Winnifred Eaton - Biography

Biography

Winnifred Eaton was the daughter of an English merchant, Edward Eaton, who met her Chinese mother while on a business trip to Shanghai, China. Her mother was Grace "Lotus Blossom" Trefusis, the adopted daughter of English missionaries.

In the early 1870s, the Eaton family left England to live in Hudson, New York but stayed there only a short time before relocating to Montreal, where Winnifred was born. Her father struggled to make a living and the large family (14 children) went through difficult times. Nonetheless, the children were raised in an intellectually stimulating environment that saw Winnifred's elder sister, Edith Maude Eaton (1865–1914) become a journalist and an author of stories about the struggles of impoverished Chinese immigrants, under the pen name Sui Sin Far.