Mrs. Benedict Arnold and Daughter, c. 1783—89

Mrs. Benedict Arnold and Daughter, c. 1783—89
by
Thomas Lawrence (1769—1830)

Pastel on gouache paper. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, Philadelphia, PA.

Peggy Shippen (1760 - 1804), daughter of Edward Shippen — a moderate Loyalist who later became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania from 1799 to 1805 — married Benedict Arnold, 20 years her senior, when she was 18.

Pictured with her is either their only daughter, Sophia Matilda Arnold (b. 1785), or, since young boys also wore dresses at that time, possiblly it is their son, Edwin Shippen Arnold (b. 1780).

By the mid 1770s, Champlain’s Quebec had grown into a huge province stretching to the Mississippi River and including modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It was home to eighty thousand inhabitants, though only 2 percent of them spoke English. Despite its official status as a North American colony under British rule, Quebec never became a part of the coalition of colonies that eventually declared their independence in 1776. Language and religious differences set the Québécois well apart from their neighbors to the south, and when representatives of the lower thirteen colonies met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774, no delegate from Quebec answered the roll.

— Thomas A. Desjardin
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold’s March to Quebec, 1775 (2006)