Emily was born in Belfast, Ireland the daughter of Samuel Shaw, Master Mariner, and Isabella Pringle. Emily's father was a Sea Captain who made numerous journeys between Belfast and Dundalk, Ireland and Saint John, New Brunswick Canada with side trips to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia where the ship was owned. He is said to have died in Saint John about 1845 but this has not been confirmed.
Emily spent her childhood in Belfast and lived at 54 Tombe Street, which adjoined Lime Kiln Dock, Belfast before immigrating to Canada. This address has her father listed there in the 1835-36 Directory. She appears to have had at least two sisters Frances and Matilda and two brothers Samuel and Pringle.
Emily and her siblings arrived in New Brunswick in 1836 and it is said Emily's name appears in school records as a student. Her first teacher's license was granted on 18th Sept 1837 in Kings County after she had been teaching for some time in the Parish of Norton and had been examined by the Board of Education.
On 19th June 1838 at Sussex Vale, Kings County, she married Frederick Williams Cadwalleder Beavan, surgeon and teacher. Rev. Horatio Nelson Arnold performed the ceremony and the witnesses were George Baxter and D.P. Coffin. They then took up residence at Long Creek, New Brunswick later moving to Mount Auburn, English Settlement.
While farming at Long Creek Emily also found time to follow literary pursuits and contributed at least ten tales and five poems to the Amaranth, the first magazine in New Brunswick to devote the bulk of its pages to literary materials. Generally her articles were published under Mrs B----n or occasionally Emily B----n as was the custom at the time. Much of her writing appears to be based on her own life experiences.
Poems published:
| 8 Aug 1841 | Vol 1 | Song Of The Irish Mourner |
| 7 July 1842 | Vol 2 | The Mother's Prayer |
| 9 Sept 1842 | Vol 2 | On Prayer |
| 10 Oct 1843 | Vol 3 | The Mignonette |
| 12 Dec 1842 | Vol 2 | A Vision |
Tales published:
| 5 May 1841 | Vol 1 | The Lost One |
| 5 May 1841 | Vol 1 | Adelaide Belmore |
| 5 May 1841 | Vol 1 | Recollections of Tombe St |
| 9 Sept 1841 | Vol 1 | Edith Melborne |
| 11 Nov 1841 | Vol 1 | A Tale of New Brunswick |
| 12 Dec 1841 | Vol 1 | Madeline St. Clair |
| 3 Mar 1842 | Vol 2 | Story of Deara, Princess Meath |
| 9 Sept 1842 | Vol 2 | A Tale of Intemperance |
| 10 Oct 1842 | Vol 2 | The Enthusiast |
| Aug 1843 | Vol 3 | Lines (The Lost Children) |
On 4th October, 1842 Emily sent a Petition requesting to have a teacher's license granted to her enabling her to teach in Queens County as she 'found it necessary, in order to overcome the first difficulties of settlement, to aid her husband in his endeavours to provide a comfortable home'. Emily wished to set up a "Model School" which was a school used for training school teachers. The Reverend Horatio Nelson Arnold who was the minister at the Church of England Trinity Church at Sussex vouched for her character.
In 1843, with their children Alfred Spurzheim Beavan and Isabella Barbara Beavan, they returned to England where her husband took up the position of his recently deceased father as Surgeon at the Derwent Mines in Blanchland, Northumberland.
In 1845 George Routledge of London published Emily's first book titled Sketches and tales illustrative of life in the backwoods of New Brunswick, North America, gleaned from actual observation and experience during a residence of seven years in that interesting colony. This book gives a very informative account of Emily's observations of a settler's life and conditions at that time. She most likely did all her writing with a wild goose quill pen and ink made from white maple bark and it was written with the idea of informing future immigrants what they could expect in the settlements of New Brunswick. Perhaps this was the forerunner of the Travel Brochure.
Print 'n Press Publications Ltd, 164 Milltown Blvd, St Stephen, NB reprinted Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick in 1980, but they are no longer in business. ISBN 0920 732-20-8 The author in this reprint was incorrectly published as Mrs Frances Beavan. It seems the book is now of historical interest to students of history, education etc. and a copy of the original book is also available on microfiche and as an online edition.
In the opinion of Marjorie Thompson, one modern day critic:
Emily had neither the acidulous wit of Mrs Trollope nor the conversational repartee of Susannah Moodie's characters but her honest background of New Brunswick life in the early 1800s will not be met in other writings and her contribution to the background material of her day, though slight, is not to be overlooked. "Recollections of Tombe Street" and " Adelaide Belmore" are in the main romantic tales, improbable to modern readers. Until one realises that privateers, or pirates, had been, quite recently in Emily's day, a harassment off the east coast of New Brunswick and still were in other parts of the world. As to the tale of where the heroine begs mercy for her husband, a prisoner of the King of France, and the King turns out to be her former tutor! The Boston Richelieu Club holds the distinction of meeting in the exact rooms where Louis Philippe, later King of France, taught French to Bostonians during his exile in America.
On a journey that began in London on 6th March, aboard the ship Mariner, Emily and her husband and two of their children, Alfred and Isabella arrived in Melbourne, Victoria on 29th June 1852 and soon took up residence at Kilmore. It is not known why one of their daughters, Edith Florinda was not aboard. Perhaps she stayed behind with family. However she is mentioned on the birth registration of Amy born in 1856 and on her mother's death registration in 1897.
In Australia, Emily continued to write and it is known she contributed to Eliza Cook's Journal and to newspapers. Her album reveals a newspaper cutting of poem called Blackberries in Australia published in the Kilmore Standard but the date is unknown.
Another book was also published in London in 1878 by J W Partridge & Co and was titled Lil Grey: Or Arthur Chester's Courtship. An original copy has been located in the British National Library and is also available on microfiche. The inside-cover of this book reveals several more books written by Emily. They are Alicia, Olga Norvonne and Readings in Rhyme. Lil Grey is a fictional romance based on the 3 daughters of a Doctor Grey.
Widowed in 1867, Emily moved to NSW in 1881 where she died on 6 Aug 1897 at Surrey Hills, Sydney at the residence of her son, Alfred. She is buried in an unmarked grave in the Church of England Cemetery at Rookwood NSW with her grandson, Walter Llewellyn Beavan. However a memorial to her has been placed at Kilmore General Cemetery on the grave of her husband.
Issue:
January 2004
Sources:
Thanks go to Mary Alice Downie and Lynette Nunn for providing this information!
