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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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WILSON, JOHN (1791-1876)

WILSON, JOHN, innkeeper, jailer, cryer, and ferryman; b. Stromness, Orkney, Scotland, 1791; m. 1813, Euphemia Clouston, in Orphir parish, Orkney; d. Wilson's Point, 21 Nov 1876.

John Wilson, from whom Wilson's Point derives its name, had a "fair education" and had been a navigator on whaling ships before he emigrated with his wife and family around 1817. After arriving on the Miramichi, the family settled on a property near the Point, in what was then part of Nelson parish.

In 1835 Wilson succeeded Thomas Mullins as county jailer. At that time, lashing and flogging were still used as punishments for prisoners. "I once saw a man flogged," stated Agnes (Russell) Vanderbeck. "He was stripped to the waist and tied to the bell post in the public square. This was in the year 1838 or 1840. They gave him fifty lashes with a leather strap and then led him back up the hill to the jail, with his back covered with blood."

While he was the jailer Wilson was also the cryer at the courthouse, and at different times, handyman, janitor, and supplier of firewood. He was succeeded as jailer in 1840 by Richard Gremley but continued to serve as court cryer, on demand, for the remainder of his life.

Wilson had appointments from the Court of Quarter Sessions in the 1840s as a ferrymen for Nelson parish, and he was enumerated as a ferryman, in robust health, in the census of 1851. His ferry service from the Point provided transportation for people and horses across the 'tickle' to Beaubear's Island, as well as across both the Northwest and Southwest branches of the river. In the period in which the service was flourishing he also kept a small store and inn at his home at the Point.

Wilson was still in business in 1854, but as shipbuilding and other activity declined on the Island the need for the ferry service diminished, and when the North West Bridge was opened in 1856 a ferry was no longer required between the Point and the north bank of the river. In the census of 1861 he was enumerated as a farmer.

Wilson and his wife, Euphemia Clouston, had a sizable family, most of the members of which settled locally. However, their daughter Susan Wilson, the wife of William Mason Jr, died in Australia, after having lived there for nearly thirty years, and their daughter Jessie Wilson made her home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sources

[b] tombstone [m] LDS-IGI [d] Advocate 22 Nov 1876 / Advocate 29 Nov 1876, 8 Nov 1910; Gleaner 28 Apr 1835, 23 May 1837, 8 May 1838, 14 May 1839, 12 May 1840, 6 Apr 1841, 16 Jun 1843, 1 May 1844, 1 Apr 1845, 9 May 1846, 16 Feb 1847, 27 Apr 1847, 12 Jun 1849, 4 Feb 1854, 6 Aug 1854, 21 Feb 1857; Leader 10 Apr 1964 (re. Agnes Vanderbeck); Times 8 May 1879 (re. Mrs Susan Mason)


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