In 1842 Daniel Webster, as secretary of state, concluded the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, settling the dispute over the boundary of Maine and Canada. That year George P. A. Healy painted a portrait of Webster, who persuaded Lord Ashburton to pose for a companion portrait. The originals were probably destroyed in a fire that consumed the Webster home in 1878; the Society's portraits are replicas of those lost originals.