Daniel Parke II (c. 1669–1710)

"A complete sparkish gentleman"
By John Closterman, 1706   [View details of painting]
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. D. Tennant Bryan, 1985

It was James Blair, rector of Bruton Church, president of the College of William and Mary, and commissary of the bishop of London, who called Daniel Parke "sparkish." He noted Parke's "quick resentment of every least thing that looks like an affront or injury." Parke once dragged Blair's wife from her family pew at Bruton Church. He challenged the governor of Maryland to a duel and horsewhipped him.

Parke inherited wealth at ten, was elected to the House of Burgesses at nineteen, and joined the Governor's Council at twenty-six. He left for England in 1697 but failed in an effort to buy a seat in the House of Commons. He won acclaim in the War of the Spanish Succession as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough but failed to win appointment as governor of Virginia. Instead, he became governor of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. His defense of royal rule, suppression of smuggling, uncompromising nature, and "debauching many of the wives and daughters" of island planters drove them to rebellion. Assassins broke into Government House on Antigua, stripped him naked, dragged him into the street, killed him, and left his corpse there for a week.

The portrait was painted in London, where it was the fashion for men to wear long wigs (over shaved heads) from the 1660s to 1740s. This portrait descended through Parke's daughter Lucy, who married William Byrd II of Westover, where this picture hung as part of the largest portrait collection in the American colonies.

Q & A
Daniel Parke's estates became part of the dowry of the richest woman in Virginia, the widow of Parke's grandson. When she re-married in 1759, who was her second husband? Mrs. Daniel Parke Custis (born Martha Dandridge) married George Washington.

Robert Barraud Taylor (1774–1834)

"One of the most devoted patriots and most accomplished men"
Attributed to Cephas Thompson, Norfolk, 1811 or 1812   [View details of painting]

The best-known feat of Norfolk native Robert Barraud Taylor during his college days at William and Mary was a duel with John Randolph of Roanoke over the mispronunciation of a word in a debate. Taylor was wounded, but both men survived to serve state and nation. One biographer has written of Taylor that "Being a consistent Federalist, he was always in the minority." Not quite. He served two widely separated terms in the House of Delegates but was defeated for Congress in 1809 by a Jeffersonian. Although opposed to the War of 1812, as brigadier general of militia Taylor organized the successful defense of Norfolk against the British. Widely respected, he was chosen to represent Norfolk in the state constitutional convention of 1829–30 but resigned because he could not, in good conscience, follow the wishes of his Tidewater constituents on the issue of fair representation for Virginia's western counties. Among those who admired his action was fellow convention delegate Hugh Blair Grigsby, who paid Taylor the compliment quoted above.

This portrait is two-dimensional and somewhat primitive, but the face has vitality. It is in accord with a contemporary account that "General Taylor is about middle size, inclined to corpulency. His countenance is lighted up with the liveliest and most expressive blue eyes." Another version of this portrait exists, but a matching portrait of Mrs. Taylor is now lost.

Thomas Fortune Ryan (1851–1928)

"the most adroit, suave and noiseless man" [in American finance]
By Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, 1913   [View details of painting]
Gift of Mrs. Anne Worrall Ryan (widow of subject's grandson)

Thomas Fortune Ryan's career was tainted by the greed and corruption of the Gilded Age; he came to epitomize the "robber barons" that employed unethical means to amass fortunes in business or banking. Nearly as accomplished as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, or J. P. Morgan, Ryan is less remembered today, probably because he diversified. At one point he held controlling interest in thirty corporations.

Ryan's early life was an American success story. Fourteen years old at the close of the Civil War, he was an orphan under the care of his mother's family and seemingly destined to suffer the postwar poverty of the southern Virginia piedmont. At seventeen, however, this lanky country boy found opportunity in John S. Barry's dry-goods commission house in Baltimore. Four years later Barry financed Ryan's move to New York City, where he prospered for a decade in a Wall Street brokerage firm that he co-founded. He bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (the youngest member ever) and married Barry's daughter.

In 1883, when a streetcar system was proposed for New York City, Ryan bid for the first line. By the expected bribery and political influence, and unexpected creation of the nation's first holding company, he managed to conglomerate franchises for nearly the whole operation. In 1905, when his above-ground railway was threatened by a subway system, Ryan was able to consolidate with his competitors. When he retired the next year from his several traction companies, they collapsed. Among the other ventures that put to use Ryan's political savvy and cutthroat tactics, the most profitable involved tobacco and insurance. The most sensational was his development of the gold, copper, and diamond industries in the Congo at the invitation of Belgium's King Leopold, who scandalized the world by ruthless exploitation of his African colony. Ryan's collaborator, William C. Whitney, called him "the most adroit, suave and noiseless man" that American finance had ever known. Whitney once predicted that his friend would become one of the wealthiest men in the country. Indeed, at death in 1928, Ryan was said to be the nation's tenth richest, and his estate was estimated at somewhere between one and five hundred million dollars.

Q & A
What projects in Richmond did Thomas Fortune Ryan finance?
In 1901 Ryan and his wife Ida Barry Ryan funded construction of the only Roman Catholic cathedral ever built by a single family—the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. In 1913 Ryan financed the Confederate murals in the Confederate Memorial Institute or Battle Abbey (now the Virginia Historical Society).

(click to enlarge)

Elizabeth Dabney (Langhorne) Lewis (1851–1946)

"She voted Socialist at eighty"
By Scaisbrooke Langhorne Abbot, 1929 (subject's grandson)
Gift of Elizabeth (Otey) Watson (subject's great-granddaughter)

In 1920 Viscountess Astor asked playfully "What has Virginia come to that Buck Langhorne [her brother] can belong to the legislature and my aunt Liz Lewis cannot vote?" By the end of that year, Elizabeth Dabney (Langhorne) Lewis (known to family as Aunt Liz) could vote. Woman suffrage had been one of her many causes.

"Lizzie" Langhorne was born in Botetourt County. The family moved to Lynchburg, where she was tutored and attended private schools. In 1873 she married John H. Lewis, an attorney. Her great-niece recalled that she had "a well-reasoned mind, curious about all new ideas, accepting nothing until she was convinced." She was very political for a woman of her era and was a popular speaker on behalf of woman suffrage and improved working conditions for women. Later in life, she championed the League of Nations. For years she played the organ at the tiny non-Christian Unitarian Church in Lynchburg. When she was over seventy she went to the Sorbonne in Paris to perfect her French. "She voted Socialist at eighty," recalled a relative, "because she said she was tired of both Republicans and Democrats and she wanted a change."

In this portrait by her grandson, she is clad in regal purple, holding a book, like a sage enthroned.

Q & A
Nancy Langhorne (Viscountess Astor) was Lizzie Langhorne's niece. What was Lady Astor's contribution to woman suffrage? She was the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons. She was Conservative MP for Plymouth 1919–45.