Tamar White was a native of Weymouth, Massachusetts, having been born there to Nathaniel White (1701-1758) and Sarah Lovell (1701-1733) on January 19, 1730. Her father Nathaniel was a Harvard-trained physician, having graduated in 1725 shortly before his marriage to Sarah Lovell; both Nathaniel and Sarah were also Weymouth natives. Tamar was the last of her father’s children by his first wife, being preceded by Abner, Alethea, and Asa in 1727, 1728, and 1729. Abner died in 1741 at the age of 14; Asa in 1730 just shy of his first birthday. In 1742, Dr White wed his second wife, Ruth Holbrook (1701-1752) and had Abner, Asa, Thomas, and Nathaniel. Dr White married his third wife, Abigail Keith, in 1755.
Dr White was induced by the town of Weymouth to become its physician in 1727, when the town voted to give him a grant of five acres of land, “should he remain in the town and practise medicine.” He was the son of Deacon Thomas White, the grandson of Lieutenant Ebenezer White, and the great-grandson of Thomas White (1599-1679) who was the first of the name to settle in Weymouth before 1636, when he became a “freeman of the colony” and church member.
Dr White was considered slightly eccentric, for “when summoned to a patient in stormy weather, he frequently would refuse to go, saying ‘the weather was not fit for any one to go out’; but the messenger on his return usually found him, with his saddle-bags, at the bedside of his patient.” Although the final resting places of Sarah Lovell White and Abigail Keith White are unknown, Dr Nathaniel White and his second wife, Ruth Holbrook, are buried in the Highland Cemetery in South Weymouth directly across from the Old South Union Church, where they and their children, including Tamar, would have been attendees at the sermons given by Nathaniel Bayley’s father Reverend James(2) Bayley. Their double headstone is charming, with evocative carved portraits of the couple.
In his portrait, Dr White appears as a sober gentleman with a full face, holding in his upraised hands some tools of his profession, but what is more attention-grabbing is the rich and elegant clothing in which he appears. He wears a full formal wig, a neck-cloth with pleats that gives the impression of being lightweight despite being carved in stone; a waistcoat with a long row of buttons; an overcoat with turned back cuffs secured with additional buttons; and the frilled edge of a shirt peeping out from his coat sleeve. To see a similar style depicted at roughly the same time, see John Singleton Copley’s portrait of his half-brother Charles Pelham, executed in 1753 or 1754, only 4 or 5 years before Dr White’s death; or Copley’s portrait of Boston merchant Thomas Greene, which was executed in the same year as Dr White’s death.
The carved portrait of Ruth Holbrook White, Tamar’s stepmother, is equally evocative of her standing in the community based on her husband’s success. She wears a closely fitted cap that, on close inspection, has a tightly frilled lace edging; earrings and a necklace of beads; a fashionable gown with a low neckline framed by a lightweight scarf, or fichu; and an elegant hand fan. To enliven this portrait, it is again useful to turn to the work of Copley, the foremost American portrait painter of that time; in this case, his portraits of Ann Sargent Ellery (Mrs Nathaniel) in 1765 and Hannah Tollman Winthrop (Mrs John) in 1773. Like Ruth Holbrook White, they wear lightweight caps and tight-fitting beaded necklaces and voluminous fichus, and hold something in their hands. Like Mrs Winthop, Ruth’s gown has delicately gathered trimming along the edge of the neckline of her gown’s bodice.
