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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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MERSEREAU, JACOB YOUNG (1854-1938)

MERSEREAU, JACOB YOUNG, photographer, newspaper publisher, and police magistrate; mayor of Chatham, 1921-23; b. Blackville, 27 Jun 1854, s/o George Mersereau and Elizabeth Bamford; brother of George William Mersereau; m. 1st, 1878, Caroline A. Whittaker, d/o of George Whittaker and Susan Golding, of Fredericton and Chatham, and 2nd, 1881, Florence Amelia Sayre Steeves, of Shediac, N.B.; d. Chatham, 4 Jun 1938.

Jacob Y. Mersereau worked in connection with the lumber industry in Doaktown before he settled in Chatham in the late 1870s. He entered the photography business in 1881, when he and a partner took over a studio which had been opened about two years previously by James A. Stevens. He had various short-term partners and assistants in the early years, when he was also a sales agent for sewing machines and organs, but he was on his own by 1887. Since the studio at Chatham did not occupy him full-time he sometimes travelled with a portable set-up to different places along the North Shore, and to Marysville and elsewhere in the province. In 1888 he had a "photo salon" at the front of Swim & Son's store in Doaktown. In 1895 it was announced that "Mersereau's photographic car" would be coming to Blackville for a week. The car may have taken the place of fixed studios and salons for a time. He was temporarily without a studio in Chatham in 1897 but opened one in Campbellton in 1898 and one in Newcastle in 1906.

Mersereau kept abreast of the latest developments in the field of photography. In 1909 he was elected vice-president of the New England Photographers' Association, of which other leading professionals in the Maritimes were also members. Some 600 of his photographs from the period 1890-1920, including scenes of sawmills and lumbering operations on the Miramichi, are preserved in the Mersereau Collection at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. Of special interest is a series of bridge pictures produced on 14" x 17" glass plates.

Mersereau closed his photography business in 1923 and became publisher of the Chatham World, as successor to James L. Stewart. He was a member of the Chatham Board of Trade, a town councillor for several years, and mayor for two years. In 1928 he was appointed police magistrate for Chatham. Soon afterwards, he sold The World to the Commercial Press Ltd of Chatham which merged it with the weekly Commercial to form The Commercial and The World. He held his appointment as police magistrate until 1935, when he resigned due to failing health.

Mersereau, who was musically gifted, organized and taught a "singing school" at Nelson in 1882 to train a choir for the new St James Presbyterian church. He himself was a member and vestryman of Emmanuel Reformed Episcopal Church in Chatham. After its demise he and his family were affiliated with the Methodist church and later with the United Church of Canada. His first wife, Carrie A. Whittaker, was drowned while skating on the river about a year after their marriage. He and his second wife, Florence A. S. Steeves, had two daughters and five sons. The sons included Charles Mersereau, an army lieutenant who was killed in action in World War I; Cecil R. Mersereau, who served overseas as an army officer in World War I, and was later a lawyer in Saint John; Claude M. Mersereau, the publisher of the Bathurst weekly newspaper, The Northern Light; and Guyon A. Mersereau.

Sources

[b/m] PPMP [d] Leader 10 Jun 1938 / Advance 17 Apr 1879, 12 Jul 1888, 12 Sep 1895, 23 Dec 1897, 28 Apr 1898; Advocate 3 Jan 1928; Commercial World 30 Jul 1953; Fraser (C); Hickey; Leader 23 Nov 1906; PPMP (re. Cecil R. and Claude M. Mersereau); World 18 Feb 1882, 14 Aug 1909


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