Ten Memorable Mothers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rebecca

Rebecca was chosen by God to be the wife of Isaac, the son of Abraham, to whom she bore two sons; Esau and Jacob. According to Genesis 25:23, Jacob and Esau were fraternal twins; during Rebecca's pregnancy, the two struggled within her womb. God told Rebecca "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; And the one people shall be stronger than the other people; And the elder shall serve the younger".

Although Esau was the elder, he lost his birthright to Jacob, who bought it from him in return for a pottage of red lentils. Later, with Rebecca's contrivance, Jacob impersonated his brother and obtained the paternal blessing of the firstborn, which was Esau's by right. Esau resolved to kill Jacob who, on Rebecca's advice, fled his home to seek employment from her brother Laban. During his flight he had the famous vision known as Jacob's Ladder, during which God told him "The land wherein thou sleepest I will give to thee and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and thy seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed." Jacob later wrestled with an angel, who subsequently blessed him and changed his name to Israel; from each of his twelve sons sprang the "twelve tribes of Israel".

Answer: Cornelia

Baldwin's touching story (based on an incident related by Valerius Maximus) gives little indication of the turbulent adult lives, and violent deaths, of Cornelia's two "jewels". Both Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus advocated sweeping social and political reforms aimed at empowering Rome's poorer classes of farmers and equestrians, which earned them the enmity of the powerful Roman nobility. Tiberius was assassinated during a riot in 133 B.C.; ten years later, his brother Gaius faced armed opposition from the nobles when he attempted to implement his brother's policies and suffered a fate similar to his brother's (although some sources maintain that he commited suicide with his slave's help).

Cornelia survived both her sons and is said to have borne their tragic deaths with stoic dignity, which at the time was considered the hallmark of true Roman nobility. She was commemorated after her death by a statue depicting her as the ideal of Roman motherhood; a famous painting of the incident with her sons by the 18th century French artist Jean Francois Pierre Peyron hangs in London's National Gallery.

Answer: Our Lady of Guadalupe

This image is believed by many Catholics to have been miraculously imprinted upon the cactus-fiber tilma (cloak) of Juan Diego, a Chicemeca Indian convert to Christianity who claimed to have received visions of the Virgin Mary on a hillside at Tepeyac in December of 1531.

The painting depicts Mary as an apparently pregnant Mexican girl with distinctly mestizo features. Around her waist, she wears a black sash, traditionally worn by Aztec women during pregnancy; she stands on a crescent moon held aloft by an angel. According to legend, the Virgin instructed Juan Diego to gather roses on the hill at Tepeyac to bring to the local bishop; when Juan opened his tilma before the bishop, the roses fell to the floor and the miraculous image of Mary was revealed.

Although the Church has never officially declared the Guadalupe image to be miraculous, it has approved devotion to the image and Juan Diego has recently been canonized.

Answer: Jane Seymour

Henry regarded Jane, whom he married in May of 1536, only twelve days after the execution of Anne Boleyn, as his first "true" wife. Interestingly, however, she was also the first of his wives not to have a coronation, which suggests that Henry was waiting for her to "prove" her worth by bearing him a son. Seventeen months later, Jane did indeed provide Henry with a son, Edward, born on October 12, 1537.

Unfortunately, Jane's already fragile constitution was further weakened after childbirth and she died just two weeks after her son's birth at the age of twenty-eight. Edward, who became king just ten years later, would not even live that long; he died at the age of fifteen in 1553.

Answer: No

Prior to her marriage to George, Martha had been maried to Daniel Parke Custis. She bore Daniel four children before his death in 1757; only two of these survived infancy: a boy, John Parke (nicknamed "Jacky") and a girl, Martha (nicknamed "Patsy"). Martha and George had no children together; George raised Martha's two children by Custis as his own. Sadly, both of Martha's children died by the time Washington became president; Patsy, an epileptic, died at the age of seventeen. Jacky survived into adulthood, married, and fathered six children, the youngest was a boy named George Washington Parke Custis. Jacky enlisted in the army to serve as Washington's aide, a position he held for only a few days before succumbing to "camp fever" at the age of twenty-seven. Only two of Jacky's children survived to adulthood; George (nicknamed "Wash") and Nelly, who bore Martha a great-grandaughter and was at her grandmother's side when she died in 1802.

Answer: Brahms' Lullaby

Brahms had once been in love with Bertha and had remained friends with her even after their romance ended. She married Arthur Faber and, in 1868, had a son, Hans, for whom Brahms wrote the famous "Wiegenlied" ("Cradle Song"). Actually, Bertha may have had a hand herself in creating this well-loved tune; she used to sing Brahms a Viennese style waltz-song during their courtship, which was in his mind when he composed the "Wiegenlied". Brahms presented the Fabers with the manuscript of the song, along with a note reading: "Frau Bertha will realize that I wrote the 'Wiegenlied' for her little one.

She will find it quite in order ... so that while she is singing Hans to sleep, a love song is being sung to her."

Answer: Mother Jones

Jones, whose motto was "I am not a social reformer; I am a hellraiser!", was one of the most loved and feared women of her time. By 1871, she had lost not only her entire family to a yellow fever epidemic, but also her dressmaking business and all of her possessions in the Great Chicago Fire. Bloodied but unbowed, she threw herself into the work of laborer's rights, leading strikes by coal and copper miners (and their wives), textile workers, and child laborers. President Theodore Roosevelt once fled his Long Island home in 1903 when informed that she was leading a worker's march from Pennsylvania to his front door.

In 1930, at the age of one-hundred, Jones was honored at her Maryland home and was filmed delivering a feisty speech denouncing capitalism and industrialism.

She died six months later, on November 30.

Answer: The Statue of Liberty

"Liberty Enlightening the World" was the product of twenty-one years of work by the Alsatian-born sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi. Finding the ideals of American liberty sadly lacking in the France of his time, Bartholdi wrote "I will try to glorify the Republic and Liberty over there, in the hope that someday I will find it again here." For the statue's body, Bartholdi used his then girlfriend (later wife) Jean-Emilie as a model; there are different theories as to who the model for the face was (a recent theory holds that it was an African slave), but most belive that it was the artist's mother Charlotte Bartholdi.

Born in Ribeauville in 1801, Charlotte raised Fréderic by herself, his father having died when he was two years old. Frederic no doubt felt that Charlotte, a domineering and possessive woman, had stern features that conveyed the iron determination the giant statue needed to project. Charlotte died in 1891 at the age of ninety; Frederic followed her just thirteen years later, in 1904.

Answer: Whistler

As a young woman, Anna had fallen in love with the dashing Lt. George Washington Whistler and was devastated when he fell in love with, and married, her best friend, the vivacious Mary Swift. The three remained friends, however, and before Mary's untimely death she urged her husband to marry Anna after she was gone. Anna became the stepmother of Whistler's children by Mary and bore him five more children before his death in 1849.

Her favorite was young James (Jemmy), with whom she lived at his studio in England, where she oversaw the servants and ran the household. Whistler always greatly admired his mother and eventually exchanged his original middle name, Abbott, for Anna's maiden name McNeill. Anna died in 1881 at the age of seventy-seven.

The famous portrait known as "Arrangement in Gray and Black No.1; Portrait of the Artist's Mother" hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; in 1934, "Whistler's Mother" adorned a U.S. postage stamp created in honor of Mother's Day.

Answer: Josephine Baker

Born in St. Louis, Baker joined a dance troup at sixteen and eventually appeared on Broadway. She was invited to appear in a revue in Paris in 1925, which led to a lifelong mutual love affair with the French public. Baker was equally popular (though more controversial) in America, where she took part in the civil rights movement (she had also participated in the French Resistance during WWII). Baker and her husband Jo Bouillon adopted twelve children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, whom she called her "rainbow tribe"; they lived in an estate named Les Milandes in the south of France.

Unfortunately, by 1968, Baker's marriage to Bouillon had collapsed and she had fallen so heavily into debt that she and her "tribe" were evicted from Les Milandes, which was put up for sale. Fortunately, Baker's great admirer, Princess Grace of Monaco, settled them in a villa on the French coast near Monte Carlo. Baker, who died in 1975, was by all accounts a highly unconventional parent, but is remembered with affection by members of her "tribe".