Main entry | Haynes, Laura Nixon |
Birth place | Baltimore, Hamilton Township, Northumberland County, Ontario |
Birth date | 8 March 1876 |
Death place | Oshawa, Ontario |
Death date | 1971 |
Identifier | 0084 |
Birth name | Ellen Laura Nixon |
Married name | Haynes |
Marital status | married |
Religious affiliation | Free Church; Anglican |
Paid work | teacher (school) |
Biography | Raised and educated in the countryside around Coburg, Ontario, Ellen Laura Nixon (1876-1971) qualified as a teacher at the Ottawa Normal School. Until her marriage in 1916 to Frederick Charles Haynes (1875-1948), Laura taught in the communities of Pelham, Stamford, and Grantham Townships, where her first poems were patriotic verses for her pupils to recite on Empire Day. She contributed poetry to the MAIL AND EMPIRE and the periodicals which circulated in rural districts, including the CANADIAN COUNTRYMAN, FARM AND DAIRY and the FARMER'S ADVOCATE. For four years she was a school trustee. Her five volumes present a variety of subjects in styles ranging from traditional forms to modernist free verse. She composed witty epigrams, whimsical children's rhymes, more serious devotional poems and stirring narratives based on her research in the rich historical field of the Niagara area. Laura and Frederick lived on the Haynes Family Homestead in St. Catharines, on ground granted to his Loyalist ancestors in 1784. In 1948, Laura dedicated COMING MY WAY? to the memory of her friend, Nina Moore Jamieson.* That same year, Frederick passed away; four years later, Laura sold the homestead, now a St. Catharines heritage site. She died in 1971 and was buried beside Frederick at Maple Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines. |
Other notes | Starting in about her teens, went by "Laura Eleanor Nixon." |
Residences | Hamilton Township, Northumberland, Ontario (1881, 1891); Pelham Township, Welland, Ontario (1911); St. Catharines, Ontario (1926); Oshawa, Ontario (-1971) |
Geographic regions | Ontario |
Primary genres | poetry |
Books | WHEN YOU AND I REMEMBER (1900); PIONEERS (1938); LANTERNS IN THE DUSK (1944); COMING MY WAY? (1948); AN HOUR OF LEISURE (1955) |
Periodicals | CANADIAN COUNTRYMAN; FARM AND DAIRY; FARMER'S ADVOCATE; MAIL AND EMPIRE |
Other publications | Anthologized in: Creighton and Ridley, NEW CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY (1938) |
Organizations | Women's Literary Club of St. Catharines, Athanaeum Club |
Father's name | George Birney Nixon |
Life dates of father | 17 July 1830, Grafton, Hamilton Township, Northumberland County, Upper Canada (now Ontario) - 4 April 1915, Hamilton, Ontario |
Father's note | farmer |
Mother's name | Anna Jane ("Jennie") Henderson |
Life dates of mother | 26 November 1841, Ireland - 5 May 1917, Hamilton, Ontario |
Spouse 1 | Frederick Charles Haynes |
Life dates of spouse 1 | 25 August 1875, Grantham, Lincoln, Ontario - 12 January 1948 |
Spouse 1 note | farmer; warden of Lincoln County |
Marriage 1 date | 7 October 1916 |
Marriage 1 place | St. George's (Anglican) Church, St. Catharines, Lincoln, Ontario |
Biographical references | WHO WAS WHO AMONG NORTH AMERICAN AUTHORS 1921-1939; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1911 Census of Canada; Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913; Ontario, Canada Marriages, 1801-1928; special thanks to John C. Haynes, distant cousin of the author, for family contributions |
Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 88; Amicus (National Library of Canada) |
Research references | complete |
Archival references | letters and essays, Women's Literary Club of St. Catharines Fonds |
Image credits | Image from Alan Creighton and Hilda M. Ridley, eds., A NEW CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY (Toronto: Crucible, 1938). |
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. |