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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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GRINDLAY, WILLIAM HERBERT (1831-1898)

GRINDLAY, WILLIAM HERBERT, teacher and general merchant; b. Kilsyth parish, Stirlingshire, Scotland, 9 Oct 1831, s/o Robert Grindlay and Janet Gillies; m. 1867, Elizabeth (MacLaggan) Porter, d/o Alexander MacLaggan and Catherine McNabb, and wid/o George Porter, of Douglastown; d. Blackville, 11 Aug 1898.

William H. Grindlay arrived in Nova Scotia in the mid 1850s and came to New Brunswick a few years later. He was trained as a teacher at the Normal School in Saint John and had a 2nd class license and two and a half years of experience when he started to teach in Blackville parish. He was enumerated as the schoolmaster there in the census of 1861, when he was boarding with John Dolan and family. In the same census his future wife, Elizabeth (MacLaggan) Porter, who was several years his senior, was enumerated as a widow living at Douglastown with her three children. He was still teaching school in 1882, at which time he claimed a total of twenty-two years of classroom service.

Grindlay was appointed postmaster at Blackville at the time of Confederation, but since he continued to teach school it was undoubtedly his wife who kept the post office. In 1887 it was reported that he had opened "one of the best country stores on the river" in the village. He was an elder of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church and superintendent of the Sunday school for a lengthy period, until about a year prior to his death. The Miramichi Advance referred to him as "one of the best known and most respected men of Northumberland."

Grindlay was succeeded as postmaster in 1898 by his son Robert Maxwell Grindlay, who was a partner in MacLaggan, Grindlay & Co., a merchandising and bartering firm. The partnership was dissolved in 1902, and Grindlay gave up the postmastership in 1903. He was later the proprietor of the Blackville Printery. It was announced on 1 March 1905 that he had released the first issue of a new semi-monthly publication entitled The Advertiser, one issue of which, dated 21 July 1906, is known to exist. In 1907 he installed a telephone system known as the Grindlay Exchange, which extended from Upper Blackville to Renous Bridge, with several spur lines. He died in 1913, at age forty-five.

Sources

[b] LDS-SCR index [m] official records [d] Advance 18 Aug 1898 / Advance 23 Jan 1896, 9 Apr 1896; Advocate 26 Oct 1887, 16 Aug 1898, 9 May 1899, 18 Jun 1902, 1 Mar 1905; Kee; Leader 30 May 1913; MacLaggan family data; MacManus; NB Newspapers; World 26 May 1886


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