Sarah Jane McConnell

1860s

Born 14 August 1867 in South Monaghan Township, Peterborough County, Ontario, and baptized that November.

1870s

In 1873, at about six, she crossed the continent with her family to the Chilliwack Valley: by train to San Francisco, then north by boat. Their first night in Chilliwack was spent in the home of Isaac Kipp, her future father-in-law.

1880s

Grew up on her father's farm at Cheam. In 1889 she became a charter member of the new Presbyterian church at Centreville.

1890s

Married Edgar Allen Kipp at seven in the morning on 21 October 1891, at her father's house. The same year she became the first chaplain of Chilliwack's new Rebekah lodge. She made butter, raised a large family, and won fair prizes for her patchwork and log-cabin quilts.

1900s

Ran a lively household on the old Kipp homestead, with a red-carpeted parlor, a cook named Gai Foon, and a steady stream of guests, dances, and parties. She won a first prize at the fair for an embroidered child's dress.

1910s

Rose to Noble Grand of her lodge in 1912 and district deputy president in 1915. During the First World War she took fruit to soldiers, joined the Liberal women's committee, and helped plan the banquet that welcomed the troops home.

1920s

Traveled north toward the Yukon in 1920. Hosted her daughter Dorothy's wedding to Arthur Menzies at home in 1922 and had her daughter Gladys's family down from Ferndale, Washington, for Christmas in 1923.

1930s

Died at home in Chilliwack on 26 August 1933, the same calendar day her husband would die fifteen years later.

From Ontario to the Chilliwack Valley

Sarah Jane McConnell was born on August 14, 1867, in South Monaghan Township, Peterborough County, Ontario, the daughter of Irish immigrants James McConnell and Anne Jane Todd, and was baptized there that November. When she was about six, in 1873, the family made the long journey west to British Columbia: by train across the United States to San Francisco, then by a series of boats up the coast to Victoria, New Westminster, and finally Chilliwack. Their first night in the valley was spent in the home of pioneer Isaac Kipp, whose son would one day be her husband.

She grew up on her father's farm at Cheam, east of Mount Shannon, in a log cabin that later gave way to a large farmhouse. The family was Methodist, but in 1889 Sarah became a charter member of the new Presbyterian church at Centreville, and when she died she was the last surviving charter member of Cooke's Church.

A Seven O'Clock Wedding

Sarah married Edgar Allen Kipp at seven in the morning on October 21, 1891, at her father's house, with the Reverend Walter Ross officiating. The guests threw rice, and the couple left on the CPR for Vancouver. When they got back, members of the Presbyterian church and choir came to their new home on Westminster Street, one of the finest houses in town, to present them with a clock. Over the following years she and Ed raised a lively family that included Gladys, Frankie, Alex, Helen Dorothy ("Dord"), Mabel, and Kathleen, known as Babe.

The Kipp Household

For more than forty years Sarah ran the Kipp household, first in town, briefly at Cheam, for about a decade on the old Kipp homestead, and then back in town on Young Road. She made butter from the family's cows and fed the leftover skim milk to the pigs. She squeezed the water out of the butter with wooden paddles, pressed it into squares with her molds, and packed it into wooden boxes. Her children kept those tools as heirlooms long after her death. In 1901 the front parlor had a red floral carpet, red plush furniture, a big globe lamp on the center table, velvet- and leather-covered photo albums, and a stereopticon. A cook named Gai Foon helped in the kitchen, and an old pioneer, J. J. Sperry, lived with the family and took his lunch out in the chicken coop.

Dorothy Lee, who worked for Ed, boarded with the family, and became a friend of their daughter Gladys, remembered Sarah as "a stout, good-natured woman of Irish descent who spent all Saturday cooking stacks of pies, cakes, bread and other goodies." After the Saturday-night sing-song, the "rollicking family," friends and all, raided the cool, roomy pantry under the house, and everyone took turns at the tub-shaped wooden churn. Others called her "a gracious hostess" who "enlivened all with her Irish wit," and her one rule for the many parties at her house was simple: "no destruction." She was a skilled needlewoman as well, winning first prize for a cotton patchwork quilt and a prize for a log-cabin quilt at the 1896 Chilliwack fair, and first prize for an embroidered child's dress in 1901. On her kitchen table a cut-glass creamer and sugar bowl always sat side by side.

Parties, Picnics, and Races

The Kipp home was seldom quiet. Sarah and Ed held dances there, and in February 1901 they threw a farewell party for her brother William, who was leaving to join Baden-Powell's police in the Boer War. They hosted picnics on the Vedder River and a farewell reception for their departing minister, and in January 1916 Sarah organized a sleigh ride for the church's young people: fifty of them in the town's two biggest sleighs, out from Five Corners to Rosedale and back to her house for a party with singing and music. She was a good sport, too. At the Merchants' Association picnic in 1912 she came second in the stout ladies' race, and at the Oddfellows' picnic at Cultus Lake the next summer she took second in another footrace, after a lunch of stuffed oysters, pies, and ice cream.

Lodge, Church, and Wartime Work

Sarah was a charter member of Chilliwack's Rebekah lodge, the women's branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and was installed as its first chaplain in 1891. She held a long run of offices after that, becoming Noble Grand in 1912 and district deputy president of the Rebekah Assembly in 1915, and in 1917 she and Ed hosted a party for the whole Assembly when it met in Chilliwack for the first time. At Cooke's Church she belonged to the Ladies' Aid and the Missionary Society, and she also worked for the Community Chest.

During the First World War she took a box of fresh fruit to the "soldier boys" at New Westminster. She joined the Chilliwack Liberals' ladies' committee in 1917 and the next year was elected second vice-president of the Women's Liberal Association, which that day endorsed a new minimum-wage bill. She was also a member of the IODE chapter formed to support the troops overseas, and in 1919 she sat on the purchasing committee for the grand banquet in the drill hall that welcomed the soldiers home.

Later Years and Remembrance

In June 1920, at fifty-two, Sarah sailed from Prince Rupert aboard the Princess Mary, bound for Whitehorse in the Yukon. Records of that trip describe her as five foot three, fair-skinned, with grey hair and blue eyes. Two years later she and Ed hosted their daughter Dorothy's wedding to Arthur Menzies at home, and at Christmas 1923 their daughter Gladys brought her family up from Ferndale, Washington. In 1931 Sarah and Ed returned the visit, spending Christmas in Ferndale.

Sarah died at home in Chilliwack on August 26, 1933, after about three months confined to the house by illness, and was buried in the Odd Fellows cemetery. She left no will. Her modest estate of about $2,578, made up of savings, a town lot, shares in the Chilliwack Meat and Supply Company and the BC Electric Railway, and a Chevrolet, passed to Ed. Her obituary said she had devoted her life to "movements which were for the betterment of her community," much of it done "so quietly and so unostentatiously that her right hand never knew what her left hand was doing." Family memory is more mixed. Her grandson Ray recalled, from a child's point of view, a grandmother who "wasn't very sociable and didn't have much patience" and who cared about social standing, a reminder that the cheerful hostess of the newspapers and the grandmother remembered at home were not always quite the same person.