Ezekiel Goldthwait

In 1771 Samuel Adams, the most energetic of the Boston radicals, stood for the office of register of deeds. He lost to Ezekiel Goldthwait by more than two votes to one. Goldthwait had kept the county's deeds since 1740 and had been the town clerk of Boston for 20 years. He was 61, a merchant's son from the North End, and the town's records had passed through his hands for most of his life.

That same year he ordered portraits of himself and his wife Elizabeth from Copley. The painter's bill, dated June 1771, survives in the museum's archives, 19 pounds 12 shillings for each picture and 9 pounds for each frame. Copley shows him at his desk, quill in one hand and a written paper in the other, turning from his work to look at us, the light falling on his face and his white cuffs.

Goldthwait held the register until 1776. His sympathies lay with the Crown, but he stayed in Boston after the British left, and he died there in 1782. The two portraits remained with his descendants until 1941.