More Family Artists

Strong, kind, good-hearted, very spiritual and ARTISTIC.

 These are the adjectives I have come to know that describe the women who married into the Parsons men, my ancestors, of Chardon, Ohio. They were pioneer settlers of this rural farm area in the very early 1800’s. Among their descendants were my three great-aunts, (as well as their brother - my grandfather on my father’s side).

I have already introduced you to two of my great-aunts, Ethel and Elsie - (see the 2 previous pages on them). Their older sister, Mildred, also had an artistic side. Here is Mildred and a watercolor she did when she was 19 yrs. old in 1904.

Did I mention strong?  Mildred volunteered to serve in World War I for the Quartermaster Department in France during 1918-1919. It was a combat service support (CSS) branch of the United States Army in which she managed supplies. She is shown below touring the trenches in North East France in 1919 and - also with General John J. ('Black Jack') Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) on the Western Front in World War I. She wrote on the back of the photo: “Me and Jack in France – June 1919”. 

My great-aunts mother, Lucinda (my Great-Grand mother) and her sister, Laura, interestingly, both married brothers of the Parsons family - my great-grandfather and his brother.

Lucinda and Laura Parsons were accomplished painters and were extremely industrious women. Below are their very similar renditions of a still life of Pansies.

 Lucinda helped earn money to put her 4 children through college beginning in 1901 through 1918. She made quilts of very fine quality and sold them through ‘The Women’s Exchange’.  Imagine, sending 4 kids to college from a rural farm life. My grandfather went to Univ. of Michigan and became a banker and manager of the Lakewood, OH branch of the Cleveland Trust Bank. Here are two more of Lucinda’s lovely paintings that I have in my collection. They are painted with oils on wood panels.

I have been curious how far back the artistic genes may have been flowing in my family. From very old letters I have discovered that this artistic line may have come, in part, from Lucinda’s and Laura’s mother, who is – keep up now - my Great-Great Grandmother, Maria (pronounced like the wind – “Mariah”).  Here she is below when she was very old with her girls, Lucinda and Laura (all on left side of photo) and their Parsons brother-husbands and their children (my great-aunts and grandfather - center to right side of photo with Laura's son Hartly far right). 

Also from the letters and papers I learned that Maria’s brother was a poet and a spiritual aesthetic. I looked it up – “Theological aesthetics is … defined as being "concerned with questions about God and issues in theology in the light of and perceived through - sense knowledge (sensation, feeling, imagination), through beauty, and the arts".

Bingo! Who knows how much farther back from whom these artistic genes may have been coming? But I do know that they are still flowing beyond in the descendants of Laura Parsons as well, such as Nancy Knapp Jantz (Laura’s Great-Granddaughter), a wonderful and prolific mural artist in Florida and even more emerging artists in younger generations. 

“Strong, kind, good-hearted, very spiritual and ARTISTIC”. Making beauty and trying to do good is the common thread among all the artists in this genetic line of family.

Now, please enjoy a link to Nancy Knapp Jantz  art and website – G.P.L.