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Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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MOWATT, JAMES (1833-1915)

MOWATT, JAMES, building contractor, b. Derby, 18 Jun 1833, s/o James Mowatt Sr and Hannah Clouston; m. 1856, Jessie Johnston, d/o John Johnston and h/w Jane, of Chatham; d. there, 6 Oct 1915.

James Mowatt was a carriage builder in Chatham for many years with his older brother John and then a building contractor. In 1877-78 he and William Lawlor built a lighthouse on Greenly Island in the Strait of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and Labrador. He lived in Chatham most of his life, but he and his wife had two children born in Massachusetts in the 1880s.

Mowatt's best-known structures are Grace Church at Millerton (1894) and Knox Church at Loggieville (1904). He was also the builder of the second almshouse in Chatham in 1899. In 1905 "James Mowatt & Sons" renovated and expanded Albert House for its owner, Allan Mann, who had come to the Miramichi from Newfoundland several years previously. Albert House was a three-storey hotel of wood frame construction with an observatory on top which stood at the corner of Duke and Henderson streets in Chatham. Its interior walls were decorated with paintings of marine and animal life which had been executed personally by Mann, and it had an ballroom called "The Palms."

When he died in 1915, at age eighty-two, Mowatt left his wife, Jessie Johnston, and seven children.

Sources

[b] census [m] Gleaner 19 Apr 1856 [d] World 6 Oct 1915 / Advance 4 May 1893. 14 Sep 1899; Advocate 11 Oct 1905, 8 Nov 1905; Fraser (C); Martin; Times 28 May 1954; tombstone (parents)


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