© Kathy Duncan, 2022
Women's obituaries in the early period of our country are very uncommon. Sally (Brickell) Murfree, however, was from a social class of women who occasionally were honored with an obituary. Sally (Brickell) Murfree was about 45 years old at the time of her death in 1802. She left behind a husband, Col. Hardy Murfree, and eight surviving children. Her children's ages ranged from twenty-one to one.
Her obituary provides the new information that she had suffered a long and lingering illness.
This illness may explain Sally's appearance in her surviving portrait. She appears in the portrait to be much older than 45 even taking into consideration that people aged more in appearance then. Sally (Brickell) Murfree was from a southern class of women who did not perform their own housework or work outdoors. In fact, she would have shielded her complexion with various hats and bonnets throughout her lifetime. We might expect her to have aged less rapidly than her working-class peers.
Her portrait is estimated to have been painted in the late 1700s when she would have been 35 to 45 years old. Her gaunt appearance might be the product of a long, lingering illness. As ill as she appears in her portrait, the painter may have taken great pains to make her appearance more flattering by darkening her hair and decreasing any wrinkles that she had. It would seem, though, that her last pregnancy might have further contributed to her decline in health.
