Eliza

In my possession there is a piece of linen that has been coveted for many years.

It arrived here in 1862, the year the young Quaker wife from Willerby, Yorkshire, England emigrated to a land not yet a country. Perhaps with a satchel or trunk full of belongings Eliza arrived with her husband Joseph to begin life anew. (In that trunk was also a sampler that I have written about in a previous post that is still an ongoing research).

Having married only three years earlier Eliza had bore a child that had succumbed to an early death. The pain may have been unbearable and so her husband believed that a fresh start in a new land may help to relieve the melancholy.

It is here she came, bearing a son Joseph and a daughter Charlotte. When her husband died in 1889 Charlotte returned to her Mother's homeland to live with her Aunt Rebecca.(Eliza's sister)

The piece of linen and the sampler were passed down through her son to his daughter Dorothy that remained in Canada for all of her 93 years. Research is a mysterious phenomena, through census, birth, marriage and death records one is able to fit the pieces of a puzzle so the picture becomes a whole. The Quakers were infamous for recording meeting minutes, blessed events and their own history. It is because of all this documented knowledge that the path of the linen and sampler has been laid before me. Their history tugs at my heartstrings and renders me content.

~ Eliza 1859~