The Diary of Winnie Beam - 1900

                                                            Under Construction

Winnie May Beam was born in St. Catharines on January 7, 1889. The pages of her diary held in this website were penned by her in 1900 at the age of 19. Each day she wrote a few brief lines chronicling her life and the life of St. Catharines for this one brief year.

Winnie was the only child of Charles O. Beam (1856-1940), a Protestant of German descent and born in Welland and Emma Price, Episcopalian (1856-1914). Charles and Emma were married in Thorold on November 16, 1880. Winnie’s father was a dentist. His office in 1900 was located on St. Paul. Winnie attended the Collegiate Institute and studied piano with Mr. Read a famous Candian composer.

In 1920 Winnie married Edward Butler (1878-1926) a widower and helped to raise his daughter, Dorothy (1913-1998). Edward Butler was the local manager of the Bell Telephone Company in St. Catharines. His first wife,  xxxx, died tragically in Cleveland, Ohio in 1918.  After their marriage Winnie and her father lived with Edward Butler on 21 Salina Street. By 1922 the family was living in Guelph, where in 1926 Edward Butler passed away. Winnie continued to live in Guelph, along with Dorothy, until her death at the age of 89 in 1970. Charles Beam did not follow his daughter to Guelph and lived out his days in St. Catharines.

The construction of this webpage was part of the course ITAL/IASC 2Q90: Digital Archives: Construction, Scholarship and Functionality . The students enrolled in this course constructed this archive as part of their course work.