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Daniel Cessna (1846-1928) was the oldest son of the Hon. John
Cessna (1821-1893,) three-term Speaker of the Pennsylvania House
of Representatives and an influential state representative to
the U.S. Congress in 1868 and 1872. He was frequently speaker
pro tem of the U.S. House of Representatives and an important
influence in the Republican Party, not only in Pennsylvania,
but also throughout the Midwest, during the critical Reconstruction
era. Daniel's great-great grandfather, also named John, was the
Representative from Bedford County to the Pennsylvania Constitutional
Convention of 1774, headed by Benjamin Franklin, and served as
Major of the Bedford County troops in the Revolutionary War.
The Cessna family were lineal descendents of John Cessna, a Huguenot,
or French protestant, who immigrated to Eastern Pennsylvania
from Ireland in 1690.
An 1842 graduate of Franklin College in Mercersburg, PA (forerunner
of today's Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.),
Daniel's father, John Cessna, served as President of The Board
of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College from 1866 until
his death in 1893. Daniel's mother was Ellen Shaeffer (1827-1922),
daughter of Daniel Shaeffer, Esq. of Mercersburg, PA. John and
Ellen Cessna were married in 1844 and took up residence in Bedford
PA, where young Daniel was born two years later. Daniel was christened
on October 31, 1846 in the Bedford German Reform Church. Notably,
Daniel's parents gave him the name of his maternal grandfather
rather than following Cessna family tradition and becoming John
Cessna VI.
Family documents record the painting of this portrait, along
with those of Daniel's father, John, and his mother Ellen, "with
little Ellen (his sister) who died at the age of three,"
and Daniel's brother, Marion, "at the Goodikuntz Studio
in Philadelphia by the artist, J. Wilson." (From the Cessna
family memoirs, written by the niece of Daniel Cessna, provided
by Frederick C. Doty, Woodstock, NY, her nephew.)
As an adult, Daniel may have spent time in Boston, PA, but
settled in Bedford, became a salesman, and married Ella Reamer
(b. 1851) of either Pennsylvania or Kentucky.
As Daniel and Ella Cessna were childless, the portrait of
young Daniel, depicted with his dog and whip, descended through
the family of his younger sister, Mary Etta (1863-1927) who married
Edmund S. Doty. The painting remained in the Doty family until
its 2006 sale at auction, consigned by Frederick C. Doty of Woodstock,
New York.
Jeremiah Wilson was born in Illinois in 1824. Wilson is known
as a California painter as he went to that state with the gold
rush of 1849. However, he is documented as having a studio in
Philadelphia by at least 1853 and he exhibited at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts off and on for the next ten years. In
1857, Wilson is recorded as being in Italy studying with Albert
Bierstadt, although by 1863, he had settled permanently in Harrisburg,
PA. It is probably through Bierstadt that Wilson became interested
in landscape painting, which was his specialty, along with the
painting of portraits.
"Daniel Cessna as a Boy" has been lightly cleaned
and re-varnished, and has a couple of very small areas of in-painting
on the lower right. The canvas has been tightened on its stretcher
by the application of a liquid canvas retensioner. The frame
has been professionally cleaned, minor losses have been replaced,
and the original gilding consolidated. |
