American Ancestors | Portraits of Patriots by Damien Cregeau

I recently watched Portraits of Patriots presented by Damien Cregeau and hosted by Curt DiCamillo as part of the Art & Architecture webinar series by American Ancestors. Cregeau published his book by the same name in 2025 to celebrate a family of artists and officers during the American Revolution. Rather than a biography of a single famous figure, an in-depth study of a campaign or battle, or what Cregeau calls a “huge book” about the entire Revolution, he collected stories about six “second-tier” Patriots with a special focus on Colonel John Trumbull.

Cregeau shared a helpful family tree to show how all members of the discussion were related. He currently lives in General Jedidiah Huntington House in Norwich, CT, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970 and Cregeau purchased in 2015. His research about the house led him to learn more about its original family. Jedidiah had married Faith Trumbull in 1766, and six of their letters are currently stored at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, CT. Cregeau believes he was the first person to describe these heartfelt letters. Faith was a talent artist, completing advanced embroidery when she was a child. Some of her works are in Boston, where she went to finishing school, while others are at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History (CMCH) in Hartford, CT. Cregeau now has copies of these artworks as high-resolution prints, which now hang in his house, which was once her house. Faith’s younger brother John Trumbull was the other artist of the family, and much of the talk focused on him. John was one of four men who spent time in Connecticut during and after the Revolution and were known as talented artists. The others were itinerant painter Ralph Earl, his good friend Gilbert Stuart who studied in London, England under Benjamin West, and Charles Willson Peale who later moved to Philadelphia and started the first American museum.

John nearly did not become an artist. He had seizures as a baby and later went blind in one eye after falling down the stairs when goofing around with his older sisters, Mary and Faith. Despite this disability, Trumbull was a skilled painter even as a teenager, creating portraits of his parents, Governor Jonathan Trumbull Sr. and Faith Robinson Trumbull, several times throughout his life, including 1774, 1778, and 1783. He had already entered Harvard College as a junior in 1771 at age 15, graduating in 1773 at age 17. One of his professors raved that he was a “natural genius and disposition for limning”. Unfortunately, his father was not supportive at that time and told him, “John, you must understand, Connecticut isn’t Athens.” John instead went to work in the military where his older brother Joseph Trumbull had started a career. John became an aide-de-camp at the rank of lieutenant to General George Washington in 1775 at age 19. He drew a now very famous map of Boston in September of that year and then quit. Out of Washington’s thirty-two aides, Alexander Hamilton served the longest, while John served the shortest at just nineteen days.

Despite this, he was promoted to colonel and worked under Major General Horatio Gates in upstate New York. He drew a map of Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence around August 1776 and told his superiors that the “mountain” could be an issues when trying to protect the fort. The officers ignored him; the British later put cannons on the hill and captured the fort. In 1777, he painted his self-portrait, now held at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He included a paint palette and a book in his portrait to show his chosen career. Another painting from the time was a family portrait of his older brother, Colonel Jonathan Trumbull Jr., sister-in-law Eunice Backus Trumbull, and niece Faith Trumbull (named after her grandmother and aunt). This painting is now held at Yale University. The next year in 1778, he painted a portrait of his other other brother, Colonel Joseph Trumbull, who had worked as a merchant. Joseph died soon after the painting was finished, probably of cancer.

The family continued to be plagued by sad events. Faith and Jedediah Huntington had a young son, Jabez Huntington, born in 1767, and Faith suffered from severe depression. When her husband was unable to visit for a planned dinner, as Washington decided to recall officers for their safety, Faith hung herself in her rental home in November 1775. The story was well-known at the time and frightened many younger officers. After the loss of his wife, Jedidiah had significant military service, including the Siege of Boston and the winter of Valley Forge. John Trumbull also continued to serve in the war but was deeply traumatized by the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778 when he was serving as the aide of Major General John Sullivan. For the rest of his life, John would recount seeing a horse decapitated and another aide lose his arm to cannon fire. He never painted the area of Narragansett Bay or Newport, RI, possibly because of this event.

By 1780, John’s father Jonathan relented and allowed him to study painting in London, a bold move for a Patriot family. John was actually put under “cushy house arrest” as a retaliation for the hanging of Major John Andre, a co-conspirer with Benedict Arnold. Andre was a similar rank and age to John and also had wanted to be an artist. During house arrest, John painted his famous double portrait of George Washington with William Lee, his enslaved valet, now held at The Met in New York City, NY. I never knew this painting was done from memory, a testament to John’s incredible skill. Later on in life, John was chosen to paint several other famous works from the period, including The Declaration of Independence with a small version at the Yale University Art Gallery along with a large version in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC, and The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill now at MFA Boston,

While I recognized most of the paintings on display during this excellent presentation, I knew very little about the man behind them, nor his interesting family. Cregeau did an excellent job blending visuals, facts, and humor into a fast-paced yet easy to follow talk. I will definitely add his book to my ever-growing queue and will be on the lookout for his work, whether it is articles in the Journal of the American Revolution or talks recorded by C-SPAN.