Patsy Swiney
Cincinnati Enquirer January 13, 1923
"PATSY SWINEY, Famous "Black Mammy Dies"
"Aunt Patsy" Swiney, "black mammy" of the Webster family, died at the home of Mrs. Kate (Webster) Victor on East Pike Street, Cynthiana, Kentucky, Friday night January 12. She had been a resident of Mrs. Victor's household for fourteen years, and before that with the Webster family in Newport. "Aunt Patsy" was born in Bath County more than 90 years ago. As a slave she was presented to Mrs. Webster*a on her wedding day, a custom in the South during the days of slavery to provide a bride with a suitable maidservant.
So attached did the colored maid become to the family that she remained with them after having been freed, and never lived in any other household. She never married. "Aunt Patsy" followed her family into the Episcopal Church, a regular communicant, and on communion days when she grew too feeble to attend church, the Bishop would administer communion at her residence.
The body was taken to Newport to rest with others of her "family" in a private vault.
Naturally with helping rear the children of the family and becoming in fact a "mammy" to the little ones, Patsy became more or less of an autocrat whose word was law. She was considered a perfect type of the "black mammies" who reigned in Southern families, and when an artist of Cincinnati, Miss Dixie Selden, a few years ago sought a model to perpetuate the species on canvas, she came to Cynthiana and spent some time painting a portrait of "Aunt Patsy," which hangs in the art gallery of the Art Museum of Cincinnati.
This and some paintings of Frank Duceneck were left by Miss Selden to the Cincinnati Art Museum, after her death. "Aunt Patsy" is now hung in a small exhibition by former Cincinnati artists.