| Main entry | Rogers, Grace Dean McLeod |
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| Birth place | Westfield, Queen's, Nova Scotia |
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| Birth date | 19 April 1863 |
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| Death place | Toronto, Ontario |
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| Death date | 20 October 1958 |
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| Identifier | 0340 |
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| Birth name | Grace Dean McLeod |
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| Alternate names | (not known) |
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| Married name | Rogers |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Baptist |
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| Degree and date | BA, Dalhousie University; MA (honorary), Acadia University (1911) |
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| Biography | Grace Dean McLeod (1863-1958), the first woman to be admitted into the Nova Scotia Historical Society, acquired her love of history from her parents: her mother was an amateur historian and her father, a barrister, wrote the historical romance, THE NOTARY OF GRAND PRE (1900). Grace was only only fourteen when she published her first story under a pseudonym in THE NEW YORK EXAMINER, for which she earned $5. Like her four sisters, she received a university education; after earning her BA from Dalhousie, she began to collect and record local folktales. Her first book, STORIES OF THE LAND OF EVANGELINE (1891), was published just before her 1891 marriage to barrister Henry Wyckoff Rogers (1858-1942), whom she had met at Dalhousie. Once her four sons were grown, Grace took up the pen again to write for various magazines for children and adults. Her historical booklets, LOUISBOURG (1928) and PIONEER MISSIONARIES IN THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES (1930), were part of the Ryerson History Readers series. Three of her sons followed her into literary careers: Arthur wrote clan sagas and military biographies; Norman wrote a biography of MacKenzie King; and David held editorial positions at the ST. JOHN TELEGRAPH JOURNAL and the REGINA LEADER-POST. Grace was granted an honorary degree from Acadia University in 1911, after which she became the first woman elected to the school's Board of Governors. Other accomplishments include being Nova Scotia's first woman candidate to stand in a provincial election. After several years of writing and of contributing to both local and distant communities through speaking engagements, Grace received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Acadia University. Outliving her husband and son Norman--who had been the McLeods' reason for retiring to Kingston--Grace died in Toronto in 1958. |
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| Other notes | Sons all had prominent careers. Arthur was a lawyer. Norman was a lawyer and statesman: served as William Lyon Mackenzie King's biographer and private secretary (1927-29); was professor at Queen's University; and as a Liberal MP, acted as Minister of Labour (1935-39) and Minister of National Defense (1939-40), until his death in a plane crash in 1940. Dean, a Harvard finance graduate, was President of Ontario Lumbermen's Forest Products and was a municipal councillor of Pembroke. David was President of the Canadian Press and of the Canadian Managing Editor's Association. According to family history, KINDRED SPIRITS (2005), the McLeod family descended from five of the original Mayflower pilgrims, and came to Nova Scotia prior to the American Revolution. The family also has connections to Rebecca Nurse and Mary Town Eastey, accused of witchcraft in Salem in the early 1690s. |
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| Residences | Westfield, Nova Scotia (1865-c1891); Amherst, Nova Scotia (c1891-1911); Kingston, Ontario (1938-); Toronto, Ontario (-1958) |
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| Geographic regions | Nova Scotia |
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| Primary genres | fiction; non-fiction |
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| Books | TALES OF THE LAND OF EVANGELINE (1890) published in the USA as STORIES OF THE LAND OF EVANGELINE (1891); ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE BAPTISTS IN AMHERST (1911) with Reverend D. A. Steele; JOAN AT HALFWAY (1919); THE BREAD OF WICKEDNESS (1925); LOUISBURG (1928); THE SECRET OF VAN ROYEN'S FARM (1929); PIONEER MISSIONARIES IN THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES (1930); RAYMOND'S INHERITANCE (1937) |
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| Periodicals | AWAKE; CANADIAN COURIER; CANADIAN MAGAZINE; CONGREGATIONALIST; COURIER AND STANDARD; DALHOUSIE REVIEW; INDEPENDENT; MACLEAN'S; NEW YORK EXAMINER; WIDE AWAKE; YOUTH'S COMPANION |
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| Other publications | Edited: MRS. CHURCHILL'S LETTERS FROM MY HOME IN INDIA (1911) |
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| Organizations | Canadian Authors Association |
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| Father's name | Arthur James McLeod |
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| Life dates of father | 20 September 1829, South Brookfield, Nova Scotia - 17 October 1906, Boston, Massachusetts; m. 1855 |
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| Father's note | teacher (school); left for Harvard c1869 to become barrister; author; father, James B. McLeod, wrote for NOVA SCOTIAN |
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| Mother's name | Eunice Dean Waterman |
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| Life dates of mother | 28 February 1833, South Brookfield, Nova Scotia - 19 September 1915, Clementsport, Nova Scotia; m. 1855 |
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| Mother's note | amateur historian |
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| Spouse 1 | Henry "Wyckoff" Rogers |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 15 June 1858, Pugwash, Cumberland, Nova Scotia - 29 November 1942, Pembroke, Ontario |
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| Spouse 1 note | Amherst lawyer; Mayor (twice); councilor and chairman of School Board; brother, Tecumseh Sherman Rogers, was justice of Supreme Court of Nova Scotia |
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| Marriage 1 date | 7 October 1891 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Berwick, Nova Scotia |
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| Children number | 4 |
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| Children's names and dates | Arthur Wyckoff McLeod (11 March 1893 - 18 April 1990), m. to Irene Frances Ganter;
Norman McLeod (25 July 1894 - 10 June 1940), m. to Mary Frances Parker Keirstead;
Dean Richards (12 February 1897 - 7 November 1992), m. to Carrie Isabel McPhail;
David Brewster Barss (23 April 1899 - 1967), m. to Helen Elizabeth Fitch |
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| Biographical references | Rogers, Carol, "A Tribute to History," THE ADVANCE, Liverpool, Nova Scotia (Web, 27 May 2011); Rogers, Gordon Hartt, KINDRED SPIRITS (2005); Morgan, Henry, CANADIAN MEN AND WOMEN OF THE TIME (1912); WOMAN'S WHO'S WHO OF AMERICA (1914-15); Rhodenizer, AT THE SIGN OF THE HAND AND PEN: NOVA-SCOTIAN AUTHORS (1948); 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; 1911 Census of Canada |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 380, 729 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | letter to Archibald MacMechan, MacMechan papers, Dalhousie; family letters and articles, published in KINDRED SPIRITS (2005); letter, Margaret Cowie fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC |
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| Image credits | Image courtesy of the Queen's County Advance, Liverpool, NS. Date unknown. |
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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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