The Surridges of Woodleigh

The Surridges of Woodleigh tells the story of the lives of the author’s ancestors who left their loved ones in England in the late 1800s to make a better life for themselves on the sparsely populated prairies of post-confederation Canada.

From a graveyard in a small village in Devon to an unmarked grave by the ocean in Victoria, British Columbia, the author has traced the lives of her grandfather, Samuel Surridge, his wife Agnes Annie Brown and his brother Thomas.

Based on the memoir of her uncle and diaries left by her own father, the author has written an engaging story of one family’s struggle to carve out a farm on the barren prairies in the Northwest Territories, now the province of Saskatchewan. The book celebrates a simpler time when children walked to a small one room school and neighbours spent Sundays after church visiting and sharing a meal.

The Surridges of Woodleigh is a rich work of family history which provides a lens through which to view the story of early European colonization and the hardships faced by early pioneer families.