Howard Weeden papers

Artist and poet, Maria Howard Weeden (known as Howard) was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on 6 July 1847, the youngest daughter of Dr. William Donaldson and Jane Eliza Brooks Urquhart Weeden. Howard's father died returning from a trip to New Orleans six months before she was born. She was educated at Huntsville Female Seminary, where she showed a talent for music and art. Recognizing her talents, Howard's mother hired William Frye, a well-known Huntsville portrait painter, to provide Howard with private art lessons.

The family home in downtown Huntsville was confiscated by Union troops in 1862, and Howard, her mother, and her sister Kate moved in with their servants. Later that year, the family and their servants moved to the Tuskegee plantation of Maria's older sister. Howard then enrolled in the Tuskegee Female Methodist College.

Returning to Huntsville in 1866, the Weedens found their home plundered and finances depleted. To help with finances, she taught art classes and sold paintings, handpainted note cards, and mementoes; she painted scenes of Huntsville and more than 200 wildflowers found on Monte Sano, a mountain near Huntsville. As a hobby, Howard often copied poems of well-known authors onto blank pages and illustrated the margins with her personal drawings. She also began writing inspirational poems and fables and essays for the Christian Observer newspaper, under the pseudonym Flake White.

In 1893, Howard traveled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and viewed works of other artists. She was struck at the common portrayal of freedpeople in an exaggerated, caricatured minstrel show style, such as A. B. Frost's illustrations for Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales. Recognizing the inadequacy of such depictions, Howard was inspired to paint the people she had known all her life. She would spend many years painting the freedpeople that she grew up with, cared for, and respected.

Toward the end of her life she wrote four collections of poetry, including Songs of the Old South, Bandana Ballads, and Old Voices. She died from tuberculosis on 12 April 1905.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Alabama http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3060