Recollections: June 2019

A day in the life - part 1

Kate Fraser's Journal

Kate and Douglas Fraser, Murray's paternal grandparents

In the early spring of 1906, Douglas (age 58) and Kate Fraser (57) and the youngest four of their eight their children -- Pete (30), Doug (24), Gordon (18), and Annie Belle (14) -- arrived in Pilot Mound.

Pilot Mound Sentinel, March 29, 1906

In the west, Kate (1849-1940) began keeping a journal, and she wrote in it regularly until she was 80 years old. The brief entries record the life she led as the family matriarch, noting routine farming operations, weather, homesteading, births and deaths, social events, and more.

Kate was widowed in 1915, when her husband Douglas ("Pa") died at age 67. She outlived him by 25 years, passing away in 1940. She spent the last 15 of her 92 years in Wroxeter, Ontario, but was buried in the Fraser plot in Greenwood Cemetery, Pilot Mound.