lacemakers and needlewomen, were all native South Australians eminent in their art. Jessie Rebecca Cowley was born on 2 March 1862 at Reynella, south of Adelaide. As a young girl she was accomplished at the keyboard and had a talent for design and a seemingly natural skill with a needle, being particularly noted for her fine embroidery and needlepoint lace. In the nineteenth century, these were considered desirable accomplishments for young women of marriageable age.
In 1885, in her twenty-third year, Jessie Rebecca married Frederick I’Anson, a farmer ten years her senior. They first farmed at Wonna, district of Burra, in the mid-north, then moved south to Kadina where Frederick farmed with his wife’s father, Thomas Cowley. Frederick and Jessie had three children: Rebecca Maria, born at Wonna on 28 October 1887; Jessie Cowley, born 13 May 1889 at Wonna, and Thomas Leonard, born in 1891. Jessie taught her two daughters needlework and lacemaking from a very early age: they received their first instruction at the tender ages of three and four. The girls were first taught to work needlepoint lace borders on muslin handkerchiefs, then progressed through the full range of whitework embroidery, needlework and needlepoint lace.
Needlework skills were often taught to girls in the hope that they could be advantageously used in unexpectedly straitened circumstances but few ever had to test the rationality of this notion. The I’Anson women, however, were among the few to test the principle, when in 1898 Frederick I’Anson’s over-strained heart caused his death at the age of forty-five. Their only son died a few months later, aged seven. The thirty-six year old widow was considered 'frail in health’, but her needlework talents and the skills she had imparted to her daughters were put to practical use, providing a means of financial support for herself and her two young daughters, then aged nine and eleven.
The diminished family continued to live in Kadina, Mrs I’Anson giving Saturday afternoon needlework classes, charging pupils two shillings a lesson, and mother and daughters making and selling fine needlework. In about 1920 they moved to a small row cottage in North Adelaide, where they remained for decades, continuing to support themselves by giving classes in needlework and from commissions for and sales of needlework items ranging from d’oyleys and handkerchiefs to tablecloths and bedspreads.
Mrs I’Anson continued to execute fine needlework; even in her eighty-eighth year, when confined to bed, she still managed to use her needle to make gifts for friends. She died in 1958, aged ninety-six. Her daughters continued teaching and producing commissioned needlework and special pieces for sale. Their lives had been dedicated to their mother and to the craft at which she excelled, one which had provided a means of support for them for most of their lives.
The discipline and patience required for fine needlework had been instilled in them from early childhood. Later in life they saw these as 'a form of character building which could help equip a girl for life’. In their terms this meant supporting themselves by dedication to fine, traditional whitework in an era when most young women saw needlework as a leisure pursuit. Jessie Cowley died in 1976, aged eighty-seven; Rebecca Maria in 1985, aged ninety-seven.
