AUTHORESS OF "FRASER'S DRINKING SONG."
MRS. GEORGINA FRASER NEWHALL
"The Frasers of Stratherrick, where are they?" To this pensive question by Charles Fraser Mackintosh comes an oft echoed and lusty answer from many distant lands. Indeed the question is, "Where are they not?" for it is safe to say that there is no country where the English language to-day prevails, in which Stratherrick may not claim a son. Their new homes have not the historical charm of the old, but wherever the Frasers have gone, away from the home of their fathers, they have acquitted themselves well. A scion of a Stratherrick house was James George Fraser, who many years ago settled at Galt, Ontario. Like his brother Capt. Charles Fraser, now residing in Glasgow, Scotland, he was attached to a Highland regiment in his younger days, but withdrawing from the service, he came to Canada with his young wife, Christina MacLeod. At Galt was born a family of three sons, William, Charles and Andrew, and four daughters, Christina, Jessie, Elizabeth and Georgina, the youngest of whom is the subject of this brief sketch. On the maternal side her descent is traced from the families of Lochend and Braemore. Her great-grand parents were George Mackenzie, second son of John Mackenzie I. of Lochend (of the Gairloch family), and Christina, daughter of Captain Hector Munro of Braemore. George Mackenzie was a distinguished officer, and attained to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel of the famous Rosshire Buffs, the 78th Highlanders. His daughter Christina married Angus MacLeod of Banff with issue, two sons, Donald and George, and several daughters, of whom Christina, as already stated, married James G. Fraser of Galt, Ontario.
Georgina Fraser was born about the beginning of the sixties, and was educated in the public and high schools of her native town. After the death of her parents she removed to Toronto, and taking up the study of shorthand entered upon the life of an amanuensis and teacher of stenography. She taught large classes in the towns surrounding Toronto, and in Victoria University, when that institution was located at Cobourg. She was the first woman in Canada to adopt this profession as a means of self-support, and to her belongs the honor of adding a new vocation to those upon which Canadian women may enter. In addition to these duties Miss Fraser undertook journalistic work, and was the first lady writer in Toronto to conduct the department devoted to woman's interests, now so important a weekly feature in the great dailies in Canada.
In 1884, while occupying the important position of Assistant Secretary to General Manager Oakes of the Northern Pacific Railway at St. Paul, Minn., she became the wife of Mr. E. P. Newhall, of the Pacific Express Co. in Omaha.
Notwithstanding household cares and ill-health Mrs. Newhall still finds time to indulge in her old taste for literature, wielding an earnest pen in advocacy of those reforms which most interest women of advanced thought. She has achieved considerable fame as a writer of short stories, and her compositions of verse bear the mark of the true poet's touch.
As a clanswoman Mrs. Newhall is fond of claiming the right to call herself a "black" Fraser, nature having endowed her with that darkness of hair and eyebrow which is supposed to stamp all the possessors thereof as "true Frasers."