Sala Bosworth

Sala Bosworth (September 15, 1805 – December 22, 1889) was one of the earliest American painters in Ohio. He painted portraits of many of the early pioneers in Marietta and Southeastern Ohio as well as the natural landscape. Biography Bosworth was born on September 15, 1805, in Halifax, Massachusetts, to Sala and Rebecca Perkins Bosworth. In 1816 his family moved to Marietta, Ohio and he graduated from Marietta High School. He studied fine art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia when he was in his 20s.

After school, he went back to Ohio and made a living painting portraits. From 1827, on he was an itinerant painter traveling around southeast Ohio. Some of the towns where he worked were Zanesville, Columbus, Circleville, Athens, Chillicothe, and Belpre. While painting in Athens, Ohio, Bosworth met his future wife, Joanna Shipman. She moved to Marietta to be with him in 1839. Johnathan Sprague Jr., Cyrus Byington and his wife Sophie Nye Byington. His drawings of the forts, "Campus Martius", "Marietta at the Point," and "Farmers Castle at Belpre, Ohio" were featured in Samuel P. Hildreth's Pioneer History of the Ohio Valley.