PEALES VISIT 1793 CAPE HENLPEN.

CHARLES WILSON PEALE

ARTIST

1793 VISIT CAPE HENLOPEN VISIT

Peale was a portrait painter of note and also a dedicated naturalist in Philadelphia where

he opened a museum to display his paintings and specimens of native American animals.

In 1793, he, his wife, and children, Raphel, Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian, spent the summer

at Lewestown on the Delaware, where he could collect examples of coastal birds on the sands of Cape Henlopen. The family scampered over the Cape dunes all summer, collecting egrets, herons,

ducks, and other birds that frequent the dunes and coastal bays. At the end of the summer he sailed back to Philadelphia, only to lrearn that the city was in the midst of a yellow fever epidemic.

Peale sealed himself and family in their home, along with the collection of fowl from Cape

Henlopen, and avoided anyone with the disease. Fearing to visit the market for food because of the fever , when they ran short of food, he turned to the cages of his collection of birds of Cape Henlopen.

The birds which were to be scheduled to be stuffed and displayed at his museum, soon

graced the Peales dinner table.

Abstract: October 25, 2017, by Harrison H, from Michael Morgan's Delaware Diary, Delaware

Coast Press, Wednesday, 25, October 2017.