Proud, proud lass with head held high
Dominic Vautier
12-2017
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Catherine Fisher was born April 16, 1855 in Kincardine, Ontario, Canada and spent an enjoyable childhood with four sisters and two brothers. She was the daughter of John Fisher and Margaret Wynne Fisher, prominent and respected farmers in the area. Margaret Wynne claimed royal lineage from Welch ancestors.
Kate became a young woman with positive convictions and the strength to accomplish them, a distinguishing feature of the fisher family. She was just 17 when she married James Alexander on June 17, 1872, and within a year Margaret was born. Then there followed three more girls, Ellena (Nellie), Katherine and Mary, in the eight years before James decided to sell most of his acreage and try the states for a change of livelihood.
Certainly Kate must have suffered qualms of insecurity being left with their small children but there were loving relatives who helped her over the next months of separation from James, and there was the fisher tenacity. It was John fisher her father who supported her most of all. Even though the children remembered stories about him, little was known about their grandmother Margaret, but certainly any traces of meekness or gentleness could be attributed to her.
When Kate received word that James was settled and ready to house the family, she dressed the four little girls in their best clothes and off they went. Margaret was nine, Ellena was six, Catherine four and Mary just two. The new home was built on posts to keep the waters of the Tahquamenon River from running in the door. The furniture was hand made and unpainted. The family arrived on July 1, 1881. Later that year the Tahquamenon River was dynamited to drain the river banks for lumbering operations, and the draining formed the Tahquamenon Falls all the men working on the project came through the sage station, together with supplies, horses, and boats.
There was no school near sage station so Kate arranged for a tutor, a bookkeeper at the lumber company to teach them for hours a day. The children held Sunday school lead by Margaret. On October 28, 1884 Kate gave birth to a handsome son named Walter for a brother she had lost.
Later James moved to Au Train with the family. The family grew up and gradually the kids got married and moved.
Kate and James grew further apart. Kate moved to Munising and purchased a small house on
Jewel Street. After James died she
remarried James Mutch, even though she was 16 years his senior. They moved to Sherwood North Dakota but soon moved back to
Princeton
Michigan, near Katie Rohrborn. Kate
died April 1, 1934.
This biography was based on the work of Margaret Brendt Smith see more here
Allegra Catherine O'Rouark went to Munising in 1912 to visit her grandmother. Allegra was my mother. She is pictured at right.