The (Benyon) Family - Brighton Massachusetts - Auburndale Mansion - 1872 - Artist George Henry Story

The Family - by George Henry Story
(Public Domain)

The great 19^th century successful American Middle Class grand family portrait painting – “The Family” by Artist George Henry Story is said to be of the Boston banker Abner Ingalls Benyon's family, and said to be painted in 1872 in the Benyon Mansion in Auburndale Massachusetts.

Public records show the Benyon family situated in Brighton Mass. where all their children were born.

The year 1872 seems to be highpoint in Abner Ingalls Benyon’s banking career with a listing at the National Exchange Bank as both president and a director in 1872, having working his way up through the ranks first as a Paying Teller in 1856 at this same bank and along the way working as a Cashier, next step up in the banking business, in 1862 at the Brighton Market Bank in Brighton Mass..

The year 1872 saw Abner Benyon named as Vice President of a new Homoeopathic Medical School also operating as the Medical Department of Boston College. This alongside his other duties as one time Treasurer and long term Trustee of same college / university 1872-1883.

Abner Benyon, with a middle name of Ingalls that matches a middle name of the brother in law of the artist, Hannibal Ingalls Kimball, the commission for the painting may have come through a family connection.

Mr. Benyon was all the talk of the east coast in 1882 when he quickly migrated to Canada and Mexico and back to Canada after indictments of embezzlement against him were about to be delivered on him in his then position as president of the Pacific National Bank Boston.

Abner Ingalls Benyon born 1832, died in Toronto in 1888 and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge Mass..

Historical Brighton – Volume 2 - 1902

In Brighton –

Abner Ingalls  Benyon married to Ruthanna J Towne

Children:

George Henry Benyon  1857-1926

Carrie L Benyon  Dec 4 1860 – Apr 5 1866

Arthur Ingalls Benyon  Mar 17 1863 - 1903

John W Benyon – dates ?

Elizabeth Benyon – dates ?

Luther Benyon – dates ?

Abner Benyon – dates ?

Presumed Tags to Figures in Painting Above:

1 - George Henry Benyon

2 - Abner Ingalls Benyon 

3 - Arthur Ingalls Benyon

4 - John W Benyon

5 - Ruthanna J Benyon

6 - Baby Abner Benyon (?)

7 - Elizabeth Benyon

8 - Luther Benyon (?)

9 – Unidentified Relative

10- Unidentified Relative

11- (Presumed) Grandmother Towne (?) or Benyon (?)

12- (Presumed) Carrie L Benyon Dec 4 1860 – Apr 5 1866

January 6, 2018

Suggested name tags per e-mail:

Wayne LaPierre’s Head on a Stick – Sounds Good to Me – 1st Amend. Right to Call that Greedy Evil NRA F**K a Greedy Evil F**K

Head on a Stick - Metaphorically Speaking

NRA Gun Fetish Lunatic Wayne LaPierre wants to abuse the second amendment to abuse me and every living creature in sight with thousands of rounds of bullets for the sake of the quarterly profits of Arms Manufacturers.

Well FUCK! 

I defend the first amendment right of Professor Eric Loomis of the University of Rhode Island to desire metaphorically at least to see an evil greedy NRA fuck Wayne LaPierre’s Head on a Stick.

Sounds like a good start to me. 

Speaking of Higher Education, I have to wonder what Wayne LaPierre learned in his catholic education at two private Catholic Colleges and embodied especially in his Masters degree in Government at Boston (Jesuit) College???

http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2012/12/25/university-professor-i-want-wayne-lapierres-head-on-a-stick/

 …a posting on Twitter by history professor Erik Loomis. Loomis wrote the post on Dec. 14, the day 20 children and six adults were killed by a gunman using a semi-automatic weapon inside a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. 

“I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick,” Loomis wrote. LaPierre is the chief executive of the NRA, the nation’s largest gun-rights lobby.

Loomis has since written in a blog post that his comment was meant to be a metaphor for holding LaPierre responsible for his actions and was not meant as a threat. He has said he received death threats himself as a result of the comments.

Memorial Newtown Conn, - 27 Wooden Angels - Victims of NRA Endorsed 2nd Amend. Rights

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Odd Bird Christians - Mary Daly - Graham Leonard

Two interesting obits of two very odd ball Christians who died within the same week.

The first is of the radical feminist theologian Mary Daly, who was tolerated by the Jesuits at Boston College where she was tenured. She in the end did not want males to attend some of her lectures, which thereby lead her way into retirement. School policy could have allowed such a quirk of teaching preferences but federal law would not allow it. In any case she seems to have the spunk and fire of a truly memorable personage in the faith that she dissected, described and challenged as a theologian.

Mary Daly, uppity theologian

Mary Daly, the feminist theologian and philosopher, has died. She was an audaciously creative spirit; an awkwardly witty, deadly serious writer. She arguably did more to stretch what is possible to think in contemporary feminist theology than any other.

Here's a taste of what she was prepared to say. In books like Gyn/Ecology and Beyond God the Father, she envisaged the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the all-male three in one – as an eternal homosexual orgy. She argued that to call God "father" is to make fathers gods, excusing all kinds of horrors from religious totalitarianism to domestic violence.

Theologians have contested Daly's claims, not least feminist theologians who have remained within the Christian tradition. They point out that alongside the male images of God as Father and Son are the more ambiguous ones of God as Spirit. In the Hebrew Bible, the Spirit of God is envisaged as a wise woman, Sophia. Sophia has even been aligned with the person of Christ: at the time of Jesus, she was well established as a symbol of God's relatedness… And yet, Jesus was a man. The female word Sophia lost out to the male word Logos when it came to interpreting the metaphysics of the Son.

The second obit is of Graham Leonard, former Church of England Bishop of London among other things who in his retirement went over to the other side, the Romans, because of his disgust of female ordination in his church body. He turned in his bishop’s title for that of monsignor.

Monsignor Graham Leonard obituary

However, in 1994, three years after his retirement from London, and after conversations with the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, his friend Cardinal Basil Hume, he was received into the Roman Catholic church and was ordained priest sub conditione. At Leonard's own consecration in 1964, an Old Catholic bishop from the small churches that have separated from the Roman Catholic church, but are in full communion with the Church of England, had joined the bishops who consecrated him. This eased his reception into the Roman Catholic church, and he was made a monsignor…

He was notably honourable in ordaining 71 women as deacons at St Paul's Cathedral on 22 March 1987. This ordination weakened the arguments against the ordination of women as priests, but he went ahead. Still, he was hesitant about allowing women to exercise authority. He appointed an area bishop to Kensington who directed that no woman should be in the sanctuary when he was celebrating, even though Kensington had many female deacons and female servers. Leonard once used the law of trespass to prevent 100 men and women accepting the ministration of a female priest ordained abroad.

If there is a waiting room outside heaven and one has to wait one’s turn to get the right bureaucratic stamp on the Christian Passport so to speak, I have to imagine a bureaucratic snafu as in the case how all bureaucratic institutions work – and imagine Mary Daly and Graham Leonard challenging each other over one’s place in line.

I do not predict fisticuffs but in any verbal and or physical confrontation between those two – my money is on the Irish girl.

LOL. R.I.P.