GNB
Archives provinciales du Nouveau-Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

1 109 entrées disponibles dans cette base de données
IntroductionIntroduction | Index des nomsIndex des noms | Index des professionsIndex des professions | Index des organisationsIndex des organisations | Recherche plein texteRecherche plein texte | Le DictionnaireLe Dictionnaire

Langue de présentationLangue de présentation
Filtré par : Professions > Tailleurs  [retirer le filtre]
1 de 6
Page 96 de 1109

BLAIR, GEORGE ADAM (1830-1887)

BLAIR, GEORGE ADAM, merchant tailor and police magistrate; b. Nova Scotia, 26 Aug 1830; m. 1858, Sarah Mignowitz Williston, d/o Phineas Williston and Mary Ann Muncey; d. Chatham, 27 Jan 1887.

George A. Blair lived in the United States before settling in Chatham in 1855 and opening a tailor shop. He was active in the tailoring business until the end of his life. In 1866 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the provincial election. Not long afterwards, he was appointed a justice of the peace. In 1883, after he had presided in an acting capacity for a number of years, he was officially named to the post of police magistrate for Chatham, in which he proved himself to be "firm and fearless." He was also the federal government's meteorological agent on the Miramichi, having responsibility for gathering and transmitting weather data.

An Anglican, Blair taught Sunday school for thirty years, served as treasurer of St Paul's Church corporation, and represented the Chatham deanery in the provincial synod of the church. He was a trustee of the Chatham Grammar School from about 1874 to 1882. His intellectual interests are revealed in the titles of addresses which he delivered to the Mechanics' Institute, such as "Charles I and Cromwell" (1865), "Byron" (1866), and "Admiral Blake" (1867). In 1879 he was elected to the presidency of St George's Society of Miramichi.

In 1881, only six years before his death, Blair and his wife, Sarah M. Williston, had eleven children living at home, who ranged in age from two to twenty-two years. Their daughters included Frances J. Blair, who became the second wife of Henry A. Muirhead, and Sarah Mignowitz Blair, who married Frederick E. Neale. The youngest of their sons, Frederick H. Blair, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, England, under Sir Walter Parratt and had an established reputation as an organist. He was the organist of Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton when still a young man, and for many years prior to his death he occupied the full-time organist's position at the Church of St Andrew and St Paul in Montreal. He was lost at sea in September 1939 when returning from Europe on the ocean liner Athenia, which was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland.

Sources

[b] tombstone [m] Gleaner 10 Apr 1858 [d] Advocate 2 Feb 1887 / Advance 22 May 1879, 6 Nov 1879, 26 Jun 1902; Advocate 6 May 1874, 11 Jul 1883, 22 Jun 1887, 28 Oct 1896, 22 Nov 1899; Commercial World 21 Sep 1939; Fraser (C); Gleaner 18 Aug 1855, 26 Mar 1859, 10 Mar 1866, 16 Mar 1867; NB Elections; Telegraph 31 Jan 1887; World 2 Feb 1887


4.11.1