When she was seven years old, her family moved to Washington, D.C. In 1857, they moved to Missouri so her father could take a surveying job there. During this time, Vinnie attended Christian College, a school for young women in Columbia, Missouri. She studied art, literature, and music. She was a child prodigy with remarkable talent.
When the Civil War began, the family was in Fort Smith, Arkansas. They managed to work their way through Confederate lines and go back to Washington, DC. Her father, who was ill with rheumatism, got a job with the government.
Though she was only 15 years old, Vinnie helped to support her family as one of the first females to work for the United States Postal Service, where she was a clerk during the Civil War. To help with the war effort, she wrote letters for the wounded soldiers in Washington, and sang in hospital concerts and local churches.
In 1863, Vinnie visited the studio of sculptor Clark Mills with Congressman James Rollins to ask for a sculpture for Ream’s old school in Columbia, Missouri. While watching Mills sculpt, she decided that she wanted to give it a try. Mills gave her some clay, which she molded it into an Indian chief’s head. It was surprisingly good, and Mills immediately took her on as a pupil.
In late 1864, Vinnie wanted to model a bust of Abraham Lincoln. The president refused at first, but when he learned that she was a poor girl struggling to support her family, he changed his mind. He gave her half-hour daily sittings for the next 5 months.
Vinnie’s bust was so lifelike that she won the $10,000 commission to sculpt Lincoln’s full-size statue over artists who were much better known. The 19-year-old was criticized for her lack of skill, her age, and her gender. Even Mary Todd Lincoln expressed her disapproval.
Miss Ream was the first female and the youngest sculptor to win a commission from the United States government. To get the measurements for the statue, she was given the clothing President Lincoln had been wearing the night he was assassinated.
Once her plaster model was done in a studio in the Capitol building, Vinnie and her parents sailed for a two-year stay in Rome. From the quarries of Cararra, she chose the purest white marble and used her model to create Abraham Lincoln in stone.
In Washington, D.C., on a January night in 1871, Vinnie’s white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda, and she became instantly famous. In the statue, the President's head is bent slightly forward with his eyes fixed upon the viewer, and his extended right hand holds the Emancipation Proclamation.
By 1873, Vinnie had become the sole provider for her family, and the money from the Lincoln statue had been spent. She pursued a commission to sculpt a bronze statue of Admiral David Farragut, three years after the Civil War hero's death. It was unveiled in Washington's Farragut Square on May 28, 1878.
Later that year, Vinnie married Richard Hoxie, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whom she met while casting the Farragut statue at the Navy Yard. She gave up her career to become a traditional wife and mother to their only child, Richard, who was born in 1883.
They lived in Washington, D.C. and had a summer home in Iowa City, Iowa. Vinnie became one of the most popular hostesses of the capital, and she often played the harp for small gatherings of friends.
In 1906, the State of Iowa commissioned Vinnie to make a bronze statue of Samuel Kirkwood, the governor of Iowa during the Civil War, for Statuary Hall in the Capitol building in Washington.
Hoxie allowed (???) his wife to take up sculpture again. The lack of artistic expression had greatly affected Vinnie. She was 59 years old at the time and suffering from a chronic kidney problem. The statue was completed in 1913.
In 1912, she was asked by the State of Oklahoma to create a bronze statue of Chief Sequoyah, the inventor of the written Cherokee language and a tribal leader.
In the summer of 1914, Vinnie had just completed the plaster model of Sequoyah when she suffered an acute attack of uremic poisoning. She was taken to Washington for treatment, and died there on November 20 1914, in her 67th year. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The model of Sequoyah was cast in bronze by Vinnie’s friend and fellow artist, George Zolnay. It was unveiled in 1917, the first statue of a Native American to be displayed in Statuary Hall. Zolnay also sculpted a bronze bas-relief for Vinnie's gravesite.
Vinnie Ream will be remembered for centuries through her timeless creations of our American heroes in stone and bronze. In 1980, the United States Postal Service, her former employer, issued a First Day Cover stamp in honor of Vinnie Ream and her work on the statue of Sequoyah. The town of Vinita, Oklahoma was named in her honor.
