It's All Relative: Richmond Families (Pt. 3)

What defines a Richmond family in 2016? The classic nuclear family has been left behind along with our black and white television sets and tuna noodle casseroles. This exhibition explores the changing definition and composition of what makes a family in our Richmond community over the past five centuries.

Benjamin Watkins Leigh (1781-1849) was born in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the son of the Reverend William Leigh (d. 1787) and Elizabeth Watkins (d. 1799). He attended the College of William and Mary, studied law and began practicing in Petersburg in 1802. Following the death of both his parents, he acted as a guardian for his younger brother William.

Leigh married three times: on December 24, 1802, to his cousin Mary Selden Watkins; on November 30, 1813, to Susan Colston; on November 24, 1821, to Julia Wickham (1801-1883), the eldest daughter of John Wickham. Their son Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Jr., (1831-1863) died at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.

This sterling silver fruit bowl is from the workshop of Philadelphia silversmith Peter L. Krider (active 1845-1860) and retailed by Mitchell & Tyler of Richmond. It was purchased by and monogrammed for Edmund Fanning Wickham (1796-1845).

Edmund was a son of John Wickham and his first wife Mary Smith Fanning. In 1822, Edmund married Lucy Carter (1799-1835) of Shirley plantation. They lived at Rocky Mills plantation in Hanover County with their six children. This piece of family heirloom silver descended in the family of Edmund’s brother, William of Hickory Hill plantation.

Frances “Fanny” Wickham Graham (1808-1895) was the sixth child of John and Elizabeth Wickham. She married Lt. Col. James D. Graham in 1860; the couple had no children.

In an 1875 letter, William Fanning Wickham (1793-1880), Fanny’s elder half-brother, described a fire at Hickory Hill, the family plantation in Hanover County, Virginia, that destroyed a considerable portion of the house along with some family heirlooms and mementos. Wickham writes that “Mrs. Graham, who lost almost her entire wardrobe is as cheerful as if nothing happened. Her good temper exceeds anything I ever knew.”

Thomas Ashby Wickham (1857-1939) was the son of Littleton Waller Tazwell Wickham (1821-1909) and Elizabeth Peyre Ashby (1824-1859). Thomas Ashby Wickham practiced law in Washington Territory in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1897, he returned to Virginia and married his cousin Julia Wickham Porcher (1860-1933), daughter of Virginia Leigh (1835-1866) and Dr. Francis Peyre Porcher (1824-1895).

Wickham was appointed judge in the Henrico County court and served in the Virginia Senate. Towards the end of his life, he sat for his portrait by Richmond artist David Silvette. Painted the year after he was widowed, it descended in the family until 1996.