 1810 - 1904 (94 years)
-
| Name |
HALLIDAY Mary |
| Born |
1810 |
Boreland, Hutton Parish, Dumfriesshire, Scotland  |
| Gender |
Female |
| Died |
16 Aug 1904 |
Spencerville, Ontario |
| Person ID |
I212 |
Baggerman Genealogy |
| Last Modified |
9 Jul 2016 |
| Father |
HALLIDAY John, b. 25 Apr 1778, Berryscaur, Hutton And Corrie, Dumfries, Scotland , d. 21 Mar 1870, Bathurst, Lanark, Ontario, Canada (Age 91 years) |
| Mother |
JOHNSTONE Margaret, b. 14 Jan 1782, Berryscaur, Hutton Parish, Scotland , d. 29 Jul 1860, Bathurst, Lanark, Ontario, Canada (Age 78 years) |
| Family ID |
F34 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
-
| Notes |
- In 1815 Mary came to Canada with her parents. At the age of eighty she gave an account to the local newspaper (Almonte, Ont.) of her emigration to Canada and of the settlement of the family on the Scotch Line near Perth. In this she said that when her father and his family reached what was to be his future home he and his neighbours put up a "shanty", while her mother "sat down at the foot of a big basswood tree" along with her eight children, one of whom was but a few weeks old. In this pioneer settle¬ment Mary grew up. Her formal education was received in her father's school on the Line, her religious training in a Calvinist household and First Presbyterian Church in Perth. This strict discipline had a marked and continuing effect upon her life.
In 1827 at the age of seventeen Mary married Archibald Fraser and removed to his farm a mile or two up the Line. There four sons and four daughters were born to them. In 1845 her husband was killed in an accident with the first power-driven threshing machine to be used on the Line. Mary was left to raise a family whose ages ranged from 17 years to 3 months. "With that indomitable perseverance characteristic of Scotch women" - so wrote the local newspaper - "she kept her family together. On the evening of the funeral of her late husband, Mrs. Fraser handed her eldest son the Bible and asked him to take his father's place". After the family had established themselves in various places, Mary left the farm in her son James' care, building herself another smaller house on one corner of the homestead. There her father lived with her for the last eight years of his life.
About 1870 Mary removed to Perth where she resided for some years, then to Almonte, Ontario, where she lived with her daughter Jessie and finally to Spencerville, Ontario, where her death took place in 1904.
Mary Holliday Fraser (and she retained the spelling used by her father) was a woman of strong character. This was made evident when at the age of 35 she undertook the problems of a frontier farm and a family of eight children unaided, and with considerable success. Grandchildren who had known her retained memories of incidents which do much to reveal her basic attitude to life. They were usually rooted in her religious faith, the stern Calvinism of the "Cameronian" discipline. A few such may be told.
Her choice of Almonte as a place of residence was influenced largely by the fact that in that village there was an active congregation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. As she became hard of hearing in her later years that church provided her with a seat specially placed immediately below the pulpit, that she might miss no part of the sermon. The "Sabbath" was observed in strict fashion. No beds were made that day, no meals cooked. When settlers on the Scotch Line might be in Perth it was customary for them to collect any mail for neighbours. Frequently such mail would be distributed on a Sunday following the Saturday visit to town. If a letter for Mary Fraser was so distributed it was put up on the clock-shelf, unopened until Monday morning. Her church disapproved of the use of hymns in public worship. When Mary lived in Spencerville, where the Presbyterian Church used hymns, she went with the family but refused to join in the service of praise and even to carry a hymn book. She approved of the criticism made by her Almonte minister of a hymn by Joseph Addison which concludes,
"For, 0!, eternity's too short
To utter all Thy praise";
He showed how false the doctrine in a hymn can be by slamming a hymn book shut and declaring "Eternity is long enough for anything".
Her interpretation of religious truth influenced her attitude towards more "secular" elements in life, especially the newer procedures of the younger generations. When her grandchildren who lived with her in Almonte showed an interest in the new feminine fashion of the bustle, her comment was, "If you had been born with a hump you wouldna like it". A story is told of how Mary once visited in Chesley, where her sisters Jane and Janet were living. Her younger relatives there wished to have a photograph of her. She is said to have refused to have it taken on the grounds that it was "making an image", and the picture had to be taken by stealth. This story bears the mark of confusion of persons, in which Mary may have been confused with her sister Jane.
No photograph of the latter is known to exist, while one of Mary, obviously a posed picture, does. If the Chesley story was correct, Mary must have changed her theological view at a later date.
|
|
|
