Portraits of Laura

This cameo portrait of Laura Secord was likely
created for marketing purposes in 1950.

When my students are assigned a project on a famous person in Canadian History, many of them will choose Laura Secord. Laura Secord née Ingersoll was a heroine of the War of 1812, who walked 32 kilometres out of American occupied territory to warn the British about an impending surprise attack. Invariably, my students include the above cameo portrait in their presentations, believing wholeheartedly that it is an authentic portrait of Laura.

Photograph of Laura Secord,
c. 1865, McCord Museum

But it isn't. The only authentic images of Laura are two photographs of her taken about 1865 when she was in her nineties. How the cameo portrait came to be associated with Laura involves chocolate and a bit of family mythology.

David Hemmings, author of Laura Ingersoll Secord: A Heroine and Her Family believes that the portrait depicts Phoebe Grace Laskey (1878-1924), a descendant of Laura Secord's brother-in-law David Secord. Laura Secord Candy Shops Limited, founded in 1913, adopted this portrait for marketing purposes in 1950.

Phoebe Grace Laskey was the daughter of William John Laskey (1846-1934) and Grace Guymer (1860-1938). William's mother, Phoebe Ann Secord (1821-1914), was the daughter of Stephen Secord (1796-1882) and the granddaughter of David Secord (1759-1844).

According to an article published in the Windsor Daily Star in 1936, Phoebe Grace Laskey and her sisters were "chums" of the artist Mildred Peel, sister of noted Canadian artist Paul Peel (1860-1892). Mildred Peel is best known for the portrait of Laura Secord that hangs at the Ontario Legislature, and for the bust of Laura that adorns the Secord monument at Drummond Hill Cemetery on Lundy's Lane in Niagara Falls. While the article does not mention a cameo portrait, it does claim that Phoebe was the model for the bust.

The Windsor Daily Star article, however, gets a number of important facts wrong. Laura Ingersoll was not married to Stephen Secord but to James Secord (1773-1841). The article claims that Phoebe's great-great-grandmother was Phoebe Ingersoll, an aunt of Laura Ingersoll, but there is no evidence to support this. Laura's father, Thomas Ingersoll (1750-1812) had only one sister and her name was Sarah (1747-1725).

Phoebe Grace Laskey's paternal grandfather was John Laskey (1815-1856) not William Laskey as the article claims. John Laskey emigrated to Illinois after his marriage to Phoebe Ann Secord. When he died, his son William was sent back to Canada to live with William's maternal grandfather, Stephen Secord.

Mildred Peel, Mrs. J. R. Peel,
Oil on Canvas, c. 1875,
Museum London

Mildred Peel was born in London, Ontario in 1856. Her father, John Robert Peel (1830-1904), was a sculptor and art educator who owned the London Marble Works. Mildred and her brother Paul studied art with their father and may have helped with the cutting and carving of gravestones and monuments. A portrait of her mother, Amelia Margaret Hall (1832-1890), painted when Mildred was about 19, is in the collection of Museum London.

Mildred attended the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts from 1880 to 1883 where she became familiar with the work of American realist painter Thomas Eakins. After briefly returning to London she decided, like her brother, to continue her studies in Paris. Mildred possibly studied at the studio of Orientalist artist Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. Summers were spent sketching and painting with her brother in Pont-Aven, Brittany.

While Paul remained in France, dying suddenly in 1892, Mildred returned to Canada where she shared a studio in Toronto with her sister Clara. Among her early commissions was a series of portrait busts for the Toronto Normal School.

Casting master for Mildred
Peel's bust of Laura Secord
at the Niagara Historical
Society Museum

In 1901, Mildred received the commission from the Ontario Historical Society for a bronze bust of Laura Secord. In its annual report, the Ontario Historical Society stated that, "Miss Peel has been very successful with the likeness with the assistance of a granddaughter of one of Laura Secord's sisters who bears a striking likeness to the Ingersolls and particularly to Laura Secord."

Was Phoebe Grace Laskey the model? Phoebe was 23 at the time. The bust depicts Laura as a woman in her late thirties, the age at which she made her historic trek in June of 1813. The casting master is part of the collection of the Niagara Historical Society Museum in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Was a great-niece of Laura the model? Possibly. Laura had numerous siblings who settled in Canada.

Mildred Peel, Laura Secord,
Oil on Canvas, 1905,
Government of Ontario

In 1905, the Government of Ontario purchased a portrait of Laura Secord from Mildred. The painting is clearly based on the photograph of Laura, a copy of which was in the possession of the Laskey family, however, Laura's many grandchildren undoubtedly also had copies.

In 1936 an X-ray examination of the canvas revealed that Mildred had painted the Secord portrait over top a portrait of her future husband. This created a minor scandal, although it was common for artists to paint over unsold works. The portrait was sent to storage and forgotten until rediscovered in 1978. When a study for the portrait was exhibited at Museum London in 2015, strong similarities were noted between the study and Mildred's earlier portrait of her mother.

Mildred married former Premier of Ontario George William Ross (1841-1914) in Toronto in 1907. Prior to  becoming Premier in 1899, Ross had served as the Minister of Education in the Liberal government of Sir Oliver Mowat. As Minister of Education, he commissioned Mildred to create a series of portrait busts for the Toronto Normal School. When Ross was knighted in 1908, Mildred became known as Lady Ross. After her husband's death in Toronto, Mildred moved to Santa Barbara County, California where she died in 1920.

Benson Lossing, Laura Secord, 1869

Apart from her photograph, the earliest representation of Laura Secord appears in Benson Lossing's The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812, published in 1869. This line drawing was obviously based on the photograph but shows Laura with a much rounder face. The drawing also appears in a number of later works including George Bryces's Laura Secord: A Study in Canadian Patriotism and John Ross Robertson's monumental Landmarks of Toronto published in 1914.

Photograph of Laura Secord, c. 1865,
Niagara Falls Public Library

A photograph of Laura Secord was published in 1898 in the second edition of Sarah Anne Curzon's The Story of Laura Secord. Sarah Anne Curzon née Vincent (1833-1898) was a poet, playwright, journalist, and pioneer for women's rights whose goal was "to rescue from oblivion the name of a brave woman, and set it in its proper place among the heroes of Canadian history." Subtle differences suggest that this photograph is not a cropped version of Laura's full-length portrait.

Emma Currie also used this photograph in The Story of Laura Secord and Canadian Reminiscences, published in 1900, and dedicated to Sarah Anne Curzon.

Lorne Kidd Smith, Laura Secord Warning Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, June 1813,
Oil on Canvas c. 1920, Library and Archives Canada

In the early 1920s, Lorne Kidd Smith painted Laura giving her warning to Lieutenant Fitzgibbon. Laura appears remarkably undishevelled for someone who has just walked 32 kilometres through the bush. The soldier standing behind her sports an impressive mustache that in 1813 was decidedly against army regulations.

Charles W. Jeffreys, Laura Secord Tells Her Story to Fitzgibbon, 1813,
1945, Library and Archives Canada

Historical painter and illustrator Charles William Jeffries created two Laura Secord illustrations. The first shows Laura about to cross a stream on a fallen tree, while the second shows a sitting, bedraggled, and exhausted-looking Laura giving her warning to Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon.

Canada Post has issued two stamps featuring Laura. The 1992 stamp depicts Laura running. She has reddish hair and appears much younger than 37. The 2013 stamp is a more accurate depiction of what a 37-year-old woman in Upper Canada would have been wearing in 1813.

Finally there is the mysterious cameo portrait that Laura Secord Candy Shops Limited used to market its chocolate. The portrait depicts a delicate young woman clad in a revealing white dress, with "centre-parted hair in a wavy, yet demure arrangement." In Heroines and History, Colin Coates and Cecillia Morgan observe that, "this Secord would definitely have employed servants, either black or white; her unseen hands would not have been calloused or darkened by manual labour."

There is no provenance for the cameo portrait before 1950. Mildred Peel and the "Laskey girls" would hardly have been chums given the differences in their ages, however, as the Laskey family lived in the same area of London as the Peel family, it is remotely possible that Mildred painted Phoebe's portrait during one of her visits home. But why then was there no mention of the portrait in the Windsor Daily Star article?

Does the cameo portrait depict a great-niece of Laura Secord? Again it is possible, but more likely the portrait is simply the creation of the Laura Secord Candy Shops Limited.   

Sources:

Baker, Victoria. Paul Peel: A Retrospective 1860 - 1892. London Regional Art Gallery, 1986.

Boyko-Head, Christine. "Laura Secord Meets the Candyman: The Image of Laura Secord in Popular Culture." Slippery Pastimes: Reading the Popular in Canadian Culture. Joan Nicks and Jeannette Sloniowski, editors. Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2002. p. 61-79

Bryce, George. Laura Secord: A Study in Canadian Patriotism. Manitoba Free Press Company, 1907.

Coates, Colin M. and Morgan, Cecilia. Heroines and History: Representations of Madeleine de Vercheres and Laura Secord. University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Currie, Emma A. The Story of Laura Secord and Canadian Reminiscences. William Briggs, 1900.

Curzon, Sarah Anne. The Story of Laura Secord, 2nd edition. Lundy Lane Historical Society, 1898.

Hemmings, David. Laura Ingersoll Secord: A Heroine and Her Family. Bygones Publishing, 2010.

Knowles, Norman. Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts. University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Lossing, Benson John. The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812. Harper & Brothers, 1869.

Poole, Nancy Geddes. The Art of London: 1830-1980. McIntosh Gallery, 2017.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/mcintoshpub/1

"Report of Monuments and Tablets Committee," Annual Report of the Ontario Historical Society, 1901 and 1902. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1903.

Robertson, John Ross. Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto, Vol 6. 1914.

"Bronze Busts and Bearded Ladies: Mildred Peel's Artistic Legacy" http://www.guidetags.com/friends-of-laura-secord/explore/fls-trillium-pois/939-bronze-busts-and-bearded-ladies-mildred-peel-s-artistic-legacy

"Mildred Peel 1856-1920." A Driving Force: Women of the London, Ontario, Visual Arts Community, 1867 to the Present. McIntosh Gallery, London https://mcintoshdrivingforce.ca/biography/mildred-peel/