Monday evening, I stopped by the Sanderson Museum on my way home from work to see what I could learn about historic snowstorms.  I found several old photos, even from the “Blizzard of 1914.”

I found notes by Chris such as “A rare sight–never remember such an early snow storm”, and diary entries from his mother Hanna like, “A bitter cold day. My heart ached a lot when I looked out and saw that my beautiful flowers were all frozen… Have just discovered that we are having quite a snowstorm.”

But after collecting my research and creating the story outline, I ended up with a much different story, one that has been growing in my heart for quite some time.

For while the museum on Creek Road is named for Chris, the more I read Hanna’s (1856-1943) diaries, the more I am intrigued by this dear lady who was much beloved in the village.

Hanna, was the rock and abiding strength behind her son; the one who got him off to his morning teaching assignments; the one who got him off to his evening lectures or dance band dates; the one who worried until he came home, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning; the one who cooked his meals. And yes, perhaps even the reason for some of his quirky habits.

She once wrote about a day, April 15, 1865, when she was lying on her living room sofa with, some “childish ailment.”

“ …[M]y father on returning from the village post office excitedly told my mother something which caused her to cry out in distress many times. I called to her to know what it all meant. She came into the room, tears flowing down her face as she said ‘Lincoln was shot last night and is dead now.’”

But what was even more noteworthy about this event was that until her last year of life Hanna would lie on her sofa every April 15 commemorating that day.

One of the first people her son Chris called when she died in his arms on Dec. 25, 1943, was his young friend Andy Wyeth, who came up to their house in the village and sketched the scene. It would later become the painting “Death on Christmas Morning” prominently featured at Wyeth’s 2006 retrospective “Memory and Magic” at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

While Hanna lived, Chris was a collector of historic artifacts.

But after she died at the age of 87, leaving him a lost and lonely 61-year old bachelor, his collecting turned into compulsive hoarding, so much so that when he died in 1966 there remained only a path through waist-high stacks of papers in his house. He could barely sleep on his bed with all the other items competing for space.

Yes, I stopped by the Sanderson Museum on Monday ostensibly to see what I might find about Chadds Ford snowstorms. But while there I realized something much more important…

I really admired this woman behind the man, Hanna Carmack Sanderson.