They Dreamed of Me: Portraits of Ancestors

Was I chosen to carry on the stories of my ancestors on the day I was born? The nurse brought me out of the delivery room and into the arms of my father and said, “She looks just like you.” My father then presented me to my Aunt Suzanne who was only 14 years old and my great grandmother, Patty Sessions Mann, who was happy that a Patty was born to carry on her name and the name of her grandmother Patty Bartlett Sessions. So the plan to call me Christiena went awry from that first day with my great-grandmother’s words: “You aren’t going to call her Christiena are you?” From that first day, I have carried the weight of those names and was lucky to have a relationship with my great grandmother until her death right before her 103rd birthday. I was 27. I have the letters she sent to me mostly bidding me to be "cheerful for no one likes a grump" and to keep my faith in the church that entered our family line with her grandmother Patty in 1823. My Aunt Suzanne and mother became the keepers of the stories in my family and although I have difficulty remembering the numbers of zip codes and telephone numbers, stories stick in my memory with a very firm glue. Through the years, I heard stories directly from my grandparents about their parents and grandparents. Some stories were embedded in further off history of ships that came to this country carrying a grandfather from Wales, escaping from a sad turn of events only to connect with another on his wedding day. My grandmother Willis was proud of a grandfather who was on the Mayflower and another who had lunch with Buffalo Bill. One great great grandmother who was sent into the mines of Scotland as a child won a highland fling contest after her ninetieth birthday. Her daughter, my great grandmother, acted on the same Salt Lake City stage during the same era as Maude Adams. Another great grandmother, after losing her husband, took her many children to a small town in Arizona and became a prize-winning maker of cheese. 

All of these ancestors and many more live on in my memory. Some were captured in photographs and, in my eyes, each deserved a portrait to commemorate their well-lived life. In painting them, they have blessed me. 

As the keeper of stories, did they dream of me? In this painting of them all together, I am at the center, my great grandmother Christiena who wears the costume of Peter Pan, holds my floating body, and my great great great grandmother Patty has her hand on my head. They are blessing me as are all the others. My great great great grandmother Margaret Cowan is the source of the butterflies. Recently married and pregnant, her husband was conscripted into the army from Ireland to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. Alone and pregnant, she dreamed of a butterfly that escaped from her dress, followed by another and another until they filled the room. She counted twenty-one butterflies. Her only child, Samuel, had twenty-one children, one of whom was my great grandmother Sarah Ann Bryson who knew the way of bees. 

During the creation of these paintings, my ancestors have been with me, telling me to paint them younger or more beautiful. They have encouraged me. I have felt their love and came to feel that they dreamed of me.  

Their portraits will be waiting on the walls of the gallery at St. Phillips during the month of November. I hope that they delight the visitors and encourage them to find the stories of their ancestors. I hope that they ask the question: Who dreamed of me?