Carter, Maybelle (10 May 1909–23 October 1978), country-music singer and instrumentalist and matriarch of a music performing dynasty, known as Mother Maybelle, was born Maybelle Addington around Nicklesville, Scott County, Virginia, a few miles north of the Tennessee-Virginia state line. Both of her parents, Hugh Jack Addington and Margaret Elizabeth Kilgore, had deep roots in rural Scott County. Maybelle was one of ten children, many of whom grew up playing various stringed instruments. Maybelle’s mother was a banjo player, and when Maybelle was still a child she joined in as the family band played for local square dances. She played the autoharp as well, but her real fascination came when she was about twelve and one of her older brothers gave her a guitar. “I started trying different ways to pick it,” she later recalled, “and came up with my own style, because there weren’t many guitar pickers around.” The guitar was just becoming popular in the mountains, and the style Maybelle came up with—what would become known as the “Carter lick” or “thumb-brush” technique—allowed the thumb to pick the melody on the bass strings while the fingers keep rhythm downstroking the higher strings. This permitted the guitarist to pick a melody and keep rhythm at the same time, and eventually it became the most copied guitar style in country music....
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Carter, Maybelle (10 May 1909–23 October 1978), country-music singer and instrumentalist and matriarch of a music performing dynasty
Charles K. Wolfe
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Kennedy, Kathleen Agnes (1920-1948), sister of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and an English peer by marriage
Cindy Sigler Dagnan
Kennedy, Kathleen Agnes (20 February 1920–13 May 1948), sister of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and an English peer by marriage, sister of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and an English peer by marriage, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joseph Patrick Kennedy...
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Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald (22 July 1890–23 January 1995), philanthropist and political matriarch
Barbara L. Ciccarelli
Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald (22 July 1890–23 January 1995), philanthropist and political matriarch, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of John Francis Fitzgerald, a politician, and Mary Josephine Hannon. In 1904 the Fitzgeralds moved from Boston’s immigrant North End to a fifteen-room house in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. While her mother nurtured her commitment to family and the Catholic church, her father introduced her to politics. Kennedy graduated with honors from Dorchester High School in May 1906, the same year her father, “Honey Fitz,” was elected mayor. Because she was only fifteen, her parents prohibited her from attending Wellesley College. Instead, she enrolled at Sacred Heart Convent in Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music, where she became a skilled pianist. From 1908 to 1909 she attended Blumenthal Academy, a German convent finishing school in Valls, the Netherlands, attaining fluency in German and French. She completed her higher education at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in Purchase, New York, and graduated in 1910....
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Mecom, Jane Franklin (27 March 1712–09 May 1794), the favorite sister of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Claude-Anne Lopez
Mecom, Jane Franklin (27 March 1712–09 May 1794), the favorite sister of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the favorite sister of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), was born in Boston to Josiah Franklin, tallow chandler, and his second wife, Abiah Folger. The last of the seventeen Franklin children, Jane formed, with Benjamin and Lydia, a trio separated from their older siblings by a gap of several years. Benjamin and Jane outlived all the others; they were alike in many ways: intelligent, vital, indomitable. But whereas Benjamin rose in the world, Jane never had a chance. Married at fifteen to an almost illiterate and sickly saddler, Edward Mecom, she had twelve children, eleven of whom died before her, as did many of her grandchildren. The deaths were recorded with Christian resignation in her ...
