Carl Wimar, Painter; and his mother, Elizebete Schmitz Wimar Becker

Carl Wimar, the great-granduncle of Charles Elleard Whitney, the present owner, was a well-known painter in St. Louis. Born in Germany in February 1828, Wimar captured the life and conflict of the Native Americans and the pioneers, helping to establish many myths of the American West. In the mid-late 1850s, he traveled up the Missouri River on fur company steamboats, observing and sketching the Indians and the landscape of the Dakotas, Montana and present-day Nebraska, which he then used to produce paintings, successfully recording Native American life. Wimar died of tuberculosis in December 1862 in St. Louis.