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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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DECANTILLON, JOHN (1808 LIVING 1861)

DECANTILLON, JOHN, farmer and innkeeper; b. Ireland, c1808; m. 1834, Nancy (Small) Fowler, d/o Thomas Small and Mary Mitchell, and mother of Elijah Fowler; living in 1861.

In 1825, not long after he immigrated from Ireland at about seventeen years of age, John DeCantillon was named as one of the executors of the estate of Patrick DeCantillon of Nelson parish, who may have been his father. He later owned property on the former Elm Tree tract, at present-day Quarryville, on which John Astle and his wife Hannah were conducting an inn in 1829. He was described as being of Blackville parish in 1833, but after his marriage in 1834 he made his home in Blissfield parish.

In the late 1830s DeCantillon was the proprietor of a roadhouse and tavern at the village of Blissfield, six miles downriver from Doaktown. In 1838 Sir John Harvey stayed overnight there while travelling from Chatham to Fredericton. In 1839 the newspaperman Edmund Ward reported in the Fredericton Sentinel that DeCantillon's was the best house between Fredericton and Newcastle, except for the inns at Boiestown.

DeCantillon was a school trustee for Blissfield parish in 1837. In 1841 he entered the 3rd Battalion of militia as an ensign. Five years later he was promoted to captain. In 1844 he was among twenty freeholders in the county who were appointed to inquire into the conduct of magistrates and county officials.

In 1842 a postal way office was opened at DeCantillon's inn. He was enumerated as both a farmer and innkeeper in 1851 census, as well as in the census of 1861, when he and his wife, two servants, and four laborers were living at the inn. In the years that followed, he experienced serious financial difficulties. "Decantlin's" is mentioned in Hedley Parker's poem, "The Days of Duffy Gillis," which is set in the mid 1860s, but the postal way office changed hands around 1865, and it would seem that the inn was closed at that time. The DeCantillon surname is not found in Hutchison's New Brunswick Directory for 1865-66 or in the 1871 census for Blissfield parish. Nothing more is known except that "Mrs Decantillon" died at Doaktown in 1888, at which time the Union Advocate noted that she had been "the hostess of Decantillon's hotel in the days of stagecoaches and had kept the best house on the river."

DeCantillon was Catholic and his wife Presbyterian. Her name and dates are on the tombstone of her son Elijah Fowler and his wife in the United Church cemetery in Newcastle, where her remains are buried.

Sources

[m] official records / Advance 17 Oct 1895; Advocate 7 Nov 1888, 16 Feb 1938; Facey-Crowther; Gleaner 17 Jul 1838, 6 Apr 1841, 28 Sep 1844, 3 Oct 1846; JHA (appendices re. post offices); NB Almanac & Reg.; New England Families, by William R. Cutter (3rd Series, Vol. 1, p. 883); Parker; Rayburn; Royal Gazette 3 Jan 1826; Stufflebean

Notes

In 1895, the Rev. William J. Fowler had the remains of his father, Elijah Fowler, and grandmother, Mrs Nancy DeCantillon, moved to the Newcastle cemetery.


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