Farmer, eccentric.
Born at London, England on 21 November 1844, the son of a woman who was a well-known painter, he spent two years in Heidelberg and trained in music. Inept in business, he immigrated to Manitoba with his families (an English woman and a German woman, plus two sets of children) in 1882, homesteading at Aweme. Criddle spent the remainder of his life living in Manitoba although a large number of children (including sons Norman Criddle and Stuart Criddle) enabled him to devote most of his time to gentlemanly pursuits such as organ playing, composing, and amateur science. For 35 years he was a self-conscious diarist, and his diary, a copy of which is in the Archives of Manitoba, is one of the most revealing documents of the pioneering period in Manitoba. He died at Aweme on 17 April 1918 and was buried in the Criddle-Vane Family Cemetery. A thorough biography is given in the 2013 book For Elise: Unveiling the Forgotten Woman on the Criddle Homestead.
See also:
The Criddle Family by Lillian Gibbons
Manitoba Pageant, Volume 6, Number 2, January 1961.Norman Criddle: Pioneer Entomologist of the Prairies by N. J. Holliday
Manitoba History, Number 51, February 2006.Historic Sites of Manitoba: Criddle-Vane Homestead (Municipality of Glenboro-South Cypress)
Criddle-de-Diddle-Ensis: A Biographical History of the Criddles of Aweme, Manitoba Pioneers of the 1880s by Alma Criddle, 1973.
For Elise: Unveiling the Forgotten Woman on the Criddle Homestead by Oriole A. Vane Veldhuis, 2013.
1901 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.
Death registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 4 April 2019
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