"Roughing It in the Bush" in British
Columbia: Mary Moody's Pioneer
Life in New Westminster 1859-1863
JACQUELINE GRESKO

In

the Provincial Archives of British Columbia are letters written by
Mary Moody, wife of Colonel R.C. Moody, while she was in British
Columbia from 1859-1863. 1 Her use of the term "roughing it in the bush" to
describe her life on the goldrush frontier was intriguing because Susanna
Moodie, who was no relation to Mary, had written a widely read account of
her experiences in the 1830s in Upper Canada. That book, now a Canadian
standard reference on female settlement, included Susanna Moodie's advice
to middle class British families. She warned them against "shipwrecking all
their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada. ''2 Mary Moody,
who seems to have read Roughing It in the Bush while she lived in England,
still went to British North America with her husband and four small children.
Mary Moody's experience as a gentlewoman in British Columbia could be
called privileged pioneering, yet in some ways her letters also cast a light
upon female settlement in British Columbia in general. Her everyday
activities were conditioned more by the Pacific frontier than by her gentility.
Mary Moody's letters about her experiences on the goldrush frontier of
British Columbia are similar in many ways to writing done by pioneer
gentlewomen elsewhere in North America. Her letters seem most closely
related to the autobiographical sketches of Susanna Moodie, although the
latter were fictionalized accounts written in hindsight about the 1830s and
-published in 1852. While Susanna Moodie concluded that to "the poor,
industrious working man [Canada presented] many advantages; to the poor
gentleman, noneJ''3 Mary Moody was not so overcome. Like Susanna
Moodie, she came from a middle class background but hers was a more
positive outlook on emigration and pioneer settlement. Perhaps this was
because she regarded herself as higher in status, or as being prepared for
adventure as a result of earlier foreign service: she had travelled on mountain
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, l 984 .

106 Mary Moody

climbing expeditions in the Alps, she had borne children and kept house in the
Crimea. Furthermore, her husband was a career officer of high status in this
posting to British Columbia where the weather and living conditions did not
resemble being a stump farmer in Upper Canada. Probably Susanna's book
lessened the shock, too.
,
Mary Moody obviously compared her own experiences to those about
which she had read in Roughing It in the Bush. That book coloured her views
of the whole experience of going to the Pacific. For example, en route there
she described a Mrs. W.D. Gosset as "rather uppish, a fine lady not fitted for
roughing it" but she conceded that the woman had not been well so she might
yet "shine in the bush".4 By November 7, 1859, she could write home
regarding the fine dinner ~~e provided Judge Matthew Begbie: "roughing it in
the bush is not such very hard work. "5 Her reports from her home at New
Westminster included the occasional ball: "our new mode of roughing it in
the Bush"; as well as her call on a Canadian family settled in the "Forest
Primeval" where they were really "roughing it in the Bush. ''6
Mary Moody's upbringing and her life as a military officer's wife
influenced her expectations of life in British Columbia. She was born in 1829
in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. She was the eldest of the three daughters of
Mary Boyd Hawks and Joseph Hawks, a banker. Her parents cultivated
business, social and clerical connections in northern England.Joseph Hawks'
banking concerns had prospered in the 1830s and 1840s so that he moved his
family from a house in Central Newcastle to Ryehill House in Western
Newcastle, and then to a suburban estate, Jesmond House, in the picturesque
district of the same name. There Mary Boyd Hawks supervised the
instruction of her daughters in penmanship, literature, riding and household
management. A term at ladies' school finished their education with
instruction on deportment and in foreign languages. Young Mary and Emily
learned about the care of invalids, too, because their sister, Juliana, was
crippled in her youth.
In 1852, twenty-three year old Mary Susannah Hawks married thirtynine year old Captain Richard Clement Moody, Commanding Royal
Engineer at Newcastle-on-Tyne, who had already been a governor in the
Falkland Islands in the ·1840s. 7 Though Mary's marriage to such a man
portended separation from her family, it met with their approval. Her banker
father saw this alliance with a commissioned gentleman, whose brothers were
also career military men, as an advancement of the Hawks family fortunes.
Captain Moody's concern for his widowed mother and spinster sisters also
impressed the bride's parents. His religiosity accorded well with their clerical
Boyd relations.
After their marriage, the Moodys maintained close ties with the Hawks
family. They wrote them long descriptive letters from their wedding tour to
France, Germany and the Swiss Alps. The Moody's first child, Josephine, or
"Zeffie", was born in 1853 in the home of her maternal grandparents. Emily
Hawks went to Malta with her sister when Richard was appointed executive
officer there during the Crimean War. The birth of Mary's second child,
Richard, delighted his grandparents, who longed to have the Moodys return.
Mary was homesick and she worried over the effect of the Maltese climate on

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107

her husband and children, but she resolved to "make the best of it.., since, as
Richard said, he was "chained to this Rock and Colonel Thompson's
ungenerous petty childish disposition. ''8 The Moodys did not go ?ack to
Newcastle until Richard contracted a local fever and was sent home to
recuperate. His next posting, to Edinburgh as Commanding Royal Engineer,
meant that the birth of Charles and then Walter could occasion family visits.
The Hawks could also bask in the prestige of R.C. Moody's preparation of a
restoration scheme for Edinburgh Castle which drew favorable attention
from the Queen and Prince Albert. In 1858, Richard was appointed
Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works in the
new gold colony of British Columbia where he was also to command the
Columbia Detachment of the Royal Engineers who were being sent out to
assist its governor, James Douglas.
Although her middle daughter, Juliana, died in August, 1858, Mary
Moody was en route to British Columbia in the autumn of 1858. Her letters
home, suitably edged in black, are filled with concern for her family's spirits,
as well as diverting tidbits about the Moody's reception in New York and San
Francisco, and notes on t:qe children's health and activities. After Christmas,
1858, Mary Moody and her children settled in temporary quarters at Victoria
on the colony of Vancouver Island. She regaled her parents with details of
Colonel Moody's prospects in the mainland colony of British Columbia and
copied out for them a long letter he- wrote to a friend in the Colonial Office
describing his first impressions of the gold colony. 9
Through the spring and summer of 1859, while her husband and the
Royal Engineers surveyed and established both their camp and the capital
city of British Columbia, Mary Moody looked forward to going to
Queenborough, or, as it was soon retitled, New Westminster. 10 Life there
would be perhaps lonely, inconvenient or even difficult. However, she
cheered herself and her parents with comments on the support she would
receive from Richard and his staff, and the attendance of the servant couple
she had brought with her. She also had with her, or was having sent out to the
colony, all manner of material comforts on the advice of Richard's brother,
Hampden Clement Moody, and other Royal Engineers who had been
stationed in British North America. 11 But before she had to journey across the
Straits of Georgia, Mary Moody reported a kind reception by the military
officers, colonial servants and clergy already stationed at Victoria. Though
Mary Moody did complain about the scarcity of servants, the expense of
food, and the Governor's slowness in arranging for completion of her new
home, her optimism about the family's venture remained. She wrote on
March 21, 1859: "I am quite looking forward to "flitting" up to
Queenborough, I quite enjoy the idea of"roughingitin the bush"and we have
the whole of the summer before us, so we sh. do very well. I hope by winter we
shall be luxuriously comfortable. " 12
In 1859, Mary Moody seems to have expected that Douglas would resign
from his governorship of the mainland so that her husband could become
British Columbia's chief officer. The prospect of becoming the governor's
lady sustained her while she moved her household to the tent city on the
mainland in the spring and back to Victoria in the summer, hosted numerous

108 Mary Moody

visitors, copied official correspondence for her husba~d, and coped with the
illness occasioned by the onset of her fifth pregnancy.1 3
When, in autumn of 1859, the Royal Engineers Camp and her new house
were ready, the Moody family finally settled into New Westminster. :Being in
'Government House' involved difficulties as well as romance and prestige.
Uncertainties about her husband's office aggravated her problems in
managing her household. For several years Mary could not. be certain
whether to provision it or not. The commissions her husband held as
Commanding Royal Engineer· of the Columbia Detachment and as Chief
Commissioner of Lands and Works for the mainland colony had specified
that he was to remain in the_colony one yearfroII\the date of his arrival.1 4 But,
the 1859 boundary crisis over the San Juan Islands meant that the Colonial
Office did not withdraw the Royal Engineers from British Columbia. Its
officials did not, however, hurry to inform the colony. 15
The indefiniteness of Colonel Moody's office in British Columbia
contributed to his .strained relations with Governor James Douglas. Initially,
despite the ambiguity of Moody's triple assignment and Douglas' dual
governorships, the two men seem to have gotten along well.1 6 Douglas'
attitude to Moody deteriorated once the Colonial Secretary explained to him
the dormant nature of Moody's commission as lieutenant-governor.17 The
fractious relationship between Governor Douglas and Colonel Moody
burdened Mrs. Moody socially and.politically at 'Government House' in New
Westminster. She could not at first be sure even that that house was her home.
The Governor treated it as his official residence on his trips to British
Columbia, staying there "as a matter of course", which Mary Moody
regarded as "a nuisance". 18 Not until May 1861 did he rent a house in New
Westminster. 19 Mary Moody had to evacuate her parlour to accommodate
extra guests. When Lady Franklin and her niece, Sophia Cracraft, visited
New Westminster in March 1861 they we're "most kindly welcomed" by the
Moodys though they were already hosting Governor Douglas. However,
Mary delighted in the prestige of this visit so much that she even went to the
Governor's official dinner at a hotel in the town. 20
Lady Franklin's niece commented on some of the strains in Mary
Moody's domestic life. She, like other officials' wives in the frontier capital,
had to "be her own head nurse, if not sole nurse", though with some assistance
from a governess. "[A]ll the ladies here [take] it for granted that they must do
without servants or rat least may have to do so. ''2 1 Sophia Cracroft pitied "the
ladies" of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, "as t:qey must absolutely &
unreservedly devote themselves to the smallest cares of everyday life-- at any
rate they must expect to have their hands so filled day by day & be prepared
for the worst. ''22
Mary Moody, despite her privileged public position, experienced
difficulties common to pioneer women. While the realities have often been
confided to diaries by women, Moody's documents typically are assurances to
her parents. As a loving daughter she censored the descriptions which she
wrote home of everyday life in British Columbia. For example, she mentioned
obtaining smallpox vaccine for the children as if it were a routine involved in
their care. In fact,. it was a critical necessity during the epidemics which

GRESKO

109

affected the colonies and particularly the large Native Indian populations of
Victoria and New Westminster in the early 1860s.23 She was frank, though, in
reporting her own spells of homesickness, concern for her father's business
failures, and her worries a bout Richard: the tensions of his roles in the colony
and the strain of incessant work on his health. 24 Yet Mary Moody worked for
her husband when she could. After Governor Douglas' economizing deprived
Colonel Moody of his secretary, she considered herself "quite fitted to accept
any I>rivate Secretary-ship" for she frequently copied out "offi,cial letters for
Richard all day!''25
She was lonely and worried when Rich~rd travelled to distant parts of
the wilderness on official duties but -she resolved to "make the best of it. "26 Her
activities as the mother of a growing family in a frontier settlement illuminate
the gravity of her resolution. When Mary Moody came to British Columbia in
1859, she already had four children under the age of six. During the next five
years she bore three more, and was expecting her eighth child when she left
New Westminster in November, 1863.27 She had the aid of camp doctors in
childbirth but Richard could do little to assist her during or after pregnancy.
Household help was always at a premium; nevertheless, her letters to her
parents are full of pride in her babies and pleasure in her children.
Her correspondence also reveals the state of her own health as a pioneer
woman. On hearing that one elderly relative at home was keeping well, Mary
commented that the relative had "never had any Colonial roughings-:- Here
we are all growing prematurely old. '728 Mary's references to toothaches while
she was pregnant, constant sleepiness, and later the need "to take to Caps"
when she got home, support her observation.29
The children's care continually concerned Mary Moody despite the
availability of military doctors and the assistance of other adults. Doctors
could offer scant protection against the children's perpetual colds in the rainy
coastal climate. Other than smallpox vaccinations, there was little doctors
could do to protect the children from disease. 30 Other officials' wives, like
Mrs. Grant, 31 might help with the Moody children when they were not
pregnant or confined themselves. Yet even childless Mrs. Bacon, whom
Richard dubbed "Goody Two-shoes"_ because she was "always helping
everybody", could only do so much since she did her own cooking andcleaning.32 The scarcity of domestic servants, particularly nursery staff, in the
goldrush town meant that "Gentlemen" became "experienced Nurses" there,
for they were "obliged to help in holding the Babies," by courtesy, or, if
necessary by request. 33
Mary Moody took charge of most of her children's education. She
prided herself on informal inculcation of the alphabet and spelling. She also
hired a Victoria official's daughter, Jessie Nagle, as a governess. However,
Nagle, who soon became engag~d, made long visits to her family and fiance in
Victoria. 34 Mary Moody considered nursery lessons insufficient for her two
oldest children, Zeffie and Dick, for they needed "good teaching". Mrs.
Moody was not satisfied to have the doctor give Zeffie drawing and music
lessons, or to "bribe the Archdeacon to teach Dick Latin.... "3 5
B~sides watching over her own children, Mary Moody also kept in touch

110 Mary Moody

C\I

i

Mary S. Moody

C\I

:it,

u

CD
<(

11.

The four eldest Moody children.

GRESKO

111

with young British friends who came out as gentlemen adventurers to the
gold rush frontier. For example, on August 16, 1859, she informed her mother
of the arrival of Mr. Annandale to whom Richard had given advice and letters
of introduction to people at Fort Hope. By June 4, 1860, Mary wrote that she
had seen young Annandale: "He was·very well & going up the country." His
attempts at mining there met failure, for on November 4, 1861, Mary wrote
that he "seems to be very unsettled just now." He and five other men had the
contract to cut wood for the camp winter fuel supply. He was "living in the
Woods, behind the Camp, chopping logs, & bringing it here for use! He will
make good Wages by it ... , but one wd. wish him to be more constantly
employed at something better." In January, 1862, he would have died of
exposure in the extremely cold winter weather had not Colonel Moody's men
rescued him and paid for bis treatment at the camp hospital. Mary Moody not
only reported the incidents to her mother but also wrote to reassure
Annandale's mother.36
Mary's privileged position of chatelaine carried with it complications of
finances of the goldrush frontier economy. The decline in her father's banking
business in Newcastle meant that she and Richard could not rely on assistance
from her parental fortunes. They were dependent on Richard's salary and the
investments he made. 37 Also, he was contributing to the support of his
widowed mother and unmarried sisters at Winchester. But the demands of
daily and seasonal living were more immediate. In British Columbia from
1859 to 1863, one of Mary Moody's major domestic responsibilities was
controlling the family possessions. She had had the assistance of relatives,
friends, servants and soldiers in packing them to go to the colonies, and then
to move from Vancouver Island to British Columbia but the Moodys lived
only temporarily in the tents at the site of the new capital in the spring of 1859.
Mosquitoes drove mother and children back to Victoria where they waited
for their new home to be finished. On September 1, 1859, she-complained "we
are getting tired of living in our boxes". Once unpacked and settled at New
Westminster Mary Moody had to prepare the family to move with the
Colonel on official duties, or vacations, or to avoid the summer mosquito
plagues. Although going to Victoria for the summer of 1861 was
"comparatively an easy matter" to removing to Hope in 1860, when she had
had "so many groceries &c to provide & take up", still lodgings in Victoria
were "a ruinous expense. "38 Preparing the children's clothing meant "endless"
sewing. Every new day brought "something new with it to be done which
Mary Moody "had not before thought of.... "39
Mary Moody found provisioning her household a burdensome task,
particularly her children's furnishings, and sewing notions. She relied on her
parents to send boxes of such items, and on family friends, like Bishop Hills,
who were coming out to British Columbia, to bring the goods she requested. 40
The irregular mail service interrupted transport of the boxes and
correspondence acknowledging them. 41 Furthermore, correspondence
making comments on the contents of the boxes entailed long sessions at the
writing table. Meanwhile, even in the capital city of the colony, ready-to-wear
items and seamstresses were scarcely available. Mary made and altered so
much c!othing that she titled herself "a capital Manager. "42

Il2

Mary Moody

Mrs. Moody, as m.istress of•Government House', could call on the Royal
Engineers for orderlies or garden produce or she could hire a soldier's wife to
cook for special occasions, but she herself managed the residence, particularly
its kitchen and household staff. Crisis and inconvenience were not
uncommon. During the extremely cold winter of 1862 the river froze, cutting
off communication to Victoria, so New Westminster was threatened with
famine. At other times the death of a cow or the delay of a pump threatened
supplies of water. 43 Like other women of British Columbia, she resented the
fact that Victoria was a duty free port while New Westminster was not. 44 She
complained "Everything is so dear here that I find it much cheaper to get
groceries from Victoria & pay the freight up here than to buy them on the
spot. "45
The problem of getting and keeping household help plagued Mary
Moody's work. The servant couple she brought out from Britain to Victoria
left her by September 1859 to run a public house in the town. 46 Later a quarrel
with her sapper servant meant that he returned to his duty and she had ••a new
man to teach", a plasterer by trade, "who couldn't be supposed to know how
to wait &c. &c."47 Then the "Canadian 'Help'", a local farmer's daughter who
replaced vacationing governess Nagle over Christmas 1861, proved to be
"very independent". Furthermore, she allowed the five children to "have
pretty much of their own way" while she amused herself. 48 She would not go
into the kitchen for her meals, but to Moody "the comfort of having her" was
"more than the nuisance of her Company .... "49 In 1862, Mary Moody
arranged through her .. Cousin Lou", Louisa Twining, active in female
emigration societies in England, to have a young girl sent out to help with the
children and the housework, especially caring for the babies. She hoped that a
young girl would be less likely to marry and also less expensive. The girl who
arrived in September 1862, with the contingent sponsored by Bishop Hills'
Columbia Emigration Society in cooperation with the London Female
Emigration Society, was too young, too small, and incapable of sewing. She
had to be replaced with an older woman.so
In spite of her difficulties as wife, mother, and household manager,
Moody could still feel kindly toward her community. She had written to her
mother April 3, 1862, that "we get on so well together[in the Royal Engineers'
Camp] that we ..... look upon ourselves as a large family." Loyal to the duties
of friendship, even during her husband's absence, her own seventh pregnancy
and usual servant problems, she aided newcomers. In May 1862, Attorney
General Crease and his family arrived at New. Westminster to take up
residence in a new house near the Camp, "before the workmen were out of it,
without a Servant of any kind--(The one they had at Victoria having left them
on the Wharf there ... having changed her mind about coming out to B.C.!) "
Mary Moody took the Creases and their three daughters into her own home
for a fortnight. Her letters emphasize the pleasure of the 'visit', not the
housework and overcrowding created by extra people. 51
Optimistic, capable, coping Mary Moody, who looked back on her
experience happily, 52 was not an unusual female pioneer settler at New
Westminster in the 1860s. Even the Victoria British Colonist, which gloried in
every bit of bad news from the rival city, happily could record only one tragic

GRESKO

113

incident: the wife of a Royal Engineer murdered her children and then
committed suicide. 53 Newspapers, memoirs, and oral traditions abound with
references to competent, coping, pioneer wives and mothers. 54 Mrs. Crease
held her household together through the ups and downs of the goldrush
economy and the removal to Victoria necessitated by colonial politics. Mrs.
Keary, the young wife of one of the soldiers who settled in New Westminster,
found herself suddenly widowed, but, on her own, she started a boarding
house and raised her family. Another ex-soldier's wife, Mrs. Bonson, ran a
temperance hotel in competition with her husband's host~lry. Perhaps those
scholars who have taken Susanna Moodie's bitter conclusions on
gentlewomen's pioneer experience at face value need to make a reassessment.
Finally literary critics and historians are beginning to make more
positive comments on pioneer gentlewomen's lives in North America. 55 They
have pointed out how education, experience and foreknowledge did prepare
gentlewomen for pioneering. Furthermore, because most of these women
were wives and mothers in nineteenth century, pre-industrial families, they
accepted their roles within the family and household through which they
supported a husband's career and aided family fortunes by acting as
secretaries and lobbyists. Able to maintain some optimism about roughing it
in the bush, they endured and survived like Mary Moody and Susannah
Moodie. Middle class British women settlers took hold of themselves on the
unfamiliar frontier and adapted. "The sort offamily that was held together-by
the successful pioneer wife ... was [the] family pattern which produced many
Canadian feminists" according to Deborah Gorham. 56

ll 4 Mary Moody

Footnotes
I would like to thank the Canada Council,- Explorations Programme and the
Provincial Archives of British Columbia for assistanc~ on Mary S. Moody
correspondence. Thanks are also due to B. and N. Harris, T.H. Holbert, R.A.C.
Lowndes, and the late Mrs .. R.E. Holford for obtaining information on the Moody
family in Britain.
1. , Mary Susannah (Hawks) Moody -Correspondence, Provincial Archives of
British Columbia (Hereafter cited as PABC). l:his paper will use the name Mary
Moody just as the R.C. Moody family did. All the letters are signed Mary S. Moody,
however, so archival collections and footnotes refer to Mary S. Moody
correspondence.
2. Susannah Moodie, Roughing It In the Bush, Introduction by Carl F. Klinck
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1962, New Canadian Library Number 31): 237.
The first London edition was published by Richard Bentley in 1852 and sold in railway
station boolc stalls. Mary S. Moody took long train trips in 1852 and 1854 and
probably purchased this book en route.
3. Ibid.: 236.
4. Mary S. Moody, 6 December 1858.
5. Mary S. Moody, 17 November 1860.
6. Ibid.: 17 November 1860.
7. This biography of Mary Susannah (Hawks) Moody has been compiled from that
of her husband R.C. Moody in the Dictionary of National Biography 1894 vol.38:
332-333; their correspondence; the records of Somerset House; British censuses; and
Newca_stle-on-Tyne directories.
8. Mary S. Moody to"Mydearest Mamma,"19November, 1854 MS, PABC. Mrs.
Moody's letters home were intended for- both her parents and sister, but were
addressed independently to 'Mother' or 'Emily'. There are, however, no major textual
differences in the letters to mother and sister, so subsequent references to them will be
by author and date only.
9. Mary S. Moody, 18 February 1859. See also Willard E. Ireland, ed., "First
Impressions: Letter of Colonel Richard Clement Moody, R.E. to Arthur Blackwood,
February I, I 859," British Columbia Historical Quarterly XV (1951 ), 85-107.
IO. Margaret A. Ormsby, British Columbia: a History (Toronto: Macmillan 1958):
175. Also known as Queensborough.
11. Hampden Clement Moody, R.E., toured the Great Lakes defences in the
Canadas in 1844 and was at Lower Fort Garry from 1846 to 1848. See J. Mackay
Hitsman, Safeguarding Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1967), 144; and William
R. Morrison, "The Sixth Regiment of Foot at Lower Fort Garry," Canadian Historic
Sites Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, No.4 (Ottawa, 1970): 171-173.
12. Punctuation has been supplied in this and other quotations for ease of reading.
In this case a period was inserted after "we sh. do very well."
13. For discussion of the Moody-Douglas relationship see Frances Woodward,
"The Influence of the Royal Engineers on the Development of British Columbia,,. BC
Studies No. 24 (1974-1975): 11.
14. Frances Woodward," 'Very Dear Soldiers' or 'Very Dear Laborers': the Royal
Engineers in British Columbia, April 1860," B.C. Historical News Vol. 12 No. 1
(November 1978): 11. ·
15. Ibid.: 8-15.
16. Ormsby, _BC.: 173.
17. Woodward "Influence of the Royal Engineers": 16.
18. Mary S. Moody, 11 February 1861.

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115

19. Mary S. Moody, 20 May 1861.
20. Mary S. Moody, 14 March 1861.
21. Sophia Cracroft, March 12, 1861 in Dorothy B. Smith, ed., Lady Franklin Visits
the Pacific Northwest (Victoria: Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1974): 66.
22. Sophia Cracroft, March 23, 1861 in Smith, Lady Franklin: 81.
23. Mary S. Moody, 28 June, 1863. The new baby (Margaret Moody, born 14
January 1863), had "not yet been vaccinated," but Mrs. Moody wanted to have her
done and "Zeffie and Dick vaccinated again." For a description of the 1863 smallpox
epidemic which reduced the native population of British Columbia "from some 60,000
persons to around 40,000," see G.P. V. Akrigg and Helen B. Akrigg, British Columbia
Chronicle 1847•1871. Gold and Colonists (Vancouver, Discovery Press, 1977): 253.
See also New Westminster British Columbian May 3, 1862 and April 29, 1863.
24. See for example Mary S. Moody, 7 January 1863.
25. Mary S. Moody, 16 August 1859.
26. Mary S. Moody, 12 September 1861.
27. The children of R.C. and M.S. Moody were by year of birth: 1853 Josephine
(Zeffie); 1854 Richard (Dick); 1856 Charles; 1858 Walter; 1860 Susan; 1861 Mary;
1863 Margaret; 1864 Henry; 1867 Gertrude; 1868 George; 1870 Ruth and Rachel.
Information supplied by Mrs. R.E. Holford, descendant of George Moody.
28. Mary S. Moody, 12 September 1861.
29. Mary S. Moody, 28 June 1863.
30. Children at the Royal Engineers Camp at New Westminster were remarkably
free from childhood diseases according to Army Medical Department records for
1860, cited by the New Westminster British Columbian, July l, 1863. The journal
attributed the children's health to the "salubrity" of the local climate. Isolation of the
community was no doubt also a factor.
31. Wife of Captain John Marshall Grant, R.E., and, like Mrs. Moody resident of
British Columbia from 1859 to 1863. For a brief biography of J.M. Grant, see Dorothy
B. Smith, ed., "The Journal of Arthur Thomas Bushby, (1858-1859),!' British
Columbia Historical Quarterly, XXI (1957-1958), "Biographical Appendix," p. 178.
32. Mary S. Moody, 11 February 1861.
33. Mary S. Moody, 4 November 1861.
34. For a brief biography of Jessie Melville Nagle, daughter of Captain J. Nagle,
Harbour Master of Victoria, see Smith, Lady Franklin Visits: 66, note 117.
35. Mary S. Moody, 12 September 1861 and 14 November 1861. See DavidJ. Lloyd,
Country Grammar School [Ludlow], 1977, 141: "In 1861 R.S. Moody [Dick], aged
fourteen, son of Colonel Moody of Caynham House, who had finished sixth in the
school the previous summer, came first out of fifty candidates competing for places at
Cheltenham College."
36. Mary S. Moody, 3 January 1862.
37. R.C. Moody to H.P.P. Crease, Private, 11 April 1860, MS. PABC. R.C. Moody
made his wife a gift of the Mayfield farm, his rural lands in New Westminster district,
as he was worried about the state of her father's finances.
38. Mary S. Moody, 18 June 1861.
39. Mary S. Moody, 4 June 1861.
40. Mary S. Moody, 11 February 1861.
41. Mary S. Moody, 3 April 1862.
42. Mary S. Moody, 4 June 1861.
43. Mary S. Moody, 18 February 1859 and 3 April 1862.
44. Ja,cqueline Kennedy, "New Westminster 1861-1869:
a Disappointed

116 Mary Moody

'Metropolis'," B.C. Historical News, Vol.2 No. 2 (February 1969): 11.
45. Mary S. Moody, 29 January 1861.
46. Mary S. Moody, l September 1859.
47. Mary S. Moody, 14 November 1861.
48. Mary S. Moody, 18 December 1861.
49. Mary S. Moody, 14 November 1861.
50. Mary S. Moody, 23 September 1862.
51. Mary S. Moody, 28 May 1862.
52. Mary S. Moody to Lady [Sarah] Crease, 3 December 1900. Crease
Correspondence MS PABC, reference to British Columbia as the "place where we
spent 5 very happy years."
53. Victoria British Colonist November 4, 1859, "Awful Murder and Suicide at New
Westminster."
54. Margaret A. Ormsby, editor, A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia
.(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976): 17-19. Gail Robertson
interview with Rod Keary, 1981 for History 110 {Local History) Douglas College,
New Westminster.
55. Marion E. Fowler, "Portraits of Susan Sibbald: Writer and Pioneer," Ontario
History LXVI (1974), 50-64; Sandra L. Myres, "Evy Alexander: the Colonel's Lady at
McDowell Arizona," Montana the Magazine of Western History XXIV (1974), 26-38;
Tamara K. Hareven, "Family Time and Historical Time", Daedalus Vol. 106 (Spring
1977): 57-70.
56. Deborah Gorham, "'Singing Up the Hill'" Canadian Dimension, June 1974: 37.

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