GOGGIN, JOSEPH REED (1843-1900)

GOGGIN, JOSEPH REED, hardware and general merchant; b. South Branch, near Sussex, N.B., c1843, s/o Robert D. Goggin and Ann Green; m. 1864, Mary Ann Elizabeth Searle, d/o Michael Searle and Prudence Brooks Parkin, of Napan; d. Chatham, 24 Apr 1900.

Joseph R. Goggin taught school for a term in Coverdale, Albert Co., N.B., in 1860. In 1861 he drew a grant of land at Mechanic Settlement in Kings County. In the spring of 1863 he arrived in Chatham and within a year was advertising groceries and liquor for sale. He was married in the summer of 1864 and had soon established the J. R. Goggin hardware firm at the corner of Cunard and Water streets. In the 1870s he was selling everything from fancy goods to guns, as well as a large assortment of hardware for domestic and commercial use. In 1882 he announced that he would be closing his store in Chatham, "in order to attend to increasing business in the West." He held a clearing-out sale in 1883 and went to Brandon, Man. He was back in October 1884, however, when his Chatham store burned, and he built a new store in 1885.

Goggin was a justice of the peace and often served as a presiding officer at elections. He and his wife, Mary A. E. Searle, belonged to the Anglican church, and he sang in the choir of St Mary's Chapel in Chatham for thirty years. He was survived in 1900 by his wife, two sons, and five daughters. The sons, Melbourne M. Goggin and Stafford B. Goggin, were the successive managers of the hardware business until it was closed in the 1940s. The daughters included Gertrude Goggin, the wife of Lyman Flett, and later of V. Alexis Danville, and Prudence N. Goggin, the wife of Dr Henry G. Vaughan.