History of Fairhaven, (Bristol County) Massachusetts United States of America

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Biographies:

William Le Baron Jenney, architect, was born at Fairhaven, Mass., Sept. 25, 1832; son of William Proctor and Eliza (Le Baron) Jenney; grandson of Levi and Ansel (Gibbs) Jenney, and a descendant of John Jenney, John Alden and Dr. Francis Le Baron, all of Plymouth colony. He was educated at Phillips academy, Andover, Mass.; at Lawrence Scientific school, Cambridge, and was graduated from the ?cole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures at Paris, with diploma of 1856. He was engineer in charge on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, 1857, and studied art and architecture in Paris studios, 1858-59. He was commissioned, in 1861, an additional aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain, in the U.S. army; was assigned to engineer duty on the staff of Gen. U.S. Grant, serving 1861-63; served on the staff of Gen. W. T. Sherman, 1863-66; was brevetted major in 1865; and resigned May 19, 1866. He established himself as an architect in Chicago, Ill., in 1868, and was the landscape engineer for the West Chicago parks, 1870-71. He invented in 1883, the skeleton construction, generally used for tall buildings, of many of which he became the architect.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

William Bradford, artist, was born in Fairhaven, Mass., in 1824. He began his art career by making drawings and paintings of whaling-vessels, the first money he received for the work being twenty-five dollars for a drawing of the whaler, Jireh Perry. Marine subjects became his specialty, and he was fortunate in securing Van Beest, the best foreign marine artist in the country, for a studio mate. The influence of Van Beest's methods upon those of Bradford were salutary, a certain set mannerism of Bradford's style being softened without destroying his habit of fidelity to detail. After his separation from Van Beest, he began to study nature as exhibited on the eastern coast, from Rhode Island to Labrador, and produced a series of marine pictures unrivalled for accuracy of detail and perfection of finish. For his "Sealers Crushed among the Icebergs," a magnificent product of his Labrador studies, he received the then unusual price of ten thousand dollars, from Le-Grand Lockwood, the New York millionaire. Years later he was enabled to visit the Arctic zone, and the pictures, resulting from his studies of the ice formations there, were among the finest productions of his brush. He was peculiarly happy in his storm effects, producing with marvellous truthfulness to nature the aspect of the sea and the tumultuous motion of the waves. He visited the Pacific slope and spent seven years in studying and painting in the Yosemite and Mariposa valleys of California. In 1870 he visited England, where his work was received with enthusiasm. "The Steamer Panther off the Coast of Greenland, under the Midnight Sun," painted by special commission from Queen Victoria, was placed in the library at Windsor castle, and other of his paintings in the galleries of Princess Louise, Lord Dufferin, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Westminster and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. No collection of any size in America is without an example of his work. Among his best-known pictures are his "Fishing Boats in the Bey of Fundy," "Shipwreck off Nantucket," "Lighthouse in St. John Harbor," "Fishing Boats at Anchor," "Sudden Squall in the Bay of Fundy," "A Stiff Breeze in the Harbor of East-port," "The Coast of Labrador," "Boarding the Sloop," "Sunset in the North," "Arctic Scene," and "Whalers after the Nip in Melville Bay" (1889). In 1873 three hundred and fifty copies of his superb volume on "The Arctic Regions" were brought out in London by special subscription, Queen Victoria and the Duke of Argyle being among the patrons and subscribers. He died in New York city, April 25, 1892.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor