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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Who was Kate Keller, 1860-1882, Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada?

 

A notation is scribbled on the back of this carte de visite image: "Kate Keller, Died 1882, Age 22." I purchased this photograph last week from an antique dealer here on Vancouver Island thinking that, along with this information and the photographer's imprint, I could learn a little bit about the life of this young woman. The photographer was W. McFadden, who worked out of studio in Uxbridge, Ontario.

I located a death certificate for Kate Emma Keller first.1 According the death certificate, Kate died on the 3rd of December 1882 in Uxbridge, Ontario of a "liver complaint" that lasted roughly twelve weeks.  She was born in 1860 in Whitby, Ontario County [now Durham Co.], Ontario. This information matches the data from the inscription on the reverse of the photograph. Kate Keller's parents were Francis and Mary Keller. I located this image of Francis Keller, along with a short biography of his life provided by the Whitby Public Library on the "Our Ontario" website. 2 Francis was a postmaster in Whitby for a couple of years, then moved to Uxbridge and became involved in the publishing business.

Kate appears to have had two siblings: Mary J. (born 1864) and William H. (born 1865). William was following in his father's footsteps as he was working as a printer at the time of the 1881 census3. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to learn much about Kate in the time I allotted to this search. Perhaps there are documents out there, such as an obituary, that might help round out her history beyond the basic dates and places.



1 "Ontario Deaths, 1869-1937 and Overseas Deaths, 1939-1947," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JDB1-VXS : accessed 17 February 2016), Kate Emma Keller, 03 Dec 1882; citing Uxbridge, Ontario, Ontario, yr 1882 cn 13117, Archives of Ontario, Toronto; FHL microfilm 1,853,237.
2 http://images.ourontario.ca/whitby/51073/data
3 “1881 Census of Canada,” digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca: accessed 3 Feb 2016), entry for household of Francis Keller, Uxbridge, Ontario North, Ontario, District 133, p. 63 (penned); citing LAC microfilm C-13245.

2 comments:

  1. 22 years is very little time to make a mark in the world. Birth, death, and maybe 2 census records - and that might be it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep, that's very possible. Sometimes you can get lucky with newspaper accounts, but 22 is very young.

    ReplyDelete