Budd family

Biography

Five of the thirteen children of Samuel Woolston Budd [1781-1854] and his second wife, Ann Trippe [1790-1843], are likely those represented in a group portrait of c. 1818, painted by an unknown American folk artist. After apprenticing in an apothecary firm, Samuel Budd co-founded the firm Wetherell on Front Street in Philadelphia in 1807. He and Trippe were probably married in Philadelphia in 1808 or 1809. The children in the portrait have been tentatively identified as Mary W. [2nd child, 1810-1843], Samuel W., Jr. [3rd child, 1812-1846], Thomas [4th child, born c. 1813], William [5th child, born c. 1814], and Ann [6th child, 1817-1895]. The 1818 birthdate of the Budd's seventh child, John Platt (who does not appear in the picture), provides a probable terminus ante quem for the painting. The Budds were probably living in Philadelphia when the portrait was painted. In September 1821, the family moved to New Mills, New Jersey (now Pemberton), where Samuel had purchased a large estate. All the children, except Mary, later married and moved away. Thomas married Eliza Moffit in Kentucky and had one child before being widowed. He later settled in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with his second wife and had four more children. Samuel W., Jr., settled near Thomas and became a professor at Mercersburg College, married Jane Williams around 1840, and had three children. William married Phebe Ann Sheppard in 1844 and had three children, then apparently moved away from Burlington county. Ann married Henry Cole some time before 1850; they had no children. Samuel Woolston Budd's tenth child, Charles [1822-1880], had a daughter named Mary who brought the painting of the elder Budd children from Lancaster to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, around 1880. One of Mary's children married a man named Hull and died in 1914, whence the portrait was passed down throught the Hull family to Blanche Hull, the last of its second generation. She sold the painting (now in the NGA) by 1954.

Bibliography

1897

Budd, Theodore H. "Budd Family: The Third of a Series of Biographical Sketches." The Burlington County Democrat. New Jersey, 1897-1898: 7-8.

1910

Lee, Francis Bazley. Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey. 4 vols. New York, 1910: 3: 945-946.

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