Seth Wells Cheney

Seth Cheney was born 26 November 1810 in Manchester, Connecticut. He was the fifth son of George and Electa Cheney. He is best known as a painter and engraver. He painted portraits and worked with his brother John Cheney in engraving; Baker's Boston edition of Dickens, and certain of Washington Allston's works are among their famous productions.

Seth's first wife, Emily Woodbridge Pitkin, whom he married in 1847, died of tuberculosis. In 1853, he married Ednah Dow Littlehale of Boston (1824-1904), and they had one daughter, Margaret Swan Cheney (died of typhoid in infancy, 1855). Ednah Dow Cheney was a prolific writer and literary critic. She was an ardent feminist; she was involved with the Anti-Slavery movement; a patron and critic of the arts; and she was involved in transcendentalism, the Concord School of Philosophy, Psychometrics and the heretical Unitarianism of Theodore Parker. Seth Wells Cheney suffered ill health all of his life. He died of tuberculosis at age 46 on 10 September 1856.