Item 0016 - Letter from Clare, March 1900

Clare Margaret Harrington, born in Montreal, was the third child in the Harrington family after Eric and Edith (who died in 1890). In the years preceding the death of her brother Eric in 1894, although she was only a teenager, she increasingly took on responsibilities for her six younger siblings (Ruth, Conrad, Lois, Constance Eva, Bernard and William) and for managing the household while her mother and sickly Eric spent time in the country and at Saranac Lake in hopes of curing him. From her letters to her mother, it is clear that she is acting as a stand-in for her mother in caring for the little ones. Some of them even called her “Muddie” on occasion. She seems to have been a link between her parents and the children as well as the servants. It was Clare who communicated news of their health and behavior. She carefully followed her mother’s instructions such as making sure that the windows were kept open in the children’s rooms for proper ventilation even though the servants kept closing them. She undertook such responsibilities from hiring new servants and to buying Christmas presents for some of the children on behalf of her uncle, George Dawson. As she got older, she also was continually reporting on news of the health of her grandmother, Lady Dawson, and of Louisa Molson, a friend of the family, who in her old age moved in with the Harringtons, commissioning an addition to be built on their home on University Street. Anna, her mother, worried about her taking on too much, but she seems to have been tireless and capable.