Dr. Catharine Wilson, F.R.C.S., Professor Emeritus

Education

B.A. (Guelph), M.A (Queen’s), Ph.D. (Queen’s)

Current Research

My interest in rural history (Ontario in particular) began when I participated in the Huron County Oral History project. It then shifted to immigration and settlement, and then family strategies for maintaining a life on the land in the 19th and 20th centuries. I have published on farm tenancy, rural masculinity, and on cooperative work (barn raising, quilting bees, threshing bees, etc.). My research seeks to understand everyday life in the past and the creation, maintenance and definition of neighbourhood, its practical workings and imagined states. I was the inaugural Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professor in Rural History 1914-2024, and coordinated the Rural History Roundtable speaker series for several years. I am currently the founder and director of the Rural Diary Archive website.

For more information about my publications and research  see

https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/history/people/catharine-wilson

Rural Diary Archive

Research 

Cramahe Township Data, Northumberland County, Ontario
The database below was used for my book, Tenants in Time: Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799-1871 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009), and was funded by a Social Science and Humanities Standard Research Grant. The database identifies owners and tenants on the 1842 census of Cramahe Township and traces these individuals backwards and forwards over time.

Introduction to Cramahe Township Data (revised)