The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Area News Mrs. Wm. [William] Hendrie Entertains Aldershot Women, Burlington Gazette Feb. 28, 1963 Members of the Aldershot Historical Society were entertained at tea Thursday afternoon, Feb. 21, by Mrs. Wm. Hendrie at Gateside House in Hamilton. The Society is a group of women interested in preserving the history of Aldershot places and families. The Tweedsmuir History Book, one volume of which is completed, has been the group's project for a number of years. The Hendrie family owned a farm and stables of racing horses on land donated to the Royal Botanical Gardens. The beautiful gates in Hendrie Park came from her family's home. In the time of Mr. Hendrie's father, one of the horses won the Queen's Plate. Mrs. Hendrie still wears a ring fashioned from one of the race's golden prize guineas, given to her by her husband. Mrs. Hendrie was interested in old pictures of her family's property which vividly recalled her past. The first volume was left for her to study more closely. Members of the Historical Society present were: Mrs. Harry Stevenson, Mrs. E. Banks, Mrs. Jack Quigley, Mrs. S. Wickens, Mrs. J. F. Carson, Mrs. Howard Gallagher, Mrs. Leslie Laking, who advised Mrs. Hendrie of the book and Mrs. Henry Klodt, a direct descendant of Mr. David Fonger, the original settler of Aldershot. Miss Edith Olmsted was also interested in these pages of history. Mrs. Wickens brought with her four paintings she had done from old photographs. One was the first school, another the old grocery store and post office located at Waterdown Road and Plains Road East. The third painting depicted ice-cutting on the Bay at Brown's wharf, now La Salle Park and the fourth was a view of the Hendrie house and stable as it was many years ago. Mrs. Hendrie was very pleased when this last painting was presented to her by Mrs. Wickens. [Newspaper Clipping] Story by Norma Bidwell Mrs. William Hendrie, of Gateside House, Aberdeen Avenue, remembers Canada's first prime minister as a "man who loved children". "John A" used to be a guest in her parents' home. "That was before he was knighted and became Sir John A Macdonald. Since that time, Mrs. Hendrie, now 90, has had many of the distinguished of the past half-century as her guests. ON MANTELS and tables, writing desks and shelves at Gateside House, their portraits are arranged. The late Governor General and Mme Vanier, Lady Bessborough, Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. J. Keiller Mackay. All are autographed affectionately to her. Mrs. Hendrie's father, the late Adam Brown, MP and postmaster of Hamilton for more than 30 years, was as keen on Canadian railroad building as was John A. [Macdonald], under whose leadership the Canadian Pacific Railway was built. Her husband the late Col. William Hendrie, who died in 1924, was one of Canada's most noted sportsmen and had an outstanding military career. Until his death he headed the Hamilton Cartage and Transportation firm Hendrie and Company, begun by his father in 1855. RECALLING the years of her marriage at Gateside House, which was built in 1911, Mrs Hendrie says: "It was a huge house… my husband added onto it after World War I and I always said he did it just so he could have a piper come in and pipe all around the table." Children Their three children, William George and Mary, were put in "the loose boxes" as they called the large rooms of the new addition - this being an expression connected with the stables of the race horses her husband and his family owned. William, now retired, lives at 11 Ravenscliffe Avenue. George, president of the Jockey Club, lives in Toronto, and Mary, Lady Cumming, wife of Sir Ronald Cumming, lives in London and Morayshire, Scotland. Mrs Hendrie's father, who had been born in Edinburgh, came to Canada at the age of seven by sailing vessel with his widowed mother, long before the first passenger steamer from Britain plied its way up the St. Lawrence. HER MOTHER, the former Mary Kough, she describes as "a wonderful woman very intellectual." Daughter of a Shrewsbury lawyer, Mrs Hendrie's mother often stressed the value of an education to her young daughter who admits she "hated school I disliked my schoolmistress and her snapping little dog!" Until she was twelve, Elizabeth Anne Brown, known to her family and friends as "Lily", attended a private school for girls run by a Miss Caddy upstairs over the present location of Cloke's bookstore. MRS. BROWN, who had been governess in Germany to the Rothschild children at Franfurt am Main, also tutored her own daughter at home. Later, when Adam Brown was appointed High Commissioner to Jamaica for two years, young Lily Brown studied with a Russian woman tutor in Germany, where she went with her mother. Mrs. Hendrie still recalls her mother's admonition: "You know, dear, there will come a day when you will be sorry you didn't listen to your mother about education." Few women have taken a more widespread interest in community affairs in the city. Honored by the Hamilton Women's Civic Club in 1950 for outstanding citizenship among women, she received the first Nora-Frances Henderson Memorial award. She was honored in 1965 by the Queen at Government House, Ottawa, when she was invested as an Officer Sister of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Also in 1965, Mrs. Hendrie was presented with a bronze medal and certificate from the Ontario Humane Society for her active interest (spanning half a century) in the society. HER INTEREST has been so widespread, it was once written of her that there were few organizations in the city, large or small, but at some time were touched by it. In a recent interview at Gateside House, she looked back to the early years of her marriage and to the days when she first became active in Hamilton's community life. Her marriage, in June, 1901, to Capt. William Hendrie, was termed by the press "a brilliant affair" and "one of the most fashionable gatherings that ever assembled in a sacred edifice in Hamilton". A Bride The Hamilton Spectator and the Hamilton Evening Times together devoted 16 columns of print to a flowery description of the nuptials, the entire list of the invited guests, and a cataloguing of the wedding gifts and their donors. THE SPECTATOR called it "the most complete, satisfactory and generally brilliant wedding affair added to the records of the local four hundred". The account carried by the Hamilton Herald added a word of admonition to local young women on leaving the city to shop elsewhere for their finery. "…the handsome costumes of the bride and her (eight) attendants should be a lesson to those ladies who think they must go to Toronto for fine things. Every article of the bride's trousseau was bought and made in Hamilton, and the same is true of the bridesmaid's costumes, as well as the artistic hairdressing, all of which was done by Hamilton people." While it was true Mrs. Hendrie's lovely gown was stitched by a Hamilton dressmaker, the 12 yard length of white satin moire, brocaded in lilies, had been ordered for her from France as a gift from her future mother-in-law. Her own mother had died at sea when she and her daughter were en route home from Germany several years before. Two of Mrs. Hendrie's granddaughters have worn the gown at their own weddings, although her daughter, Mary, did not. THE ACCOUNT of the wedding of "two of Hamilton's most popular young people" also noted the bride's going-away dress "of lovely yellow Indian silk... with girdle of brown panne velvet and brown picture hat" made "a delightful blending of the Hendrie racing colors". The plain gold wedding band Mrs. Hendrie has not taken off since her young bridegroom slipped it on her finger also has a connection with the Hendrie family's love of the sport of kings. It was fashioned from the golden guinea presented to the groom's father when his horse "Lydite" won the King's Plate for the first time. The Church The church where the wedding took place, under arches of lilacs and chestnut blooms, also has special meaning for the bride. Her great uncle, the late Richard Judson, had given both the land for the Church of the Ascension and its bells. LOOKING back over the morning of her wedding, Mrs. Hendrie recalled that her bouquet did not arrive from London. Although newspaper accounts of the affair noted "the bride carried a great sheaf of Easter lilies", in truth she carried blooms from a nearby garden. "Sweet Maggie, my maid, told me not to worry. She went next door to the McLaren's garden and gathered some lovely iris and she and I arranged them, together." Mrs. Hendrie speaks nostalgically of the small cottage on Caroline Street, above Main Street, the first home she and her husband shared. She recalls the Greening and Southam homes nearby and The Holmstead, at the corner of Bold and MacNab Streets, that was her husband's family home. After Mrs. Hendrie Sr.'s death, the Holmstead, which had been used as a military hospital in 1812, was pulled down. A high-rise apartment now occupies the site. "MY SON wanted it kept as a museum", Mrs. Hendrie said. "My children always had a great deal of sentiment, for which I was glad". Gateside House, itself, is almost a museum with its wealth of lovely antique furnishings. Although most of the furniture was collected by Col. And Mrs Hendrie, themselves, two prized pieces were inherited from his mother. One is a priceless Buhl tortoise shell cabinet, and the other, the handsome round pedestal table used by Mrs. Hendrie Sr to serve tea to King Edward VII when in 1861, as Prince of Wales, he and his retinue were guests in her home. Mrs. Hendrie's father was given the Prince's pearl-handled fruit knives and forks, marked with the three royal feathers. These, she has since given her eldest son, William. GATESIDE House is filled with portraits of Mrs Hendrie's three children, six grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren, as well as many of the distinguished guests who have become her personal friends over the years. Despite her years, Mrs. Hendrie is alertly interested in what all members of her family are doing. She writes long letters to her daughter Mary. She corresponds with great grandchildren in Ghana and Scotland, and chats of this one's progress at Eton and that one's account of life in Africa. Her memories go back to the days of her engagement when she and her husband-to-be visited his father's farm, the Valley Farm, on Plains Road in Burlington marked now by the Hendrie Gates. She adores the races, though she never rode. SHE CHATS of the Boxer rebellion, the Boer War, fishing - after her husband's death - at Connemara in Ireland, when she visited the late Senator and Mrs. George Lynch-Staunton. "We stayed at a lovely estate, owned by one of the directors of the Titanic I remember one day, the first cast I made, getting two fish on my line at once. The gilly (attendant) turned to me and cried 'Oh, my lady! You'll be having a taut line all afternoon!" She remembers accompanying her husband "just after William was born" to the running of the Grand National in England and being invited with him to luncheon at Berkeley with Winston Churchill. "I was shy," she recalled, adding that Churchill paid not the slightest attention to her because she was a mere woman. She talks of her long interest in Girl Guides ("I never wore the uniform - the belt was not becoming to me!); in the St John Ambulance (some of her mother's ancestors had been buried with their legs crossed to show they had been twice to the crusades); in the SPCA (her father founded the Hamilton Branch in 1887). "In those days you had nurses for your children and a cook and a housemaid," she reminisced, explaining how she had so much time to give to community affairs as a mother of three small children. Gateside House has been the scene of many brilliant gatherings over the years. One newspaper account 20 years ago noted "she has opened her home to the public whenever it would add to the prestige of the city." An Example But with all her eminent connections, her association with distinguished personages from many parts of the world, and her long tradition of service, Mrs Hendrie retains much of the shy, unassuming nature that marked her personality at the turn of the century when she was a bride. HER AUGUST appearance is deceiving. She has a genius for friendship, an ability to take time for the little things, to shed tears with the sorrowing and to do the practical thing for the needy. She would sooner chat about her great-grandchildren than about her own life. "You feel you must set them an example," she sums it all up.