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Born: 14 April 1844, Canada
Died: 17 September 1919
Country most active: Canada
Also known as: Adeline Chisholm, Adeline Foster
DAVIS, ADELINE (Chisholm; Foster, Lady Foster), temperance reformer and author; b. 14 April 1844 in Hamilton, Upper Canada, eldest daughter of Milton Davis, a stagecoach proprietor, and Hannah Cook; mr. first 17 Aug. 1864 Daniel Black Chisholm in Hamilton, and they had a son and a child who died in infancy; mr. secondly 2 July 1889 George Eulas Foster* in Chicago; they had no children; d. September 17, 1919 in Ottawa.
As a young woman, Addie Davis studied at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, NY, where she was said to be distinguished for her “diligence, aptitude, and general proficiency.” After graduation, she taught an infants’ class in one of Hamilton’s Methodist Sunday schools, possibly at Centenary Methodist Church. The school superintendent there was D. B. Chisholm, a prominent barrister, whom Addie married in 1864. Although they shared many interests, including temperance and public life – Daniel was a councilor and mayor of Hamilton, and then an mp – their marriage was not a happy one. In September 1883, according to Addie, Daniel deserted her and their young son and left Hamilton, apparently because he had misappropriated clients’ funds. By 1885 Addie Chisholm had moved to Ottawa and seems to have been renting out rooms in her residence at 127 Bank Street. One of her lodgers was George E. Foster, a temperance advocate and a Conservative MP. A relationship between the two soon started.
Publicly throughout the 1880s Addie Chisholm devoted herself to temperance, a cause she had taken up in earnest in Hamilton. She was second president of the Ontario Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, from 1882 to 1888, and publisher and editor of the WCTU periodical, the Woman’s Journal (Ottawa), in 1885. As well, she authored a number of tracts and pamphlets for Ontario WCTU officers and youth-group leaders. A strong-willed and unfailingly hard worker, she was an important mover in organizational committees for provincial conventions, helped set up local unions, and was a noted platform speaker. In 1888 she was the Canadian representative at the meeting of the National WCTU in the United States. In Ontario she supported the female franchise as a key step to obtaining legislated prohibition: “The Lord never promises to do for us what we can do for ourselves, and we have come to the conclusion that this stone of woman’s disability is to be rolled away before prohibition will come to this country.”
Like Letitia Youmans [ Creighton* ], the first president of the Ontario WCTU, Chisholm was devoutly evangelical. She was certain that WCTU efforts would find success if members pledged themselves to the proposition “that our diffidence in speaking at the great truths which lie so near our hearts may be overcome in the strength of Him who will give us the victory.” She apparently saw Youmans, whose presence steeled “less gifted and more timid” members, as her mentor. Following Youmans’s example, Chisholm was a firm proponent of temperance education for juveniles through bands of hope and loyal temperance legions. These were groups of children, from about 7 to 12 years of age, who met after school and on Saturdays. A single mother, Chisholm was an implacable supporter and defender of the Young Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a WCTU subgroup for single women of about 16 and older. Its existence was controversial because many in the Ontario WCTU feared that the youth group would draw members from the main body and thus weaken the common cause. There was also jealousy in the ranks over the range and success of many YWCTU initiatives, including homes for unwed and abandoned mothers, residences for working women, temperance and gospel missions among the poor, and literacy programs for working-class girls and boys.
Under Chisholm’s leadership, the Ontario WCTU continued its campaign to have “Scientific Temperance Instruction” made compulsory in the public schools. Such instruction emphasized the terrifying physical effects of alcohol and tobacco on the unsuspecting user. Chisholm argued, as Youmans had before her, that the course must be supported by a WCTU-approved textbook, properly trained teachers, and final examinations. Partly through the work of Chisholm and such other WCTU leaders as Emma Frances Jane Pratt [ Vail ], the subject was introduced into Ontario schools on an optional basis in 1885, part of the moral thrust being introduced by education minister George William Ross. (The course would become compulsory eight years later.)
In January 1888 Addie Chisholm moved from Ottawa to Chicago, where a brother lived, no doubt to obtain an easy divorce. In the same year she and George Foster became engaged, but securing a divorce in Ontario meant petitioning the Senate, an expensive course that might also have done political harm to Foster, who became minister of finance in May 1888. Proceedings were therefore instituted in the Circuit Court of Cook County in January 1889. As a result, Addie resigned that year from the Ontario WCTU.
On the occasion of her final address to her annual convention, she was treated to an extended and emotional tribute. From this and other statements made about her, additional insight can be gained into her personal qualities. Many referred to her warmth and “Christian gentleness and kindness.” There is also evidence of her assertiveness, for it seems that within the Ontario WCTU her views generally prevailed. In her speech to her delegates, she noted that “even when my plans ran counter to your own you have been ever ready to renounce the one and embrace the other.” There can be no doubt about the strength of her personality. For a single parent to lead an organization committed to the preservation of family must have demanded enormous strength, but to divorce, in 19th-century Canada, required even more fortitude.
Addie’s divorce was granted in June 1889 and Foster quickly joined her in Chicago, where they were married. Repercussions started as soon as they returned to Ottawa. Many questioned the legal validity of the divorce in Canada, and the Fosters were officially shunned. The prime minister’s wife – the iron-mannered Lady Macdonald [ Bernard ] – and Governor General Lord Stanley* both refused to receive Addie Foster. Sir John A. Macdonald* feared personal attacks against his cabinet colleague in the House of Commons, and on the hustings in the election of 1891 hecklers yelled the Chisholm name at him. The Fosters were accepted, however, by Sir John Sparrow David Thompson*, the minister of justice and later prime minister, who reputedly considered the divorce legitimate, and by Lady Thompson [ Affleck ]. In 1893 the ostracism ended when the Fosters were invited to a concert put on by Governor General Lord Aberdeen [ Hamilton-Gordon* ] and Lady Aberdeen [ Marjoribanks* ].
Following her marriage and return to Ottawa, Addie eventually shifted her energies from temperance to more fashionable cultural and humanitarian pursuits. After 1900 she was active with the Women’s Canadian Historical Society, the Ottawa Humane Society, the Women’s Morning Music Club, the Women’s Canadian Club, and the Ottawa branch of the Victorian Order of Nurses. Understandably, a good deal of her time also went into making social contributions to the career of her husband, who was knighted in 1914.
Lady Foster died in 1919 after a two-year battle with breast cancer, discreetly described in an obituary as a “mortal but lingering illness.” Deeply depressed, her husband painfully marked her passing in his diary: “Dull without and darkness within.”
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time, edited by George Maclean Rose, published by Rose Publishing Company in 1888 and republished by Project Gutenberg.
Chisholm, Mrs. Addie, Ottawa, President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Ontario, is a native Canadian, having been born in the city of Hamilton, Ontario. Her early life was spent there, excepting a few years devoted to study in the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, New York, where she was distinguished for diligence, aptitude, and general proficiency. Both before and after her marriage she was known as an enthusiastic worker in every religious and charitable movement, and many benevolent institutions had the advantage of her wise counsel, gentle sympathy and bright encouragement. As an infant class teacher in one of the Methodist Sunday schools of Hamilton, she was remarkably successful in developing on right lines the tender minds that were entrusted to her care, and here she passed through just the training to fit her for the broader sphere of usefulness that was waiting her riper talents and attainments. Sympathizing very deeply with the temperance reformation, she could not but be drawn strongly towards the crusade work which was so successful in the United States some years ago, and when that great uprising of loving, ill-treated womanhood, was crystalized into the effective and permanent form—the Women’s Christian Temperance Union organization, Mrs. Chisholm at once came to the front as one of its enthusiastic supporters, warmest advocates, and most efficient directors. Mrs. Yeomans was the first president of the Ontario Union, and was succeeded by Mrs. Chisholm, several years ago, and has held the position up till to-day, being annually reinstated by the unanimous vote of her appreciative sisters. Her success in this sphere of responsibility must be judged by the facts already so well known in regard to the results attained by this great organization—results that were only possible through the united, prayerful, determined work of many loving hearts and heads, as well as a skilful leadership possessed of the faculty to govern, and guided and blessed by the wisdom and strength without which all labor is in vain. Not merely in the many organizations with which she has been connected, chief among which, of course, is the Union, has Mrs. Chisholm shown her genius and skill. For near four years she has been publisher and editor of the Woman’s Journal, the Canadian organ of the White Ribbon Army. She has also written tracts and pamphlets that have blessed and helped the temperance cause everywhere. She has visited, spoken, organized, and worked with an untiring energy that could only come from deep sympathy and fervent zeal; while every act has been characterized by Christian gentleness and kindness, that won where more openly aggressive methods would be sure to fail. We earnestly hope that our good sister may long be spared to aid with her tongue, her pen, and her brain, the cause that is so near to our heart, and that under the management and direction of such as she, and “the blessing that maketh rich and addeth no sorrow,” the Women’s Christian Temperance Union may continue a mighty power for good, until the end for which it was organized has been fully attained.
Work cited
Sharon Anne Cook, “DAVIS, ADELINE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 10, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davis_adeline_14E.html.