Take an audio tour of The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum and the oldest museum building in the United States! Listen to WYPR's Aaron Henkin recount the fascinating stories that surround this historic building. Includes 16 stops.
Born in 1777, Moses Williams grew up in the Peales’ Philadelphia household, the son of an enslaved couple, Lucy and Scarborough, who were traded to Charles Willson Peale in exchange for portraits he had painted of their enslavers in Maryland. After Peale had moved his family to Philadelphia, he became part of the Pennsylvania State Legislature that passed the country’s first "Gradual Abolition of Slavery" Act in 1780. But a provision of the law required those born enslaved to remain in a sort of indentured status with their enslavers until the age of 28, so Moses was raised with Charles Willson Peale’s children after his parents were emancipated and his father took the name, John Williams.
Unlike Peale’s biological children, Moses was not taught to paint, but he did learn how to cut silhouettes and operate a physiognotrace, a silhouette-cutting machine. He earned enough selling souvenir silhouettes at 8 cents each to visitors to Peale’s Philadelphia Museum that he was able to gain his independence a year earlier than required by law.
Only six months younger than Moses Williams, Rembrandt wrote begrudgingly of Williams’ success in an 1857 article about the physiognotrace, a silhouette cutting machine: “It is a curious fact that until the age of 27, Moses was entirely worthless: but on the invention of the physiognotrace, he took a fancy to amuse himself in cutting out the rejected profiles made by the machine, and soon acquired such dexterity and accuracy, that the machine was confided to his custody with the privilege of retaining the fee for drawing and cutting. This soon became so profitable, that my father insisted upon giving him his freedom one-year in advance. In a few years he amassed a fund sufficient to buy a two story brick house, and actually married my father’s white cook, who during his bondage, would not permit him to eat at the same table with her.”
In the 1830 Census, Moses Williams was listed as the head of a household including 7 children. He seems to have ceased cutting silhouettes – and perhaps passed away – some time after 1834. The Peale is currently engaging with scholars to conduct further research into Moses Williams’ story and work.
