I was going to mention, your avatar is super-cool! Sounds like your family had a good penchant for preserving history. Any idea if the original portrait made it through the years? If you would like to share any of the images with the site I can include a profile for him amongst the others in the People section, totally ok too if you’d like to keep the images private.
One of the more interesting pieces I have come across is a “magazine” from the period. Essentially it was a monthly, bound publication that looks like a book and included news from the times. I found a signature inside and was able to trace it to a New Jersey governor. Also really cool, the publication included a list of subscribers names, one of which was Ben Franklin. I don’t believe it to have much value as there were a fair amount of “magazine” like publications at the time, though I’ll have to read it through to see what historical events it might mention.