In mid-July, I received an intriguing letter from a kind lady in Tullahoma, Tennessee, desiring to unravel the mystery surrounding a painting that had been in her family for the last 100 years or so. She stated that the painting had been on the wall of her grandfather's house in Shelbyville, Tennessee, for as long as she could remember, and after the passing of her grandfather she now inherited the beautiful work of art.
The rectangular oil painting, adorned in a gold-leaf frame, is a floral still life of fifteen cut roses in a multitude of colors, including crimson, pink and white, linearly strewed out, surrounded by a cloudy ethereal backdrop of muted tones. In the lower right corner, the painting is simply marked "R. Shapard 1893."
Here is where genealogical research played a vital role. It is common Shapard knowledge that Shelbyville, Tennessee, had been a family stronghold for many years, especially throughout the 1890s when the painting was created. We determined that since it was highly likely that the artist was from Shelbyville, that is where we would begin our hunt.
In the 1850s, Robert Paine Shapard (1805-1871) and his wife Parthenia (Mitchell) moved their family of ten children from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to Shelbyville. After Robert's death in 1871, only two of his male children remained in Shelbyville raising families of their own - Evander Shapard (1843-1921) and David Green Shapard (1846-1919). No one in David Green Shapard's family with an "R" name survived to 1893, thus, we excluded his line from the search. Among the children of Evander Shapard, there were two possibilities - Robert Paine Shapard (1872-1933) and his sister Rebecca Shapard (1877-1965).
Upon researching Robert Paine Shapard (1872-1933), I only found his signature as "R. P. Shapard" and never just "R. Shapard." Furthermore, there is no record of him painting during his life, especially at the age of 21 years old in 1893.
Rebecca Shapard (1877-1965) on the other hand was a more promising prospect. She would have been 16 years of age in 1893, being classically trained in school with an emphasis on the arts, as was common for young ladies at that time. The floral motif of the painting is in perfect harmony with a female painter and the skill level of the brush strokes is consistent with an artist of her age. Rebecca married Sidney Wood Garrison on June 17, 1896, and had one son. After her husband's death she married Eugene Haynes in 1910, and they had no children. She is buried in Willow Mount Cemetery in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Interestingly, the owner of the painting reported that her grandfather's mother's maiden name was Haynes also from Shelbyville, Tennessee. Although I was unable to connect the families through genealogy, the coincidence is promising.
Thus through our best evidence, we deduced that the artist was Miss Rebecca Shapard (1877-1965), daughter of Evander Shapard (1843-1921).
