Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

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====== Tracey, Sara Ann ====== 
 (22 June 1850-24 Dec. 1948), dressmaker. Born at Riceville, Ont. Parents as stated in her obituaries: Dr John Tracey of Westminster, Eng., and his wife Ann Powell of Coventry, Eng. At the age of 9 Sara Ann Tracey went to Connecticut or by another account Coventry, N. Y. (perhaps Coventry, Conn., is meant). She was educated in the United States, and returned to Riceville at the age of 21 to care for her parents. Miss Tracey, who never married, lived for many years in Maxville, where she did dressmaking and skilled needlework, and lived to be 98. Her last six years in Maxville were spent at the home of Mrs J. J. Urquhart, who was the daughter of Alexander Campbell, the centenarian. Miss Tracey made clothing and quilts for the Red Cross in World War II. When she was given a Red Cross medal in 1946, it was reported that she “has pieced several quilts for the Red Cross and has recently finished one containing 1,225 pieces.” (//Standard Freeholder// 21 March 1946) She sent needlework to Princess Elizabeth’s wedding in 1947. Baptist. Burial was at Riceville. The fact that her pallbearers included Osie and Bennie Villeneuve and W.A. McEwan can be seen as evidence that although she was, presumably, closer to being poor than to being rich, she was of social distinction in Maxville; but perhaps, as has been suggested by a close observer of the Maxville scene, most importantly it indicated that she was an old lady valued by younger friends, including Alma Villeneuve.

<tab>Her father, given the title Dr in the daughter’s Cornwall and Alexandria obituaries of 1948, was probably the John Tracey, a Baptist, born in England, who appears as a shoemaker in the 1871 census. Perhaps the Dr title was simply someone’s error, but another explanation may be suggested, a little fanciful perhaps, but fitting a fair number of the facts. The //Dictionary of Canadian Biography//, Vol. VI, includes the life of a Dr Daniel Tracey (d. 1832 in Montreal), who was born in Ireland, and in Canada was an Irish nationalist, a Patriote and one of the radical physicians of the years leading up to the 1837 Rebellion. He himself died too soon to be involved on the rebel side in the actual fighting of the Rebellion. However, Dr Daniel Tracey had a brother John, who in 1837 left Canada to live at Albany, N. Y. If we imagine John getting some experience of medicine by way of his brother’s practice, it would not have been out of keeping with 19th-century rules for him to practise a little medicine on the side in connection with another occupation, such as shoemaking, and being known accordingly by the title of Dr.


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<fs small>//Standard Freeholder// 30 Dec. 1948 & //Glengarry News// 31 Dec. 1948 * notice of her 97th & 98th birthdays, //SFH// 26 June 1947, 28 June 1948 * John Tracey: Elliott 303; gravestone of him and his wife, Riceville Cemetery * //The Ontario Register//, Vol. I (1968) ed. Thomas B. Wilson, p. 121: Riceville cemetery inscriptions
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