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Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family’s black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte’s lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi’kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel. Excerpt from from The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor: “Every summer of my youth, we would travel from the family cottage at Youghall Beach to visit my mother’s extended clan in Tabusintac near the Miramichi River. And at every gathering, just as much as there would be chickens to chase and newly cut hay to leap in, so there would be an ample serving of stories about Charlotte Taylor. . . She was a woman with a “past.” The potboilers about her ran like serials from summer to summer, at weddings and funerals and whenever the clan came together. She wasn’t exactly presented as a gentlewoman, although it was said that she came from an aristocratic family in England. Nor was there much that seemed genteel about the person they always referred to as “old Charlotte.” Words like “lover” and “land grabber” drifted down from the supper table to where we kids sat on the floor. There were whoops of laughter at her indiscretions, followed by sideways glances at us. But for all the stories passed around, it was clear the family still had a powerful respect for a woman long dead. We owed our very existence to her, and the anecdotes the older generation told suggested that their own fortitude and guile were family traits passed down from the ancestral matriarch. For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to imagine the real life Charlotte Taylor lived and, more, how she ever survived.”… (more)
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There a few weaknesses - the sections that Armstrong invented are admittedly the weakest (Jamaica in particular) - too colourful and melodramatic to be taken seriously. She also can't help but infuse a modernist look at the over-development of land and displacement of Native Americans. I'm not sure a settler would have these concerns given the magnitude of the land and the incredibly harsh conditions for survival.
Overall an entertaining and instructive read.
Overall, a wonderfully written story about the first female settler on the Mirimichi and a great read for anyone with an interest in 18th century Canadian Maritimes history.
It is published as fiction, but it is, as they say, based on a true story. The Miramichi is in northern New Brunswick, still a generally wildish type area, based on my own prejudices and stereotypes. Armstrong writes a fascinating story, showing the reader what life was like for the early settlers in Canada. Not easy to be a woman, but Charlotte was the type of woman who thrived in a pioneer setting. She was able to make decisions that helped her (the men to marry) and then pick up herself was bad things happened (she buried several husbands.) Through it all, she was determined to own her land and defend her family. She maintained friendships with the Mi'kmaq, and Armstrong shows the poor treatment the natives received.
For those interested in historical fiction- a Canadian view of the deportation of the Acadians, the settlement by the English and the Loyalists from the States (the American Revolution crept into Canada since the British were still ruling here), the treatment of the Mi'kmaq, this is a great book. Besides this broad view, the specific life of Charlotte Taylor was remarkable, as one woman living in the wilds of New Brunswick maintained her family and built a legacy.
This is a historical fiction account of one of the early settlers of the Miramichi area of New Brunswick in Canada. In 1775 Charlotte Taylor leaves her comfortable home in Sussex with her black lover and sails for the West Indies. Upon arrival in Jamaica, after 8
Over the years she marries and is widowed with John Blake, William Wishart and Philip Hierlihy and has 9 more children. She accumulates many lots of ocean front land along the Miramichi River and as a widow she has to fight to retain them in her name and for her children. Onslaughts of of patriot settlers from the American colonies and then Loyalists threaten the security and safety of her holdings . Eventually, the region becomes part of New Brunswick, before it joins the Canadian confederation in 1867. She died on April 25, 1841.
This book is a tribute to a pioneer who faced insurmountable odds on her own and survived because of her determination, intelligence, courage, foresight, hard work, collaboration and love her children and the territory she adopted. She is someone we would all have liked to have known and admired for her fierce spirit, independence and kindness.
I couldn’t put this book down and highly recommend it.