The Tweedsmuir Women's Institute Histories

 
A list of histories on microfilm at the University of Guelph was prepared by Jon Studiman in the summer of 2003. He identified (with a rating of 4 or 5 in the “assessment” column) those with the best or most numerous histories of individual farms. For the farm histories, see also the questionnaire sent out by the WI to help in their preparation.

These became the basis for student research projects in the research seminar in Rural History, History 4620. Nine of their essays from the course have been deposited in the University of Guelph archives. In addition, the class summarized its experience working with such farm histories and their potential for rural historians.

There is much else in a Tweedsmuir History, including minutes of the branch or district, accounts of community institutions and activities, etc. As well as the microfilm listed here, the University of Guelph archives has 67 boxes of minutes and other records of Women’s Institutes in York, Lincoln, Wentworth, and Wellington Counties, from 1902 to 1993, transferred in 1999 from the Farm Museum in Milton (XR1 ms A722; see finding aid) and 49 boxes of material that supported Linda Ambrose’s history of the FWIO (XR1 MS A709).

Context on the Tweedsmuir Histories and the WI in Ontario can be found in:
Linda Ambrose, For Home and Country: The Centennial History of the Women’s Institutes in Ontario [HQ1909 O6 A42]
Monda Halpern, And on That Farm He Had a Wife: Ontario Farm Women and Feminism, 1900-1970 [HQ1459 O57 H34]
Margaret C. Kechnie, Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919 (2003) [HQ1909 O5 K33 2003.