SPRATT, JOSEPH (1788-1861)

SPRATT, JOSEPH, churchman; b. Chester, England, c1788; m. 1812, Ann Coy; d. Chatham, 22 Jan 1861.

Joseph Spratt sailed from Liverpool, England, for the Miramichi with his wife and family in 1819. He settled first at Bay du Vin, where he was a boot and shoe maker in 1825. Around 1829 he and the family relocated in Chatham. He advertised patent medicines for sale in 1845. In the census of 1851 he was enumerated as a baker.

Spratt was affiliated with the Wesleyan Methodist Society in England from age eighteen and was licensed as a local preacher. In company with Robert Morrow and others he was a founding trustee of the Methodist church at Chatham in 1831, and he remained "a consistent member" throughout his life. "I am very much indebted to Joseph Spratt, of Chatham," stated Robert Cooney, in reference to his conversion from Catholicism at that time. "He was the first man that ever spoke to me of Methodism, and the state of my soul."

Spratt was one of the charter members of the Miramichi Temperance Society in 1832 and its first secretary (pro tem). Later he served on the executive committee of the combined Chatham Temperance and Total Abstinence societies. Civic responsibilities which he undertook included those of overseer of the poor and town clerk of Chatham parish.

In a eulogy published in The Gleaner, Spratt was described as a "kind hearted" man and "a promoter of every cause that had for its object the welfare and advancement of the people." He had "a gigantic memory," and "his knowledge of the world and his conversational powers seemed unbounded." He was an impressive public speaker, one of whose addresses was delivered to a meeting of the Miramichi Mechanics' Institute during the 1847-48 lecture season on the subject of "Heathen Mythology."

Spratt and his wife, Ann Coy, brought two children with them to New Brunswick: Thomas Spratt, who had a dry-goods store in Chatham in 1841, and later made his home at Paris, Ont., and Ann Spratt, the first wife of A. James Henderson. Four more children were born on the Miramichi, including Ellen Spratt, the wife of William Parker, and Elizabeth (Spratt) Hurley.