My grandmother, Mrs. George S. Brien, formerly B. Irene Simpson, was a charter member and first president of the Rural Ridgetown Women's Institute. Among its activities, the Institute encouraged its members to collect and document local history.
Among my grandmother's possessions was a binder, consisting mostly of type written pages that appeared to be copies of some of the histories developed by members of the RRWI or copied from other sources. The following transcriptions were produced from those pages and are, for the most part, unedited. The articles generally relate to landmarks, schools, churches and families in and around Ridgetown.
Index
Download consolidated ASCII text file [96Kb].
The RRWI no longer exists. An article, reprinted in the Ridgetown Dominion on November 27, 1985 under the banner "1975" read
The white candle burned slowly - lower and lower - a brief interval of brightness follows and then the light is out. The organization known as the Rural Ridgetown Women's Institute, after 38 years of service to the community, closed its books and the end of an era became a reality. Rural Ridgetown W.I. came into being March 3, 1937 at the home of Mrs. Fred Brien, Erie Street South.
E.D. (Tedd) Brien, Ottawa, Last revised 2004/11/01