Edith Jessie Archibald (1854 - 1936)

Edith Archibald was a part of the Suffragette Movement.

Edith Archibald was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1854. Her parents were Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald and Catherine Elizabeth Richardson Edith received some of her early education in London and New York, where her father was British Consul General. ^[1]

Edith^[2] married her second cousin Charles Archibald in 1874, a mining engineer he became vice-president of the Bank of Nova Scotia. They had four children. Edith spent a lot of her time on social causes like the movement to establish a children's hospital in Halifax, the Nova Scotia Red Cross, and the Halifax Victorian Order of Nurses. For her numerous activities, she was dubbed Lady of Grace by George V, and received a recommendation by the Order of Jerusalem for her war work.

Edith kept herself occupied by leading saloon raids with the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), It was when Charles and Edith moved to^[3]. Halifax that Edith's activism flourished she nearly accomplished her goal of acquiring the vote for Nova Scotia's women within the first year of her arrival in the city, her efforts finally succeeding in 1918. Edith was a leader in the National Council of Women of Canada and the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON). She was president of the Local Council of Women of Halifax from 1896 to 1906 and president of the Halifax VON from 1897 to 1901

In later ^[4]life she wrote poetry, short stories and articles and was the author two books. Her first, published in 1924, was a biography of her father titled Life and Letters of Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald, K.C.M.G., C.B.. The second, The Token, was a novel published in 1930.^[5] Edith died in 1936, in 1997, she was designated a^[6] Person of National Historical Significance by the Government of Canada because of her work with women's rights. ^[7] She was also named A Women of the Century. ^[8]