Great-Aunt Fanny

This is my paternal Great-Aunt Fanny Davenport, c 1897.  Fanny was an actress of some renown in both the American and British theaters in the 19th century.  I have a lot of fascinating information about her to put into my family tree on Ancestry.  

Since typing one-handed isn’t working well, I’ll only share this little bit of trivia about Fanny for the moment:  she was absolutely terrified of birds, all birds, any birds, big birds, little birds, live birds, dead birds, pictures of birds, paintings of birds, stuffed birds, cooked birds -- whatever condition they were in she would faint dead away at the sight of one.  She refused to go on stage if a bird was painted on the scenery or used as a prop.  She achieved a certain degree of notoriety with this phobia and, given the flair for off-stage drama that runs in my family, it just may have been a 19th century equivalent of today’s publicity stunt.