The little house was built in approximately 1874 by Senator Donald Montgomery (1807-1893) of Park Corner for his son Hugh John Montgomery and his wife Clara Woolner Macneill, parents of Lucy Maud. Lucy Maud was born in the house on November 30th, 1874. When Lucy Maud was only 21 months of age her mother died of tuberculosis and the girl was taken to Cavendish, about 18 kilometres east, to live with her grandparents. She lived there until her marriage to Rev. Ewan Macdonald, in Park Corner, on July 5, 1911.
The house, once in private hands, was transferred to the provincial government to be operated as a tourist attraction as part of the 1964 Centennial celebrations. In 1965 the
L.M. Montgomery Act was passed "to provide for the administration, operation and maintenance of the birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery". A volunteer foundation continues to operate the site. Refurnished in period pieces, the museum holds a great many artefacts and bits of memorabilia which were part of the day to day life of Lucy Maud through her lifetime.
The Birthplace of the esteemed authoress, Lucy Maud Montgomery, is situated on the picturesque village of "Clifton", New London, PE on Route 6, overlooking the beautiful New London Harbour and the sand dunes of which she was to write so much about in later years. LM Montgomery was the authoress of the famous ANNE books, best known of which is Anne of Green Gables. Other books written by this famous authoress include "Pat of Silver Bush", "The Story Girl", "Rainbow Valley", and "The Emily Series".
Lucy Maud, daughter of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill, was born in the house on November 30th, 1874. Owing to her mother's illness, she was taken as a young child to her maternal grandparents to the Macneill Homestead in Cavendish. There she was brought up and lived until her marriage to the Rev. Ewan Macdonald, in Park Corner, on July 5, 1911.
As you walk through the rooms of the Birthplace, you will thrill to the realization that it was in this house that Lucy Maud first saw the light of day. Visit the old fashioned bedroom where she was born.
View a replica of Lucy Maud Montgomery's wedding dress and accessories. On display are scrapbooks depicting LM Montgomery's personal life as a student at Prince of Wales College and her years as a writer and teacher. You can purchase books written by and about Lucy Laud Montgomery. Licensed giftware is also available during your visit to this historic location.
Period furniture such as a Franklin Stove, the organ belonging to her Montgomery relatives, and many other artifacts are also on display throughout the home.
The Birthplace had been owned by K.C.Irving of Saint John, New Brunswick. Mr. Irving who very generously deeded it back to the Province of Prince Edward Island in 1964.
From the Lucy Maud Montgomery Birthplace Museum
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Her Life
L.M. Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, on November 30, 1874, to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. When Maud Montgomery was 21 months old, her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father left her in the care of her mother's parents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill of Cavendish, and moved to western Canada, where he eventually settled in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and remarried.
As an only child living with an elderly couple, Montgomery found companionship in her imagination, nature, books, and especially writing. When she was nine, she began writing poetry and keeping a journal. She also spent time with her Uncle John and Aunt Annie Campbell (her mother's sister), and their family in Park Corner. There she spent many happy days, playing with her cousins and visiting her paternal grandfather, Senator Donald Montgomery, who lived close to the Campbells. She loved her Cavendish home and Silver Bush (as the Campbell farm was called) in Park Corner. At the age of six, she began attending the one-room school near her grandparents' home in Cavendish. She completed her early education there, with the exception of one year (1890-1891) which she spent in Prince Albert with her father and his wife, Mary McRae. While in Prince Albert, she achieved her first publication - a poem entitled "On Cape LeForce" published by a Prince Edward Island newspaper, The Patriot. In September of 1891, she returned to Cavendish, too late to go to school that year, but she completed grade ten in 1892-1893. The following year (1893-1894), she studied for a teacher's license at Prince of Wales College, completing the two-year course in one year and graduating with honours.
During her brief teaching career, Montgomery taught at three Island schools: Bideford, Belmont, and Lower Bedeque respectively. She left teaching for one year (1895-1896) to study selected courses in English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming one of the few women of her time to seek higher education. It was during her stay at Dalhousie that she received the first payments for her writing.
In 1898, while Montgomery was teaching in Lower Bedeque, her grandfather Macneill died suddenly. She returned to Cavendish immediately to take care of her grandmother who otherwise would have had to leave her home. She remained with her grandmother for the next thirteen years, with the exception of a nine-month period in 1901-1902 when she worked as a proof reader for The Daily Echo in Halifax. During her years in Cavendish, Montgomery continued to write and sent off numerous poems, stories, and serials to Canadian, British, and American magazines. Despite many rejections, she eventually commanded a comfortable income from her writing. In 1899, she earned $96.88 - certainly not much by today's standards but a nice sum at the turn of the century. Her earnings from her writing increased to $500 in 1903.
In 1905, she wrote her first and most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables. She sent the manuscript to several publishers, but, after receiving rejections from all of them, she put it away in a hat box. In 1907, she found the manuscript again, re-read it, and decided to try again to have it published. Anne of Green Gables was accepted by the Page Company of Boston, Massachusetts and published in 1908. An immediate best-seller, the book marked the beginning of Montgomery's successful career as a novelist.
After Grandmother Macneill died in March of 1911, Montgomery married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald, to whom she had been secretly engaged since 1906, on July 5, 1911. Prior to her engagement to Macdonald, she had had two romantic involvements: an unhappy engagement to her third cousin Edwin Simpson, of Belmont, and a brief but passionate romantic attachment to Herman Leard, of Lower Bedeque. After their marriage, Montgomery and Macdonald moved to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Macdonald was minister in the Presbyterian church. She bore three sons: Chester (1912), Hugh (stillborn in 1914), and Stuart (1915); assisted her husband in his pastoral duties; ran their home; and continued to write best-selling novels as well as short stories and poems. She faithfully recorded entries in her journals and kept up an enormous correspondence with friends, family, and fans. Maud Montgomery Macdonald did not live on Prince Edward Island again, returning only for vacations.
Montgomery was a very sensitive and intelligent woman who suffered deeply from events that affected her personally and the world in general. In her journals, she expressed her pain at the death of her infant son Hugh, the horrors of the First World War, the death of her beloved cousin Frede Campbell, and the discovery that her husband suffered from religious melancholia. But despite these and other problems, she continued to write, expressing her love of life, nature, and beauty in her fiction, journals, and letters. In 1926, the Montgomery Macdonalds moved to Norval, Ontario, where they stayed until Macdonald resigned from the ministry in 1935. They then moved to Toronto, where they could be close to their sons. Maud Montgomery Macdonald died in Toronto, Ontario, on April 24, 1942; Ewan Macdonald died in November 1943. In death, Montgomery returned to her beloved Prince Edward Island, where she was buried in the Cavendish cemetery, close to the site of her old home.
L.M. Montgomery never lived on Prince Edward Island again after her marriage in 1911. Yet, she immortalized this tiny province through her wonderful descriptions of life, nature, community, and people on Prince Edward Island. All but one of her 20 books are set on Prince Edward Island. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people, directly or indirectly influenced by the way of life she depicted in her writing, come to Prince Edward Island to see the place she loved so much.
From LM Montgomery