Margaret Strawbridge Clews, 91, artist and businesswoman

Margaret Strawbridge Clews, 91, an artist, former co-owner of a boat and automobile dealership in Malvern, and advocate for peace and woman's rights, died of pancreatic cancer Friday, Aug. 6, at Kendal at Hanover, a retirement community in New Hampshire.

Mrs. Clews boasted about being born in 1919, the year women got the right to vote. For years, she wore a silver pendant with the initials ERA, for the Equal Rights Amendment that she championed, said her son Christopher.

Six days before she died, he said, she enthusiastically greeted friends and family at an exhibit of her work, titled "Mostly Women," at the Howe Library in Hanover, N.H.

The work, done in pastels - her preferred medium - with a few oils, included a portrait of her mother and depictions of Afghan and Iraqi women who were struggling with war and loss.

Mrs. Clews was active with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and served on fund-raising committees over the years. In 1984, she participated in the Peace Fair for Nuclear Disarmament in Ardmore. She was a longtime member of the Downingtown Friends Meeting. She told an Inquirer reporter she was determined that her children and grandchildren not fight another war.

"War isn't like it used to be," she said. "There's no patriotism anymore."

Mrs. Clews grew up in Merion. Her great-grandfather Justus C. Strawbridge cofounded Strawbridge & Clothier department store in 1868. In 1984, Mrs. Clews and a cousin were the first women to be appointed to the store's board of directors. The Strawbridge & Clothier chain was sold in 1996.

Mrs. Clews graduated from the Shipley School and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She exhibited her first work at age 16 and continued to create art and teach pastel painting throughout her life, her son said.

In 1940, she married Mancha Madison Clews, an engineer. They met at the Assembly Ball in Philadelphia and discovered they were both bored with the local social scene, their son said. On their honeymoon, they sailed from New Jersey to Maine on a 24-foot lobster boat.

In the late 1950s, Mrs. Clews and her husband began selling boat kits and eventually established a boat and automobile dealership near their home in Malvern. She was a born saleswoman, their son said. While her husband provided customers with facts, she convinced them of how much fun it would be to own a Johnson outboard or a Saab automobile, their son said. The couple retired in the mid 1990s.

Mrs. Clews and her husband summered in Newport, R.I., and for years had a winter home in Jensen Beach, Fla. He died in 2006.

In addition to her son, she is survived by another son, Henry; a daughter, Sylvan; seven grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

No service is planned. Donations may be made to the Central Asia Institute, Box 7209, Bozeman, Mont. 59771. The organization promotes education, especially for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.