Author: Mifflin, John Houston
Biography:
MIFFLIN, John Houston (1807-88: WBIS)
Mifflin was a Quaker descendant of John Mifflin, one of the first English emigrants to Pennsylvania. He was born in Columbia PA, the eldest child of Martha and Joseph Mifflin. Details of his early life are scarce, but in the 1830s he was established as an artist in Philadelphia, from which place he regularly toured southern cities such as Charleston SC, Augusta GA, and Tallahassee FL in search of portrait commissions. (He contributed a paper "On the Fine Arts in America" to the Platonian Literary Association of Philadelphia in 1833.) In 1841 he added daguerrotypes to his offerings. After he married Elizabeth Ann Bethel Heise in 1844, however, he gradually ceased work as an artist and tried other enterprises, such as the manufacture of printers' inks. The couple settled in Lancaster PA and had seven children, of whom four outlived both parents. Mifflin is buried in Mount Bethel Cemetery, which he had been instrumental in founding. Some family papers are held in the J. Houston Mifflin Collection of LancasterHistory (formerly the Lancaster County Historical Society). (ancestry.com 10 Apr. 2020; Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun [2001]; Cynthia Lee Patterson, Art for the Middle Classes [2011]) HJ
Other Names:
- J. Houston Mifflin