1916-04-15

        HARRIET ANNIE WILKINS

          Away back in the first half of the first half of the last century, the family of the Rev. John Wilkins, an English Congregationalist clergyman, came from the old homeland and settled in Hamilton. Of Mr. Wilkins but very little is known, as he passed away shortly after arriving in the city; but it is of the two daughters, Harrie Annie and Mrs. Robinson, that this reminiscence will have to do, as both of them were connected with the education of ancient Hamiltonians, especially Harriet Annie, who was the gifted poet that sang of the early days. This old Muser has a very kindly remembrance of Harriet Annie for writing his new year address in 1851, when he was an apprentice in the Canada Christian Advocate office. In those days, the new year address was the perquisite of the carrier boy, from which he realized what seemed a fortune to him, the subscribers to the paper giving him from a penny to a half dollar each. The address was generally on local matters and very interesting, and the young poets of the town vied with each other as to which one would carry off the palm in point of literary style. There were four papers published in Hamilton in 1850 – the Gazette, Spectator, Journal and Express, and the Christian Advocate – and the carrier boys of each paper had his new year’s greeting. This old Muser was fortunate in getting Harriet Annie as his poet laureate, for her poems were very popular with the people. If you want a boy to remember you with affection, even after the grass has withered on your grave for years, do him a kindly act, and he will never forget it. Out of that address the Muser realized over twenty dollars. When we called upon Miss Wilkins to share our wealth, she generously declined accepting a penny. However, she accepted with pleasure a copy of the address printed on cream-colored satin, which she said should be preserved by her during her lifetime. That was a characteristic act of Hamilton’s sweet singer, for her whole life was given to add to the comfort and happiness of others. Her life was chiefly remarkable for her labors of active charity and of self-denial.

          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          The managing editor of the Spectator received a letter from Mrs. D. Wilkins Van Maurer, a resident of Atlanta, Georgia, making inquiries about Harriet Annie. You remember the lamentation of Rip Van Winkle, after his long sleep in the Kaatskill Mountains, and on his return to the village of Falling Waters, “How soon we’re forgotten when we’re gone.” When the managing editor turned Mrs. Van Maurer’s letter to this old Muser we thought it was but the work of an hour to trace out Harriet Annie’s later life. She had been dead not quite thirty years, and having spent at least fifty years of active life in this town we expected that all we would have to do would be to ask the first ancient Hamiltonian we met in the street as to her history, and we are blessed if he could tell anything. All he did remember was that a poet of that name once lived in Hamilton and that she taught a school somewhere  on James street, and that his sister was one of her pupils. Pretty bad start, eh? We remembered that in the year 1851 she wrote a eulogy on Ancient Masonry, and that it was published in a booklet, and concluded that all we had to do was ask some member of the ancient craft to help us out. The first one we applied to, although his head is now whitened with the snows of sixty or more frigid Hamilton winters, and he was one of her pupils in his childhood days, yet he could only remember that such a person once lived here sixty-five or seventy years ago, but beyond the knowledge that she used to shake him up when he failed in his lessons, there was nothing more that he could tell. Then we interviewed a couple of the ancient girls who knew Harriet Annie before Hamilton became an incorporated city. They knew her intimately, and said all the nice things possible about her poetry, but they could not remember when she left this world, nor anything special about her beyond that she was a most lovable woman who spent her life in doing good and in helping the unfortunate over rough roads. Then we searched the church records, hoping there to find something that would answer the inquiries of the lady in Atlanta, Georgia. When all else failed, there was the cemetery record left, and in it we found the date of her death. We are getting on solid ground, for with the date we could refer back to the bound files of the Daily Spectator, and there we found the following:

          “Died, in her home, 64 Main street west, on Saturday, January 7, 1888, Harriet Annie Wilkins, last surviving daughter of Rev. John Wilkins, born in England, aged 58 years and nine months.”

          At last we had got on the right trail, and then the daylight dawned. By searching the Hamilton directory of 1856 we found that Miss Wilkins occupied the cottage on the corner of James and Gore streets, where now stands the Grand Opera house, where she and her sister taught a day school for young boys and girls, and in addition gave lessons in music and painting to scholars of maturer years. Later the school was changed to an academy for the preparation of young ladies for entrance to college. Both the Misses Wilkins were accomplished scholars, and their academy was well filled with pupils. In time Harriet  Annie was left alone with her school, for her sister was united in marriage to a Mr. Robinson. It was a long struggle, for school teachers in the early days were but poorly paid for their work; and often the quarterly fee was never paid to them by the scholars’ parents. By and by death came knocking at the door, and Mrs. Robinson was called hence, leaving a family of young children of young children to Harriet to provide out of her meager earnings as a school teacher. Her great woman’s heart was equal to the task, for she not only attended to her duties in the schoolroom and in the home, but she was most active in visiting the sick, the sorrowful and the sinful. Wherever sickness, poverty or crime found a lodgment, Miss Wilkins considered it her duty to be to extend assistance, comfort and counsel. The home of poverty was brightened and the bed of death made less terrible by her coming. Her Christianity was broad enough for her to take into her heart Protestant and Catholic alike, and often did she stand by the sickbed with Bishop Farrell or Dean Geddes to aid in ministering to the afflicted ones of their flock. The guilty prisoner was urged by her to repent and strive for reformation; the unfortunate received for her not only wise counsel, but material aid. A cup of cold water given in the right spirit is often more efficacious than a wordy prayer. Quietly and unostentatiously she carried on her labors of love and duty, and very few people knew how active she was in the great work of practical philanthropy. Her whole life was spent in the service of others. Miss Wilkins possessed considerable literary ability. She was a frequent contributor to the local newspapers and published several volumes of poems, which gave evidence of pure and lofty ideas, gracefully expressed. Her longest poem was a Masonic story, of which order she had an exalted opinion as a charitable and useful organization, and many of her best poems were written in its praise. Her first volume was published in 1851, entitled the Holly Branch, and was dedicated “To Sir Allan Napier Macnab, Knight, M.P.P., and the Fraternity of Freemasons.”

          “The Holly Branch is in itself a type of your institution. How often, amid the delicate flowers of spring, the glorious rose of summer, or the dazzling splendor of autumnal beauty, is the Holly – the evergreen Holly – forgotten! But when the winter storms gather around, then are the crimson berries and verdant leaves cherished; and in my own native land, from the poorest peasant on England’s soil to the royal chambers of England’s Queen, the holly branch droops its fadeless clusters. Forgive us, then, if we have desecrated a type of masonry by linking it with our feeble efforts.” So wrote Hamilton’s gifted singer, in her dedicatory prelude.

          With a knowledge that her life would soon be spent, she bravely continued to the end to help others. Her last illness was terrible in its painfulness from cancer. For nearly a year she was unable to leave her bed; and her sufferings were so acute that only by the use of morphine could she get any relief. A friend who was with her in the closing hours of her life, in telling the sad story to the Muser, said that her acute agony was borne by her with resignation and uncomplaining fortitude. A poor heroic life came to an end. The poor, weary body was at last laid to rest. Her endless reward was entered upon. Her funeral was held on January 10, 1888, and was largely attended by the poor and afflicted ones in whose betterment she took so much interest, and by the members of the Masonic order. Mr. James Charlton, general passenger agent of the Chicago and Alton road, sent from Chicago a wreath, Gates ajar, and the local Masonic fraternity contributed a wreath with a square and compass and the letter G in the center. Thus passed from the active life of Hamilton one of its most philanthropic women. But we cannot refrain, in closing this brief reminiscence from repeating Rip Van Winkle’s lament : “How soon we’re forgotten when we’re gone.”

                   -------------------------------------------------------------

          In this connection let us recall to the memory of ancient Hamiltonians a couple of Harriet Annie’s poems, published in the Holly Branch :

                    HAMILTON, THE CITY OF STRANGERS

          How many a land do we call our own,

          The countries which o’er the depths are thrown?

          But how few may stand on the well-known spot

          Where fell the first smiles of their childhood’s lot;

          We come to throng where of old there stood

          The spreading maple and the tangle wood.

          We have seen the cliffs of the spreading shore

          Fade ‘mid the rush of the water’s roar;

          And voices that rose to sad farewell strains

          Were lost ‘mid the grating of cable chains.

          Some from our beautiful Albion Isles,

          From the lofty fanes, from the flower’s smiles;

          These – from the glittering of olden spire;

          Those – from the light of their household fires;

          Some from the midst of the city throng,

          Some are fresh from the wood-dove’s song,

          Where the holly bush and the broad oak grows;

          Many are from the land of the Rose.

          And many a son of the Thistle green

          Hath said farewell to each boyish scene,

          And dwelleth still with the stranger’s cild,

          Far from the heather and mountain wild.

          And others from Erin’s emerald sod,

          The shore of a western clime have trod;

          Still, they cherish dreams of their place of birth,

          Of the shamrock leaf and the verdant earth.

          And a few from the vine-clothed hills of France,

          Where the sun is warm in his noontide glance;

          A few have come from the mountain’s brow,

          Some have sighed for the orange bough;

          A few from the fields of growing rice,

          And the luscious fruits of the groves of spice.

          Some are called in from the ocean gales,

          They have cast their anchor and furled their sails;

          And changed the dash of the foaming spray

          For the calm, broad waters of Burlington Bay.

          Thus are we gathered a stranger band

          From the homes of many a distant land;

          Oh! would that at last, when from every coast,

          Man shall come forth like a thronging host,   

          That we who have dwelt as a foreign throng

          May together hear the seraphim’s song;

          In a land where the stranger’s sadness is o’er,

          And the dwellers in glory go out no more.

          -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   THE OLD STEAMER MAGNET

          How few of the present generation have even heard of the good old steamer Magnet, one of the first iron-built steamboats to sail in American waters. The Magnet and the Passport were built about the same time, both iron-plated, and were built by Canadian companies to ply on Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence to Montreal. The Magnet was owned principally by Hamilton capitalists, and officered by Hamilton men – Captain Sutherland, who was killed in the Desjardins canal accident fifty-nine years ago; Captain Fairgrieve, who was the purser, and F. W. Fearman, who had charge of the quartermaster’s stores. The name of the Magnet was afterward changed to Hamilton, and after many mishaps, in one of which she found a watery grave and was raised to the surface again, she was sold and transferred to some other route. Miss Wilkins was a summer passenger on the old Magnet, and on her trip, wrote the following verses, which she delivered to the commander, Captain Sutherand:

          Away we haste like a flitting bird,

No sounds of cable or chains are heard,

But rapid and still as spirit’s flight

We are passing over the waters bright;

A few year’s ago and the Indian’s bark

Shot like a deer o’er the waters dark,

Where now, through splashing and silvery spray,

The iron magnet is plowing her way.

Hamilton’s far-bound and queenly boat,

May success be yours when your banners float;

You are born to bear, ah! who? – what forms

Shall tread on your decks ‘midst smiles and storms?

The known – the stranger – the mean – the brave,

All may comingle – all, but the slave –

All but the fettered; they cannot breathe

Where Britannia’s banner its folds unwreathe.

To thee, kind commander, thanks we pour,

For the peaceful joy of this festive hour;

For the glorious rush of dividing waves;

For the thrilling bound over hidden caves.

May your Magnet attract Concordia’s smile,

As you traverse many a dreary mile;

Attract the sun in his smiling dance,

Attract the moon in her nightly glance;

Attract the light of the gold-bearing cars,

So, through tedious watching, be watched by stars.

When time hath marred this beautiful bark,

And the light of her glory is dim and dark;

Where shall we be who have trod her deck?

When Burlington’s pride is a lonely wreck?

We would not be cast on a desolate shore,

Like a broken toy to be gilt no more;

But drawn by a Magnet, whose power is blest,

To the harbor of peace, and haven of rest.