behind AotW

Nathan Andrew Feaster was from a prominent family in Fairfield County, SC; his father Andrew was a wealthy planter, his grandfather John reached Fairfield from Lancaster, PA sometime before 1810.

In 1844 an itinerant portrait artist named George Williamson Livermore Ladd painted several members of the Feaster family, including Nathan. He was then about 23 years old and a retail merchant in Columbia, SC, the state capital.

18 years later in May 1862, then 41, he enlisted in the First South Carolina Infantry and was appointed First Sergeant of Company F. He was wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and was killed while going to the rear for treatment.

Portrait of Nathaniel Andrew Feaster (1820–1862) by George W. L. Ladd, c. 1844. Oil on canvas; HOA: 28-3/8″, WOA: 24-1/4″. Collection of the Fairfield County Museum, Winnsboro, SC.

There’s much more about George Ladd and those Feaster portraits online from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.