Catherine Kennie Kelly
Dover, Westmorland County, New Brunswick, Canada
Canadian, 1862 - 1941
Canadian, 1862 - 1941
| Death Place: | Stilesville |
| Death County: | Westmorland County |
| Death Province: | New Brunswick |
| Death Country: | Canada |
| Biography: | Catherine Kennie Kelly married Oliver Kelly in 1880 and moved to Stilesville, NB, a farming and rural area, where she lived as a housewife and raised her family of 8 children. Young men went to Albert County to work in the woods and this may be how the young couple met. She was an excellent seamstress, able to sew almost anything including men's coats and pants. Her knitting skills were the same, knitting many, many pairs of wool socks along with other clothing items. During this period of farm life, there were enough men to do the outside farm work and chores so that the women worked inside the home. Her hooking skills are apparent in her mats. She dyed her own wool as part of the hooking process. Her daughter, grandson, and great-great granddaughter also did some hooking in their lives. Hooking was done for the family's use. Her granddaughter, Ivena Briggs (born in 1914), recalls her using tree bark to make the colour grey. Ivena remembers the mats being used in the living room and thinks they may have been passed on to her daughter, Susan Kelly Colpitts when the room was changed to a bedroom. When Ivena Colpitts Briggs moved to the McFeters-Briggs homestead in Stilesville, the mats came along and were used on the bedroom floors periodically. When she moved to a special care home, this mat was given to Catherine's grandson, Charlie Kelly and his wife, Carol Kelly. |
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