William Henry Drummond Family Fonds : P103. Complete Inventory List

The fonds consists of personal correspondence, including substantial family correspondence, diaries, journals, engagement books, ledgers, menus, manuscript poems, galley proofs, lecture notes, scrapbooks, and photographs relating to William Drummond (1854-1907) and his family. William Henry Drummond, dialect poet and physician, was born in Ireland in 1854. His family moved to Montreal in 1864. Drummond attended the High School of Montreal, but left at age fifteen to study telegraphy. His work as a telegrapher brought him in contact with the habitant farmers and woodsmen, whose broken English he emulated in his poetry, especially in his 1897 book of poems, The Habitant, and Other French Canadian Poems. Drummond entered McGill in 1878 to study medicine but failed his second year. He received his M.D. from Bishop’s Medical School in 1884. After a short period practicing in Knowlton, Drummond set up practice in Montreal. At this time, he became interested in the breeding of Irish Terriers. In 1894, he married May Isabel Harvey of Savanna la Mar, Jamaica. His book, The Habitant, was published in 1897 with an introduction by Louis Frechette. Drummond died from a stroke in 1907 while assisting in a small pox outbreak in Cobalt, Ontario, where he owned mining property.

Montreal

McGill University, Osler Library Archive Collections

[n.d]

xi-255-[2] p.

en