MITCHELL, JAMES (1825-1901)

MITCHELL, JAMES, high sheriff, 1855-71, and inspector of lights; b. Miramichi, 10 Oct 1825, s/o Peter Mitchell Sr and Barbara Grant; brother of Peter Mitchell; m. 1st, 1853, Ann Jane Caldwell, a native of Newcastle, and 2nd, 1870, Isabel Birkmire McCurdy, of Truro, N.S.; d. Newcastle, 1 Mar 1901.

James Mitchell attended the Newcastle Grammar School when it was conducted by John H. Sivewright and spent almost his entire life in Newcastle. In 1855, at age thirty, he received an appointment as high sheriff of the county, and he was, by all accounts, one of the most successful occupants of that office. He resigned in 1871 to become provincial inspector of lights for the federal Department of Marine and Fisheries, of which his brother Peter Mitchell was minister. He retained this appointment until he was retired on pension about ten years before his death.

Mitchell was a lieutenant in the militia in 1875 and a member of the detachment sent to Bathurst under Maj. Robert R. Call's command to guard the jail in which the Caraquet rioters were being held. His community activities were not especially numerous, but he was favorably regarded by all. To quote the Miramichi Advance, he was "a staunch friend, a manly opponent, and an honorable and public-spirited citizen."

Mitchell and his first wife, Ann J. Caldwell, who died in 1869, at age forty-one, had three sons who survived to maturity, two of whom became civil engineers and the other a lawyer. All three settled in western Canada, as did the only child of the second marriage, Charles R. Mitchell. He attended the University of New Brunswick and the Saint John law school and had a distinguished career in Alberta as a barrister, politician, and jurist. During the six years prior to his death in 1942 he was chief justice of the trial division of the Supreme Court of Alberta.