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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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LOGGIE, ANDREW (1848-1928)

LOGGIE, ANDREW, fish processing and trading company head; b. Black Brook, 14 Jul 1848, s/o Alexander Loggie and Georgina Gray Jardine; unmarried; d. Dalhousie, N.B., 23 Jul 1928.

Around 1875 the brothers Andrew and Robert Loggie formed the A. & R. Loggie Co. in their home community of Black Brook (Loggieville). At first they had only a small store, not twenty feet square, but they soon expanded it and became fish packers and shippers, as well as general merchants. With the coming of the railway, United States markets were opened up as never before, and one of the Loggies' first large-scale successes was in the packing and shipping of smelts to the U.S. Most of the bigger Miramichi fish marketing firms became involved in the smelt trade as well, but the A. & R. Loggie Co. led the way.

A. & R. Loggie Ltd was incorporated in 1881, with Andrew and Robert Loggie as president and vice-president. After their younger brother Francis Peabody ("Frank") Loggie returned home from business college he became a partner too. Later he was secretary-treasurer for many years and eventually vice-president. Before the end of 1880s, the A. & R. Loggie firm was among the largest packers and exporters of fish in Atlantic Canada. On the merchandising side, the firm also grew rapidly, opening new stores at Loggieville, Dalhousie, Richibucto, and elsewhere.

An informative article, "A. & R. Loggie: The King Canners and Fresh Fish Exporters of Eastern Canada" was published in the Miramichi Advance in 1904. The home base of the company was still at Loggieville, but business was being conducted all over northeastern New Brunswick, as well as in Quebec, Nova Scotia, Maine, and Vermont. From Chatham and Dalhousie, primarily, the firm was shipping 2,000 tons of fresh and frozen salmon annually, much of it to Britain and Germany. Several hundred tons of fresh and frozen mackerel and about ten other kinds of fish were being shipped to both European and North American destinations from different ports in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Each year, at a plant at Inkerman, N.B., 150 tons of clams were being canned. A million tins of smelts, thirty tons of canned lobster, and forty tons of finnan haddie packed in boxes were included in the fish shipments. Most of the canning and packaging was done under the Loggies' "Eagle Brand" label.

Given the statistics on fish exports, it is surprising to read in the 1904 article that the A. & R. Loggie Co.'s largest output was not in fish, but in wild blueberries, for which they operated three canneries in New Brunswick, six in Quebec, and one at Island Pond, Vermont. They also canned fruit and vegetables on a smaller scale. For all types of canning combined they had seventeen plants in two provinces and two states. They had nine ice houses at different locations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, each with a capacity of 100-175 tons. These were used mainly for fish, but they also packaged and shipped beef, pork, poultry, and game birds. They had twenty-five sail-powered fishing boats, two schooners, one sloop, one steamer, and one tow boat. At Loggieville they had a large can and box factory and an electric plant, from which they sold surplus power to customers in the village. They had other business interests as well, including fox ranching and river and harbor dredging.

The first keeper of the post office at Loggieville (which was known as Black Brook until 1895) was Robert Blake. He held the appointment from 1863 to 1877. Andrew Loggie was then the postmaster for the next thirty-three years, until he moved to Dalhousie, N.B., for business reasons in 1910. He continued to be the senior member of the A. & R. Loggie Co. until his death in 1928, at age eighty. His survivors were four brothers, including an older brother, Peter Loggie, of Oregon, who once had a woodworking plant at Chatham which supplied 'shooks' for fish crates to A. & R. Loggie.

Andrew Loggie left an estate valued at more than $750,000, mostly in "cash in the bank." His successor as president of the company was his brother Robert Loggie, who had been based at Loggieville throughout. When Frank Loggie, then vice-president of the firm, died in 1939, at age seventy-seven, his estate was valued at $550,000, and when Robert Loggie died the next year, at age eighty-eight, his was assessed at $935,000. Among them, the brothers had amassed a fortune of more than $2 million.

The A. & R. Loggie Co. remained vigorous while its founders were alive and was continued as a family-owned business until 1945. It was then sold with its corporate name intact. It rapidly declined in importance, but in 1953 it became the first Canadian firm to prepare pre-cooked fish for the domestic market. It was producing 78,000 fish sticks a day in 1958, the year before it was acquired by Eagle Fisheries, a subsidiary of National Sea Products Ltd.

Sources

[b] Loggie family data [d] Leader 27 Jul 1928 / Advance 10 Nov 1904; Advocate 19 Sep 1928; Commercial World 21 Sep 1939 (re. Francis P. Loggie); 18 Jan 1940 (re. Robert Loggie), 25 Jan 1940 (re. F. P. L.), 8 Feb 1940 (re. R. L.), 17 Feb 1955, 6 Feb 1958, 2 Apr 1959; Fraser (L); Hist. Bay du Vin; JHA 1863 (re. militia); MacManus

Notes

There is a later sketch of Andrew Loggie, by W. D. Hamilton, in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. XV, 2005.


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