REID, ROBERT (173?-1828)

REID, ROBERT, businessman, coroner, county treasurer, high sheriff, 1795-c1813, and registrar of deeds, 1813-23; b. Scotland, 1730s; m. 1st, Helen Geddes, and 2nd, 1819, Mrs Nancy Dunn; d. Miramichi, 5 Apr 1828.

Between 1766 and 1778 Robert Reid and his wife, Helen Geddes, had six children baptized in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. During most of this period, Reid was employed as clerk (or "amanuensis") to Adam Smith, who was also living in Kirkcaldy and readying his famous work, The Wealth of Nations, for publication. He joined him sometime after November 1768, when his occupation was given as weaver in the church register, and concluded his service before November 1778, when he was a land waiter in the customs service at Alloa, near Kirkcaldy. In register entries from 1770, 1771, and 1774, he is described specifically as "clerk to Professor Adam Smith." Smith took an ongoing interest in his former employee's welfare and thanked Sir Grey Cooper, lord of treasury, in 1783, for the attentions he had given his "friend Reid."

By the summer of 1784 Reid had made his way to the Miramichi, where he was in partnership in a fishing enterprise with Alexander Wishart and others. In the fall he and one of the other partners went to Quebec to buy a schooner. They were delayed in their return and had to winter the vessel at Pabos on the Gaspé coast. From there Reid travelled all the way to Halifax on snowshoes, "in order to transact some necessary business." His journey is described in a lengthy letter which he wrote to Adam Smith in September 1785. In this letter he also stated that he was appointed coroner of Northumberland County.

In 1785 Reid was occupying the land which he was later granted at Newcastle, and in 1786 he began construction of a house for his family. He stated in January 1787 that his "wife and numerous family" were "now upon their passage to this country," but it is not known if they arrived that year. It is recorded in the census of 1851 that his son Andrew Reid came to New Brunswick in 1789.

Reid was the foreman of the first grand jury of Northumberland County in 1790. He was the first county treasurer and one of the first port wardens. He was a member of the first committee created to manage the affairs of the Presbyterian residents of the Miramichi. Patrick Campbell stated in 1791 that he was conducting a store. In the same year, he and Andrew Cheap, of Wishart & Co., negotiated the sale of the lot of land to the Court of Sessions which became the 'County Lot' and the nucleus of the town of Newcastle.

In 1792 Reid resigned as county treasurer in anticipation of being appointed high sheriff, but the position went instead to William Sanford Oliver of Saint John. When Oliver resigned in 1795, Reid was bonded, on 13 March, as the fourth high sheriff in the brief history of the county. In 1806 he was reprimanded by the court for refusing to execute a writ against a friend in a case of bastardy. The following year he and his son Andrew were found guilty of assault and battery and sentenced to pay fines. Several disagreements with the court ensued. He resigned in 1811 but was still acting as sheriff in 1812, and no doubt continued to do so until 1813 when he took on the part-time position of registrar of deeds.

A tombstone in the cemetery at Wilson's Point reveals that "Nelly," the wife of Robert Reid, died in 1810, at age sixty-five. When Reid was remarried in 1819 to the widow Nancy Dunn, The Royal Gazette gave their ages as eighty-seven and thirty respectively. Reid retired in 1823 and died five years later, in his mid nineties.