GROWING | PORTRAITIST | LANDSCAPIST | GALLERY |
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Family |
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Emigration to the Midwest, 1817 |
_ | Junius Sloan was born March 10, 1827, in Kingsville, Ashtabula County, a
land of wooded sand ridges and fertile meadows lying along the southern shore of Lake Erie
in northeastern Ohio--formerly part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. In 1817, Mayhew Luce, his wife, and seven of their children, including fourteen-year old Drusilla, came from Barre, Massachusetts by covered wagon to settle in Kingsville. In 1820, Drusilla began the manufacture of straw bonnets, a house industry art and skill she had learned in Barre. The redheaded, red-bearded blacksmith-toolmaker-farmer, Seymour Sloan came to Kingsville shortly after, probably in 1821 when he had reached his majority. On November 30, 1824, Seymour and Drusilla married in Kingsville. Junius was the second of their eight children, who were born, as was common, at about two year intervals. Almost all showed aptitudes for music making, writing verse, and/or painting. The children attributed their talents to the Luces, especially to the gentle, encouraging Drusilla. Seymour, on the other hand, stern and hardheaded, wanted his children to be practical; he wanted Junius to paint signs, not landscapes. |
