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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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SAMUEL, MICHAEL (1787-1862)

SAMUEL, MICHAEL, businessman; b. c1787; m. 1818, Mary Catherine Parker, sister of George Joseph Parker; d. London, England, 14 May 1862.

Michael Samuel was a partner of his brother-in-law John Joseph, the husband of Sophia Elizabeth Parker, in one of the leading businesses to be established in Chatham prior to 1825. The two men came to the Miramichi from Halifax and were in business by 1819. They bought land that year in Chatham and opened a general store, and their names are on the 1819 list of members of Fortitude Lodge, the first Masonic lodge to be organized on the river. They were the owners of the schooner Avon, in which they shipped fish to the West Indies. They were also engaged in the lumber trade and had a boom opposite Middle Island.

Joseph & Samuel had a branch store at Newcastle which was destroyed in the Miramichi Fire. This was later rebuilt and managed by Jacob Samuel, who may have been a nephew. In partnership with Michael Samuel's son Michael Jr, a branch store was conducted in Richibucto. This was later owned outright by the younger man.

Samuel's wife, Mary C. Parker, died in 1834, at age forty-one. After the death the following year of his partner, John Joseph, he continued in business on his own. At this time he had a net worth of at least £25,000 and had more money to lend than most other merchants would ever accumulate. A regular borrower from him in the 1830s was the County of Northumberland, which sometimes had to reserve up to a quarter of its revenues for principal and interest payments. In 1842 he advanced a loan of £10,000 to Joseph Cunard, nearly half of which was outstanding in 1847 when Cunard's business failed.

In 1842 Samuel announced that he was about to leave the Miramichi, but he did not depart immediately. In 1844 he was one of twenty members of a 'grand inquest' into the conduct of magistrates and county officials. In 1846 the firm of M. Samuel & Sons was formed, with sons Joseph J. and William E. Samuel as partners. It was dissolved in 1850 after Joseph J. Samuel died. By this time Michael Samuel was living in retirement in England, and his son William E. Samuel was in charge of the store in Chatham. After William E. Samuel died in 1859 his brother Samuel G. Samuel conducted the store until he too died in 1862, at age thirty-three, a month before his father's death occurred in London.

It has been stated that John Joseph and Michael Samuel were "Jewish merchants," but Samuel was married in St Paul's Anglican Church in Halifax, and both men and their families were affiliated with the Anglican church on the Miramichi. The five sons of the family mentioned above all died in early middle age. Daughters Sophia Samuel, the wife of Dr Stafford Benson, and Susan Samuel, the wife of Richard Hocken, were the only survivors of their father, and inheritances from his estate left them and their families financially independent.

Sources

[m] Halifax Marriages [d] Morning News 25 Jun 1862 / Acadian Recorder 5 Jul 1834; Fraser (C); Gleaner 24 Jun 1834, 28 Apr 1835, 23 May 1837, 8 May 1838, 12 May 1840, 29 Aug 1842, 28 Sep 1844, 5 Jan 1847, 14 Jan 1850, 16 Apr 1859, 1 Feb 1862; Manny Collection (F182); Manny (Ships); NB Courier 31 Mar 1849


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