Sarah Greenleaf Boardman (Mrs. Offin Boardman) and Benjamin Greenleaf Boardman, about 1787¹
Oil on canvas
38 5/8 x 34 3/4 in. (98 x 88.2 cm)
Museum purchase, 1938.5

Scratched into the back of the frame, at top right: "1778/Oct 12^th/Tan hin"

Provenance
Captain Offin Boardman (1747/8–1811); by bequest to his daughter Susan Greenleaf Boardman Odiorne (1788–1862). By descent in the family to George Carr Odiorne (1878–1965), Hoosick Falls, N.Y.; to Clyde H. Tomlinson, Hoosick Falls, N.Y.²

References
"The Evening Reception: A Pleasant Levee at City Hall—The Portrait Gallery, Newburyport Herald," June 11, 1885.

Historical Society of Old Newbury 1885, 131.

Worcester Annual Report, 1938, 10, 16.

"The Salisbury Collection," Worcester News Bulletin 4, no. 6 (March 1939): n.p.

American Portraits 1939, I, 41, cat. no. 222.

Dresser 1949b, 108, 124, 125, 131, 133, 135, 139.

Sadik 1966, 89.

Little 1976a, 112, 114.

Sadik 1976, 16, 52.

Benes 1985, 229–30.

Benes 1986, 8, 19, 118, 132, 133, 143.

Tagney 1989, 230.

Exhibitions
Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Newbury, Newburyport City Hall, Newburyport, Mass., June 10, 1885, cat. p. 131.

Christian Gullager, 1759–1826, Worcester Art Museum, June 18–September 6, 1949, cat. no. 4.

Old Town and the Waterside: Two Hundred Years of Tradition and Change in Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, 1635–1835, Cushing House Museum, Newburyport, Mass., July 20–October 20, 1985, cat. no. 110.

Notes
1. This portrait has also been published as Mrs. Offin Boardman (Sarah Greenleaf) and Child (Sadik 1976, 16); Portrait of Mrs. Offin Boardman (Worcester Annual Report, 1938, 16); Sarah Greenleaf (The Evening Reception: A Pleasant Levee at City Hall—The Portrait Gallery, Newburyport Herald, June 11, 1885); and Sarah (Greenleaf) Boardman and Child (Mrs. Offin Boardman) (Dresser 1949b, 124).

2. The painting probably descended from Susan Greenleaf Boardman Odiorne to her son James Locke Odiorne, Sr. (1817–1872); to his son James Locke Odiorne, Jr. (1837–1909), West Newbury, Mass.; to his son George Carr Odiorne. For this line of descent, see Odiorne 1966, 46–7, 68, 95–96, 128–29; and Barbara Odiorne Kerr to Laura K. Mills, December 18, 1999. For Offin Boardman's bequest of to his daughter, see Offin Boardman, Will, March 1, 1808, Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 2717, vol. 381, 183. Helen Thurlow (b. 1897), the granddaughter of James Locke Odiorne, Jr., remembered seeing the portraits in her grandparents' house as a child; see Louisa Dresser, memo, October 20, 1941. All documents are in the object file, Worcester Art Museum.