Dr. Catharine Wilson | College of Arts

Dr. Catharine Wilson

Catharine Wilson

Education

B.A. (Guelph), M.A (Queen’s), Ph.D. (Queen’s)

Current Research

My interest in rural history (Ontario in particular) began when I participated in the Huron County Oral History project, shifted to immigration and settlement, and now focuses on family strategies for maintaining a life on the land in the 19th and 20th centuries. My current SSHRC-funded project explores reciprocal work bees (barn raising, quilting bees, threshing bees, etc.) using Ontario farm diaries. It seeks to understand the creation, maintenance and definition of neighbourhood, its practical workings and imagined states. I hold the Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History, coordinate the Rural History Roundtable speaker series, and am the Director of the Rural Diary Archive website.

For more information about my research and areas of supervision see https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/history/people/catharine-wilson

Rural History Roundtable 

Rural Diary Archive 

Research 

Cramahe Township Data, Northumberland County, Ontario
The database below was used for my book, Tenants in Time: Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799-1871 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009), and was funded by a Social Science and Humanities Standard Research Grant. The database identifies owners and tenants on the 1842 census of Cramahe Township and traces these individuals backwards and forwards over time.

Introduction to Cramahe Township Data (revised)