The Bloomfields

Joseph Bloomfield served as a Major in the 3rd New Jersey Regiment before being elected clerk of the New Jersey State Assembly in 1778. That same year, Bloomfield married Mary McIlvaine and they settled in Burlington, New Jersey. Charles Wilson Peale painted these twin portraits of the Bloomfields the year he became the state’s attorney general in 1783. In 1801, Bloomfield became the first elected Democratic-Republican Governor of New Jersey, a position he held until 1812. A strong opponent of slavery, Bloomfield served as the president of the New Jersey Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

The Harlan Crow Library

The Harlan Crow Library