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Ellen Jane McLennan 1883-1972

Ellen Jane McLennan was born at Beaver Point, Salt Spring Island on December 22, 1883. She weighed about three pounds at birth and spent the first weeks of life in a basket on the oven door. She grew to very small stature, but was strong and healthy, living to be 89 years old, with less than a year in a much hated intermediate care facility, which may have led to the demise of this very independent woman.

In her youth, Ellen regularly attended the Burgoyne Bay Methodist Church and took part in social functions there. She won first prize for butter that she entered in the Provincial Agricultural Exhibition in Victoria in 1904. Later in 1904, she went to Oregon to keep house for her brother, Alex and cousin, Ewen, from Scotland. She later married Ewen and lived the rest of her life in Oregon. She was not welcome at Glenshiel Farm as long as her father lived because he did not approve of a marriage of first cousins.