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Ancestress   Listen
noun
Ancestress  n.  A female ancestor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ancestress" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Rajput gentlemen, beggars, hangers-on, retainers armed with ancient swords, mountebanks, several carriage-loads of women, who could sing and dance and were as particular about their veiling as if Lalun were not their ancestress, the inevitable faquirs, camel-loads of entertainers, water-carriers, sheep, asses, and bullock-drawn, squeaking two-wheeled carts aburst with all that men and animals could eat. Three days and nights of circus life, as Tess described it ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... served. It would be very pleasant, when one was in the mood. But it would not satisfy her. There was something strong and fierce and primitive in her nature—something that had come down to her through the generations from some harness-girded ancestress—something impelling her instinctively to choose the fighter; to share with him the joy of battle, healing his wounds, giving him of her courage, exulting with him in ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... referred to Isole de Heton. He now for the first time heard of her unhallowed intercourse with the freebooter Blackburn, of her compact on Whalley Nab with the fiend, of her mysterious connection with Malkin Tower, and of her being the ancestress of Mother Demdike. The consideration of all these points, coupled with a vivid recollection of his own strange adventure with the impious votaress at the Abbey on the previous night, plunged him into a deep ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... there was little to fear. He, as I said, loved my father, and was a father to Isabel. The Lady of Arundel likewise was then living, and was careful over her as a mother. Knowest thou that the Lady Griselda, of such fame for her patient endurance, was an ancestress of thy father? It should have been of thy mother. Hers was a like story; only that to her came no reward, ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... woman's, but made curious by certain wrinkles which ran from the corners of the eyes towards the ears. I think that these came from the bending of the brow in thought, but others say that they were inherited from an ancestress on the female side. Bakenkhonsu my friend, the old prophet who served under the first Seti and died but the other day, having lived a hundred and twenty years, told me that he knew her before she was married, and that she and her descendant, ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... after her grandmother, who had in her turn inherited from another ancestress the name of the Homeric matron whose peculiar merits won her a place even among the Puritan Faiths, Hopes, Temperances, and Prudences. Penelope was the girl whose odd serious face had struck Bartley Hubbard in the photograph of the family ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "Your ancestress," said the Duke, "was won at a tourney—you shall be fought for in real melee. Only thus far, for Count Reinold's sake, the successful prizer shall be a gentleman, of unimpeached birth, and unstained bearings; but, be he such, and the poorest who ever drew the strap of a sword belt through the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... an ancestress of mine," she said coldly, "an Italian lady. She was rich and musical. Her money built these rooms along the garden, and these ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... bar," answered Catherine, firmly, "but there are the staples where that bar should be; and into those staples have I thrust mine arm, like an ancestress of your own, when, better employed than the Douglasses of our days, she thus defended the bedchamber of her sovereign against murderers. Try your force, then, and see whether a Seyton cannot rival in courage a maiden ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils a faint trace of the soft red-brown—just enough to remind us of what we have lost, and keep fresh in our minds the memory of these sorrows. If I wish to see what her eyes might have been, I look above my head to the portrait of Sylvia's noble ancestress, a copy made by a "tramp artist" in Castleman County, and left with ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... lap-dog, even though descended, by indubitable pedigree, from a genuine "liver-and-tan" spaniel, that followed King Charles II. in his strolls through St James's Park; and which was given to her ladyship's ancestress on a day recorded, perhaps, in the diary of Mr Samuel Pepys. Again, in the country of the Esquimaux, who has not read in the intensely interesting narratives of the Moravian missionaries, how the dogs of the "Innuit"—of "the men," as they call themselves—are, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... Haumea. The name applied after her death and apotheosis to Papa, the wife of Wakea, and the ancestress of the Hawaiian race. (The Polynesian Race, A. Fornander, 1, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... entered it, seeking somewhere to hide myself, and saw a painted coffin lying on the floor near to the marble sarcophagus from which it had been dragged. It was that in which we had found the body of my ancestress; but since then thieves had been in this place. We had left the coffin in the sarcophagus and the mummy in the coffin, and replaced their lids. Now the mummy lay on the floor, half unwrapped and broken in two ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... seemed to me, that the poetry, the romance, the fire and the passion, came with Ruth of Moab into the household of Boaz. For they were strong and beautiful, these sons of Jesse, who had Ruth as their not remote ancestress, and the mother-qualities live long and tell ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... ceremony an acknowledgment of the kinship of the snakes with the Hopi, both having descended from a common ancestress. And since the snakes are to take part in a religious ceremony, of course they must have their heads washed or baptized in preparation, exactly as must every Hopi who takes part in any ceremony. The meal sprinkled on the snakes during the dance and at its close is symbolic of the Hopi's prayers ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... commonplace, little second-heroine in "Adam Bede," Hester, a pathetic and sentimental expression, to which nothing in her mind or character corresponds, and which must have been an inheritance from some ancestress in whom such an expression had originated ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... the most curious thing about Bubbles," said Varick thoughtfully, "is a kind of thought-reading gift. I fancy she must have inherited it from an Indian ancestress, for her great-great-grandfather rescued a begum on her way to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre. He ultimately married her, and though she never came to England. Bubbles' father, a fool called Hugh Dunster, who's lost what little ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... all those persons who can trace their blood to a single ancestor and ancestress; or, if we take the strict technical meaning of the word in Roman law, they are all who trace their blood to the legitimate marriage of a common pair. "Cognation" is therefore a relative term, and the degree of connection in blood ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Knowsley lies near Prescott, about seven miles from Liverpool. The family are descended from the Lord Stanley who was created Earl of Derby by the Earl of Lancaster and Derby, afterwards Henry IV., for services rendered at the battle of Bosworth Field. An ancestress, Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, is celebrated for her defence of Latham House against the Parliamentary forces in the Great Civil War, and is one of the heroines of Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Peveril of ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... own, even the rival himself obliges us by throwing up the sponge just when the game should really begin. All this is soothing enough, but it is also very thin stuff; and the addition of a ghostly ancestress, who lures her descendants to midnight assignations by smiling at them out of a LELY painting, does not stiffen things much. The fact is that away from such a purely Irish subject as, say, "Countrymen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... Pike's Peak. Never heard of the battle you mention; but as an explorer—So one of his companions married your ancestress?" ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... Mine ancestress, who far on Egypt's shore A young cow's semblance wore,— A maiden once, by Hera's malice changed! And then on him withal, Who, as amid the flowers the grazing creature ranged, Was in her by a breath of Zeus conceived; And, as the hour of birth drew nigh, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... Marquis, for the first time, addressed his conversation to me. He prefers to speak in English—to show what a linguist he is, I suppose. He made me many compliments, and said how very like I was growing to my ancestress, Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt, and he told me again the old story of the guillotine. Grandmamma ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... either side of the fire. She felt like an ancestress or a family portrait. The rosy haze of her tea-gown looked strange and alien fluttering in the huge ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... strange. My ancestress—but there is no need to publish her revered name—did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's, where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... to John and Priscilla Alden, five sons and six daughters. Sarah married Alexander Standish and so cemented the two families in blood as well as in friendship. Ruth, who married John Bass, became the ancestress of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Elizabeth, who married William Pabodie, had thirteen children, eleven of them girls, and lived to be ninety-three years; at her death the Boston News Letter [Footnote: June 17, 1717.] extolled her as "exemplary, virtuous and pious and her memory ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble

... of Aunt Amy, had provided the large basket. They might not need it all, but then again they might. It was best to be prepared. And, anyway, no one should ever say that she, Mrs. Sykes, "skimped" her boarders' meals. As for the big shawl, once belonging to a venerated ancestress, it is always safe to take a big shawl on a country trip even in June heat with the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... he visited Kentucky, which so pleased him that in 1774 he decided to make that part of the back country his home. He was even then a man of powerful frame, with broad brow, keen blue eyes, and a dash of red in his hair from a Scottish ancestress—a man, too, of ardent patriotism, strong common sense, and exceptional powers of initiative and leadership. Small wonder that in the rapidly developing commonwealth beyond the mountains he quickly became a ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... this hyar thing layin' behind a barrel up thar in ther attic," he lied, as he restored the lost journal of the revolutionary ancestress. "I 'lowed hit ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... in a Far Western State as the wife of a white husband. A typical case was that of a family in which the tradition of Negro origin had persisted long after all trace of it had disappeared. The family took its origin from a white ancestress, and had consequently been free for several generations. The father of the first colored child, counting the family in the female line—the only way it could be counted—was a mulatto. A second infusion of white blood, this time on the paternal side, resulted in offspring ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... bastard son of the French mistress was created Duke of Richmond and Earl of March in England, and Duke of Lennox and Earl of Darnley in Scotland. To these proud titles the present head of the noble house of Richmond and Lennox—by virtue of the grant made by Louis XIV. to his ancestress likewise adds that of Duc d'Aubigny ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... so?" rejoined the earl, with rising interest. "Oshkosh is, indeed, a grand old name. The Oshkosh are a Russian family. An Ivan Oshkosh came to England with Peter the Great and married my ancestress. Their descendant in the second degree once removed, Mixtup Oshkosh, fought at the burning of Moscow and later at the sack of Salamanca and the treaty of Adrianople. And Wisconsin too," the old nobleman went on, his features kindling with animation, for he had a passion for heraldry, genealogy, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... than a century the withered mummy of a French princess, the coquettish Kate, whom Henry V. courts so ardently in Shakespeare's play. Katherine lost her prestige at her son Henry VI.'s Court by her second marriage with a Welsh gentleman of no rank, but she thus became the ancestress of the great Tudor dynasty, which was destined to supplant both her royal husband's line, the Lancastrians, and their rivals, the house of York. Yet it was in the reign of her own Tudor grandson that Katherine's original sepulchre in the old Lady Chapel was destroyed, and her embalmed body in ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... to declare himself a champion and lover of Ruth. The plan is successful. A kinsman nearer than Boaz refuses to claim his rights by marrying her, and the way is left open for Boaz. He accordingly marries Ruth, who thus becomes the ancestress ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... was the brave Vercingetorix, and among the Egyptians, Arsinoe, the sister of Cleopatra. A banquet was given at his cost to the whole Roman people, and the shows of gladiators and beasts surpassed all that had ever been seen. The Julii were said to be descended from AEneas and to Venus, as his ancestress, Caesar dedicated a breastplate of pearls from the river mussels of Britain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to reduce the sons of Pompeius. They were defeated in battle, the elder was killed, but Cnaeus, the younger, held ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... by which St. Vitus lured his votaries to the grave. And then I look at Rowley's licentious eye and cynical lip, and think to myself, 'This man's father perished on the scaffold; this man's lovely ancestress paid the penalty of her manifold treacheries after sixteen years' imprisonment; this man has passed through the jaws of death, has left his country a fugitive and a pauper, has returned as if by a miracle, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... fear of them. (11) In Jericho the spies put up with Rahab. She had been leading an immoral life for forty years, but at the approach of Israel, she paid homage to the true God, lived the life of a pious convert, and, as the wife of Joshua, became the ancestress of eight prophets and of the prophetess Huldah. (12) She had opportunity in her own house of beholding the wonders of God. When the king's bailiffs came to make their investigations, and Rahab wanted to conceal the Israelitish ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... as well as that of her ancestress, and she blushed as her eyes met those of a strange young gentleman, with a sketch-book in his hand, and a French poodle at ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... mentioned. A Burmese drama, for instance, sets before us nine princesses of the city of the Silver Mountain, who wear enchanted girdles that enable them to fly as swiftly as a bird. The youngest of these princesses is caught while bathing, by means of a magical slip-knot. A divine ancestress of the Bantiks, a tribe inhabiting the Celebes Islands, came down from the sky with seven companions to bathe. A man who saw them took them for doves, but was surprised to find that they were women. He possessed himself of the clothes of one ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... and again a description of the palace and the Generalife who had just come from Spain. There was little in print about Heidelberg that I could use, and I had to write out the whole story of the Winter King and his Queen, James First's daughter Elizabeth, ancestress of the present king of England and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... of the "Wilkina-Saga" gives a different account of the death of Theodoric. According to this, Witig, after he sank in the lake, was received by his mermaid ancestress and borne away to Zealand. Here he abode a long time, till he heard of the return and recovered might of Theodoric. Then, fearing his resentment, he betook himself to a certain island, and having made an image of Theodoric, laid a strict charge upon the boatman who ferried passengers across ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... Marquis of Monterey in the mission church, a face that was alleged to leave a deep and lasting impression upon the observers. It was undoubtedly owing to this quality during a brief visit of the famous viceroy to a remote and married ancestress of Don Jose at Leon that the singular resemblance may ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... directly and indirectly, perhaps unconsciously, in many a descendant. Without assigning her any direct influence on Wilberforce, much of the feeling of this novel is the same as inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe. She has been claimed to be the literary ancestress of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Chateaubriand; nor is it any exaggeration to find Byron and Rousseau in her train. Her lyrics, it has been well said, are often of 'quite bewildering beauty', but her comedies represent her best work and she is worthy to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Troyes, and is still with us, no more interesting work exists than his earliest masterpiece, Cliges. The delicate and reticent Soredamors; the courteous and lovable, Guinevere; the proud and passionate Fenice, who will not sacrifice her fair fame and chastity; the sorceress Thessala, ancestress of Juliet's nurse—these form a gallery of portraits ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... still think, even after all my experience of life, they were a blessing to the family. You will think that I am wandering away from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who had owned the lace, Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my mother and my Lady Ludlow. And so it fell out, that when my poor father died, and my mother was sorely pressed to know what to do with her nine children, and looked far and wide for signs of willingness to help, Lady Ludlow sent her a letter, proffering aid ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... savage woman than a malignant witch; and, above all, that Lucy was of her kith and kin; and that, in putting her to the trial, by water or by fire, we should be torturing—it might be to the death—the ancestress of her ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... case: you must know that it had been in Leonora's family ever since her ancestress, Theodolite, Pharaoh's daughter, left Egypt, not knowing when she was well off, and settled in Ireland, of all places, where she founded the ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... daughters was Lady Burleigh, who had been governess to Edward VI., second wife of the famous lord-treasurer, and direct ancestress of the present talented marquis of Salisbury, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, whose sister, Lady Mildred Beresford-Hope, wife of the well-known son of the author of Anastasius, bears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... of her first husband, Octavia was married to Mark Antony, by whom she had two daughters, through whom she was the ancestress of three Emperors, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... cleverly made Augustus himself the leading figure in this and the following stanza, and the listeners forget the Capitoline gods as they note the allusion to Venus, the ancestress of the Julii, the prestige of Augustus that has brought envoys to him from Scythia, Media, and India, and in the next stanza the public virtues, presented here as deities—Fides, Pax, Honos, Pudor, Virtus—on whose aid and worship the new ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... and many marvel at the modesty of the Author, in deriving his own origin from him and from his wife, when he might have derived it from a more noble source. But I find in such modesty the greater merit, in that he did not wish to fail in affectionate gratitude toward her,—Gualdrada,—his ancestress,—giving her name and handing her down as it were to eternity, while she by herself would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... or her ancestress the actress made her development possible, whether her Connecticut grandfather or her Virginia grandmother taught her, how much she owed her bandit father who defied the world and her mother, the nun, who won it—both for love—who ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... her father considered, was dangerously like her picturesque ancestress! The thought kept Peter from the still, back in the woods, for many a day. He, poor down-at-heel fellow, was as ready as any man of his line to protect women, especially his own, but he was ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... He looked at the two words in some annoyance. They were very ugly. Addressed to a person who wore pink shoes, they seemed singularly abrupt. And if Miss Vancourt should chance to resemble in the least her ancestress, Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt, they were wholly unsuitable. A creditor might write 'Dear Madam' to a customer in application for an outstanding bill,— but to Mary Elia Adelgisa one would surely begin,—Ah!—now ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... the tattle which we are told is still current among some of the high families of Philadelphia. They had two children,—a son, the idol of his father's heart, who died as a child; and a daughter, who married Richard Bache, and is the ancestress of a large family. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... light and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," saying, "I wish that some one of your descendants may one day know that his ancestress was a woman whom Saint Jerome would have loved as he loved Paula and Marcella, one who needed only a pen illustrious and saintly enough to do her justice." Hearing of her last illness, he made ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... monster, Of the "Louisville and Nashville," Sounded loud the shrill steam-whistle Of the railroad "On to Richmond." And the Old Church walls so sacred, Fell beneath the stormy cargo, Our Republican ancestress Bent her hoary head in shrinking; All the rank and mouldy ruins Fell before the thund'ring onset. Never more the timeworn benches Shall reecho words of wisdom; Never more the brick and plaster Shall have grace from text and precept, Ne'er alas! her slumb'ring children Give her ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... away into eternal expatriation, while among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah, who annually made a little coat for Samuel at the temple; and Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue; and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present Christian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the kingdom of God. Christ announced who would ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... and formed a lake, at first called Logrum (the sea), but now known as Maelar, whose every indentation corresponds with the headlands of Seeland. Gefjon then married Skiold, one of Odin's sons, and became the ancestress of the royal Danish race of Skioldungs, dwelling in the city of Hleidra or Lethra, which she founded, and which became the principal place of sacrifice ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel" afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers —all kith and kin to noble Benjamin —this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable. Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... exemplification (in subject at least) of Wordsworth's aphorism, that "the child is father to the man." It is a sonnet addressed to "Zelia," "On her charging the author with writing too much on Love!" Who Zelia was—whether a lineal ancestress of Dickens's "Mrs. Harris," or some actual grown up young lady, who was teased by, and tried to check the chirpings of the little {566} precocious singing bird—does not appear: but we suspect the former, for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various

... Tunbelly Clumsy, who, when at home, 'never disobeyed her father except in the eating of green gooseberries'—transforming to a varnished City madam; with a loud laugh and a mincing step; the crazy ancestress of an accountably fallen descendant. She bustles prodigiously and is punctually smart in her speech, always in a fluster to escape from Dulness, as they say the dogs on the Nile-banks drink at the river running to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... an illusion of the senses? Suppose her a mere graven image, hollow, void. Call her merely a handsome woman, with the face of some remarkable ancestress, with just enough of warmth to be subdued by the vigorous passion of such a fine fellow as Carnaby. On the whole, Rolfe preferred this hypothesis. He had never heard her say anything really bright, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... don't understand these things yet, but you ought to feel your duty toward your family and do all you can to keep the name as honorable as it always has been. What do you suppose our blessed ancestress Lady Marget would say to our oldest boy taking ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... of the brooding love and more than maternal solicitude of God in Christ. Nor can we forget that the only other instance of the figure before David's psalms is in the exquisite idyl which tells of the sweet heroism of David's ancestress, Ruth, on whose gentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, "A full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust" (Ruth ii. 12). We may perhaps also see in ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... Baron never kindled but once,"—in atrociously violating the grave of an Ancestress (or Step Ancestress) of ours. [Step-Ancestress was Dorothea, the Great Elector's second Wife; of whom Pollnitz, in his Memoirs and Letters, repeats the rumor that once she, perhaps, tried to poison her Stepson Friedrich, First King. (See supra, vol. v. p. 47).] "But ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... have your private affairs overseen and interfered with by such beings as they are, though sometimes it may be most useful and agreeable. Besides which, there was a Fairy-secret connected with the family that lived at the Sea Castle. An Ancestress of the present Mistress had been a Fairy herself, and though she had accommodated herself to mortal manners, and lived with her husband quite quietly as well as happily, and so her origin had been in a great measure forgotten, it was not unknown ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... over her, and especially over her conversion, and prays, 'A full reward be given thee of Jehovah, the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.' She is married to him, and becomes the ancestress of David, and, through him, of the Messiah. All this is a beautiful completion to the other side of the picture which the fierce fighting in Judges makes prominent, and teaches that Israel's relation to the nations around was not to be one of mere antagonism, but that they had ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and presenting him to her young ladies, said, "There, my dears; there's your ancestor." I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad representative of their "ancestress."] ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... Don Luis conjured up the whole story of the past: Count Malonyi's ancestress hiding in the old family mansion, escaping the search of the perquisitors, and in this way living throughout the revolutionary troubles. Everything was explained. A passage contrived in the thickness of the wall led to some distant outlet. And this was how ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... transferred from the purple clouds of Myrtle's imagination to the pale silvery mists of Susan's pretty fancies. She sat in her day-dream long after Bathsheba had left her, her eyes fixed, not on the faded portrait of her beautiful ancestress, but on that other canvas where the dead Beauty seemed to live in all the splendors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... then!" exclaimed the author, with another of her sea-gray, long-lashed glances of worshiping admiration at Mr. Vandeford, the eminent Broadway producer who was putting a great star into her play based on the adventures of an ancestress. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... in the fact that not only did her Majesty represent one of her predecessors, an ancestress however remote, but that many of the guests were enabled to follow her example. They appeared—some in the very armour of their forefathers, others in costumes copied from family pictures, or in the dress of hereditary offices still held by the representatives of the ancient ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... grant your request to reserve a berth on the Mayflower for your delightful ancestress, Mrs. Patience Loveday. The Mayflower is already overcrowded, and, owing to some ill-feeling raised in America, we decided to resign all interest in the vessel. Should you desire some other form of Puritan distinction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... her: "Cou'd I have guess'd that I had a Poet in my House! Cou'd I have look'd for a Poet under lac'd Clothes!" The poor author offers her the security of his (as yet unacted) play; whereupon Mrs Moneywood (lineal ancestress of Mrs Raddles) pertinently cries out: "I would no more depend on a Benefit-Night of an unacted Play, than I would on a Benefit-Ticket in an undrawn Lottery." Luckless next appeals to what should be his landlady's heart, assuring ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... I can't afford to feed you on diamonds from my sacred ring! Did you get your greedy nature from some sable Dodonean ancestress? If we had lived three thousand years ago, I might be superstitious, and construe your freak into an oracular protest against my engagement. Feathered augurs survive their ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Fouque, otherwise Aunt Dide, the ancestress of the Rougon-Macquart family, whose early career is related in the "Fortune of the Rougons," whilst her death is graphically described in the pages of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... "No, Madam Ancestress, born of her whom not an Indian or a fierce bear could frighten away from her duty of protection to those of her affections, I will not flee. I will stay here by the side of my Uncle, the General Robert, ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... HENRIETTE. Born at Paris; 1829-1901. Pupil of Chaplin. The family name of this artist was Bouteiller, and she married M. Jules de Saux, but as an artist used the name of an ancestress. Her pictures of genre subjects very early attracted attention, especially in 1855, when she sent to the Salon "A Brother of the Christian School," "School for the Poor at Aix," "Mutual Instruction," and "Rabbits." Her works were ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... evidently not so particular about concealing their features, and I obtained a glimpse of some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... joins Pall Mall, and where Thynne was done to death. The Koenigsmarks had a sister, the beautiful Aurora, who was mistress of Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and so mother of the famous Maurice de Saxe, and ancestress of George Sand. Later, like the fair sinner of some tale of chivalry, she ended her days in pious retirement, as prioress of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... dishonor? Remember Rahab, and how she became The ancestress of the great Psalmist David; And wherefore should not I, Helen of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... others members of the city proletariat. We possess the charter of the colony planted at Urso in southern Spain under the name of Colonia Julia Genetiva Urbanorum. Of the two latter titles, the first is derived from the name of Venus Genetrix, the ancestress of the Julian house, the second indicates that the colonists were drawn from the plebs urbana. Accordingly, we find that free birth is not, as in Italy, a necessary qualification for municipal office. By such foundations Caesar began the extension to the provinces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... to obtain a hearing either from Prince or King. In spite of all your efforts to the contrary, I shall learn any state secrets I desire to know, and I have great hopes of winning over Charles Stuart to the faith for which his lovely and martyred ancestress died. One more word at parting, Sir Jocelyn. You will remember, when we first met, you were in danger from the Star-Chamber. It would be useless now to say how I saved you from the punishment your rashness had incurred—how, while ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... Anne of Denmark. Such of her many jewels as were to be found when she died are said to have been left to her son, later Charles I, and none to her daughter Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia and ancestress of many of the sovereigns of Europe, as well as of the present reigning house in England. Unfortunately for her heir, a great part of the jewels had been embezzled, and could not be recovered, although models of many had been carefully preserved by William Herrick, who swore that the originals ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... never do things by halves, we are studying and cultivating and buying and making, and trying to forget and overcome that terrible marriage of our beautiful Colonial ancestress with the dark-wooded, plush-draped, jig-sawed upstart of vulgarity and ignorance. In another country her type would be lost in his, forever! But in a country that sent a million soldiers across three thousand miles of ocean, in spite of every obstacle and in the twinkling of an eye, why even ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... road dropped down and down to the shores of lonely St. Mary's Loch (Scott wrote of it in "Marmion"), and at the end of the still lake to Dryhope Tower, where brave Mary Scott, his ancestress, "The Flower of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the crowd about it should be denser there than before any of the other pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy, letting her feel, and letting all the people about them guess, that the day she chose she could wear the same name as his pictured ancestress. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... descent from Rev. Joseph Hull, minister at Durham in 1662, a graduate at the University at Cambridge, England; from John Ham, of Dover; from the emigrant John Heard, and others of like vigorous stock. It was his ancestress, Elizabeth (Hull) Heard, whom the old historians call a "brave gentlewoman," who held her garrison house, the frontier fort in Dover in the Indian wars, and successfully defended it in the massacre of 1689. The father of the subject of this sketch was a man of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... Pardee, "a Whidby was a common ancestress of your father and his cousin, 'Red Jim.' It is strange how family traits reproduce themselves ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... whom he created Duchess of Cleveland. The Dukes of St. Albans owe their origin to his intrigue with Nell Gwynn, a player and a courtezan. Louise de Querouaille, a mistress sent by France to win him to its interests, became Duchess of Portsmouth and ancestress of the house of Richmond. An earlier mistress, Lucy Walters, declared him, it is believed falsely, father of the boy whom he raised to the dukedom of Monmouth, and to whom the Dukes of Buccleuch trace their line. But Charles was far from being content with these ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... of whom the saga told, a certain ancestress named Saevuna, whereof it is written "that she was of all women the very fairest, and that she drew the hearts of men with her wonderful eyes as the moon draws mists from a marsh," who, in some ways, might have ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... instance, Maine (Early Law and Custom), in speaking of tribes who still trace their descent from a single ancestress, says, "The outlines" (i. e. of the maternal family) "may still be marked out, if it be worth any one's ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... high (book-collecting) reputation, the Comtesse de Verrue, was represented in the Beckford sale by one of three copies of 'L'Histoire de Melusine,' of Melusine, the twy-formed fairy, and ancestress of the house of Lusignan. The Comtesse de Verrue, one of the few women who have really understood book-collecting, {16} was born January 18, 1670, and died November 18, 1736. She was the daughter ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Ancestress" :   ancestor, antecedent, ascendant, root



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