FALCONER, ISABELLA HENDERSON (1870-1920)

FALCONER, ISABELLA HENDERSON, kindergarten teacher; b. Newcastle, 18 Aug 1870; d/o William Falconer and Margaret Johnston; unmarried; d. 20 Sep 1920.

Isabella H. Falconer's parents both died in 1879, when they were in their forties, leaving ten children between two and twenty years of age. Several of the children died young, and a number of those who lived to adulthood did not marry.

Falconer, who graduated from the Provincial Normal School in 1890, enjoyed a successful period of service as a teacher in the public schools and then opened one of the Miramichi's first kindergartens in her home in Newcastle. She was also a Sunday school teacher at St James Presbyterian Church. She was fifty years of age at the time of her death.

Falconer's older sister Katherine E. Falconer also became a teacher. She taught in Newcastle but left the profession in 1885 to accept a civil service position in the Post Office Department in Ottawa. Five years later this "very intelligent lady" died in Ottawa, at age twenty-nine.