| Main entry | Riis, Stella E. (Eugenie) Asling |
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| Birth place | Simcoe, Ontario |
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| Birth date | 4 October 1869 |
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| Death place | Canada |
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| Death date | 1957 |
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| Identifier | 0152 |
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| Birth name | Histella Eugenia Asling |
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| Married name | Riis |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Presbyterian |
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| Biography | Upon marrying contractor Andreas ("Andrew") Riis (1869-1936) in 1906, Stella Eugenia Asling (1869-1957) moved from Ontario to New York State where she was active in the cultural life of Richmond Hill and the Women's Christian Temperence Union. When not hosting relatives at the couple's summer home at Honey Harbor in Georgian Bay, Ontario, Stella spent time researching and sorting out the details of her ancestors, whose first North American residences had included Schenectady, New York, the state of Vermont, and Blenheim, Ontario. Stella also kept abreast of contemporary issues, and on more than one occasion shared her sharp-tongued opinions through letters to the NEW YORK TIMES. In 1918, she indignantly criticised journalist William Bayard Hale's shifting political portrayals and dismissal of the New York Authors' League. Two years later, she rebutted zealous Americanization proponents who were wrongfully categorizing Swedes, Danes and Norwegians as "unsaved heathen," when they had, she felt, been those who had "saved Protestantism." Deeply affected by her husband's Danish cultural heritage, Stella was the historian and archivist of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, through which she explored his lineage in addition to corresponding frequently with relatives connected to her own family. Despite these wide-reaching interests, her published works reflect her own experience in the Ontario settings of her childhood. THE GREAT FRESH SEA (1931) is an historical novel based on the Huron conquest of the Iroquois near the town of Midland where she spent some of her girlhood and resulted in being given the Huron name "Be-daw-bun-o-kwe" or Lady of the Dawn. Widowed in 1936, Stella sold both her New York and vacation homes and moved back to Canada. She drew on her Loyalist descent in her last novel, STAR OVER FLUSHING (1939), which reconstructs the emotional and physical trials of her ancestors as they abandoned their homes during the American Revolution to settle in the British colonies that became Canada. |
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| Residences | Simcoe, Ontario (1869-); Barrie, Ontario (1871); Stayner, Ontario (1878); Midland, Ontario (1880); Hamilton, Ontario (1901-1906); Queen's, New York (1906-1936); Drumbo, Ontario (1940) |
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| Geographic regions | Southern Ontario; USA |
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| Primary genres | fiction |
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| Books | CROWNED AT ELIM (1903); THE GREAT FRESH SEA (1931); STAR OVER FLUSHING (1939) |
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| Periodicals | CANADIAN HOME JOURNAL; JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS OF THE WENTWORTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY; OTTAWA JOURNAL; NEW YORK TIMES (letters to editor) |
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| Organizations | Authors League (New York); Ontario Society of Authors |
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| Father's name | Charles Wesley Asling |
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| Life dates of father | 19 December 1843, Reach Township, Ontario - 15 July 1919, Hamilton, Ontario; m. 1866 |
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| Father's note | machinist; carpenter; cabinet maker; millwright |
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| Mother's name | Mary Isabella Morrow |
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| Life dates of mother | 6 October 1846, Ashburn Township, Ontario - 3 May 1913, Hamilton, Ontario; m. 1866 |
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| Spouse 1 | Andreas Jensen Riis (anglicized to Andrew Jenson Riis) |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 28 February 1869, Nykker, Bornholm, Denmark - 16 February 1936, Queens, New York |
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| Spouse 1 note | building contractor, responsible for construction of dozens of homes in Richmond Hill, New York; with first wife, Marie, produced two children; committed suicide for unknown reasons |
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| Marriage 1 date | 10 October 1906 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Hamilton, Ontario |
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| Children number | 2 step-children |
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| Children's names and dates | Edward J (1895-);
Arthur A (1902-1968) |
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| Biographical references | letters, private collection of Sharon Haggerty; 1871 Census of Canada; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; 1910 United States Federal Census; 1920 United States Federal Census; 1930 United States Federal Census; Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913; Ontario, Canada Marriages, 1801-1928 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 374 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Image credits | "Stella E. Asling." Image from The Canadian Magazine 22.4 (February 1904): 381. |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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