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Archives provinciales du Nouveau-Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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STEWART, ALEXANDER (1844-1916)

STEWART, ALEXANDER, hotel proprietor; b. Scotland, c1844; m. 1874, Margaret McMurray, of Saint John; d. Vancouver, B.C., 23 Mar 1916.

Before he moved to the Miramichi, Alexander Stewart was head steward of the Waverley Hotel in Saint John. In 1873 he took over management of the former Wilbur House in Newcastle and renamed it the Waverley. The Wilbur House had been conducted for about four years by James H. Wilbur in what had previously been the Fallon Hotel. The building stood on the corner which was later occupied by the Lounsbury Co.

Stewart was "the very prince of good fellows," and the Waverley was one of the best hotels in the northern counties of the province. For many years it was not only a stopping place for the travelling public but a boarding house for members of the professions who did not have families or homes of their own. When the census of 1881 was taken the twenty-seven full-time residents of the hotel included two physicians, a dentist, a druggist, an accountant, two merchants, a school inspector, and four teachers. Countless meetings, banquets, and parties took place at the hotel in the 1870s and 80s, one of the most splendid of which was a party which Mr and Mrs E. Lee Street gave in 1889 for more than 100 guests from among the social elite of Newcastle.

In 1890 Stewart sold the Waverley to John F. Jardine, and he and his wife opened a boarding house at their home in Newcastle. They sometimes hosted parties and banquets there too, such as the "New Year's Scotch Dinner" of 1895, at which John McKane sang a solo and recited a scene from The Lady of the Lake.

Stewart's wife, Margaret McMurray, died in 1900 at age forty-eight, and soon afterwards he moved to British Columbia. In 1906 he was living in the small border town of Eholt and was said to be prospering, after having made some lucky investments. He and his eldest son, Alexander Stewart Jr, a registered pharmacist, owned Stewart's Drug Store at Eholt, but the business was among the casualties of a disastrous fire which swept through the town in 1912. He and his son then went to Vancouver, where he died in 1916 at age seventy-one, and his son in 1918 at age forty-two.

Sources

[m] Advocate 6 May 1874 [d] official records / Advocate 19 Aug 1874, 15 Mar 1876, 31 May 1876, 21 May 1879, 7 Jan 1880 (ad), 6 Feb 1889, 19 Mar 1890, 16 Jan 1895, 30 May 1900, 31 Mar 1909; Grand Forks Evening Sun (B.C.) 30 Aug 1912; Leader 28 Dec 1906, 31 Mar 1916, 14 Jun 1918; Ledge (Greenwood, B.C.) 13 Jun 1918; PABC (will of Alexander Stewart Jr)


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