Portrait of Nathaniel Treadwell

As indicated by the inscription on the reverse, this portrait depicts Nathaniel Treadwell (1769-1835), who built an inn at 26 North Main Street in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1806. His grandfather and grandmother, Nathaniel (1700-1777) and Hannah (Endicott) Treadwell were known as Landlord and Landlady Treadwell and ran an inn favored by the likes of John Adams in the eighteenth century. The younger Treadwell's inn was similarly renowned and hosted Daniel Webster and during his 1824 tour, the Marquis de Lafayette. Later in the nineteenth century, the inn was re-named the Agawam Hotel and remained the town's premier hotel until the 1930s (William M. Varrell, Images of America: Ipswich (Ipswich, 2001), p. 110; Joseph B. Felt, History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1834), p. 207).