Crawford, Isabella Valancy

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Crawford, Isabella Valancy

1850-1886

Isabella Valancy Crawford was born in Dublin in 1850 (according to conjecture, on Dec. 25), the sixth child of Dr. Stephen Dennis Crawford and Sidney Scott Crawford. The family emigrated to Canada and settled in Paisley, Ontario, in 1857, where her father became the settlement's family doctor. Crawford uprooted his family again in 1861 and moved to Lakefield in the Kawarthas, northeast of Toronto, and finally to Peterborough in 1869. Her father died in 1875, leaving Isabella to be the principal earner of her family's income. She had been encouraged in this by Catherine Parr Traill during the Lakefield years and started publishing in Toronto newspapers, The Evening Telegram and The Globe, and in American journals. She and her mother moved to Toronto and lived in boarding houses on Shuter Street, St. Andrew's Ward, and Adelaide West until in the winter of 1885 they moved into a third-floor flat at 57 John St. at the corner of King. The year before Isabella had James Bain and Son publish her only book, Old Spookses' Pass, which was reviewed well in both British and Canadian papers but got her little fame or money. She died suddenly at her flat on Feb. 12, 1886.

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