[1] Esther "Hetty" Benbridge (née Sage) was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
[3] In April 1773 she moved with her mother and the baby to join her husband in Charleston, South Carolina, where he had established a portrait studio.
She was mentioned in the April 5 edition of the South Carolina Gazette as "a very ingenious Miniature Paintress" who had arrived that week from Philadelphia.
All are painted in watercolor on ivory and set in small gold lockets.
[5] Eight of the portraits are of women, including eighteen-year-old Anne Wragg Ferguson, and one depicts a child.