L.M. Montgomery
Original name: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Birth: Nov. 30, 1874
Death: Apr. 24, 1942
Author. Born the only daughter of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner McNeill at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada, she was known to her family as Maud. After the early death of her mother, she was sent to live with her maternal grandparents Alexander and Lucy McNeill who maintained the Post Office for the town of Cavendish on Prince Edward Island. She attended the Cavendish Schoolhouse and proved an exemplary student. Her earliest writing included hymns, poems, and sketches of her imaginary friends and her pets. Her fist publication came when she was 15, the Saskatchewan newspaper the Patriot, printed one of her poems. In 1893 she earned a teacher's certificate from Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and started teaching at the Number 6 one-room school in Bideford. She continued to take teaching positions even as she continued to write. She retired from teaching after five years in order to care for her widowed grandmother. Her first, and possibly most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables, was published in 1908. In 1911 she married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald and moved to Ontario where he had been assigned minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, Leaskdale. The couple would have three sons. Montgomery initially resisted the idea of a sequel to Anne of Green Gables but ultimately, between 1909 and 1939, she wrote a series of five more books about the orphan: Anne of Avonlea; Anne of the Island; Anne of Windy Poplars; Anne's House of Dreams; and Anne of Ingleside. In 1923 she became the first Canadian woman to join the Royal Society of Arts in Britain. In 1935 she became a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France and was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died of congestive heart failure in Toronto at the age of 67. Her body lay in state at her girlhood home; the inspiration for Green Gables, which had become part of the Prince Edward Island Provincial Park, established in 1937. In 1943 Canada declared Montgomery a person of national historic significance. Her most famous creation, Anne, has been translated into film about once a decade from 1919 onward. The Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden was established in Halton Hills, Ontario in her honor. (bio by: Iola)
Family links:
Parents:
Clara Woolner MacNeill Montgomery (1853 - 1876)
Spouse: Ewan Macdonald (1870 - 1943)*
Children: Hugh Alexander Macdonald (1914 - 1914)*
*Calculated relationship
Burial: Cavendish Community Cemetery
Cavendish, Queens County, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Sep 17, 1999
Find A Grave Memorial# 6363
