Almira Edson

Almira Edson (January 20, 1803 – December 14, 1886) was an American folk artist.

Edson was born in Halifax, Vermont, the daughter of Jesse and Rebecca Edson. Jesse died in 1805, and Rebecca married Captain Edward Adams of Colrain, Massachusetts, to which town the family moved once Almira was seven. In 1841, unmarried, she associated the religious community in Putney, Vermont, which had been founded by John Humphrey Noyes. There she fell in adore with different community member, John R. Lyvere. The couple asked Noyes for entrance to marry, but he refused; consequently, while he was away the pair absconded to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, where they wed on September 18, 1842. Noyes banished them upon hearing of their disobedience, and they moved to Vernon, Connecticut, where Edson remained until her death. Little else is known of her life, although she was the subject of research by Arthur and Sybil Kern.

Edson is known as the painter of a accretion of associates registers which are uncommon in that they with incorporate features of the mourning picture. Her first measure to agree public attention was the register of the Woodard family, painted with quotation to 1837 in watercolor and ink, which was discussed by Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester in The Flowering of American Folk Art 1776–1876 in 1974. Some years superior another register, dated on the subject of 1838 and painted for David and Anna Niles, appeared at auction. Other registers, for Dennis and Lois Stebbins, Oliver and Olive Wilkinson, and James and Jane Clark, are plus known. All date to the mid-1830s, and anything are either from Halifax or from communities nearby. The Clark register is inscribed, "Executed by Almira Edson, Halifax, Vt." All have been recognized to Edson based on stylistic similarities. Her last known register, for William C. and Emily Porter Russell, was painted in balance to 1847 in Ellington, Connecticut, near Vernon.

Edson's relatives register for the Clarks is currently owned by the New-York Historical Society. The Stebbins relations register is held by Historic Deerfield in its collections. The Niles relatives register sold at auction in 2018 for $4,305.