Micah Williams: some recent discoveries: the prodigiously talented Williams is proof that there are second acts in American lives.(Biography)

In the spring of 1851 a slightly built, sandy-haired man stepped out onto one of the bustling streets of New Brunswick, New Jersey. Micah Williams (Fig. 1), a former plater of silver, recently released from the Middlesex Country jail as an insolvent debtor, walked away from the failures of the previous year and toward a new career. For the next twenty years, he would support his family with his artistic efforts as an itinerant painter of pastel portraits.

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In a series of articles that appeared in The Magazine ANTIQUES between 1954 and 1960, the scholar Irwin F. Cortelyou (1896-1997) examined the life and work of this previously unidentified New Jersey artist. (1) Those studies, which included a 1959 interview with Williams's great-granddaughter, represented the first serious research on Williams. This article, which reflects research I have completed over the past ten years, will present new findings on the artist, specifically information on how the financial failure he experienced in his first career forced him to reinvent himself as a traveling artist. In addition, a fresh look at Williams's pastel portraits will offer exciting new insights into his techniques and stylistic development.

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Williams was born about 1782, possibly near Hempstead, New York. (2) The first published reference to him appeared in December 1806, when his marriage to Margaret Priestly (Fig. 10) was reported in the Guardian, or New-Brunswick Advertiser. (3) Soon after, Williams and his brother-in-law James Applegate Priestly established a silver-plating business in New Brunswick. Their partnership apparently did well, and in 1810 Williams purchased a house on Church Street for a family residence and workshop (see Fig. 2). (4) The firm did business with numerous local residents as well as several prominent New Jersey and New York silversmiths, including Jacques W. Cortelyou (1781-1822) in New Brunswick and the New York firm of John Sayre (1771-1852) and Thomas Richards (active 1802-1830) (w. together 1803-1813). (5)

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Williams and Priestly began their partnership at a time when the fledgling American economy was experiencing a depression brought on by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, both of which prohibited imports to the United States from Great Britain and France. In addition, the was of 1812 caused severe economic hardships within the new nation. By 1813 Williams, increasingly desperate to keep afloat financially, engaged in a series or property purchases, sales, and mortgages in an attempt to fend off financial ruin. (6) But there was no hope. On June 13, 1814, the Middlesex County sheriff, acting on a writ from the court, seized the family's residence and household goods for nonpayment of debt. As part of the paperwork filed with the courts, Williams was required to submit a list of his creditors. While other Middlesex County debtors from 1814 and 1815 listed between five and twenty-five creditors with an average debt of between five hundred and fifteen hundred dollars, Williams's creditor list contained over 150 names, for a total of well over five thousand dollars. (7) Micah and his wife, who was pregnant with their fourth child, watched as their possessions, including their children's beds, were taken from the house, (8) Williams and Priestly formally dissolved their partnership in November 1814, (9) On December 5, Williams was arrested and placed in debtors' prison. The family's house was sold at public auction in early 1815 (see Fig. 4).