Portrait found in North Carolina thrift store links artist, untold story in Black history

Dennis Williams was a rarity in 1880s Springfield: a successful African-American artist and businessman. Only a few examples of his art are known to exist today.

Now there’s one more, thanks to SangamonLink, a local researcher, and a North Carolina thrift shop devotee.

Williams (1851-89), born an enslaved person in Mississippi, was a completely self-taught artist, partly because many teachers refused to accept an African-American as a student. Williams eventually set up a studio on the Springfield square, advertising himself as “the old reliable crayon artist.” He received awards at county and state fairs and won commissions to do portraits of many prominent residents of Springfield and Illinois, including Abraham Lincoln’s friend David Davis.

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SangamonLink.org, the Sangamon County Historical Society’s online encyclopedia, published a short entry about Williams in 2013. In 2021, however, Mary Frances, an artist and historian in Springfield, contacted SangamonLink and offered to write a more complete biography of Williams.

Frances first heard of Williams from a 1987 book, "The Black Struggle for Public Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Illinois" by Robert L. McCaul. After the State Journal-Register article reported in 2002 that Williams mysteriously disappeared from Springfield in the late 1880s or early 1890s, Frances says, “I made a commitment to find out what happened.”

Her research culminated in a greatly expanded SangamonLink entry about Williams, which was published in June 2021. (Frances found that Williams had died, under somewhat puzzling circumstances, while traveling through Texas in December 1889.) The entry also included four authenticated examples of Williams’ art – a color drawing of kittens, which Williams used on his business cards, and black-and-white portraits of three men.

Despite his output – 100 of his portraits are documented in newspapers – the three portraits were the only signed, dated works by Williams known to exist.

That changed in September, when Andrew Cook of Durham, N.C., read SangamonLink’s entry on Williams. “I think I have a large portrait … of judge Andrew G. Henry, done by Dennis Williams,” Cook wrote as a comment to the entry. “I’d like to get more information about Mr. Williams and the judge as well.”

Initial indications were positive. Andrew G. Henry was a judge and legislator from Greenville, Ill., a Republican and a supporter of Abraham Lincoln. The man depicted in the pencil drawing looked very much like the one shown on Henry’s Findagrave page.

And Henry was elected to the Illinois House in both 1872 and 1874, meaning he would have been in Springfield for legislative meetings in 1873, the date on the portrait.

SangamonLink asked Frances, the expert on Williams, to look into the portrait’s authenticity. Cook and Frances exchanged emails, which included several images of both the front and back of the framed portrait.

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The frame is what confirmed Springfield’s Dennis Williams as the artist. Stenciling on the back says, “From C.C. Howorth’s Picture & Frame Store. No. 14, American House Block.” Frances found newspaper documentation that Howorth, a respected framer, was at that address at the time and that Williams employed Howorth to frame some of his other portraits.

“The wooden, gilded frame, medium, vignette style, and overall size are consistent with Williams’ three other known portraits,” Frances adds.

Cook, who describes himself as “an art enthusiast and a history enthusiast,” bought the portrait four years ago at a thrift store in Durham, N.C. He paid less than $20 for it.

“I can’t afford all the artwork I’d love to buy, so I haunt thrift stores,” Cook says.

Cook tried to learn more about the portrait when he first bought it, but came up empty. Prompted by a friend’s inquiry, he tried again in September. “I got lucky putting in ‘Illinois artist D. Williams’ and found that (SangamonLink) article about Dennis Williams,” he says. “I was thrilled.”

Finding the portrait and learning about its history and that of Dennis Williams “is what people who do what I do dream of,” Cook says. “But I never thought it would happen.”

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Frances received an SCHS grant last year to help pay for a grave marker for Olive Price, the sister of Eva Carroll Monroe, who founded Springfield’s Lincoln Colored Home. Dennis Williams is buried near Cairo, but Frances is in the process of placing a bronze plaque at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield to recognize Williams’ mother, stepfather and two daughters.

“Dennis Williams fascinated and intrigued people while he was alive and even now after his death,” Frances says. “African-American history is sometimes difficult to know and document, yet the effort is worth it.

“I hope we will continue to tell these unknown and forgotten stories and share them with the world.”

Mike Kienzler is the editor of SangamonLink.org, online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield, IL, Black history uncovered by thrift store artwork