LAWLOR, THOMAS WILLIAM (1876-1912)

LAWLOR, THOMAS WILLIAM, military officer and businessman; b. Red Bank, 6 Jul 1876, s/o Thomas Lawlor and Mary Maddock; m. 1908, Gertrude Riordan Murphy, d/o Patrick Murphy and Elizabeth Drinan, of Sunny Corner; d. Red Bank, 31 Oct 1912.

Thomas W. Lawlor was a gunner with the Newcastle Field Battery in 1895 and ranked high in a three-month training course in which he was enrolled in Quebec. He was a sergeant in 1896, when he was sent to Shoeburyness, in England, with a Canadian Artillery team. The recipient of a first class certificate from the Royal School of Artillery, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1897 and captain in 1901. In 1902 he went to South Africa with the 4th Canadian Contingent, but since the war ended the same month as the contingent arrived, he did not see action.

After his return to Canada, Lawlor attended business college in Fredericton. He was promoted to major in 1904, and in 1905 he was named to succeed Maj. Richard L. Maltby as commanding officer of the Newcastle Field Battery. He was still in charge of the unit in 1908 but was wintering in Bermuda, after having contracted tuberculosis.

In 1910 Lawlor was one of the incorporators of the Newcastle Steamboat Co., of which Patrick Hennessy was president. Prior to his death in 1912, at age thirty-six, he was president of the Renous Bridge Lumber Co., which had a store at Renous and a mill at Millerton. He and his wife, Gertrude R. Murphy, who died of tuberculosis a few months after he did, were survived by three children.