Life
Swisshelm was born Jane Grey Cannon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, one of several children of Mary (Scott) and Thomas Cannon, both of Scots-Irish descent; her father was a merchant and real estate speculator.
In 1823, when Jane was eight years of age, both her sister Mary and her father died of consumption, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Jane worked at manual labor, doing lace making and painting on velvet, and her mother colored leghorn and straw hats. At twelve she was sent to boarding school for several weeks, as there were no public schools at the time. When she returned home, she learned the doctor thought she was in the first stage of consumption. Her mother had already lost four of her children to illnesses. She moved with her children to Wilkinsburg, a village outside Pittsburgh, and started a store. After some more formal study, in 1830, Jane started teaching classes for village children. That year her family learned that her older brother William, much loved by all, had died of yellow fever in New Orleans, where he had gone for work.
Read more about this topic: Jane Swisshelm
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“His meter was bitter, and ironic and spectacular and inviting: so was life. There wasn’t much other life during those times than to what his pen paid the tribute of poetic tragic glamour and offered the reconciliation of the familiarities of tragedy.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)
“Ordinary time is “quality time” too. Everyday activities are not just necessities that keep you from serious child rearing: they are the best opportunities for learning you can give your child...because her chief task in her first three years is precisely to gain command of the day-to-day life you take for granted.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)