Framing a Family History ; Frederick "Moss" Prewitt Descendants Gather Resources to Buy a Long- Lost Bingham Portrait

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The story about how Grandma Koonse gave up the Bingham paintings wasn't one folks in the family liked to talk about. It was the 1950s, and George Prewitt Koonse was gone the day a man came to their rural Boonville home and offered his wife money for the portraits.

The paintings were of Koonse's most famous relatives: Frederick "Moss" Prewitt and his wife, Nancy Johnston Prewitt. Moss Prewitt was instrumental in settling Boone County as a merchant, civic leader and a founder of the University of Missouri. George Caleb Bingham - one of America's greatest 19th-century painters - had painted the famous couple in 1855.

Losing the paintings was a sore subject. …