CAROLINE MARY O'TOOLE (HARVEY)

Born: November 27, 2002 (personal correspondence)
Died: October 4, 2002 (personal remembrance)

My grandmother, Caroline (or Nan, as she was to me), was one of the most important sources of information for this family tree project. The following biographical information is a combination of my eprsonal recolections, information given me by her personally in 1997, and also derived from a video of her 80th birthday, in 1990.

Caroline was born November 27, 1910, eldest daughter of Edward O'Toole and Mary Murphy. She was baptised at St. Patrick's Catholic church in St.John's, Newfoundland, and grew up in Jersey Cottage on Waterford Bridge Road. The house was rented from the Stanley family, until Caroline's father finished building the house on Southside the family eventually moved to. Her mother died when Caroline was only 16, before the house was completed, and Caroline essentially took over the responibility of raising her younger sisters, Jean, Margaret and Clair.

Caroline graduated From Littledale College in 1927, with a full commercial & intermediate diploma. She woked for the Singer Company for the next 5 years, from 1927-1932. Living on Southside, it was probably impossible not to encounter the Harvey family, who has lived in the area since emmigrating from Devon, England in the mid 1800's. She met her husband to be, my grandfather, Robert (Bob) Harvey while babysitting for his older brother, James. As it happens, it all came about because initially she had a crush on James - just goes to show what a funny thing fate is!

Robert & Caroline were married at St. Mary the Virgin Anglican church, Southside, on Feb.10, 1934. Lifelong friends Fred & Mary Tucker were their best man and bride's maid. They lived in several locations over the years - Scott Street, Hamilton Avenue, and Southside Road, before eventually buying the house on Stamp's Lane, where they lived until my grandfather died in 1980. Over those years, Caroline successfully raised 9 children, and suffered the loss of one, John, at the age of 8 from TB/Menningitis. And just when all the children were safely out the door, she managed to find the time to help raise me too, for three or four years while my mother worked weekdays.

My grandmother always, I think, lived a life of responsibility and determination. Till the day she died she was a proud, self sufficient woman. She continued to worry and look after her cildren even long after they became parents themselves. In fact, I don't think there's a single one of us grandchildren that she didn't think about regularly, and worry about as if we were one of her own! After my my grandfather died, my parents bought the house on Stamp's Lane and my grandmother moved to a small apartment complex for seniors. But never a week went by, even at the ripe old age of 92, that she wouldn't go out to the mall shopping with my mother, or go out to church or run errands or go bery picking with one of my aunts & uncles. When some of them moved to various parts of Canada, it never stopper her from flying up to see them occassionally. While we lived on Stamp's Lane, she continued to offer guidance and help to me in tending the garden - one of her favourite hobbies, and one she inherited from her mother, she told me. I inherited it from her. And although Nan was grey for as long as I can remember, my own daughter, without a doubt, has inherited her great-grandmother's red hair!