Florence Griswold Museum - Captain Augustus Henry Griswold

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Bookmark: http://collections.flogris.org/objects-1/info/23178

Captain Augustus Henry Griswold

ca. 1820
21 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.

Object Type: Painting

Medium and Support: oil on canvas

Credit Line: Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Gay Wilmerding

Accession Number: 2020.16.1

The eldest son of Connecticut Governor Roger Griswold, Augustus Henry Griswold (1789–1836) came from a family that contributed several members to oceangoing professions, including Florence Griswold’s father Captain Robert Harper Griswold. Around 1814, Augustus Henry Griswold served aboard privateers that transported goods to and from the Caribbean, acting in the interest of the cargo owners by selling their merchandise abroad and purchasing materials for shipment back to America. In addition to his role in the Triangle Trade, in the 1820s he sailed to Canton in the China Trade and became a packet ship captain for Old Lyme native John Griswold’s London Line out of New York City. Ocean life had its hazards: the British captured Augustus Henry’s privateer ship with him aboard in 1814 and he later shipwrecked in the Atlantic, making his way to the Azores with sixteen crew members in an open boat.

Griswold married the English-born Elizabeth Landsdell in 1820 and brought her to Griswold Point, where they occupied a stone house overlooking the Sound. Their portraits—his by a sophisticated French artist and hers by a less accomplished, possibly local painter—kept the couple’s likenesses in each other’s minds during their long periods of separation.

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