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Pioneers |
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Sarah Ballenden Métis Pioneer |
Born Rupert's Land, Canada.
She was one of 8 children of a North West Company Trader and
an aboriginal mother. December 23 1853 she married John Ballenden and the
couple would have four children. She died in Edinburgh, Scotland supposedly
of a broken heart. She had been the victim of strong racism that occurred in
the early Red River Settlement. She had been accused of having an affair
with a white man and even though her name was legally cleared the stigma
remained and she was snubbed and an outcast in Red River society. Source
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. lll pg. 573-74. |
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Mary Bradley |
née Coy. Born Grimross (Gagetown) New Brunswick September 1,
1771. Died March 12, 1859. She and her first husband, David Morris took up
farming in the Saint John New Brunswick area in 1801. Widowed in 1817 she
remarried in 1819 to Levitt Bradley. Unable to speak out at church meetings
simply because she was a woman gave her a cause. She spoke out whenever she
could and sought out a church that accepted women as speakers. In 1803 she
joined the Wesleyan Methodists. In 1849, although a relatively uneducated
person, she published A Narrative of the life and Christian experience of
Mrs. Mary Bradley of Saint John. Her life was dedicated to the expansion of
the Christian word. In her will she left a large portion of her substantial
estate for continuance of the teaching of the Christian gospel. |
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Esther Brandeau. |
Born approximately 1718. She was the first
person of the Jewish faith to set foot in New France. Disguised as a boy and
using the name of Jacques La Farque she sailed to Quebec in 1738. Once her
disguise was discovered she told a tale of having been the only family
member to have survived a shipwreck and having survived as a cabin boy and
baker’s boy in a Christian community. She was unwilling to accept the
Catholic teachings of the Nuns of Quebec and after being deported back to
France she disappears from written history. |
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Molly Brant |
(also known as Mary) (Native name
Konwatsi'tsiaienni = someone lends her a flower) Born circa 1736 Died April
16, 1796. She was one of the powerful Six Nations Indian matrons who were
chose the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy. She was also the life partner
of William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Northern Indians. She was
the chatelaine of Johnson Hall in New York state, where she entertained and
took over total management when Johnson was absent. She encouraged the
Iroquois to support the British during the American Revolution. Her lands in
New York were ravaged by the Americans for her stand with the British and
she was forced to flee to Canada. The Governor of the area had a house build
for her and she received a pension of 100 pounds a year, the largest pension
ever paid to a native person during this era. |
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Elizabeth Couc |
Died 1667. Captured by an Iroquois Indian war party about
1695 she was raised by the tribe and as an young woman married one of the
tribes young men. She moved from the Detroit area to New York where she was
known as Mme Montour and was a valuable interpreter. She married a Chief of
an east coast tribe and followed him to Pennsylvania. Full information may
be found in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. |
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Catherine Jérémie de Lamontagne. |
Baptized September 22, 1664.
Died July1, 1744. In her era, this mother of some 11 children would become a well
known midwife and amateur botanist. She collected plants and sent them back to
France for study. Her shipments were made more valuable by the descriptive notes
she included with explanations of the properties and effects
of the medical herbs. |
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Francoise Marie Jacqueline de la Tour |
The first European woman to make a home in
Acadia. |
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Elizabeth Doane |
née Osborne. Born Massachusetts 1715. Died May 24, 1798. As a
young woman she married Captain William Myrich who was lost at sea. The
widow then married William Pain who dies within a year of the marriage. Her
third marriage was to Edmund Doane in 1749 and the amalgamated family was a
total of 7 children. The new family settled in Nova Scotia. Since there was
no doctor in the area her skills in roots and herbs as remedies were welcome
in the province. She was well known for her doctoring, nursing and midwife
skills well into her 80's. |
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Theresa Mary Gowanlock. |
(née Johnson) Born Tintern, Upper Canada
(Ontario) July 23, 1863. Died September 12 1899. She was married in
her home of Tintern, Lincoln County, Ontario on October 1, 1884. The
newlyweds headed for western Canada to begin life where she one of two
white women at their settlement. Her husband, John was massacred by the
Cree Indians at Frog Lake, North West Territories (now Alberta) during the
Northwest Rebellion on April 2, 1885. Theresa was taken captive into the
camp of Chief Big Bear, and held captive for two months before being rescued
by the Northwest Mounted Police. Theresa and the other white women captive
Theresa Delaney wrote of there experience. Theresa returned home to Ontario
but never overcame the terrors of the ordeal which broke her spirit. A good
biography may be found at: http://www.rootsweb.com/-nwa/theresa.html |
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Letitia Hargrave |
née McTavish Born Rupert's Land, Canada. .Died
September 18,1854. In 1840 she married and accompanied her husband James
Hargrave to his job as Chief Trader of the Hudson Bay Company at York
Factory. She was one of the earliest pioneer women of the fur trade in
Western Canada. She enjoyed corresponding with her family back in Scotland
and her letters have been saved over the generations providing written
accounts of her insight as to the daily life in the Canadian “wilderness”
of the Hudson Bay Company and the fur trade. She realized early that the
morals and norms of British society had to be “relaxed” for the lifestyle of
the HBC outposts. She wrote of adapting her wardrobe to include the warmer
native clothing. Can you imagine the beautiful fur s that might have been
her winter clothing? Sources: Dictionary of Canadian Biography vol.
lll pg. 589-90 &
www.furtraders.ca accessed March 10, 2008. |
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Mary Whitmore Hoople |
née Whitmore.
Born
New Jersey
1767. Died 1858. As a child of 11 her family farm was raided by Delaware
Indians. While many of her family were killed in the raid, Mary was taken
as one of the captives. She lived for seven years with a tribe in
Pennsylvania. before she allowed herself to be traded as a contract worker
to a French family in Detroit. The trade provided food for her starving
adoptive native band. She eventually moved to
Upper Canada
to live with her next of kin. She met and married Henry Hoople and the
couple settled in what is now the
Cornwall area of
Ontario where
they raised 12 children. During times of failed crops, Mary’s knowledge of
edible plants helped her starving community. Knowledge learned during her
life with the American Indians also allowed her to provide natural cures for
any sick family member or neighbours. In the war of 1812 she nursed a
wounded American. The new American government paid her the handsome reward
of $600.00 for her service. The family gravestones are preserved at a
pioneer memorial near Upper Canada Village historical park at Morrisburg,
Ontario, |
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Gudrid |
Born Iceland. Died 980. As a youth she and her family
followed Erik the Red to Greenland. She was a seasoned traveller by the time
she found herself at a settlement in North America (Vineland) and gave birth
to a son, Snorri in 1007. He was the first European child to be born in
North America. The young family remained in Vineland for some three years
before they abandoned the settlement and returned to Greenland. Her story
was put into writing by great grandson, Thorlak who became Bishop of
Skalholt. |
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Marie-Anne Lagemodiére. |
Born Maskinongé, Quebec August 2, 1780. Died
December 14, 1875. Marie-Anne traveled with her fur trading husband and in
1806 was one of the first white women to visit such outposts as Red River
and Fort Edmonton. Her daughter, Reine, was the first legitimate white child
to be born in the Canadian west in 1807. Marie-Anne was also the grandmother
of Louis Riel. |
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Sarah L'esperance. |
(née Allyn) Born May 3,1692. A
daughter of a Massachusetts Puritan family, Sarah was kidnapped from
Deerfield by the Indian allies of the French and taken to live in Quebec.
She was 12 years old. She trekked through the harsh wilderness of New
England and New France and grew strong in her survival of the ordeal. She
was baptized as a Catholic in 1705 in Bellevue, Quebec. At 18 she married
Guillaume LaLonde dit L'esperance and they had 10 children. |
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Elizabeth Lount |
née Soules. She married Samuel Lount in 1815 and had a family
of seven children. Her husband was a well respected blacksmith and surveyor.
He was reported to b a generous man. However, he had what was considered at
the time by the powers of the community to have questionable political
beliefs. He sided with the rebel William Lyn Mackenzie and participated in
the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Unfortunately for him and his family he
was caught attempting to flee to the United States the same as other rebels
had done. He was arrested and sent to trial where he was sentenced to hang
on April 12, 1838. Elizabeth Lount stepped up in defense of her husband. She
spoke out on his behalf and gathered 35,000 signatures on a petition to
grant clemency to her husband. Governor John Beverly Robinson would not
listen to her efforts. Several years later, the rebels who had escaped were
granted amnesty and many like William Lyon Mackenzie returned to the serve
the colony. In a letter addressed to Mackenzie in 1850, Elizabeth Lount
provided a written description of her husband which gives historians insight
to this historical figure. |
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Elizabeth McDougall |
(née Boyd) Born Grey County Canada West
(Ontario), 1853. Died March 31, 1941. As the wife of a Methodist missionary
husband she accompanied her husband to his postings. She took the trek
across the early plains to become the first white woman in the Alberta
foothills. For some 25 years she and her husband worked to share their faith
at the Stoney reserve. She managed to travel with her husband by all of the
traditional conveyance of the time including canoe, wagon and dog sled. She
would raise her six children in the foothills. In 1898 she retired to
Calgary where she became president of the Southern Alberta Pioneer Women and
Old Timer’s Association. She held the strong belief that it was the presence
of the frontier women who allowed the frontier families to survive. She
pointed out the large number of bachelors who found it necessary to leave
prairie life when they did not have the emotional and physical support in
their work from a loving, energetic and sympathetic woman. |
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Mary McKenzie |
née
Mckay (?) Born 1796. Died October 4, 1886. Her mother was probably descended
from a voyageur and her father was a Nor’Wester who abandoned his family to
return to Scotland. Mary became the wife of another Nor’Wester, Charles
McKenzie. Together they travelled and lived in the undeveloped Canadian
north west. She was an accomplished hunter and kept her family and at time
other non hunting families of her community in wild game, including bear
meat. She was also a competent business woman of her era, for her husband
left her in charge of his fur trading post while he took care of company
business in the south. Her story is told through the pages of her husbands
journals. She did not keep a journal of her own. She outlived her husband by
three decades living with her son and his family in St James, west of the
Red River along the Assiniboine. For more information check The Beaver,
February/March 2005. |
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Catherine McPherson |
Born Scotland circa 1789. Died 1876. In
1813 she courageously left her homeland as on one the settlers of Lord
Selkirk’s Red River project. The party landed in Fort Churchill where they
spent the long, cold winter. On June 21, 1814 the settlers finally reached
the Red River Settlement. Catherine married Alexander McPherson and they
began a pioneering adventure that would see their home burned in a raid,
their crops destroyed in raids and in naturally bad weather. The family
survived floods and droughts and plagues of grasshoppers as well as
epidemics of small pox. These early prairie pioneers were true heroines of
Canadian life. |
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Nancy McTavish Leblanc
Métis pioneer |
Aboriginal name Matooskie. Born Hudson Bay Lands, Canada
1790. Died July 24, 1851.
Her Father was a North West Company Trader and her mother an
aboriginal woman. She herself was abandoned by her first husband, McTavish,
a fur trader. It was the custom held by man fur traders to cohabit with
aboriginal women and when they decided to leave the fur trade and the area
they would abandon their fur trade territory wives and children and perhaps
legally marry a white women and start a “legal” family. The Hudson Bay
Company arranged a marriage for Nancy with another trader Pierre LeBlanc in
1831. Nancy was just one of many victims to the whim of the HBC. The
practice of abandoning aboriginal partners and their children and then the
HBC custom of partnering the women with other traders fostered racial
discrimination that lasted for many decades in the Canadian northwester
regions. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Toronto, University of
Toronto Press, (also online) vol. lll pg 560-561. |
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Mikak |
Born Labrador circa 1740. Died 1795, A
daughter of an Inuit Chief, Mikak lived with her husband and son in a small
British fishing station when the settlement was raided and her husband was
killed. The young widow learned to speak English from a British solder,
Francis Lucas. She and her son went to England with Lucas. Here she was
treated like the Inuit Princess that she was. She and her son had their
portrait painted by the famous artist John Russell. In London she met Jens
Haver, a Moravarian Missionary. She helped the missionary raise funds for a
mission and in the summer of 1768 she returned to Labrador with Francis
Lucas. When Jans Haven arrived in 1769 she helped establish the mission for
which she had helped to raise funds from the British. She remarried an Inuit
hunter, Tugavina, and settled with her family in her homeland. |
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Catherine Papineau |
née Quevillon. Born 1686. Died 1781. As a youth she was
carried off by the Iroquois and was ransomed only after several years in
captivity. During her full lifetime she would marry four times. In 1704 she
married Samuel Papineau, a soldier. They would have nine children together
and founded a Canadian family dynasty. |
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Marie Rollet. |
Born France, circ 1580. Died May 27, 1649. In
1617 she arrived in New France with her husband and young children. Her
husband would be known as Canada’s first farmer. He was also an apothecary
and Marie befriended the local natives to whom her husband administered. She
is Canada’s first farmer’s wife. Their farm was on Cape Diamond which is
located in the heart of the modern city of Quebec. She may also be
considered Canada’s first teacher as records show she enjoyed teaching the
local native population. After the death of her husband in 1627 she remained
in her new homeland. She would marry a second time to a settler by the name
of Hubot and they would raise an adopted native daughter |
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Marie-Henriette LeJeune Ross 'Granny Ross' |
Baptized August 13 1762 Rochefort, France. Her family would
emigrate and settle in Acadia only to be deported back to France twice as
the area transferred back and forth from the France to England. As a young
girl in France she married Joseph Comeau and in 1784 the young couple headed
back to Cape Breton where Comeau drowned leaving a young widow. Marie-
Henriette married Bernard Lejeun dit Briard and after being a widow again in
1792 she married James Ross. She not only raised her family of 11 children
but she became a known healer herbalist and midwife who traveled hundreds of
miles tending to the care of the people of Nova Scotia for over 60 years.
Her name and stories of her life deed have been passed down through the
family from generation to generation merging fact and fiction. She is said
to have killed two bears one with a musket and one with a fire shovel! She
is known to have spent hours in the forest studying plant life and learning
the medical properties of the flora and fauna making her a knowledgeable
scientist of her day. Sources : Canadian women in Science, Library
and Archives Canada, accessed March 2006; Dictionary of Canadian
Biography vol. lll p. 498-499 |
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Elizabeth Russell. |
Born December 26, 1754.
Died 1822. After the death of her father she moved to the Canada's
with her older half brother, Peter. Peter was an administrator in the
colony. She became an able entertainer on behalf of her brother and his
position in York (Toronto), socializing with the elite society of the day.
In her letters and diary she has left a detailed picture of one woman's life
in early Upper Canada. |
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Mrs. Sargeant, |
wife of the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company,
her companion, Mrs. Maurice, and a maidservant are the
first
English women to come to James Bay in 1683. |
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Mary Scovil. |
(née
Barber) Born September 25, 1803. As a young woman she was a teacher. She worked in Sutton Township
( Lower Canada) in 1834 for her room and board and a salary of $1.00 a week! She
married a farmer, Stephen Scovil. At 44 she was pregnant, a widow and already
a mother of three older children. She worked harder than ever with her farm. Against
the sentiment of her own era she worked herself into the position of a prosperous
farmer. A strong minded individual she left her estate to her family assuring
that her daughters inheritance could not become part of the estate of their husbands! |
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Susan Sibbald |
née Mein Born Fowey, Cornwall England
November 29, 1783. Died July 9, 1866. In 1807 she married Col. Sibbald.
After the death of her husband in 1835 she emigrated to Canada to
investigate her sons' activities and to find a suitable farm for the, She
took a day tour on Lake Simcoe and decided to settle on what is now called
Sibbald Point. Mrs. Sibbald and John Coomer donated land for a cemetery and
church near the entrance to her estate which she name Eldon Hall. She was a
close friend with the daughter of Governor General Simcoe. A great grandson
published her memoirs that included letters covering her years in Canada(
London, 1926) |
Frances Ramsay Simpson
Lady Simpson |
Born London, England. March 28,1812 Died March 21 1853. She
married her cousin, George Simpson February 24 1830. His
career a Governor with the Hudson Bay Company would bring her to Canada. She
and her companion, Catherine Turner, wife of another HBC employee, were the
first white women to travel to remote Hudson Bay Company areas. After a
visit to Rainey Lake ( in modern Ontario) the settlement was named Fort
Frances in her honour. Living in Red River she became homesick and lonely
and remained semi invalided after the birth and death of her first child.
Eventually the family settled permanently in Lachine Quebec in 1845 were
their five Canadian born children could be raised. The diaries she wrote
during the time she spend on her adventures in the Canadian west left a
vivid written record of the times. |
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Frances Anne Stewart. |
née Browne
Born Dublin, Ireland 1794. Died October 24, 1872. She married Thomas
Alexander Stewart on December 16, 1816. When Thomas lost his job with a
bankrupt company the young couple decided to emigrate to Canada with other
family members. They left Ireland on June 1, 1822 spending seven weeks
aboard ship for the crossing to Canada! A true pioneer to Upper Canada, she was a diarist and letter writer.
Her letters to home have left us with a rich insight into early
Canadian life of such of her friends as the Strickland family. Her
family published her writings after her death. Many of her personal
writings are stored in the Archives at Trent University , Peterborough,
Ontario. |
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Eunice Williams. |
Born Deerfield, Massachusetts U.S.A. September 17, 1694. Died November 26, 1785. She was also known by the names Marie, Maria, Margueritte,
Marguarett, Gannenstenhawt (meaning she who brings in the corn), Ouangote, Aongote
(meaning they took her and placed her as a member of the tribe). Eunice was captured
by Indians in her home in Deerfield, in the colony of Massachusetts in 1703 or 1704. She was taken with
100 other prisoners to Canada. Her father spent many years trying to trade or
exchange his daughter and bring her home. The tribe she lived with became very
fond of the child and she learned their ways. Eventually she married a brave.
She would keep in touch with her family and often visited her brothers with her
own husband and children. Her children took their mother's name as is the native
tradition. One of her grandsons became a chief of Sault-Saint-Louis. Her descendants
may be found living in this same area today. |
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