Thread: Anniversaries
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Old 18-06-20, 09:08
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Merry Merry is offline
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I keep forgetting this thread!

Yesterday, 17 June, was the anniversary of the death of my 2xg-grandmother Mary Buck, nee Smith. She was a big influence over her grandson (my grandfather). Had she not been, his life would have probably taken a different course and I wouldn't be here now.

Mary was a strict Quaker and was very well known in the village where she lived in Oxfordshire, in part because she always wore Victorian styled black dresses and a black silk poke bonnet right through to her death in 1914 at the age of 87.

Having strict religious views didn't stop her being a bit of a feminist though! She was all for women having as much right to do anything as a man, encouraging her daughters to use the good education they received to become teachers at least until they married. Also, when Mary bought a property in her home village to rent out she thought nothing of fully inspecting all the work done on it by climbing the workmen's ladders and walkign around the scaffolding - I should think this was no mean feet given her clothing and the fact that she was at least in her 70s at the time. Of course her neighbours thought of her as eccentric, but her fame lasted long enough that when I first visited the village on a FH jaunt about 20 years ago two random people I spoke to in the village knew who she was even 80 years after her death!

Here she is in about 1855:



and here is one of her later bonnets which I still have:

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