March 18 – Women’s History Month – Fearless Females

March 18   –   Shining star: Did you have a female ancestor who had a special talent? Artist, singer, actress, athlete, seamstress, or other? Describe.

As with the March 17 topic, this is another one that is difficult to answer regarding my female ancestors!

My maternal grandmother Lucy Sinclair (nee Dartnell) (1883 – 1984; yes 101 years old) used to be a Court Dressmaker (I have written about this in the Daily Blogging Theme, Mystery Monday) and used to make clothes for herself and her children and it would not surprise me if she made clothes for her friends as well.  She also knitted many items as well.

Her daughter, my (now 100 years old) Aunt Lucy has been an artist for most of her life.  She paints beautiful  landscapes, seascapes, still life, portraits, all sorts and in all sorts of different ways with charcoal, acrylic, pastels and so on and is still painting and exhibiting at this milestone age!!

Here is a photograph of my Aunt with one of her paintings, taken from a newspaper article about her in November 2010 for her 100th birthday.  The quality of the pic is not too good and as it is from a newspaper the print from the other side can be seen through it!!

Photograph from a newspaper item Nov 2010 - copyright 2011

 

We have a famous author ancestor but he is male!  So I cannot write about him here as this is about our female ancestors.

In my family history research I haven’t yet come across any females who are “Shining Stars” although I think in the 1700s and 1800s many of my female ancestors were probably very accomplished seamstresses.  If they were financially comfortable then they probably spent a lot of their days sewing embroidered tapestries but if they were poorer, then they probably made their own dresses or were lacemakers.

So, again, I’m sorry to say that I cannot write too much about my female ancestors as I have not come across anything they have done that I could include in this post.