New Portrait of a Clapp Ancestor

In 2013 a post I wrote for this blog shared my recent findings that Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn wife of King Henry VIII, was an ancestor of our Clapp-Loy-Tilghman families. On that post I included a photo of a painting by an unknown artist that is on display at Hever Castle, Kent in the United Kingdom. This week I learned that another painting whose subject for many years had been a mystery has recently proved to be Mary Boleyn.

Mary Boleyn by Jordaens Van Dyck

This portrait by artist Jordaens Van Dyck had been sitting unidentified in the Royal Collection for hundreds of years until recent research determined the identity of the subject. It would appear that there were several artists painting the same subject because although very different, the clothing and jewelry are exactly the same in the portrait included in my 2013 post and this Van Dyck painting although it is possible that the second portrait was a copy of the Van Dyck. Nonetheless, the newly discovered painting of our ancestor Mary Boleyn is lovely and worth sharing.

The Tilghman family migrated to the American colonies in 1638 and settled in Somerset County, Maryland. John Tilghman or Tillman is recorded in Mormon records as being the father of Tobias Tillman who served in the Revolutionary War from Orange County, North Carolina. Our ancestor Catherine Tillman, wife of George Loy, of Orange County is believed to be Tobias' sister and the daughter of John. John Tilghman or Tillman to which it was changed after arriving in North Carolina, left Maryland after the death of his father in 1766 and is found in the few scant extant records of extinct Dobbs County, North Carolina in 1769. John's brother Stephen also migrated to Dobbs County at the same time. All of the Dobbs County records other than a few deed indexes were lost in a courthouse fire so the complete story of that family after their arrival in North Carolina may never be fully known but there are tidbits contained in the early Mormon records in Salt Lake City that connect the family to John Tilghman, son of Gideon Tilghman of Somerset County, Maryland.

Read more about the Van Dyck painting in Mary Boleyn is identified...

Thanks to Jayme for sharing the news of these new findings.

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2013 Post - JP Ancestors in the Court of Henry VIII