SUSAN LEFEVRE WAS HERE FROM DAY ONE
Stories of pioneering women
This is the first of six biographies of Central Okanagan pioneer women.
Susan Walker was born in Hope, B.C., on June 7, 1862, daughter of Sylvanus McConico and Ellen Walker.
Sylvanus Walker was born in Tennessee about 1830, son of John Walker (1787-1864) and Patsy Martha Headerick (1789-1864).
On Dec. 24, 1849 at Pope, Arkansas, Sylvanus McConico Walker married Amanda Melvina Sears (1834-1860). They had at least one child, a son named William F. Walker (born about 1854), Susan Walker’s American half-brother.
Sylvanus Walker came to the Crown colony of British Columbia about 1861, a year after the death of his wife, Amanda.
At Hope, he and his Ontario-born partner Joseph Austin Bowles had a sawmill. Hope was booming because of the Fraser River gold rush and continued to prosper when gold was discovered in the Cariboo.
At Hope, Sylvanus and Ellen Walker had at least three children: Susan (1862), Joseph (circa 1865), and Jennie (circa 1871).
Little is known about Susan Walker’s mother, Ellen. She was Indigenous, probably born in what is now British Columbia. The 1881 Canada census (British Columbia) indicates that Sylvanus Walker was a widower, meaning that Ellen probably died between 1871 (when Jennie was born) and 1881.
Ellen Walker’s British Columbia Death Registration, which might provide some valuable information about this woman, has not been located as her death was possibly not registered. It is all too common for pioneer Indigenous women to be missing from early British Columbia records and provincial history books. This oversight must be rectified.
Susan Walker spent her younger years at Hope, probably in the company of her siblings Joseph and Jennie. Hope was a busy place with hundreds of miners pushing their way to the Cariboo goldfields.
On May 29, 1885, in Yale District, Sylvanus Walker re-married. On his B.C. marriage registration, Sylvanus was described as a 55 year-old widower, born in Wayne County, Tennessee, and son of John and Martha Walker. Sylvanus Walker’s wife, Mary Catherine Lorenzetta, was born at Hope. She was 22 years old, making her date of birth about 1863, a year after her step-daughter, Susan.
Sylvanus and Catherine Walker had at least one child, Sylvanus McConico Walker Jr. — born July 25, 1884 and baptized at St. John’s Church, Yale, B.C. on Aug. 1, 1884 — Susan Walker’s muchyounger half-brother.
Sylvanus Walker died at Nine Mile Creek, Okanagan-Similkameen, in 1887, three years after his son, Sylvanus McConico Walker, was born.
On April 16, 1878, Susan Walker married Alphonse Lefevre, who was born in Quebec, on Oct. 12, 1841, son of John and Margaret Lefevre. Lefevre was a pioneer of the Nicola Valley, pre-empting land in that district as early as May 1874.
Alphonse and Susan Lefevre lived in the Nicola Valley for a year. In 1879, they came to the Central Okanagan, acquiring John B. Moore’s property on Mill Creek, beside present-day Sexsmith Road.
Susan and Alphonse Lefevre had nine children — four daughters and five sons — all born in the Central Okanagan: Archie Joseph (1881-1929); Annie Florence (1882-1960); Mary Ellen (1884-19??); Alphonse S (1886-1916); Henry (1889-1979); Maria Victoria (1890-1970); Norman (18931966); John Walker (1894-1969); Leontine (1896-1930).
Alphonse Lefevre died near Kelowna on March 16, 1902. His obituary, in the March 20, 1902 edition of The Vernon News reported that “he had been in feeble health for several months and the end was not unexpected. He was an old-timer in the district, and for many years had been engaged in farming in the Mission Valley (Central Okanagan), where all his friends and neighbours held him in high esteem.”
Susan Lefevre survived her husband by 50 years, dying on April 25, 1952. At the time of her death, she was one of the Central Okanagan’s oldest pioneers, having lived here for 73 years.
Her obituary on page 1 of the April 28, 1952 edition of The Kelowna Courier reported: “The few remaining links with the earliest days in Kelowna were lessened by one Thursday when Mrs. Susan Lefevre, widow of Alphonse Lefevre, died at Shaw’s Rest home. She was 89 years of age, and a resident of the Kelowna area for the past 73 years. She and her husband, who died in 1902 at the age of 52, travelled over the Hope-Princeton trail on horseback to reach the Okanagan 73 years ago (1879). She was born in Hope in 1862, marrying Mr. Lefevre there at the age of 16.
“Shortly after the Lefevres came to Kelowna they settled on a broad expanse of land, comprising 1,500 acres, southeast of the Five Bridges district. This property subsequently was subdivided and sold … Surviving are three sons and three daughters. six grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren.”
In her 89 years, Susan Walker Lefevre experienced much history. She was a young child when the Cariboo gold rush was at its height. In 1871, when B.C. became Canada’s sixth province, Susan was nine years old.
When Susan and Alphonse Lefevre moved to the Central Okanagan, in 1879, non-Indigenous settlement was in its infancy, a handful of settlers living in the district.
Susan Lefevre knew Father Pandosy, founder of the Mission of the Immaculate Conception and Central Okanagan resident until his death in early 1891. She was 30 years old in 1892, when the townsite of Kelowna was surveyed, and had lived in the district for 26 years when the City of Kelowna was incorporated on May 4, 1905. During her lifetime, she witnessed the birth of Kelowna and saw it expand to a city of about 8,000 people.
One of Susan Lefevre’s descendants shared this about her pioneer ancestor: “I only wish that I had known more about Susan and her life. Unfortunately, I only know that Susan’s Catholic faith was important to her and … she was a good cook. I didn’t even know that Ellen was Susan’s Mom.”
Susan Walker Lefevre, resident of the Central Okanagan from 1879 to 1952, was laid to rest in the Immaculate Conception Church Cemetery on Casorso Road. Her grave is currently unmarked.
The next article about pioneer women — Eleanor (nee Laurence) Saucier — will be in two weeks.