QUILTY, ELIZA JANE (WRIGHT) (1867-1937)

QUILTY, ELIZA JANE (WRIGHT), milliner; b. Newcastle, 2 Jan 1867, d/o William Wright and Jane Grant; m. 1896, Hugh Alphonsus Quilty, of Richibucto, N.B., a railway employee and longtime station agent at Newcastle; d. Chatham, 8 Apr 1937.

Eliza Jane ("Jennie E.") Quilty had a millinery shop in Newcastle by 1895, when she published an advertisement describing her large stock of ladies' wear, as well as her mail order service. She was a competitor of Susan (Jardine) Demers and other leading milliners, all of whom found it necessary to attend fashion and sales events in cities such as Halifax and Montreal and offer a variety of up-to-date merchandise to their customers.

Business appeared to be booming for Quilty during the first decade of the 20th century, and her millinery shop was still open in 1916. The building in which it was located, on Sargeant's Corner in Newcastle, was demolished in 1918, however, to make way for the erection of the Stothart Block.

"A woman of friendly manner and charitable instincts," Quilty was predeceased by her husband in 1933. They had no children.