Vinnie Ream Hoxie

Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888

Library of Congress

Hoxie, Vinnie Ream, sculptor, b. in Madison, Wis., 28 Sept., 1846. She went at an early age to Washington, where her father held an office, and then removed to the west, and was educated at Christian college, Columbia, Mo. At school she wrote several songs, which were set to music and published. During the civil war the family returned to Washington, and she obtained a clerkship in the post-office department. Subsequently she studied art, and soon devoted her exclusive attention to sculpture. One of her first efforts was the head of an Indian chief, with which she was so successful that she made busts of Gen. Grant, Reverdy Johnson, Albert Pike, John Sherman, and Thaddeus Stevens. Her larger works of this period include “The Indian Girl,” a full-length figure cast in bronze. A design for a fountain, which she called “America,” consisted of four female figures, representing the points of the compass, with typical emblems of the four sections of the United States. She then made, in marble, “Miriam as she met the Children of Israel as they crossed the Red Sea.” Her most important piece at this time was the marble statue of Abraham Lincoln, which was placed in the capitol at Washington. It was the first statue ordered by the government from a woman. Mrs. Hoxie spent three years abroad while making this statue, and produced medallions of Gustave: Doré, Pére Hyacinth, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, the Abbé Liszt, and Thomas Buchanan Read. On her return to the United States, she modelled a bust of Lincoln for Cornell University, a life-size statue of “Sappho,” “The Spirit of the Carnival,“ and several ideal busts. Her later work includes a statue of Admiral Farragut, which was cast in bronze from metal obtained from the flag-ship “Hartford,” and placed in Farragut square, Washington. She married, on 28 May, 1878, Capt. Richard L. Hoxie, of the U.S. corps of engineers.

Hoxie, Vinnie Ream, Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography 1888, Vol. 3, Pages 288-289.