As I have grown older and have had more time to think, I have been reflecting on these wonderful, strong young women of today. They are striking out in all directions, from politics to work discrimination, to jobs, to sexual identity. It has been a long time coming, and long overdue.
If you were to look into the past, as I am doing more and more, you would find strong women in your lives, quietly asserting their influence in so many ways. I am more fortunate than many, as the women in my past wrote about their lives and those before them. Their stories carried me through the tough times in my life and taught me to stand up for what I believed in.
I would like to tell you about a few of my ancestors who, like yours, paved the way for today’s women, starting with my Canadian great-great grandmother, who raised ten children and nursed the people in the small village they lived in. There are stories of her leaving her nursing clothes outside, so she wouldn’t bring sickness home to her children.
My great grandmother on the other side of the family got tired of having her whaling captain husband sail off to the South Pacific for years at a time. She announced that for the next trip he was NOT going to go off without her. She took her son, packed up their clothes, took a rose bush with her and boarded the Sea Ranger, a miserable, smelly, whaling ship for four years in the South Pacific. She mended torn clothes and patched up injuries for all the men on board, was sea sick, broke an arm in heavy seas, and had a baby on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.
My Yankee grandmother became a widow at a young age, raised seven children, ran a farm, fed all the help and all the transients that showed up at dinner time. She marched in Carrie Nation’s temperance marches as did her daughters. She famously walked into the florist’s shop at Christmas time and helped herself to a dozen roses. The owner said, “Mary Sawyer, what do you think you’re doing?” She answered, “The same thing you do George, in the spring when you help yourself to my lilacs!”
The other grandmother (the one born in the South Pacific) outdid herself by divorcing my grandfather, and “running off” with an engineer who was on Nantucket with other engineers to receive Marconi’s first signal from overseas. She lived to have spanned transportation history, with three years on a ship getting back to Nantucket, moving to California on sailing ships, taking a train across Panama in three months, and flying back east in her 90s in six hours.
After a very long life, 30 years of it in Patagonia, I realize that these women guided me through many years of ups and downs. During my downs, all I had to remember was what they survived, and I knew if they could do it, so could I!
“HerStory,” is a monthly column for and about women. Call Patra Kelly for more information about appropriate subjects, length of articles, how to submit, deadlines, or to talk about your ideas. 520-604-8119