2-991-595 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of Elizabeth Chew Smith, 1762. The subject was born in 1742 or 1743, the daughter of Samuel Chew III of Anne Arundel County and his wife Sarah Lock. Since Elizabeth Chew was married on February 11, 1762, it is possible that the present painting was a marriage portrait. Her first husband was John Hamilton Smith, a resident and plantation owner of Calvert County; they had two daughters, Elizabeth Chew and Mary. Records for Saint James’s (Old Herring Creek) Parish show a large family with the name of Smith living there in the early eighteenth century. Elizabeth Chew Smith later married a man named Sprigg. It is not known whether this second marriage produced issue. She died sometime after 1800.