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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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RITCHIE, ALLAN J. (1848-1916)

RITCHIE, ALLAN J., lumber company head and MLC; mayor of Newcastle, 1899-1900; b. Mearns parish, Renfrewshire, Scotland, 1 Jan 1848 (bap. 7 Feb 1848), s/o David Ritchie and Mary Young; m. 1884, Susan Elizabeth Hocken, d/o Richard Hocken and Susan Samuel; d. Newcastle, 2 Jan 1916.

Allan J. Ritchie was brought to New Brunswick in 1852 by his parents and grew up near Flatlands in Restigouche County where his father was engaged in the lumber business. After attending school at Campbellton and Chatham he took a job as a clerk in 1865 with the firm of D. & J. Ritchie, the principals of which were his older half-brothers David and John Ritchie, lumber agents and exporters, based in Chatham, and in Liverpool, England, respectively.

In 1868 Allan Ritchie and his older full brother Robert Ritchie became partners in D. & J. Ritchie, and when their half-brother David Ritchie, the resident partner at Chatham, also moved to Liverpool, he and Robert carried on the business on the Miramichi. At first they had their logs sawed by contract at different Miramichi mills and shipped from Chatham, but in 1872 they purchased the former Rundle millsite in Newcastle and erected a large new mill. A year after it was built it burned, throwing 150 men out of work and taking the life of one John Halloran. It was rebuilt and brought into full operation in 1874. By this time the Ritchies were in business for themselves, but they retained the firm name of D. & J. Ritchie. They acquired extensive timber limits along the Northwest and Little Southwest branches of the Miramichi, and their winter logging operations gave employment to hundreds of woodsworkers.

In 1878 the Ritchies were the largest shippers of lumber through the port of Newcastle, loading twenty vessels out of a total of forty-nine. They were still dwarfed by the Chatham shippers, led by J. B. Snowball & Co., which dispatched fifty-eight vessels in 1879, but their share of lumber shipments increased as the century progressed. In 1881 they were conducting a second sawmill, which had formerly been owned by William Park. In 1890 they loaded fifty-three ships. In the decade of the 90s they sometimes had as many as sixteen ships in port at once and loaded up to six at a time. A new mill which they constructed in 1896-97 to replace the second one lost to fire cut ten million board feet annually, on average, and was the largest mill in Newcastle.

As big as the business became for a time, it was not in size that D. & J. Ritchie excelled, but rather in their employment practices. The Ritchie firm was one of the first on the Miramichi to pay its workers in cash instead of "due bills," or vouchers, redeemable only at the company store. They had a store at Newcastle, but it was conducted on a competitive basis, and employees were at liberty to make their purchases wherever they wished.

In 1890 Allan Ritchie was appointed to a seat in the New Brunswick Legislative Council which he held until the council was abolished two years later. In 1899 he entered upon a one-year term as the first mayor of the incorporated town of Newcastle. He later sat for eight years on the town council. He was a member of the Anglican church, the Masonic order, and the Highland Society, of which he was president in 1913.

Ritchie was predeceased in 1904 by his wife, Susan E. Hocken, and in 1907 by his older brother Robert, who had always been the more retiring of the partners, and who had no successors. When Ritchie died in 1916 he left three sons as the inheritors of D. & J. Ritchie. His son Harold Ritchie played a prominent part in business and civic life on the Miramichi, but the firm did not survive the 1920s. The company store was transferred in 1923 to Harry A. Taylor. The mill was sold to the International Paper Co. in 1927 and dismantled in 1929. More than sixty years after that, the Ritchie Wharf recreational park was opened on the former millsite.

Sources

[b] Can. Album [bap] LDS-IGI [m] official records [d] Leader 14 Jan 1916 / Advance 14 Jul 1881, 3 Sep 1896; Advocate 18 Nov 1874, 4 Dec 1878, 19 Nov 1879, 27 Jan 1904, 2 Jan 1923; Biog. Review NB; Hist. Highland Soc.; Leader 3 May 1907, 8 Mar 1929, 26 Jun 1974; Ritchie business data; Wood Industries


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