The Wheeler overmantel demonstrates that artists who created such landscapes often combined literal  transcriptions of actual places with elements that were either stylized or imaginary. For example, the trees  lining the street here appear to be stylizations to suggest an orderly thoroughfare in a prosperous town,  rather than a representation of plantings in Worcester at the end of the eighteenth century. As a young  minister in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, Wheeler had been impressed by a similar landscape  feature on the property of his predecessor: "Fronting the house that was built by Rev. Mr. [John] Seccomb  is supposed to be the longest row of elm trees in New-England, set in exact order, and leading directly  toward the meetinghouse."  This element of the overmantel also resembles the way trees were  designed in embroidered samplers of the time. Such samplers occasionally served as source material for  decorative painters.  Similarly, the cluster of buildings at right reflects a hieratic division of space found in  samplers between the featured property of the owner and the rest of the town.

The featured estate in this overmantel is clearly supposed to be that of Joseph Wheeler, who in 1784 paid 200 pounds for one-and-a-half acres of land in Worcester. That property was situated on the east side of what was then called the County (or Country) Road and is today known as Main Street. On his lot, he built a house, a store and probate office, and a barn, which are represented in the painting as the second cluster of buildings from the left.29At his death in 1793, his property on Main Street was listed in the probate record as "Homestead consisting of about 1 1/4 Acres of land & buildings---------£580.0.0."

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