Catharine parr traill biography sample

STRICKLAND, CATHARINE PARR (Traill), settler, author, teacher, and naturalist; b. 9 Jan. 1802 in Rotherhithe (London), England, fifth daughter of Thomas Strickland and Elizabeth Homer; d. 29 Aug.

1899 at Lakefield, Ont.

Though Catharine Parr Strickland’s life embraced nearly the entire 19th century and though she spent nearly 70 years in Canada, the roots of her values, beliefs, and interests belong to the rural Suffolk of her girlhood.

Not long after her birth in Kent, her father, Thomas Strickland, retired as manager of the Greenland Docks on the Thames and removed his family to Norwich (in Norfolk), hoping to reduce his business involvements and to find a more congenial climate for his family and for the gout from which he suffered.

A man of wide intellectual interests, he also wished to undertake the education of his daughters (of whom there were six by 1803) and to purchase an appropriate home for his growing family. From 1804 to 1808, while he maintained