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Memorable Manitobans: Margret Jónsdóttir Benedictsson (1866-1956)
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Margret Benedictsson
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Journalist, human rights activist.
Born in Hrappsstaoir in Vioidalur, Iceland, she immigrated to North Dakota in 1887, where she attended Bathgate College. Four years later she came to Manitoba. Benedictson first lectured on women’s rights in 1893 and she later founded Icelandic women’s suffrage society in Winnipeg. She served as editor, with her husband Sigfus, of Freyja, “the only women’s suffrage paper published in Canada,” from 1898 to 1910. They lived at 530 Maryland Street. She divorced her husband in 1910 and two years later moved with her three children to Blaine, Washington. She died at Anacortes, Washington in 1956. She was selected posthumously as a Manitoba Women Trailblazer and was inducted into the Winnipeg Citizens Hall of Fame.
See also:
Three Manitoba Pioneer Women: A Legacy of Servant-Leadership by Carolyn Crippen
Manitoba History, Number 53, October 2006.
Sources:
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 13 July 2021
Memorable Manitobans
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