The Niles Star

Niles artist in 1902 presented her painting to Theodore Roosevelt

By Staff
Part of a continuing series on Niles' historic Silverbrook Cemetery, provided by Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery, a group working to preserve and restore the cemetery.
As our country gets ready to elect its first black president, it is easy to forget just how far this nation has come in accepting the equality of black and white persons. Struggles have often marred our history and yet, beams of light have at times shone through the darkness of racist thinking.
One such beam of light was a Niles-born artist. Charlotte "Lottie" Wilson was one of but a few black women artists in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century.
Her painting of former slave and early woman's rights activist Sojourner Truth, on display in the Niles Public Library since the early 1980s, is a reminder of another U.S President's role in making this Jan. 20 inauguration possible.
Lincoln had met with Truth in the White House on Oct. 29, 1864. The painting, one of three artistic renditions done by Michigan artists, depicts Lincoln showing Truth a Bible that had been given him by the black people of the city of Baltimore.
Wilson was no doubt attracted to the pioneering spirit of the intrepid Truth. Her own family also had that same pioneering spirit.
Wilson's father, Calvin F. Wilson was a charter member of the first black Masonic Lodge in Michigan. As its chairperson in 1867 he was a strong voice for equal, although still separate, education for all races.
He was one of many black barbers in Niles.
With his wife Henrietta, reportedly a quiet woman devoted to her home and spiritually guiding her family, Wilson had moved his family from Virginia in the early 1840s. They settled into a modest house on the southwest corner of Ferry and Fifth streets, which was at that time part of a white middle-class neighborhood. Lottie, their only child was born in 1854, attended Niles public schools.
After completing her early schooling in Niles, Wilson attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago studying the Atelier method of instruction. This method of fine art instruction was modeled after the private art schools of 15th to 19th century Europe. Atelier programs teach a form of realism based upon careful observations of nature with attention to detail.
In Wilson's painting of Lincoln and Truth there is the feel of the old masters. One sees in it a certain realistically perceived awkwardness as the former slave and the President relate to one another.
Niles is fortunate to have the opportunity to see the historic work at will simply by visiting our local library.
As a fundraiser in the past, the library sold lithographs of the painting.
One might wonder, looking at Wilson's painting, just what that conversation between Lincoln and Truth might have been. The issues that took up Truth's energy at that time in different form still occupy our thoughts today.
One biography of Truth writes: "Sojourner spoke for women's rights, abolition, prison reform, and addressed the Michigan Legislature against capital punishment. She took women to task for the way they dressed, trussing themselves up in corsets and wearing high heeled shoes and hats trimmed with goose feathers, looking like they were ready to take off and fly like birds."
We can be thankful that among other lessons women have learned to dress a bit more comfortably.
As if adopting some form of Truth's "woman's lib," Lottie Wilson always maintained her maiden name for her professional work. She actually was married twice.
She was married first to a man named Dennis Huggard from South Bend, Ind. with whom, according to Michigan History (September/October 1984), she had a daughter, Callie.
Huggard apparently died not long after their daughter's birth, but that was not the end of the personal tragedy visited upon the artist.
Wilson completed a life-size portrait of her daughter just before the child's death when Callie was about nine-years-old.
Following the double tragedy, Wilson left Niles in the late 1890s, moving to Washington to open her own studio and focus on her work. It was while in Washington she painted the picture of Sojourner Truth and President Lincoln.
It copies an earlier work done in 1893 by Battle Creek, painter Franklin Courter, a nationally known artist and professor of art and drawing at Albion College. Courter had been commissioned by Mrs. Francis Titus, a former assistant to Sojourner Truth, to do a painting for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
Though Wilson's painting is inscribed to President Theodore Roosevelt, some family members believe it was intended for President James McKinley.
Whatever that truth; the painting surfaced, badly deteriorated, in 1981 at Washington, D.C. where it was purchased by a Washington art conservator who, after it was restored, eventually sold it to our Niles Library.
Wilson returned to Niles in 1906 and married farmer Daniel Moss. It seems she gave up much of her own painting but did teach some art classes at her home. She also painted china, did fine needlework and was a sculptress according to relatives.
Poor health forced Wilson to move back into her childhood home in Niles from the country to be nearer doctor's care and she died there in January 1914.
The Michigan History article goes on to say that her husband remarried and most of her work was then lost.
According to a Niles Daily Star article dated Feb. 14, 2008, Nelson Hill delivered a talk at the Niles Library, presenting recent research on Lottie Wilson regarding her ancestors, education, marriages, children and discussed her other known works of art.
Hill is the great-great-great-grandson of Dennis Hill, Lottie Wilson's maternal grandfather, who came to Niles in 1842 and purchased 80 acres of land on the Berrien and Cass County border.
Could it be that Calvin Wilson followed his father-in-law to settle in Niles thus adding to this city's place in history? Perhaps, they came together. What is certain is that a small painting hanging in the local library is worthy of revisiting, during this exciting year. It is a local symbol of the history of a nation about to enter another era.
Lottie is buried in the Bond section of Silverbrook Cemetery in the Wilson family plot.
For more information on Friends of Silverbrook with regards to memberships and work days to help restore and catalog the monuments contact: Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery c/o 508 E. Main St. Niles MI 49120, Tim and Candace Skalla at 684-2455, wskalla@sbcglobal.net or contact Ginny Tyler at 445-0997, SPHINX1974@aol.com.