QUAYLE, PERLEY (1893-1975)

QUAYLE, PERLEY, teacher, farmer, and local historian; b. Williamstown, 23 May 1893, s/o William Quayle and Levisa Tozer; m. Kathleen Sutherland, of North Esk parish; d. Newcastle, 23 Apr 1975.

Perley Quayle attended school at Williamstown and Millerton and graduated from the Provincial Normal School in 1912. He served as principal of the superior schools at Millerton and Doaktown for short terms prior to 1920. Later he spent many years working on his parents' farm at Williamstown. At the same time, he acquired expertise in several trades through correspondence study and a high level of self-education from reading. He wrote in a chaste style but published little other than an article entitled "The Value of Education," in The Educational Review in 1925 and an incomplete series of sketches on Miramichi history in the Union Advocate in the 1930s. He made a hobby of local history and maintained files of notes and clippings, as well as a many-volumed diary in which he made entries over a period of more than fifty years. A collection of family letters from his estate, the earliest of which date from the 1850s, is held by the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick.

In 1941 Quayle was named principal of the Miramichi Rural High School at Bayside, as successor to A. Theodore Patstone. His appointment was under the Vocational Education Board, and besides administering the school he managed the shops and taught industrial arts. He occupied the position until 1946 and then retreated again to the family farm. Throughout the years, he was a leading figure in the little Williamstown Methodist-United Church. Married late in life, he was survived in 1975 by a middle-aged widow and a young daughter.