Born in Derby, Derbyshire, England, on 1 March 1830, to Thomas Coggan, a printer and publisher of Derby, and Alicia Ann Tyson, Catherine Elizabeth Alicia Coggan emigrated alone to the United States. She seems to have left England under a cloud and in June of 1848 at the age of 18 came to Boston, Massachusetts, where she had relatives.
By 1854, she was living in Lynn, Mass., and was supporting herself as a seller of millinery and straw goods at No. 5, Common Street.[1] Circa 1850, she became involved with James Stanford, a man much older than herself and a businessman of Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a five-year courtship and the exchange of many letters, the two were married[2] 26 April 1855, at St. Stephen’s Church, Lynn, Massachusetts, by the Rev. J. W. Hallam, Rector.[3] They returned to Halifax together, where they resided until his death in 1872 at the age of 68, an event which proved economically disastrous. Their first child, James Tyson Stanford, was born 15 June 1856. She and her husband were blessed with three more children: George Simmons, born 20 September 1858; Alicia Davenport, 30 August 1860 and Harry Penn, 3 October 1867.
After the death of the elder James, the family fell on hard times, and Catherine was under a great deal of stress attempting to keep her family together and support them. She eventually sent her son George to Australia where young men were needed and where he stayed for seventeen years. Her daughter she sent to live with relatives in Chester, Nova Scotia, and later moved there herself with son Harry. Her pen name was in part taken from this town. It was during this time that she wrote Hearts Versus Diamonds, a romance novel, hoping to generate a little extra income from its sale.
Her son James Tyson Stanford joined the North West Mounted Police (which later became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) in 1875[4] and soon found himself at the newly constructed NWMP post of Ft. Macleod, Alberta, where he served as a commissary sergeant. He was discharged from the NWMP on 21 June 1878[5] at Ft. Macleod and by September of 1878[6] had settled in Ft. Benton, Montana Territory, and shortly afterwards sent for the rest of his family.
Catherine and her children, Alicia and Harry, arrived in Ft. Benton 30 May1879 on the steamer Montana[7] on its second[8] voyage, which was from Pittsburgh – where Catherine and family boarded—to Benton. Although the family tradition has Charles Conrad meeting them at the Benton levee,[9] they arrived while Charles was down river where he had gone to meet the rest of his family[10] and to accompany them back to Benton. The Conrads arrived on 9 June aboard the I. G. Baker & Company steamer Red Cloud.[11] Indeed, Charles Conrad did not yet know either James Stanford or his family.
The Stanfords quickly settled into life in Ft. Benton, and it was not long before the family’s fortunes took a substantial turn for the better. Alicia Davenport Stanford caught the most eligible bachelor in town, the aforementioned Charles Edward Conrad, and they were married by the Rev. C. S. Blackiston on 4 January 1881 at the Stanford home in Benton.[12]
C. E. Conrad was the founder of the town of Kalispell, Montana, and a very successful businessman who, with his brother, George W. Conrad (known as W. G. Conrad from 1870 onward), created a substantial commercial empire. C. E. also built a large home in Kalispell which today is the Conrad Mansion Museum.
Mr. Conrad moved from Ft. Benton to Kalispell in 1891, but Catherine Stanford remained in Benton until the extended family moved into the recently completed new Conrad home in April of 1896 and she lived in the mansion up until her death on 1 September 1904.
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Notes
1. 1854 Lynn City Directory, Burrill to Cotter. Transcribed/submitted by Shaun Cook. http://www.lynnhistory.com/Directories/1854/pg4.html. She was in business for herself and received some financial support and much business advice from her father in England during this period.
2. She was his second wife, his first having died some years earlier and by whom he had several daughters. Catherine was of similar age to her new step-daughters!
3. Stanford family Bible in collection of the Conrad Mansion Museum. The curricula vitae for the family is also recorded therein.
4. NWMP Personnel Records, 1873-1904, RG18, vol. 10037, Reg No. (Old Series) 330A, pg. 9, Official discharge.
5. NWMP Personnel Records, op. cit. His rank at discharge was Acting Constable. “Commissary sergeant,” supra, is a job title and not a rank.
6. Letter from JTS to his mother, 12 September 1878 (on letterhead of Custom House, Helena, Montana, with Helena crossed out and “Ft. Benton” written in): “I have had no steady employment so far and am not likely to have this winter. So I am first at one thing and then at another. I have been employed at the Custom House here for the last month and am now in charge for another month as the Collector is away on business in Helena.... I am heartily tired of knocking about; I have been all over Montana and across the range (Rocky’s)...” A later letter indicates he was working for an unnamed attorney and expected to be able to find plenty of work come spring. He obviously was not working for the Conrads at this point in his life.
7. Murphy, James E. Half-Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles Edward Conrad. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1983. p. 187. Catherine’s history as given beginning on page 73 is entirely fictional, and contradicts materials given elsewhere in the book, a not uncommon problem with this work. The correct account is given on p. 187.
8. The steamboat Montana, a stern wheel packet with a wood hull, was built in California, Pa. (hull) and completed at Pittsburgh in 1879. She was in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, on 30 June 1879, preparing to reload for a third trip to Fort Benton when a tornado completely stripped the cabin off. In 1884, she was upbound on the Missouri when she veered, hit a pier, and sank. The captain on the June 1879 Benton run was Nicholas Buisson/Beusen.
9. This story was told by her granddaughter, Alicia Ann Conrad Campbell, and she got it from her grandmother. It would seem that the story-teller in Catherine Stanford often led to her telling some stories that she did not always identify as tales. The story of her journey across the Atlantic that Alicia Campbell related to James Murphy and which he in turn recorded in his book (op. cit. p. 73-75) is an example. One thing that alerts the reader to not take it as gospel is that in that tale, she claimed to have been accompanied by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio telegraph (wireless). Catherine emigrated in 1848, and Mr. Marconi was not born until 1874! Virtually all of the rest of that tale is apocryphal and bears some resemblance to the plot of her novel. She made an excursion to Bismarck from Ft. Benton in 1883 on the Red Cloud, and upon her return from that trip—after his marriage to her daughter, Charley was at the levee to pick her up in a buggy.
10. The previous year, Charles Conrad had fetched to Benton his widowed oldest sister, Martha Elizabeth Hawkins, and a younger sister, Mary Blanche “Mollie” Conrad. Reported in the 9 June 1878 Extra issue of the Benton Record and carried in the 14 June 1878 issue of the Helena Independent, p. 3 (Vol. 9, No. 73). Also on board the Red Cloud was Shirley Carter Ashby and his wife and a nurse. Shirley was Charles Conrad’s 3rd cousin on his mother’s side. He had arrived in Benton in 1867, sold his 10% interest in the Baker company to the Conrad boys in 1870, moved to Helena and built a home at 642 Dearborn St. which still stands today and is an historic landmark. See also Ashby, Shirley C. An Opportunity Presented Itself, in Silliman, Eugene Lee, ed., We Seized Our Rifles, Missoula: Mountain Press Publ. Co., [1982], pp. 85-96.
11. Helena Independent, 14 June 1879 (Vol. 10, No. 78), p. 3, as previously reported in the 9 June1879 issue of the Benton Record. His sister Martha had evidently gone with him, as she, too, is listed on the passenger list along with Alice, Arthur, Joseph, James W. (father) and Mrs. Conrad (Maria).
12. Reported in the 5 January 1881 issue of the Benton Record and carried in the 11 January 1881 issue of the Helena Independent. Rev. Blackiston was an Episcopal clergyman.