The Eckstein Family (Continued)
Their maternal grandfather, FRANCIS BAILEY, was a printer from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1778 he opened a full-time print shop in Philadelphia on Market Street between Third and Fourth Streets. His print-shop sign was a painting of the skull from Shakespeare’s Yorick.
Prominent men stopped by his shop to read newspapers, buy books, and talk politics. The family was friends and neighbors with Benjamin Franklin and his family, who only lived two doors away. Bailey was the first witness on Benjamin Franklin’s will, and after his death the Bailey family inherited his famous harmonica.
After reading the works of Emmanuel Swedenborg, Francis Bailey, converted to the faith. He was the first to print Swedenborg’s work in America.
Francis Bailey also printed The True Christian Religion papers which John Chapman distributed. John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He was also a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgen Church.
In 1799 Bailey was appointed as the official printer of the laws of the state of Pennsylvania. He died in 1817.
After Bailey’s death his wife, his son, and his four remaining unmarried daughters moved to Cincinnati. The Bailey women then opened the city’s first boarding school for young ladies.
The First New Jerusalem Society of Cincinnati was incorporated in 1818. The following year they built a temple on the north side of Longworth Street between Race and Elm. The Bailey’s were prominent members of the congregation.
JOHN H. JAMES, a Cincinnati native, had a distinguished career as a lawyer, legislator, scientific farmer, banker, and railroad builder. He married Abby Bailey and the couple moved to Urbana in 1826. John H. James later donated the land for the Urbana University campus, the first New Church College in the world.
Johnny Appleseed visited with the Eckstein family when he passed through Cincinnati.
The Eckstein sisters’ paternal grandfather was just as interesting. JOHANN ECKSTEIN grew up in Poppenreuth, Germany. After studying art in Nuremburg he travelled throughout Europe perfecting his craft. He later became court painter and sculptor to Fredrick the Great, King of Prussia. He resided for a time at the Prussian Court in Potsdam, and his works adorned many of the buildings and parks of Potsdam, including the Sans-Souci palace.
He is most famous for his “death mask” of Fredrick the Great, King of Prussia.
In 1794 he decided to take his family to America. They arrived in Philadelphia in November 1794, where they were welcomed by American believers of the Swedenborg faith.
Johann Eckstein’s final work in America was a large Italian marble bust of Emanuel Swedenborg completed in 1816 for William Schlatter. He died in Havana, Cuba, on June 27, 1817 while working on a public monument.
Johann’s son, FREDERICK ECKSTEIN, also an artist and sculptor, married Francis Bailey’s daughter, Jane. Frederick was a good artist but never managed to make any money. When his father died, in 1817, Frederick took up teaching. Over the next six years he taught in schools in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but poverty followed them.
His wife, Jane persuaded her sisters that Frederick would be an asset to the teaching staff of their school. The family moved to Cincinnati in December 1823. Frederick’s time in Cincinnati was busy but unsuccessful. He had big ideas, good ideas, but lacked the stamina and charisma to make them succeed. While teaching at the Miss Baileys’ school Frederick sculpted busts of both Andrew Jackson and the Marquis de LaFayette. He is often credited with being “the father of Cincinnati art” as he was the man who first convinced the residents of Cincinnati that they needed a school to train young men in both fine arts and mechanic arts. His academy was never realized, but his idea led to the establishment of the Ohio Mechanics Institute.
The Cincinnati years were the happiest ones of her married life for JANE ECKSTEIN, she was once again in the company of her family. In her biography of Johnny Appleseed, Ophia D. Smith states that Johnny occasionally visited with Jane Eckstein and her family when passing through Cincinnati.
In 1830, Frederick and the family left Cincinnati for a teaching position in Frankfort, Kentucky. Jane died of cholera in July 1833 while living in Millersburg, Kentucky. Frederick returned to the city in his later years to live with his widowed daughter Mary. He died in 1852, an almost forgotten man.
Check out the Cincinnati Art Museum to see Johann Eckstein’s sculpture the Resurrection of Lazarus (donated by Frances Eckstein) and Frederick Eckstein’s plaster bust of Marquis de Lafayette. They also have oil portraits of Francis and Eleanor Bailey by Charles Willson Peale.