Born 1788(?) in Fredericton, New Brunswick; daughter of Edward Winslow and Mary Symonds Winslow; died 1868 in Ontario.
Hannah Winslow was no stranger to sorrow. Although she grew up in a loving household, she experienced the pain of losing half of her family. Two sisters, Catherine and Christianna, two brothers, Daniel Murray and Thomas, and both her parents had died by 1815.
Following the death of her beloved sister, Christianna, in 1814, Hannah sunk into a dark depression. She tried to “set a good example to my sisters by keeping my sufferings confin’d to myself,” but it is unknown whether she succeeded. When her father, Edward Winslow, died a year later as the result of a stroke, sorrow again consumed her.
In a letter to her brother Edward informing him of their father’s death, she confided her fears about the family’s future. She noted that their younger brother, John Frances Wentworth Winslow, had difficulty finding employment and that she and her sisters had no one left in the world to protect them. She urged Edward not to come back to Fredericton to assume the role of protector, but instead to focus on his own career and life. The Winslow women, she implied, would find a way to provide for themselves.
Only Hannah’s distraught letter of 1815 survives. Little else is known of her life. She never married and, for reasons that remain unknown, she moved to Ontario. Hannah outlived her entire family, dying in 1868 in Ontario at the age of 80.
Jane Ellen Kilburn, "The Winslow Sisters: Seven Colonial Women." (M.A. thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1995).
Maude Maxwell Vesey, "Biography of Edward Winslow." (Unpublished Manuscript, University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections).
For further reading see the bibliography of print and online resources.