RICHARDS, WILLIAM D. (1835-1903)

RICHARDS, WILLIAM D., lumber company head; b. Douglas parish, York Co., N.B., 10 Sep 1835, s/o Daniel Richards and Mary Griffiths; m. 1854, Mary Ann Sansom, of Douglas parish; d. Boiestown, 1 Jun 1903.

The son of Welsh settlers at Cardigan Settlement in York County, William D. Richards was a successful lumberman on the St John and Nashwaak rivers before extending his operations to the Miramichi in the 1870s. About 1876 he acquired an interest in the sawmill at Millbank which had previously been owned by Gilmour, Rankin & Co. After this mill burned in 1883 his Fredericton-based firm took over the Muirhead mill in Chatham. Under the management of John T. Rundle, the Chatham mill was one of the Miramichi's largest producers of lumber for export.

In 1883 Richards was a director of the Northern and Western Railway Co., in the name of which the Chatham to Fredericton railroad was built. The line made it possible to ship sawn lumber by rail from the Southwest Miramichi, and in 1891 Richards acquired the MacMillan saw and grist mills at Boiestown and established his headquarters and residence there. He and a son-in-law, Herbert H. Gunter, conducted big harvesting operations on the Southwest, Taxis, Dungarvon, and Renous rivers. They built a store and warehouse and fine homes for their families. At the height of the season in 1891 they had more than 200 employees. In 1895 their sawmill at Boiestown was providing work for seventy-five men. In 1896 their lumber cut on the Miramichi was second only to that of J. B. Snowball & Co.

When business took him to Chatham, Richards put up at the Adams House, which had a 'back room' of questionable legality in which alcoholic drinks were served. Richards "always visited that Back Room in the early morning," recalled his fellow-guest Max Aitken, sixty years later. "He would ask most politely for a glass and some sugar. He added Angostura bitters and a small measure of hot water, just enough to dissolve the sugar. Du Kuyper gin completed the mixture. Then a big breakfast."

In 1897 the Richards business interests were transferred to a stock company, the Richards Co. Ltd, of which William Richards was president. In 1899 the company built a new flour mill at Boiestown, but after Richards became ill in 1900-01 and began to spend most of his time in a suite at the Barker House in Fredericton interest in the Boiestown operations waned. In 1903 the Richards Co. bought the Alexander Morrison sawmill at Morrison's Cove, but two years later the firm's assets on the Miramichi, consisting of the mills at Boiestown and Chatham and 166,000 acres of timber land, were sold to the Miramichi Lumber Co., a subsidiary of the International Paper Co. of New York.

"Richards the Lumber King," as he was known, was a popular figure on the Miramichi, and when he died in 1903, at age sixty-seven, trains carried mourners to Boiestown from both Chatham and Fredericton. Later, funds were raised by public subscription for the erection of the Richards Memorial Fountain in Chatham. He was survived by his wife, Mary Ann Sansom, two daughters, and a son.