She was born April 21, 1993 weighing only three pounds fourteen ounces and was sixteen and a half inches long. She was a preemie. When I held her it was like holding a baby doll. After a brief stay (2 weeks) in the hospital she came home. Her father moved in with me to my parent’s house.
Jarena Lee was likely one of the first African American female preachers in America. Born in February 1783 to free but poor black parents, she was sent to work as a live-in servant at the age of 7. After hearing a sermon by Richard Allen, the
Maya Streloff 14th/04 /2012 Social Studies 9 John Kay (Flying Shuttle) John Kay was the twelfth child born. He was born in the Lancashire hamlet of Walmersley just north of Bury in England in June 17th 1704. John Kay’s father Robert owned the park estate in Walmersley, but before John Kay was born his father had died and his mother was responsible for his education till she was remarried. At age twenty-two John Kay only had forty dollars and an education until he was fourteen. After John Kay has traveled the country with his brother William they both got married to Bury women.
Her father was the youngest sibling of thirteen and her mother, Minnie Happe Pagenkopf was one of seven children. Satir was the oldest of five children. Russel and Roger, twins were born 18 months after her and in 1921, her sister Edith was born. Following that, in 1923 her baby brother Ray was born. Being the oldest of five, she felt responsible for her siblings and took care of them often during her younger years.
I am my mother’s only child; however my father has a total of six children. I have a strong kinship network in my immediate family. Even though I was not raised around my father, I always say God blessed me with 3 uncles who have been and still are like fathers to me. Being the only niece for the first 11 years of my life, I am also everyone’s daughter. Some people say I am spoiled.
In fact, according to Levy, W., (1999), “until she was sixteen she lived half of the year with her spinster aunts, her father’s sisters, in New Orleans, and the other half with her parents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City” (pg. 350). This resulted in her wanting to be alone and quitting college at the age of 19, taking a job with a publisher. Many of her plays drew from her life and family. “The Children’s Hour” was Ms. Hellman’s first success at the age of 29.
Toni Morrison and the Bluest Eye Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in February 18, 1931. Her parents were, Ramah Willis Wofford, mother and her father was George Wofford (Johnson Lewis 2010). She had family who were immigrants and sharecroppers from both of her parents’ side. They lived in Lorain, Ohio were she was the only African America student in her first grade classroom (Bois 1996). Both of her parents were hardworking, while growing up, Morrison also learned folktales and stories that taught her about her heritage (Bois 1996).
(Ewell) Kate experienced much loss at a young age, three of her family members died by the time she was thirteen. The first death was of her father on November 1st, 1855 from a train accident leaving her mother to raise the children with the help of Kate’s grandmother and great grandmother. When she was thirteen, her great grandmother and half brother passed away a month apart. Her great grandmother was rumored to be a great influence on her from her story telling and encouragement. (Ewell) During her school years Chopin attended St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, there she was encouraged to write and express herself.
Alice Walker, best known perhaps as the author of The Color Purple, was the eighth child of Georgia sharecroppers. After a childhood accident blinded her in one eye, she went on to become valedictorian of her local school, and attend Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarships, graduating in 1965. Alice Walker volunteered in the voter registration drives of the 1960s in Georgia, and went to work after college in the Welfare Department in New York City. Alice Walker married in 1967 (and divorced in 1976). Her first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel just after her daughter's birth in 1970.
Chanel's family grew with a sister Antoinette and brothers Alphonse, Lucien and Augustin who died as an infant. Four years after the death of Augustin in 1891 Chanel's mother passed away. Chanel's father left the children with various family and in orphanages. 12 year old Cahnel was left in the orphanage of the Catholic monastery of Aubazine. There she learned to sew and Chanel spent school vacations with realtives learning to sew with more style than what was thought by the nuns in the monastery.