20: What was Alice Dewhurst like?

 Her granddaughter Ellen Ewing described her:

• "Alice was highly strung"

• "Those who knew, said that, as a young woman, she was not particularly handsome … her eyes must have always been beautiful, large and deep set as they were and expressive to a remarkable degree"

There are hints of her lack of physical stamina – don't "exhaust what little strength you have," her sister Jane wrote in 1848.

In character, we know she was like her father – and in 1848 she described herself teasingly to her fiancé

I have a bad temper, a talkative tongue, a badly furnished mind and what furniture there is thrust in without arrangement, and furthermore, I know very little of housekeeping. 

 

Next: 21. John Hopkinson, millwright & engineer: the 1840s