The Story of Jennie

Two of the portraits hanging in the Salisbury Association’s Academy Building are those of John Churchill Coffing and his wife, Maria Birch Coffing. If you look closely at Maria Coffing’s portrait, you will see a young Black girl looking around the corner of a door frame in the background.

This is Jane Elizabeth Winslow, who worked for the Coffings for over 40 years. What is so unusual about this painting is that very few portraits of this time period include the likeness of a person of color.

Jane Elizabeth Winslow, known as Jennie, was born circa 1825 to John and Elizabeth Winslow. In 1830, 5-year-old Jennie came to live with the Coffings after both of her parents died. The 1840 U.S. census lists a “free colored person between the ages of 10 and 23” in the household of John Churchill Coffing.

This was probably Jennie, as she appears by name on the 1850 census as a member of the household of Maria Birch Coffing and again on the 1860 census. John Coffing died in 1847, and Jennie continued to live with Maria and her family until Maria died in 1865. Jennie stayed on caretaking the Coffing house in Salisbury for another five or six years before moving to Massachusetts.

A search of vital records in Great Barrington shows that a Jane E. Winslow, age 47 of Salisbury, was married on Nov. 8, 1871, to Egbert Lee, age 71, in VanDeusenville, Mass. The marriage was recorded as her first and his second, as he was widowed. Egbert’s death, recorded on Dec. 23, 1881, shows that he was born an enslaved person in Georgia. Jennie Winslow Lee is buried in the Salisbury Cemetery and her gravestone reads “Lee, Jane E. Winslow, wife of Edward (Egbert) d. April 15, 1872,” just five months after she married.

This information was gathered from the Salisbury Association Historical Society’s archives by Board President Jeanette Weber.