Locating Slavery's Legacies @ Sewanee: The University of the South

Memorial Artwork

Visual Work of Art

Enslaver

Meredith, Thomas

Painted Portrait of Thomas Meredith

The portrait is believed to have been made soon after Thomas Meredith’s marriage to Georgia Sears while the couple was in Philadelphia, according to the college historian Mary Lynch Johnson.

Born on July 17, 1795, Meredith was a Baptist leader who preached along the east coast and was a founding member of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, as well as the founder and editor of a denominational newspaper, the Biblical Recorder. The Meredith family owned slaves during his ministry in North Carolina and throughout his marriage to Georgia Sears. He wrote a proslavery pamphlet in 1847. Thomas believed that good education made better Christians and supported robust education for men and women. His support for women’s education led to his name being adopted for Meredith College in 1909, originally chartered as the Baptist Female University in 1891. The portrait hangs beside the portrait of his wife in the Julia Hamlet Harris Rare Book Room in the Carlyle Campbell Library.

In The History of Meredith College, author Mary Lynch Johnson suggests the portraits were made while the couple was in Philadelphia and were believed to be the work of Gilbert Stuart. However, after restorations performed in 2005, restorers believe this to be incorrect.

This portrait was donated to Meredith College in 1966 by Claude and St. John Ralls, sons of Ada Tolson Ralls, a granddaughter of Thomas Meredith.

The painting is 27 ¼” by 22 ½” in a gold-colored frame not original to the painting. The medium is oil on linen canvas. The portrait is part of a pair; the other portrait being of Thomas Meredith’s wife Georgia. The portrait’s composition is typical of antebellum portraiture. A dark background with no discernable features and a bright, well-lit central figure in period clothing facing left. The figure depicts a young Thomas who has very pale skin and dark brown, short, straight hair.

Stuart, Gilbert

1820

2005

1820-1865: Slavery, Anti-Slavery, and Civil War

2000-Present: Confederate Memorialization in the Era of Universities Studying Slavery and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Ralls, Claude

Ralls, St. John

Meredith College; Raleigh, North Carolina

Footnotes from a page in “A History of Meredith College” by Mary Lynch Johnson provided valuable information about the painting of Thomas Meredith.

This continuation of Mary Johnson’s book provides some context as to the more recent records of the portrait. Written by Carolyn C. Robinson.

Twig article where the browsing room is opened.

First Twig article to mention the portraits.