Nancy C. Sawin

Nancy Churchill Sawin (June 21, 1917 – April 18, 2008) was an American artist, local historian, educator, and field hockey player in Delaware.

Early life and education Nancy Churchill Sawin was born on June 21, 1917, in Wilmington, Delaware. She was the daughter of Sanford Wales Sawin, a civil engineer, and Ellen Quigley Sawin, one of the first women in Delaware to earn a master's degree and the daughter of suffragist leader Ada Gould Quigley. Sanford and Ellen Sawin founded the Sanford School, a prep school in Hockessin, Delaware, in 1930.

Sawin's peripatetic schooling began in public school in Marshallton, Delaware, then she received a scholarship to attend the Tower Hill School in Wilmington for third through seventh grades. After a year at Misses Hebb's School in Wilmington, she attended high school at the Principia School, a Christian Scientist institution in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1938, she began working for the Sanford School, teaching and coaching a number of sports, including field hockey, tennis, softball, basketball, riding, and lacrosse, and serving as head of the school from 1961 to 1974. and the Hall of Fame of Delaware Women in 1981. Sawin was one of the first group of inductees into the USA Field Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988.

Art and history As a child, Sawin took lessons from artist Frank Schoonover. Throughout her life she traveled regularly with a sketchpad. Shortly before retirement, she travelled to Europe and had her first art show "on a clothesline outside a small condo on the Mediterranean." In retirement, she began publishing a series of books about local history in Delaware, including her own sketches of historic homes, buildings, and other structures, including mailboxes and outhouses.

Death Nancy C. Sawin died on 18 April 2008 at the age of 90.