HUTCHISON, DAVID ALEXANDER ERNEST (1847-1918)

HUTCHISON, DAVID ALEXANDER ERNEST, lumber company head, MLA, and benefactor; b. Douglastown, 1 Jan 1847, s/o Richard Hutchison and Elizabeth Stewart Mackie; m. 1871, Elizabeth Jane Johnston, d/o Robert Johnston and Ann McDiarmid, of Chatham; d. Columbia, S.C., 5 Dec 1918.

Ernest Hutchison had no formal education beyond that which he received from James Millar at the County Grammar School in Chatham, and John Hardie at the Newcastle Grammar School, but he improved his mental attainments through reading and travel. He was also a skilled mechanic, who was reputed to know as much about steam mills as any sawmill engineer. Many years prior to his father's death, responsibility for the management of R. Hutchison & Co. began to shift to him, and by 1890 he was the owner of the firm. After his father died he did business in his own name. He conducted the firm with much success until 1907 and then sold out completely to the Miramichi Lumber Co., a subsidiary of the International Paper Co. of New York. He received $300,000 from the sale, which was considered to be only a fraction of the fortune which the family realized from the business.

Hutchison was elected to the County Council in 1876 when Northumberland County became incorporated as a municipality and served a one-year term as the first county warden. Conservative politically, he won a seat in the House of Assembly in 1878. He was defeated in the election of 1882 but was returned in 1886. When he lost the election of 1890 he withdrew from politics. It was said that he was never a strong "party man," but one who conceived of his role as that of helping constituents.

Hutchison was president of a committee of stewards formed in 1881 to organize regattas on the Miramichi, and he participated in them with his yacht, Fisherman. In 1890 he hired James Henderson to build the steamer Saracelle, which he used as both a yacht and tugboat. An occasion in June 1894 on which he took a party of guests out on the river in that vessel was reported in detail in the Miramichi Advance. He was later one of the Miramichi's early motor car owners. In 1906 he purchased a 2-cylinder Russell runabout from the Lounsbury Co. This was the twenty-fifth car registered in New Brunswick and the third registered to a Miramichi owner. In 1907 he bought a 50-horsepower Royal Tourist, which seated seven passengers. In July 1913 he was the first to drive a car through the former post road to Bathurst, which had degenerated greatly after the railway replaced the stagecoaches. He got to Bathurst in five hours, including the time needed to cut away windfalls. He had John Morrissy, the minister of public works, with him, and Morrissy had the road "turnpiked" that fall.

Hutchison was an officer in the militia, a member of the Highland Society (and president in 1906), president of the Chatham Curling Club, a Mason, and an adherent of the Presbyterian church. He was public-spirited and widely admired for his generosity. In 1892 he gave the former Rankin house and grounds at Douglastown to the local school board for use as a school, offering to remove unneeded chimneys, install a new furnace, and make other repairs and alterations at his own expense. In 1914 he gave the handsome Associated Lodges hall to the people of Douglastown. The next year, after a campaign to raise the funds required to erect a new hospital failed to get off the ground, he stated that he would pay for the hospital himself. Built and equipped at a cost of approximately $100,000, the Miramichi Hospital was presented by him in 1916 as a gift to the community which, for nearly 100 years, had supplied the brawn needed to sustain his family's lumber business. One of the only provisos attached was that a representative of the Highland Society, in which his father had played such an important part, would always have a seat on the hospital's board of trustees.

Hutchison was vacationing in South Carolina when his death occurred in 1918. He was survived by his wife, E. Jane Johnston, a daughter, and a son. His daughter, Belle Hutchison, performed the unveiling ceremony for the Burns Memorial in Fredericton in 1906, towards the erection of which the Highland Society at Miramichi was a main contributor. "Woodlands," the Hutchison family home at Douglastown, remains a landmark.