Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Grace Edith Williams was born on August 28, 1919 in Lower West Jeddore, Nova Scotia. She was the fourth of five children born to Edgar ‘Stuart’ Williams (1881-1961) and Ada Hannah Harpell (1888-1977).
Grace attended school in West Jeddore until grade eleven and then proceeded to obtain her grade twelve through correspondence. She married Roy Avard Forsythe on January 24, 1940 and worked at a variety of jobs in Halifax throughout the 1940s. Together Grace and Roy had one son, Michael George. Grace and Roy divorced in 1947 and Grace went back to school, graduating from the Provincial Normal College in 1949 and continuing to further her education by doing extension work through Dalhousie University. Her first teaching position was in Seabright, followed by positions at various other communities along the Eastern Shore including Pleasant Point from1953 to 1954. She taught at Robert Jamieson High School in 1957, was principal at Jeddore-Lakeville in 1961, and later taught at Eastern Shore District High and schools in Dartmouth and Spryfield. During the summers she continued her own studies and graduated from Mount Allison University with her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.
A member of the West Jeddore United Baptist Church, president of the United Baptist Women’s Missionary Society and the Mission Band as well as the first Girl Guide leader in her area in 1953, she was very involved in community and school organizations. She was a member of the Red Cross, also involved in organizing Junior Red Cross Societies in schools and was awarded a Badge of Service for her efforts in 1965 and again in 1987. In addition, she was a Charter member of the Marine Highway Historical Society and the Nova Scotia Genealogy Society, having done much of the initial work for those organizations and holding the positions of secretary treasurer and later president of the Marine Historical Society as well as being a co-editor of their publications together with Helen Jennex.
After retiring in the early1980s, Grace spent several years at the Salmon River House, which was owned by her aunt and uncle, Cora and Sandy Myers. She remained there until she moved to Dartmouth in 1988. Grace then spent time travelling overseas before moving to the Royal Court Retirement Residence (now the Parkland Estates Royal Court) in Riverview, New Brunswick in 2001 to be near her family. She passed away there on September 26, 2014 at the age of ninety-five.
Places
Jeddore (N.S.)
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Teacher
United Baptist Women's Missionary Society
Girl Guides
Red Cross
Marine Highway Historical Society
Nova Scotia Genealogy Society
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
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Control area
Authority record identifier
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Rules and/or conventions used
RAD
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
July 9, 2015
Revised Jan. 9, 2017 by Laureena Leadbeater
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
Sources
• Contents of fonds
• Michael Forsythe correspondence, March 2, 2013
• Province of Nova Scotia (2011). Nova Scotia historical vital statistics
• Grace Edith Forsythe obituary, Ferguson's Funeral Home