u/LyricalWillow

Since everyone is sharing Dolly stories, I’ll share mine.

My class was promised $500 from Dolly if we graduated high school. We had an awards ceremony at Dollywood to celebrate.

After the dinner, we took turns receiving our check from Dolly and getting our pictures made.

As you can see in the pic, I wear glasses. The photographer asked me to tilt my chin up. I knew it was to avoid lens flare, but Dolly must have thought it hurt my feelings. She started complimenting me on my “beautiful chin.” It was a little surreal. Here I was, totally starstruck, listening to Dolly wax on about my chin.

There you have it. That’s my favorite memory of Dolly.

I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee/Western North Carolina. My great grandmother lived in a very poor, rural area where access to medical care required long trips and lots of money. Her father was a physician and he taught her how to deliver babies. That was her only training.

Back then, giving birth in a hospital was a luxury the women couldn’t afford. So my great grandmother became a midwife.

Every time we visited her there seemed to be a heavily pregnant woman living in her house. The women would move in with her when their due date approached since transportation in that area was hard to come by. The women fascinated me, as did my grandmother’s birthing room. I liked to play in her room, pretending I was delivering babies too.

While I never witnessed a birth, I did hear quite a few of them. The women were quite stoic, keeping pretty quiet overall. I always got excited when I’d hear the baby crying.

She charged $15.00 for delivery. However since it was such a poor area she accepted trades as well. People paid her in vegetables, firewood, or working on her farm. She never turned down a woman because of inability to pay.

She also never lost an infant or mother, and she delivered over 2,000 babies. Her last baby she delivered when she was 86 years old.

She was quite famous in Appalachia. She was featured in National Geographic, People magazine, a television show called The Heartland Series and even had a book written about her.

I’m very proud of my great grandmother.

This medal is engraved with a portrait of the ‘MOOST HAPPI’ Anne Boleyn 👑

On this day in 1533, nearly 500 years ago, Anne Boleyn, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and second wife of Henry VIII, was crowned and anointed Queen of England. This medal is thought to commemorate her coronation, though it may have been devised to celebrate the birth of Anne and Henry’s second child, who was either sadly miscarried or stillborn. Boleyn would later be executed just three short years later, having failed to provide Henry VIII with his much-desired male heir.

She wears a pedimental headdress, which was common at the time, with a large veil at her back, a cross hanging from a necklace, and a low dress and mantle over her shoulders, all of which correspond with contemporary records of the ceremony that day.

The most likely interpretation of the inscribed letters ‘A . R’ is that they refer to Anne herself as ANNA REGINA (Queen Anne)

(This is a post from the British Museum on Facebook, I could not figure out how to post the direct link. Sorry mods)