Marcus Mote
Marcus Mote (1817 to 1898) was born to a well established Ohio Quaker family, though he broke with tradition by eloping with Rhoda Steddon, which earned the couple a temporary banishment from the meeting. Mote did not follow the cabinetmaking path of his father, turning his attention, instead, to painting. He earned his living largely as a portrait painter (and later a photographer), though like many late nineteenth century artists, became transfixed by the American landscape. In 1855, he advertised in the Western Star, “M. Mote informs his friends that he is ‘engaged in Portrait Painting, and Landscapes’ “. By the Civil War, Mote’s Lebanon business was waning. He looked west, permanently relocating to Richmond, Indiana, in 1865, where his business prospered, and where he died in 1898.