Amos Doolittle (1754-1832)
One of America’s most important early engravers, Amos Doolittle was born in Wallingfor (New Haven), Connecticut on May 8, 1754 and learned the engraving trade as an apprentice silversmith.
A partriot, Doolittle enlisted as a private soldier in the Governor’s Second Company of Guards (Connecticut, Capt. Benedict Arnold, commanding). Hearing about the fighting at Lexington and Concord, forty volunteers of this company marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts, arriving on April 29th, ten days after the historic battles. Among the ranks were Doolittle and the portrait painter, Ralph Earl (1751 to 1801). These two journeyed on to Lexington and Concord in order to investigate sites of the recent conflict and record the events, Doolittle interviewing participants and Earl sketching landscapes at four locations. The young silversmith instructed the painter as to what activities were to be depicted in each scene and even posed with a musket when needed. This was documented by Levi Harrington of Lexington, who wrote “…a stranger from Connecticut came here to take a sketch of the village as it appeared on the 19th of April 1775… and he afterwards published a series of copper plate engravings”.
By late May, Doolittle and Earl had returned to New Haven where the four paintings were completed and transfered on to copper plates used to make a set of prints “plain ones or coloured”. The Concord plates (II and III) depicted A View of the Town of Concord with the Ministerial Troops destroying the Stores and The Battle at the North Bridge in Concord; the Lexington plates depicted The Battle of Lexington (I) and The South Part of Lexington where the first Detachment were joined by Lord Percy (IV). The engravings were advertised in the Connecticut Journal and met with great popular success, allowing Doolittle to pursue the engraving trade full-time.
During the Federal period Doolittle engraved portraits of the new Republic’s leaders, including presidents George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. These were well received by the public and one of his most famous works, a tribute to Washington, entitled A Display of the United States of America, was first issued in 1788 and went through at least six diffent editions. The Display featured a circular layout of official seals, state populations, and number of senators and representatives of the 13 original colonies and the total population of the United States, all surrounding a central portrait of George Washington.
In addition to historical scenes, like his view of New York’s Federal Hall and Washington’s Inauguration (1789), Doolittle also engraved book illustrations, maps for the cartographer Jedidiah Morse, scenic views, sheet music and bookplates. If he was not the first engraver in America, as he often claimed, Doolittle was the first to expand beyond service work to original compositions on a regular basis.
Over his long life Doolittle had three wives. Sally, the first, died in 1797, where upon he married Phoebe (born 1764) in New Haven, who died in 1825. Again he married in the same year, to Esther Moss (1769 to 1845), and he died in Cheshire (Connecticut) on January 31, 1832.