Ancestral Pin Explained

Sophie_vf from the Icarus KAL asked about my ancestral pin: it belonged to my great-grandmother, and I just received it from my grandma, partly because I'm the designated family historian and am trying to sort out and document who's who, and partly because I'm planning to name my first-born girl Anna, after the great-grandmother in question (Annie) and her own grandmother (Antje), who is the woman in the picture (thus, she's my great-great-great grandmother) (and also after my husband's grandmother, Anya). I think it must be a daguerrotype, though it's hard to believe it's quite that old! Judging by the cut of her sleeves, it must have been taken in her old age, late 19th century. She's still in the Old Country (the Netherlands) -- I think it was her children who came over here -- and she's wearing what I grew up calling "kissers" (I should point out here that I grew up in Holland, MI, home of the Tulip Time festival, and I used to be a high school klompen dancer). We had to wear "kissers" with our so-called authentic folk costumes, and were told their purpose, besides being decorative, was to keep the young men from getting fresh. Whatever. I never thought to have a picture of my own ancestress actually wearing them!

While I was visiting Grandma, we looked through a lot of old and very old photo albums and I digitized most of the images with my camera. It occured to me that all these ancestresses I was looking at were probably knitters, though I don't know for sure (Grandma's a crocheter, though she knows how to knit). I found their faces fascinating, and put a collage of them on my old knitting page.