Sarah Jane McConnell

1860s

Born 14 August 1867 in South Monaghan Township, Peterborough County, Ontario.

1870s

About 1873 her family left Ontario for the Chilliwack Valley — the train across the United States to San Francisco, then north by boat.

1880s–1890s

Married Edgar Allen Kipp on 21 October 1891. She made butter on the farm, kept a comfortable house — a red-carpeted front parlor with plush furniture — and won prizes for her patchwork and log-cabin quilts at the Chilliwack fair.

1900s–1920s

Ran the Kipp farm household at Chilliwack and then Cheam, with help from a cook named Gai Foon; hosted her daughter Helen's wedding at home in 1922 and Christmas visits from her daughter Gladys's family from Ferndale, Washington.

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 Monaghan Township, Peterborough County, Ontario. About 1873 her family made the long journey west to British Columbia — the train across the United States to San Francisco, then a series of boats up the coast to Victoria, New Westminster, and finally Chilliwack, where they settled in the farming valley that would be Sarah's home for the rest of her life.

A Farm Wife's Life

Sarah married Edgar Allen Kipp at her father's house on October 21, 1891; the local Presbyterian choir presented the couple with a clock as a wedding gift. She kept the household running on the Kipp farm for over forty years — making butter from the family's cows, working it with wooden paddles and molds that her children kept as heirlooms long after her death — and became known locally for her cooking and her hospitality: a boarder in the household, Dorothy Lee, later described her as “a stout, good-natured woman of Irish descent who spent all Saturday cooking stacks of pies, cakes, bread and other goodies” for a “rollicking family” that raided the pantry after Saturday sing-alongs, with one firm house rule for the frequent parties: “no destruction.” She won prizes for her needlework at the Chilliwack fair — a cotton patchwork quilt and an embroidered child's dress among them — and the documents record a near-constant stream of visitors, teas, picnics, and parties at the Kipp home across three decades, many connected to her lodge and church work.

Community and Lodge Life

Sarah was a charter member of the Presbyterian church at Centreville and, at her death, its last surviving founding member. She was equally active in the Rebekah Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, serving in a long succession of offices from Chaplain (1891) to Noble Grand (1912) to District Deputy President of the Rebekah Assembly (1915). During the First World War she served on the ladies' committee of the Chilliwack Liberal party, was elected second vice-president of the Chilliwack Women's Liberal Association, and belonged to the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire chapter that raised money for soldiers overseas.

Death and Remembrance

Sarah died at home in Chilliwack on August 26, 1933, leaving no will; her modest estate — savings, some shares, and a Chevrolet — passed to Edgar. Her obituary praised a life spent on “movements which were for the betterment of her community,” carried out “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 her, from a child's perspective, as someone who “wasn't very sociable” and 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.