CHAPTER 11
Three local historians supplied me with a wealth of wonderful detail about the residents of the Rice Lake area during the last century. Gore’s Landing and the Rice Lake Plains (1986) by N. Martin, C. Milne and D. McGillis brought home to me the spirit and eccentricity of so many early settlers. Rupert Schieder’s introduction to the Carleton University Press edition of Canadian Crusoes, A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains (1986) and Michael Peterman’s introduction to the Carleton University Press edition of Catharine’s The Backwoods of Canada (1997) covered Catharine’s experience with publishers, and the receptions accorded her books.
The most useful source on the slow and tortured development of the Canadian publishing industry is George L. Parker’s The Beginnings of the Book Trade in Canada (1985). I also looked at Royal A. Gettman’s A Victorian Publisher, A Study of the Bentley Papers (1960) and H. Pearson Gunday’s Book Publishing and Publishers in Canada before 1900 (1965).
CHAPTER 12
This chapter would have been impossible without a thoughtful and exhaustive thesis by Klay Dyer, entitled “A Periodical for the People, Mrs. Moodie and The Victoria Magazine” (unpublished thesis presented at the University of Ottawa, 1992). It shaped all my reactions when I read the original Victoria Magazine, now reprinted by the University of British Columbia Press.
Since Roughing It in the Bush is by far the best-known book by Susanna, it has repeatedly been put under the academic microscope. Among the most helpful analyses are two by Michael Peterman: “Roughing It in the Bush as Autobiography,” in Reflections: Autobiography and Canadian Literature, edited by K.P. Stich (1988); and This Great Epoch of Our Lives: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush (1996). A collection of essays which cast a new light on many aspects of Canadian women’s writing, and which I found helpful and provocative, was Re(dis)covering our Foremothers, edited by Lorraine McMullen (1990). I learned a lot from Alec Lucas’s contribution, “The Function of the Sketches in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush,” and Bina Freiwald’s “‘The tongue of woman’: The Language of the Self in Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush.”
CHAPTERS 13 AND 14
Most of the information in these chapters is contained in the exchange of letters between the Strickland sisters on each side of the Atlantic, and in Pope-Hennessy’s biography of Agnes Strickland. Samuel Strickland’s pioneer memoir, Twenty-seven years in Canada West, was first published in 1853, and was reprinted in 1970 by Hurtig.
CHAPTER 15
Most of the Moodie material in this chapter comes from Susanna’s letters, and from “‘A Glorious Madness,’ Susanna Moodie and the Spiritualist Movement” by Carl Ballstadt, Michael Peterman and Elizabeth Hopkins (Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 17,No. 4, Winter 1982-83). The nineteenth-century fascination with spiritualism has often been ignored by serious historians, while attracting the attention of twentieth-century believers. One of the best and most dispassionate accounts of the Fox sisters’ activities appears in The Spiritualists, The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century by Ruth Brandon (1983). I also looked at Mediums and Spirit-Rappers and Roaring Radicals by Howard Kerr (1972), and Geoffrey Nelson’s Spiritualism and Society (1969). For information about Victoria Woodhull, I read Barbara Goldsmith’s Other Powers, The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (1998) and Mary Gabriel’s Notorious Victoria (1998). Ramsay Cook’s The Regenerators, Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (1985) gives the social context for the Moodies’ spiritualist activities.
CHAPTER 16
My principal sources for information about Orange Order activities in 1860 were Donald Creighton’s John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician, The Old Chieftain; Gerald M. Craig’s Upper Canada, The Formative Years; and Early Travellers in the Canada 1791-1867 (1955) edited by Gerald M. Craig. Audrey Y. Morris (The Gentle Pioneers) has produced the best account of John Moodie’s travails as sheriff.
CHAPTER 17
No aspect of the Strickland sisters’ achievements has been more neglected than Catharine’s interest in natural history. Two articles that explore Catharine’s activities are “‘Splendid Anachronism,’ The Record of Catharine Parr Traill’s Struggles as an Amateur Botanist in Nineteenth Century Canada” by Michael Peterman (Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers, edited by McMullen, 1990) and “Science in Canada’s Backwoods” by Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley (Natural Eloquence, Women Reinscribe Science, edited by Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Schteir, 1997). Another essay in the Gates and Schteir volume was also useful: Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Invisible Woman.” For background on science in nineteenth-century Canada, I read Suzanne Zeller’s Inventing Canada, Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (1987). Information on Catharine’s botanist friends comes from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. I was also helped by The Pioneer Woman by Elizabeth Thompson (1991) and “Catharine Parr Traill and the Picturesque Landscape,” a paper prepared for the Lakefield Literary Festival in 1998 by Elizabeth Hopkins.
CHAPTER 18
There are marvellous local histories and early photographs of the Stony Lake area. Among those I used were Enid Mallory’s Kawartha, Living on These Lakes (1991); Jean Murray Cole’s Origins: The History of Dummer Township (1993); James T. Angus’s A Respectable Ditch: A History of the Trent-Severn Waterway, 1833-1920 (1988); Katharine N. Hooke’s From Campsite to Cottage, Early Stoney Lake (Peterborough Historical Society, 1992); and Richard Tatley’s Steamboating on the Trent-Severn (1978). The quotations from James Ewing Ritchie come from his travel book To Canada with Emigrants (1885).
CHAPTERS 19 AND 20
For a sparkling social history of late-nineteenth-century Ottawa, there is nothing to compare with The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier by Sandra Gwyn (1984). The quotation from Maria Thorburn was kindly sent to me by her great-great-granddaughter, Jane Monaghan. All the other family information in these pages comes from the Traill Family Collection in the National Archives of Canada and the Patrick Hamilton Ewing Collection in the National Library of Canada.
I found additional useful material in Ottawa, An Illustrated History by John H. Taylor, and in “Making Science Beautiful: The Central Experimental Farm, 1886–1939” by Julie Harris and Jennifer Mueller (Ontario History, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 2, June 1997). Maime Fitzgibbon’s A Trip to Manitoba, or Roughing It on the Line, appeared in 1880 and has not been reprinted.
Picture Credits
page no.
12 Robert Malster
17 NAC C 67337
18 NAC NL 15658
21 NAC C 67341
42 NAC C 41067
71 NAC C 2394
79 NAC C 23073
80 NAC PA 201405
88 NL 15559
92 NL 15558
100 NAC C 11811
121 NAC C 1993
153 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
156 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
162 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
164 NAC C 31493
169 NAC C 9556
212 NL 22012
215 NAC C 67335
229 NAC PA 127486
231 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
233 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
242 Collection of The New York Historical Society
265 NAC C 5164
266 NAC C 606
267 NAC C 2183
275 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
282 NACC 67346
283 Katharine Hooke, Peterborough
284 NAC C 67327
296 NAC C 145223, C 145224
304 Katharine Hooke, Peterborough
308 NAC C 7043
309 NAC PA201403
320 NL 17457
324 NAC C 67343
328 NAC PA 13248
331 NAC PA 26304
336 NAC C 67334
338 NAC C 55562
344 NAC PA 117832
346 NAC PA 67353
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nbsp; 349 Hastings County Museum, Belleville
Index
Albert, Price of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 72, 176
Albion, 89, 90, 124, 210
Anglo-American Magazine (Toronto), 219, 289
Anne, 51, 52
Anti-Slavery League, 23
Arkwright, Richard, 5
Arthur, Sir George, 138, 142, 145
Ashburnham, 143, 174-75
Athenaeum (London), 124, 335
Atlantic crossing, 49-65; boredom, 54-55, 62; conditions in steerage, 52-53, 57; length of voyage, 52; voyage of the Anne, 55, 57-58; voyage of the Rowley, 61-64
Atwood, Clinton, xiv, 234, 260
Atwood, Margaret, xiv–xv
Auburn (Stewart residence), 81
Austen, Jane, 19, 20, 34
Backwoods of Canada, The (Catharine Parr Traill), 115-16, 124-25, 178, 183
Baldwin, Eliza, 165
Baldwin, Robert, 163-68, 172-73, 200
Baldwin, William, 164
Beecher, Henry Ward, 253
“Bees”, 104, 206
Belleville, 119, 229; Bridge Street house, 161, 274; entertainment, 232; Moodie house fire, 160; mourns John Moodie’s death, 279; politics, 166-68; social divisions, 152 53, 156-57; social standing of Moodies, 161; society, 148, 156, 161; Susanna’s daily routine, 161-62; town, 151-52, 231-32
Belleville Intelligencer, 170, 279
Benjamin, George, 168-73, 269, 279
Bentley, Richard, 39, 204-5, 217, 221, 224, 230, 235, 246, 247, 248, 250, 270, 271, 273, 276
Bentley’s Miscellany, 217
Bird, James, 27, 46, 51; and Emma Bird, 22, 35, 42
Bird, James (son), 51, 61
Blackwood’s Magazine, 210
Blessington, Lady, 23
Blewett, Octavian, 271
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 5
Bond Head, Sir Francis, 126, 129, 130
Botanical Society of Canada, 291
Boulton, George, 73, 143
Boulton, Henry, 122
Bourinot, John, 345
Bowell, Mackenzie, 279
Bridges, Rev. George Wilson, 183-84
British officers, half-pay, 30, 43, 72
British Whig (Kingston), 170, 172
Brockville, 68
Bronte, Charlotte, 9
Bungay, 8
Burney, Fanny, 20, 34
Burnham, John, 342
Butt, Susanna, 5
Caddy, Hannah, 106, 141
Caddy, James, 129
Caddy, John, 106
Canada Company, 39
Canadian Crusoes (Catharine Parr Traill), 190-3
Canadian Home Journal, 343
Canadian Literary Magazine, 124
Canadian Magazine, 124
Canadian Settler’s Guide (Catharine Parr Traill), 238-39
Canadian Wild Flowers (Agnes Moodie
Fitzgibbon and Catharine Parr
Traill), 297-99
Capron, E.W., 245
Carlyle, Thomas, 36
Cartier, George-Etienne, 265
Caswell, Edward, 340-41
Cattermole, William, 40-41
Cavendish, William George Spencer, sixth Duke of Devonshire, 213
Chamberlin, Brown, 299
Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 190
Chatterton, R.D., 73, 90
Cheesman, Thomas, 22
Chippewa, 78, 102-3
Cholera epidemic, 60-61
Clementi, Rev. Vincent, 290, 303, 307
Cobourg, 72-74, 229
Cobourg Star, 73, 74, 90, 202
Cohen, Moses, 169. See also Benjamin, George
Collins, Wilkie, 205
Colonial Advocate, 68, 121
Cooper, James Fenimore, 243
Cot and Cradle Stories (Catharine Parr Traill), 342
Creighton, Donald, 119, 165, 167
Crimean War, 237-38
Cruikshank, William, 35
Currier and Ives, 294
Dalhousie, Lady, 289
Darwin, Charles, 301
Davies, Robertson, xiii Davy, Benjamin Fairfield, 249
Dawson, John, 291
Dexter, George T., 245
Dickens, Charles, xi, 256
Disraeli, Benjamin, 171, 212
Dougall, Alan Ramsey, 262-63, 279
Dougall, Mrs. John, 310
Douro Township, 76-77, 118-19
Dunlop, Ellen, 174, 190, 194, 227, 245, 259, 320, 328
Durham, Lord, 164
Eagle, Georgiana, 248
Edgeworth, Maria, 34, 205
Edmonds, John, 245
Edward, Prince of Wales, 264-61
Elgin, Lord, 200
Emigration: conditions in steerage, 51-53, 57; diseases, 58; disillusionment with Canada, 69, 71-71; economic factors propelling, 42; emigrant gentlemen, 42, 209; promotion of Canada, 39-41
Examiner, 218
Fairfield, Sumner Lincoln, 124
Family Compact, 69, 120, 121
Faraday, Michael, 256
Fenton, Faith, 343
Findley, Timothy, xiii
Finsbury, 34-35
Fitzgibbon, Alice, 295
Fitzgibbon, Charles, 220, 275, 292, 293
Fitzgibbon, Cherrie, 295
Fitzgibbon, James, 220
Fitzgibbon, Maime, 295, 325, 340-41
Fleming, Sir Sandford, 330-31, 344
Fletcher, James, 329, 331, 332
Flora Lyndsay or Passages in an Eventful Life (Susanna Moodie), 224
Fothergill, Charles, 136
Fox, Kate, 241-43, 245-48, 256-57
Fox, Maggie, 241-43
Francis, C.S., 193
George iii, 5
George iv, 175
Globe (Toronto), 219, 332
Gore, Lady Bella, 151
Gore, Sir Francis, 151
Gore’s Landing, 184-85
Graham, Robert, 287-88
Grant, George, 345
Greeley, Horace, 243
Grosse Ile, 58-60, 63
Hague, Mary, 141, 150, 219-20
Hall, Arthur, 193
Hamilton Township, 349
Hannah (nursemaid), 51, 58, 85, 86
Hare, Robert, 245
Harral, Anna Laura, 23, 246
Harral, Francis, 43
Harral, Thomas, 22, 246, 251-52
Harris, Joseph, 84, 86-87
Hastings County, 166
Hayes, John, 177
Homer, Elizabeth. See also Strickland, Mrs. Thomas
Hooker, Sir William Jackson, 288, 291
Hope, Rev. Henry Payne, 238, 239
Horticulturist, 289
Howard, John, 54
Hudson’s Bay Company, 284, 338
Huron Signal, 202-3
Irish, 59, 153, 207, 218
Irving, Edward, 35
Jameson, Anna, 205
Katchewanooka, Lake, 76, 303-5, 350. See also Lakefield
Kawartha Lakes, 307
Kingston, 68, 119
Knight, Charles, 115, 125
Krieghoff, Cornelius, 294
Lady Mary and her Nurse (Catharine Parr Traill). See also Lost in the Backwoods
Lafontaine, Louis-Hippolyte, 165
Lakefield, 77, 271, 271-74, 302, 350. See also Katchewanooka, Lake
Lansdowne, Lady, 326-27, 328
Langton, John, 77, 123
Langton, Ann, 198
Lawson, George, 291
Leith, 50-51
Leprohon, Rosanna, 197
Leverton, Rebecca, 21, 22, 43
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (Susanna Moodie), 221-23
Lindsey, Charles, 218
Literary Garland, 137, 170-71, 173, 181, 197, 198, 199, 209, 220, 224
Literary Gazette, 210
Lorne, Marquis of, 332
Lost in the Backwoods (Catharine Parr Traill), 193
Lovell, John, 137, 159-60, 199, 220, 293-94
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 176
McCarrroll, James, 73
Macdonald, Sir John A
., 171, 265, 266, 269, 298, 323, 331
Mackenzie, William Lyon, 68, 121-23, 130, 131
Mark Hurdlestone (Susanna Moodie), 224
Marks, Grace, 222-23
Martineau, Harriet, 19
Matrimonial Speculations (Susanna Moodie), 172, 224
Melsetter (Hamilton Township), 84, 92-93
Melsetter (Orkneys), 30
Mesmer, Anton Franz, 253
Methodist Book and Publishing House, 341
Mitford, Mary Russell, 33, 34
Moncktons, The (Susanna Moodie), 224
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 19, 205
Moodie, Agnes (daughter) (Mrs. Charles Fitzgibbon; later Mrs. Brown Chamberlin), 88, 97, 128, 141, 150, 219-20, 235, 254-55, 278, 292-95, 299-301, 324
Moodie, Benjamin (brother), 30
Moodie, Catherine Mary Josephine (daughter) (Mrs. John Vickers), 46, 51, 97, 133, 149, 220, 225, 235, 256, 269, 275, 310, 313, 319, 339
Moodie, Donald (son), 125, 140, 220, 235, 276, 278, 310, 311
Moodie, George Arthur (son), 160
Moodie, John Alexander Dunbar (son), 103, 125, 141, 148, 220, 235, 274, 278, 311
Moodie, John Dunbar: appointed temporary paymaster, 138; charges of corruption, 261-64; commissioned captain in Queen’s Own Regiment, 135; death, 78; and departure from Leith, 50; devoted father, 105, 135; emigration, attraction of Canada, 39-41; failing health, 269-71, 276-78; falls in love with Susanna, 30-31; family background, 30; lack of political connections, 120-21; literary work, 39, 136; loving husband, 105, 135-36, 145-46; money woes, 30, 31, 39, 40, 92, 100, 123, 125-26, 137-38, 144-45, 220, 270; moves family to Belleville, 148-49; and politics, 122, 163-73; relations with Thomas Traill, 127; resignation as sheriff, 269; sells military commission, 125; as sheriff of Victoria District, 147, 151-73, 261-64; and spiritualism, 244-45, 247, 249-251, 253-55; temperament, 54, 83; and The Victoria Magazine, 198, 200-3; volunteers to put down rebellion, 130; frontier life: desperate to leave, 125-28; moves family to Lake Katchewanooka, 93-96; settles in Hamilton Township, 83-93; settling the land, 100; squanders Susanna’s family legacy, 123
Moodie, John Strickland (son), 133, 140, 160, 162-63, 253
Moodie, Robert Baldwin (son), 172, 220, 235, 276, 278, 308, 317, 319
Moodie, Susanna (née Strickland), 18, 21; and abolitionist movement, 23, 26; clothes, 233-34; condescending attitude, 59-60, 71, 89; expulsion from Congregationalist Church, 196; and Native people, 108, 109-10, 141; patriotism, 133; portrayed, xi-xiii; religion, 25-26; and spiritualism, 244-52, 255-56; temperament, 11, 14-15; view of North Americans, 98-99; childhood: birth, 7; bond between Catharine and, 18; defiant and impulsive behaviour, 14-15; courtship, marriage, and motherhood: difficult relations with own children, 219-20, 274-75, 310-11; falls in love, 31; loss of little Johnnie, 162-63; maternal role, 105; pregnancies, 39, 103-4, 137; relations with John, 105, 135-36, 219, 276-80; wedding, 38; emigration: Atlantic crossing, 50, 60; first impressions of Canada, 58-59; loneliness, 90; and plans to live in South Africa, 32; psychological scars, 50; reservation about Canada, 42; travelling party, 51; frontier life: at Lake Katchawanooka, 100-3; care packages from home, 126, 182, 186; daily work, 87-88, 105-6; family reunion, 1-2, 94-101; finding extra sources of income, 137; first impressions, 72-74, 83-96, 98-100; Hamilton Township home, 84-93; help of neighbours, 141-42; homesickness, 92, 101; loneliness, 136, 144, 146-47; managing farm and family alone, 137, 138-42; meals, 107-8; poverty, 89, 123-24, 126-27, 140; rosy expectations, 67-70; social life, 106-7; travel, 94-96; literary work and career: constraints in Canada, 88-90; contributions to Literary Garland, 159, 198-99, 224; criticisms of her work, 224-25; early works, 24-25; editorship of The Victoria Magazine, 199-203; hunger for fame, 27; income from writing, 205, 210, 224, 225, 240; and John Lovell, 159-60; Life in the Clearings, 221-23; recognition, 173; reviews of Roughing It, 217-19; ridicules editor of Belleville Intelligencer, 170-72; rising star, 33-36; rivalry with Agnes, 24-25, 27; Roughing It in the Bush, 204-10; search for publishing outlets, 89-90; sense of professionalism, 197; uncertainties of bluestocking future, 37; writing as a form of release, 146; writing as a means of support, 124; widowhood: affection of Catharine, 316-18, 320; death, 321; last days, 319-321; moodiness, 315-16; under one roof with Catharine, 312-15
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