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1721 to 1730

1721

born ..... Barberina Campanini ..... La Barberina, famous ballet dancer who was born in Parma in Italy. In 1739 she was presented in Paris at the Academie Royale where four special dances had been written for her. The ballet ran for fifty performances. In the same year she went to Covent Garden and in 1742 danced in Dublin.  A year later Frederick the Great engaged her to appear in Berlin but she had eloped to Venice with Lord Stuart Mackenzie. She had several lovers - Prince Carignan, Lord Arundel, the Marquis de Thabouville and the Duc de Durfort.  When she did eventually go to Berlin she was a great favourite and was paid a very high salary. She stayed there for four years and in 1749 married the son of Frederick the Great's chancellor but they separated ten years later and were divorced in 1788. In exchange for being created Comtesse de Campanini she endowed an institution for Poor Ladies of Good Birth, became its abbess and administered it until her death in 1799

1722

born ..... Flora MacDonald ..... Jacobite heroine who saved the life of Prince Charles Edward after the defeat of Culloden Moor in 1746.  She dressed him in women's clothes and passed him off as her maid to avoid capture. She also persuaded her stepfather to issue a passport for ' an Irish spinning maid, Betty Bourke' and together they managed to slip through to the safety of France. Bonnie Prince Charlie presented her with his portrait in a gold locket. Eventually Flora was arrested and sent to the Tower of London for just under a year but escaped the possible death penalty and emerged from captivity a celebrated heroine.  She was born the daughter of Ronald MacDonald who died when she was a child. Her mother then married Sir Alexander MacDonald. Flora herself, married Allan Macdonald of Kingsburgh and in 1751 they emigrated to North Carolina in America. He was a loyalist in the Rebellion and was captured. On her return to Scotland she was wounded in a fight with a French frigate. After the war they were re-united and she lived the rest of her life in Skye. She died on March 5th 1790 and was buried, wrapped in the sheet in which Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept so many years before

1723

born ..... Claire Josèphe Hippolyte Léris de La Tude ..... French actress who took the stage name of Mademoiselle Clairon and who became the leading tragedienne of her day and introduced a new style of acting. She first appeared on stage in 1736 and in 1743 joined the Opéra in Paris but soon reverted back to acting.  Her style of acting moved beyond the stiff formal gestures and speech of established practice and on a greater concentration of costume as a reflection of the play rather than as an ostentatious display. She retired in 1765 and acted only in private theatres after that until her death in poverty in Paris in 1803 ..... and

born ..... Eliza Lucas Pinckney ..... American agricultural pioneer. She experimented with diversified crops in the South Carolina soil and helped to develop indigo as a major resource. She was the daughter of an English army officer and moved to South Carolina with her family in 1738 where her father bought a plantation near Charleston. As a young woman she tutored her sister and taught two black girls to read intending to train them as teachers for the rest of the Negro children.  In 1747 she married Charles Pinckney and continued to experiment on his plantation cultivating hemp, flax and silk. In 1753 they went to England but returned to America five years later for a holiday. During this time he died and Eliza then resumed the job of plantation manager until her own death in 1793. Her diary and letters are one of the largest surviving collections of a colonial woman ..... and .....

born ..... Hortense Lepaute .....  French astronomer. Her father was attached to the court of the Queen of Spain and in 1758 Hortense married the royal clock-maker. She investigated the oscillation of pendulums, studied Haley's comet, calculated and charted the path of eclipses, edited the astronomical annual of the Academy of Sciences and was the author of a number of scientific works. A Japanese rose was named Lepautia in her honour but was later renamed Hortensia. She died in 1788

1727

born .... (c) George Anne Bellamy ..... the illegitimate daughter of a Quaker schoolgirl and Lord Tyrawley. She appeared first c1744 at Covent Garden in The Orphan. the beginning of a brilliant theatrical career. Sadly she squandered her talent and her beauty and her last years, until her death in 1788, were spent in poverty. Her autobiography is entitled Apology and was published in1785 ..... and .....

born ..... Hester Chapone neé Mulso ..... English poet and writer who was largely self-educated and studied French, Latin, music and drawing. She was friends with some of the influential London literary figures of the day - Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter and Elizabeth Montagu and her most popular work was Letters on the Improvement of the Mind in 1773. She also wrote for the periodicals The Rambler, The Adventurer ad The Gentleman's Magazine. She died in 1801

1728

born ..... Mercy Otis Warren ..... one of the most significant Revolutionary women. She was self educated, a poet, satirist and historian and published a major document in 1805 entitled The Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. She sincerely believed that women should have equal education, rights and opportunities. She was the wife of James Warren, president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and was herself in the centre of revolutionary politics. She died in 1814