Theresa Gowanlock
JOHNSON, THERESA MARY (Gowanlock), pioneer and author; b. probably 29 July 1863 in Tintern (Lincoln), Upper Canada, daughter of Henry Johnson and Martha A. Upper; m. 1 Oct. 1884 John Alexander Gowanlock in Tintern; d. there 12 Sept. 1899.
Theresa
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JOHNSON, THERESA MARY (Gowanlock), pioneer and author; b. probably 29 July 1863 in Tintern (Lincoln), Upper Canada, daughter of Henry Johnson and Martha A. Upper; m. 1 Oct. 1884 John Alexander Gowanlock in Tintern; d. there 12 Sept. 1899.
Theresa Mary Johnson left the quiet security of her Loyalist family’s home on the Niagara peninsula for the North-West Territories following her marriage in 1884 to 24-year-old John Alexander Gowanlock, who had secured a government contract to build a combined saw- and grist-mill at Frog Lake (Alta). The new Mrs Gowanlock enjoyed the journey west and showed an intelligent interest in the people of the NWT. After a six-week stopover in Battleford (Sask.), where John Gowanlock had been managing a store earlier that year, the couple continued on to Frog Lake, arriving on 12 December. The community at Frog Lake consisted of a Wood Cree Indian reserve (Unipouheos Indian Reserve, Alta), and a small white settlement that included a Hudson’s Bay Company post, the Roman Catholic mission of Father Léon-Adélard Fafard*, and an Indian sub-agency. The three bands of Wood Crees on the reserve had been joined by the Plains Cree band of Big Bear [Mistahimaskwa*] for the winter of 1884–85.
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