TOZER, JARED (1798 LIVING 1861)

TOZER, JARED, lumber operator and JP; Newcastle postmaster, 1857-58; b. Sunbury Co., N.B., c1798, s/o Jared Tozer Sr and S. Eunice Ives; brother of James Tozer; m. 1829, Sarah Rogers, of North Esk parish; living in 1861.

Little is known about Jared Tozer's childhood, but he had a better education than most of his contemporaries in North Esk parish. Like several of his brothers he entered the lumber industry as a woods operator and sawmill owner. The settlements of Lyttleton and Sillikers grew up around a mill which he erected on the Little Southwest Indian reserve in the late 1830s, on land which he leased from the Julian chiefs at Red Bank. At the same time, he had a 15,000-acre reserve of crown land on the Little Southwest. Like most other Miramichi lumbermen, however, he came to financial grief in the early 1840s and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1843.

Tozer joined the North Esk Baptist Church in 1820 and became a deacon in 1826. Although his relationship with the church was sometimes stormy he served as a deacon for several terms over a period of more than twenty years. From the 1820s onward he also occupied almost all the important parish offices, such as surveyor of lumber, trustee of schools, and overseer of the poor. He enlisted in the militia in 1824 as an ensign and was promoted to lieutenant in 1836 and captain in the 2nd Battalion in 1839. In 1840 he was the officer in charge of a company on the Little Southwest.

Tozer was made a justice of the peace in 1838. He was an active and vocal magistrate and was one of those whose appointments were renewed in 1855. He was unsuccessful in 1856 in a bid to win a seat in the provincial Assembly. In November 1857 he was appointed postmaster at Newcastle, succeeding Edward Williston, but he held office only until June 1858, when he was replaced by James Johnston. He was declared to be an "insolvent debtor" in November 1858.

Tozer was enumerated at South Esk in the census of 1861, but little more is known. Several of his sons migrated to Kansas, and his wife, Sarah Rogers, also went there at a later date with their son Henry Tozer. She died a widow in Morton township, Ottawa Co., Kansas, in 1884. There were at least seven children in the family, including Jared Tozer Jr, who was the postmaster for many years at South Esk. Jared Tozer Jr and his wife Mary Vye were the parents of Frederick W. Tozer, MD, who practiced medicine at Rexton, and also at Blackville for a short time in the 1930s.