VANDERBECK, JOHN WILLIAM (1864-1921)

VANDERBECK, JOHN WILLIAM, sawmill manager, musician, and MLA; b. Renous, Oct 1864, s/o Abraham Vanderbeck and Agnes Nancy Russell; m. 1885, Elizabeth Love Russell, d/o Samuel Russell and Susan Maria Schofield of Millerton; d. there, 1 May 1921.

John W. Vanderbeck was a descendant of Abraham Vanderbeck (1st), a Loyalist from New Jersey who settled in Fredericton in 1783 with his wife, Matilda Underhill, and family. A son, Abraham Vanderbeck (2nd), who was born in 1789, carried the surname to the Miramichi.

John W. Vanderbeck was employed during most of his working life by J. B. Snowball & Co. In the census of 1901 he was enumerated as a "lumber overseer." About five years later he became the manager of a sawmill at Millerton which was conducted in the name of J. W. Vanderbeck & Sons but was owned in the United States. When this business was sold to J. B. Snowball & Co. in 1910 he returned to work for them. The sawmill was converted to a lath mill in 1920 with him as manager, but he suffered a serious leg injury and retired in November of that year.

Vanderbeck served as a county councillor for fifteen years and sat on the County Board of Health for ten years. He was best known to the public, however, as a musician who played a unique twelve-string guitar. During World War I he was a violinist with the Patriotic Orchestra, which performed at charitable and other functions in the province, as well as at the Legislative Assembly.

Vanderbeck was one of the candidates in the provincial election of 1920 who was endorsed by a coalition of independent farm and labor interests. After condemning the Liberal government of the day, "publicly and privately, on the platform, in the street, and in private conversation," and after "referring to a big carpetbag full of documentary evidence of its sins," he was voted into political office at the head of the poll. He took his seat but died a few months later, at age fifty-six, of complications from the injury of the previous fall.

When he died, the Chatham World stated that Vanderbeck's "sturdy independence and straightforwardness won him the respect of associates in business and political life," and that "his genial disposition, ready humor, and great musical talent made him a prime social favorite." He was survived by his wife, E. Love Russell, three daughters, and three sons. His son Abram Victor Vanderbeck (1890-1954) successfully contested the by-election held in 1921 to fill his seat and held it until 1924. He was later an employee of the Bathurst Power & Paper Co. and manager of a subsidiary at Chaleur, on the Gaspé coast.