Letters of William Richard Grahame, His Ancestors and Descendants, 1782-1923

Albert Stray is Head of Mobile Library Services at the London Public
Library.

William Richard Grahame (1807-1867) was born in Glasgow but immigrated
to Canada in 1833, settling in Vaughan Township (north of Toronto).
Along the way he passed through a number of the larger, settled American
cities, such as Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington. In
1835 he married; he and his wife Otilia had seven sons and one daughter.
Otilia died in 1853, and in 1858 William took his family back to
Britain. Though he remarried and remained in Britain, two of his sons
returned to Vaughan.

More than 300 letters, obituaries, and wills dating from 1782 to 1923
have been used to give the reader a rich first-hand account of the
people and events in this province’s past. The book comprises sixteen
chapters: the first few are devoted to W.R. Grahame’s ancestors in
Scotland, while the final seven focus on his descendants.

Chapter 5 talks about his travels to America and Canada, beginning in
1831. Detailed information about this episode is found in The Lost
Chapters 1831-1832. These should be read in the context of The Diary of
William Richard Grahame in the United States and Canada 1831-1833
(1989), edited by Fred B. Grahame.

Each chapter begins with a short summary. Where necessary, the
explanatory notes precede the letter(s). As you read, you can mine
little nuggets. For example, William’s sister Hannah complained in the
1830s of the dangers of smoking. And William himself grasped a Canadian
trait: in explaining why the masses did not join William Lyon Mackenzie
in 1837, he explained that we preferred security to liberty.

Sixteen pages of photographs, drawings, and maps enhance the text.
Descendants of W.R. Grahame will be interested in the five-page family
tree. While most family historians must content themselves with being
able to put names and dates on a family tree, Grahame’s descendants
are fortunate, in that he and his family were writers. These letters
bring family history to life. If this and similar published family
histories were used in the teaching of Canadian history, the oftenheard
refrain about history being dull would itself become a thing of the
past.