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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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RUDDOCK, JOSEPH MILLS (1840-1902)

RUDDOCK, JOSEPH MILLS, mechanical engineer, foundry owner, and shipbuilder; b. Saint John, 20 May 1840, s/o Andrew Ruddock, a native of Kinsale, Ireland, and Phyllis Mills; m. 1865, Margaret Jane Davidson, of River Philip, N.S.; d. Saint John, 3 Apr 1902.

The son of a family which had been engaged in the shipbuilding industry for four generations, Joseph M. Ruddock attended elementary school in Saint John and then apprenticed for eight years in the field of mechanical engineering. He began work at around age twenty and tried his hand at a number of different jobs in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and New England. One of the first of these was at Shediac, where he spent two years in the machine shop of the European & North American Railway. For a short time in 1862 he was the engineer on a Confederate steamer which had been in port at Halifax. He then went to New York and worked on the construction of men-of-war at the South Brooklyn Machine Works. He had a number of other jobs before he came to the Miramichi in 1867 as engineer in charge of the steam sawmill owned by Alexander Morrison. Five years later he entered business in his own right with a machine shop in Chatham.

As elsewhere noted, Ruddock was the mechanical superintendent of the Miramichi Foundry from 1879 to 1884, while it was owned and managed by Henry A. Muirhead. Besides doing ironwork of every description the foundry supplied the heavy steamboat and mill machinery needed on the Miramichi and built most of the early steamers. The plant had no serious competition in northern New Brunswick and was a major supplier to the province of Quebec. In this period Ruddock was the designer and builder of such widely-acclaimed steamers as Robert P. Whitney's Loyalist, whose "hull, boiler, and engines" all came from the foundry. In 1883 he went to Saint John to install a boiler and engines in the tug Quiddy, which had been built there from a design supplied by him. However, when the Miramichi Foundry Co. was dissolved in 1884 and William W. Muirhead took over as proprietor, he no longer had a position there.

Between 1885 and 1892 Ruddock was an independent contractor. In 1887 he built a steamer for the New Brunswick Trading Co., an English firm which had opened an agency at Chatham. In 1889 he completed construction of the Bridgetown for Edward Sinclair, which was hailed as "the best of the small steamers built on the Miramichi." In 1890 he entered an engine of his design and construction in competition in the Saint John Exhibition which the Miramichi Advance described as "the best marine engine of its dimensions in Canada."

Meanwhile, after eight years as proprietor of the Miramichi Foundry, William W. Muirhead went bankrupt. The plant had been vacant for some time and had been badly vandalized before Ruddock bought it in the fall of 1892 and set about to bring it back into production. Over the next ten years he kept between twenty and forty workers employed at all types of steel fabrication, including the construction of new vessels for the growing Miramichi steam fleet. In 1896 he himself was the owner of the handsome steamer Arthur, and he launched the yacht Marietta that year, also for his personal use. In 1897 he built the steamer Nellie H. for D. W. Hoegg & Co., which was doing business on Chaleur Bay. In 1899 he was awarded the contract for the superstructure of a new steel bridge on the Nashwaak River at Marysville. This was to be constructed at Chatham and shipped by rail. In 1901 he was hired by the provincial government to study bridge construction practices in the state of Connecticut. At the time of his death in 1902 he had a large crew at work building the 400-passenger ferry Alexandra for the Miramichi Steam Navigation Co.

The Miramichi Advance stated, that as a citizen and businessman Ruddock "stood in the first rank," and that as a practical engineer "he had no superiors in the country." He was "a man of strong purpose, strong will, and great self-reliance." In politics he was an independent. He was not one to join a lot of organizations, but he was a member of the Anglican church and the Masonic order. One of his favorite recreations was fishing. In the spring of 1879 he and Thomas F. Keary "had an excellent day's sport at Bartibogue, bringing home baskets that would have delighted old Isaak Walton himself," and during a four-day trip to Indiantown in 1885 he and two companions landed sixty trout and a salmon. His survivors in 1902 were his wife, Margaret J. Davidson, and three sons, all of whom were employees of the foundry.

Sources

[b] census [m] Biog. Review NB [d] Advocate 9 Apr 1902 / Advance 22 May 1879, 16 May 1889, 10 Sep 1891, 30 Apr 1896, 29 Oct 1896, 4 Mar 1897, 13 May 1897, 5 Oct 1899, 6 Jun 1901, 10 Apr 1902; Advocate 13 Oct 1886, 12 Oct 1892, 9 Nov 1892, 22 May 1895; World 28 Jun 1882, 21 Apr 1883, 22 Nov 1884, 6 Jun 1885, 11 May 1887


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