Robert Frost was born and raised in San Francisco, U.S.A. He married in 1895 and moved to New England. While he lived in New England he attended Harvard for two years. Unfortunately two of his children died and after their deaths he moved his family to England. In England he had published a volume of verse called "A Boy's Will" and continued to write poetry. Robert was friends with Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas. He returned to the U.S.A. and moved to New Hampshire where he continued to write. Robert won the Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems (1923), A Further Range (1936) and A Witness Tree (1942). He continued to write until the time of his death in 1963. (Taken from: The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press, 1983.)
Richard Birdsall was born in 1799 at Thornton-le-dale, England, and educated at Londesborough, Yorkshire. His family intended a naval career for him upon graduation. Instead, when he graduated in 1817, he emigrated to Canada. Due to his education, he qualified for a position as a fully-accredited land surveyor in Canada West. In May of 1820, he was commissioned to survey the Newcastle District, where he remained for the rest of his life and became a very prominent man. The Newcastle District was comprised of the counties of Northumberland and Durham and included which would later become the counties of Peterborough, Victoria, and Haliburton. In 1821, he married Elizabeth Burnham, daughter of Zaccheus Burnham, who was a prominent early settler in the District. From his father-in-law, Birdsall bought 920 acres of land at the northeast end of Rice Lake (Lot 1, Concession 1, Asphodel Township) and made his home there. His wife died in a tragic fall in 1827 leaving Birdsall with four young daughters. He remarried in 1836 to Charlotte Jane Everett of Belleville and had four more children with his second wife; two of these were Richard Everett Birdsall (1837-1877) and Francis (Frank) Birdsall (1838-1914). Between the years of 1827 and 1836, Birdsall carried out most of his surveying work, including the survey for the town of Peterborough. In 1831, he was commissioned Captain of the fourth Regiment of Northumberland Militia and he led the Asphodel contingent when the militia was called out in the Rebellion of 1837. Later he was an officer in the Peterborough Regiment. Birdsall was also a Commissioner of the Court of Requests and a Justice of the Peace. When the Colborne District was created in 1841, he was the councillor for Asphodel and in 1850, when districts were replaced by counties, he represented Asphodel at the Peterborough County Council as its first Reeve. He continued in this position until his death on January 20, 1852.
George Savigny emigrated to Upper Canada from Scotland. He was a farmer and resided on Lot 15, Concession 17, Otonabee, Peterborough County, Upper Canada in the mid-1850's.
George Stevens is listed in the Peterborough Directory as being located at 364 Mark Street, Peterborough, Ontario in 1936 and in 1940, and operating as a junk dealer in 1936, and a junk dealer and fertilizer dealer in 1940.
George W. Hatton, Barrister, Peterborough was Agricultural representative in the Peterborough area for the Ontario Department of Agriculture, and by his own writ, was hoping that Borden would appoint him to the Senate. He was Crown Attorney from October 1914 to his death in 1929.
Gerald Cantello is a graduate of the M.A. program at Trent University and a former employee (1951-1989) of C.G.E., Peterborough, Ontario. He was recruited from Britain as a machine and tool design draftsman and in 1958 had advanced to the Civilian Atomic Power Department of C.G.E.
Geta Helme, an English teenage girl from Lancashire, found herself in Germany studying music and the German language when England declared war on Germany in 1914. She was one of three children of Lillian (Young) and Robert Helme, a prosperous linoleum manufacturer in Lancashire. Helme was also the granddaughter of Egerton R. Young of Canada.
Francis Frape was born December 10, 1898 in Kingston, Ontario. He was the son of May Ryan and Arthur Ernest Frape and had at least one brother, two years younger than her, also named Arther Ernest. Both Francis and his brother enlisted into the Canadian military during World War I. Francis served as a sergeant in both France and north Russia for the 16th Brigade when he was 20 years of age. His enlistment and involvement in WWI began a life long carrier within the Canadian military where he engaged in continuous military training. He was decorated with Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1919. In 1922 he married Lillian Mabel Robson (born December 2, 1903.) They had at least one child named Francis (Frank) Frape. In 1928 he was promoted to be Warrant Officer Class II and Company Sergeant Major Instructor in Kingston. In 1938 Francis was appointed to be Camp Sergeant-Major for the Cannaught Camp in Ontario and in the following year was awarded The Canadian Medal for Long Service and Good Conduct. By the end of his military carrier he reach the rank of Captain. In 1982 Lillian and Frank celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
Frank C. Beazer was born in Chippenham, England. He left Chippenham in 1912 and worked in Ifracombe, Eastbourne, London and Bath in England. He was a ship's steward on two trips to East Africa before he became a missionary to the Church of England Camp Mission. The first place he went to as a missionary was the diocese of Caribou in British Columbia. He enlisted in Chapleau, Ontario, in the 227 B Company, on July 26, 1916 and travelled to France with the 54th Battalion where he became assistant to the regimental chaplain. In 1919 he attended Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto and received his ordination on St. Georges Day in 1922 in the Cathedral in Cochrane, Ontario. He resided at Kapuskasing for twelve years. In Kapuskasing he helped to build his church and house. He was also an assistant scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of Canada in Kapuskasing. In 1927 he married Gertrude Hudson of Toronto. He was the pastor for Oxford Mills, Carrying Place and St. Paul's Anglican Church in Roslin, Ontario; Christ Anglican Church in Thomasburg, Ontario and St. Luke's Anglican Church in Peterborough, Ontario. In 1958 Reverend Beazer and his wife visited his two brothers in Chippenham, England. While they were there they were invited to have cocktails with the High Commissioner of Canada George Drew and his wife. Frank was a member of the Masonic Lodge.
Louis Riel, leader of the North West rebellions of 1870 and 1885, was born at St. Boniface, Manitoba, on October 22, 1844, the son of Louis Riel and Julie Lagimoniere, and the grandson of Jean Baptiste Riel, a native of Berthier, Lower Canada. Louis Riel was educated at the seminary in Montreal, and then returned to the West. In 1869 he became secretary of the Comite national des Metis, an organization formed to resist the establishment of Canadian authority in the North West. Later in the same year he was elected president of the provisional government set up by the rebels. He escaped from the country in August, 1870, on the arrival of the expeditionary force under Colonel Wolseley; but in 1873, and again in 1874, Riel was elected to represent Provencher in the Canadian House of Commons. In 1874, on taking the oath, he was expelled from the House; and in 1875 a warrant of outlawry was issued against him. He took refuge in Montana, and there he remained until, in the summer of 1884, he was invited to return to Canada to organize the half-breeds of the North West Territories so as to obtain redress of their grievances. The outcome of his visit to Canada was the second North West rebellion. On the defeat of the rebels at Batoche, on May 12, 1885, by General Middleton, Riel was captured. He was tried at Regina, in July, on the charge of high treason, was found guilty, and on November 16, 1885, was hanged at the Mounted Police barracks at Regina. (Taken from: The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, fourth edition. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974.)
Professor Anne Innis Dagg has a Ph.D. in biology and teaches at the University of Waterloo. She is author of The Feminine Gaze and MisEducation: Women & Canadian Universities.
Aileen Young is a descendant of the Young's Point pioneers and has a keen interest in the local history of Peterborough and its surrounds.
Alan J. Slavin is a professor of physics at Trent University, and an adjunct professor at Queen's University. He received a M.Sc. from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and is the recipient of the following academic awards: Trent University's Symons Award for Excellence in Teaching (1992), 3M Teaching Fellowship, and Ontario Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Teaching (1993), and Canadian Association of Physicists Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1996). Slavin was a member of Kawartha Ploughshares.
Alexander Geerardt Mörzer Bruyns was born in Holland in 1877 and emigrated to Canada in 1925 where he was recognized as a distinguished authority on agricultural affairs. Upon immigrating, he settled in Limehouse, Ontario and became a farmer and stock breeder, later moving to Acton, and then to Georgetown. He was chairman of the Live Stock Improvement Association and the Milk Producers Association. He was also author of the book, The Good Husbandry Dollar, and several articles related to agriculture. Mörzer Bruyns died in Georgetown, Ontario in 1955.
Alfred Tennyson De Lury was born at Manilla, Canada West, on May 13, 1864 to Irish immigrant parents. He was educated at the University of Toronto where he received his B.A. (1890) and his M.A. (1902).
De Lury became a mathematics lecturer at University of Toronto in 1892, Head of the Mathematics Department in 1919, and he held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1922 to 1935. Throughout his life he collected Irish literature and maintained associations with prominent Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Yeats, John Butler Yeats and other family members, George Russell, and John and Malcolm Magee. De Lury was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1918 and he was the author of several algebra and arithmetic textbooks. He died at Lindsay, Ontario on November 12, 1951. His Irish literature collection is located at the University of Toronto Library.
Andrew Finnie II was born in 1820 and emigrated from Scotland to Canada with his brothers in 1840. Around 1850, Finnie settled on Lot 12 Concession 2 in South Monaghan Township. He and his wife, Jane Chambers, had thirteen children of which eleven lived to adulthood. Some moved to Manitoba and sent photographs over the years to the family who remained on the South Monaghan homestead; the homestead to this day is still in possession of Finnie heirs. Andrew Finnie II died in 1908.
Professor Allan L. Sherwin was Professor Emeritus of Neurology at McGill University and Attending Neurologist Emeritus at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. He was born in Montreal in 1932 and trained at McGill University. He received a Bachelor of Science in Honours Biochemistry (1953), Doctor of Medicine (1957), and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience (1965). He completed training as a Clinical Neurologist and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1963. He then practiced Neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute where he directed research into the causes and treatment of epilepsy.
Professor Sherwin published two books and 140 scientific papers. For many years he was a neurologist at the Lachine General Hospital and often served as a neurological consultant to the nearby Mohawks of Kahnawake First Nation. In 2012 he published Bridging Two Peoples: Chief Peter E. Jones, 1843-1909, the biography of one of the first Aboriginals to obtain a medical doctors degree from a Canadian medical school (Queen’s University at Kingston in 1866).
Professor Sherwin died in 2016.
Allan Percival Way (fl. 1921-1945), was a farmer who owned property in Murray Township, County of Northumberland. He also lived in Trenton, Ontario and was married to Florence Mildred Way.
Arthur Thibert was an oblate who served from 1927-1936 in the Saint Joseph and the Mother of the Saviour Roman Catholic mission in the Southampton Island and Baker Lake area of northern Canada. A work by Thibert, Eskimo-English, English-Eskimo dictionary = Inuktitut-English, English-Inuktitut Dictionary, has been published.
Sarsfield Sheehy was a student of the Peterborough Collegiate Institute in 1909.
Samuel Strickland came to Canada in 1825. He first spent time in Newcastle District and then later cleared some property for a farm in Otonabee Township. He later sold his farm and purchased land in Douro and there he began clearing land at the present site of Lakefield. He was active in church, military and town life. In 1847 he became a Major and in 1851 he was the Reeve of Douro for three years. He also became a Justice of the Peace. During the years of 1828-1831 he worked for John Galt in the Canada Company. In his later years Samuel established an agriculture school for young men and boys interested in pioneer farming. Around the same time that Samuel moved to Douro his sisters Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie arrived in the area. His sister Agnes edited a book "Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West" which was based on Samuel's writings. H. Stickland was born in 1870 in Peterborough to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Strickland. He married a Miss Hall. He gained fame on his 5 hour and 15 minute swim from the Lakefield locks on the Trent Canal to the Peterborough Lift Locks in 1905.
Arthur Greig Fleming was a resident of Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, Scotland. He married Elizabeth Arnot in the early 1800's. They had at least two children, David and Sandford who emigrated to Canada in 1845. Sandford later became Sir Sandford Fleming, well known railway surveyor and construction engineer. In 1847, David Fleming was living in Toronto, Canada West. Arthur and Elizabeth travelled to Canada in 1847 after July. It is possible that they emigrated to Canada as well.