SAUNDERS, JOSEPH (1765-1825)

SAUNDERS, JOSEPH, lumberman, county treasurer, JP, and MLA; b. c1765; m. c1792, Margaret Anderson, and 1817, Mary Hannah Willis; d. Nelson parish, 1825.

Joseph Saunders took up residence on the Northwest Miramichi around 1788. He was engaged in the lumber industry there until 1805 and then relocated at Kirkwood, at the junction of the Southwest and Barnaby rivers, in Nelson parish. He stated in 1810 that he held 1400 acres of land and was sawing and exporting planks and other lumber to the value of £1,400 annually. He had spent £650 building his house and barn at Kirkwood.

When the 1st Battalion of Northumberland County militia was activated in 1799 Saunders was named a lieutenant. By 1810 he was a captain. In 1812 he was appointed a justice of the peace, and in 1813 he succeeded Joseph Home as county treasurer. In 1819 his name was on the membership roll of Fortitude Lodge, the first Masonic lodge to be organized on the Miramichi. In the provincial election of that year he won a seat in the House of Assembly, but he withdrew from politics after dissolution of the assembly in 1820. He died before the end of June 1825, when an announcement was dated concerning his estate. The administrators sold much of his property at auction in 1831.

Saunders and his wife Margaret Anderson had at least eight children, including Ann Saunders, the wife of Alexander Davidson, and Alexander Saunders, who was his father's successor at Nelson. There were also a number of children born of his marriage to Mary H. Willis, who died in 1822, at age thirty-five.