When Your Great-Grandfather Poses for a Statue
The Enduring Legacy of Family Lore, Especially Involving the Minute Man Statue, Daniel Chester French, and Our Family Posing with Our Elbows Out at the Old North Bridge
Every year around Patriots’ Day (in Massachusetts), a combination of photo memories and public posts from Minute Man National Historical Park remind us of a story from our family. That story?
Our great-grandfather claimed that he had posed for Daniel Chester French for the statue of the minute man that stands at the Old North Bridge. The likelihood that this story is true? Very low. Very, very low. Not entirely impossible. But very unlikely.
Created between 1871 and 1874, our great-grandfather was between 7-10 years of age during the statue’s creation. Is it possible that he had a memory of sitting for Daniel Chester French during the earlier stages of statue creation? Quite possibly. But again, a nine-year-old sitting still for that long seems implausible. Is it possible that it was in fact his father that sat for the statue and that as he got older, my great-grandfather got confused? Much more likely.
Daniel Chester French was still a relatively unknown artist when he was commissioned to create The Minute Man. He did use a series of local Concord men as models between September 1873 and 1874 to try and make the statue more natural. So, it is plausible that my great great-grandfather posed. However, a nine-year-old? Again, not quite as likely, though they most likely crossed paths.
Regardless, the story specifies that the elbow of the statue is modeled after a family member. As a result, we have picture after picture of members of our family standing in front of the statue with our elbows out.
See? I’m not kidding! (This photo is from 2020, if you couldn’t tell from our face masks.) There are also pictures from when we were kids of the same thing.