SINCLAIR, EDWARD (1842-1901)

SINCLAIR, EDWARD, lumber company head; b. Douglastown, 5 Jan 1842, s/o John Sinclair and Ann Elizabeth Rogers; m. 1865, Sarah Jane Willard, d/o Oliver Willard and Sarah Ann Patten; d. Northwest Bridge, 30 May 1901.

Edward Sinclair was educated at the County Grammar School under James Millar and trained as a clerk in the offices of Gilmour, Rankin & Co. He was a "work hand" with Peter Mitchell when Mitchell was a lumber merchant and shipbuilder at Newcastle. He later entered business for himself, and by 1871 was the proprietor of a lumber and mercantile establishment at Northwest Bridge. In 1872 he advertised his store in a verse published in the short-lived Caribou Courier. The following is one of a number of stanzas, which are similar in structure to Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott":



Now public all come see yourselves

What treasures are upon our shelves

Come, pay your money, take your choice

If you're deceived, then raise your voice

Against the North West Bridge...



Sinclair was an astute businessman who headed one of the most successful mid-sized lumber firms in the province. In 1878-79 he installed a Pond's Wisconsin rotary sawmill which had been manufactured by the Miramichi Foundry. This was lost to fire in August 1883 and was only partially covered by insurance, but he had the frame of a new mill erected by October and planned to have it operational by spring. It was stated in 1897 that he had a "fine mill" equipped with "a Milwaukee rotary and lathwood and shingle machines." At that time, the mill was sawing five million board feet annually, deals for the British market, laths and shingles for the American, and ships were taking on their cargoes directly from his wharves.

In 1882 Sinclair was the owner of the schooner Maggie Jane. In 1885 he launched the John McLaggan at Northwest Bridge. After this schooner sank the same year while enroute to Philadelphia from Summerside with a cargo of potatoes, he engaged Patrick Desmond to build a replacement. The three-masted vessel of the same name, constructed of juniper and weighing 238 tons, was lost with all hands off the coast of Mexico in 1887. In 1889 he took delivery of the steamer Bridgetown, which was a combined tugboat and yacht. She was built by Joseph M. Ruddock and was described in the Advance as "the best of the small steamers built on the Miramichi."

Sinclair was a Conservative in politics and a supporter of Michael Adams. In a speech which he gave in 1886 he stated that he was neither a politician nor an orator but "just an elector and employer of labor," whose interests had been "more of a practical than theoretical character." His life had been "one busy whirl, watching for some [monetary] return," and his life's experiences had been "as variegated as the autumnal leaves on the maple tree." He had succeeded, he said, "in making both ends meet and lap over a little." He was in fact a wealthy man but also, in the words of the Union Advocate, "one of the most impulsively good hearted and systematically generous of mankind," who "studied, planned, and sought for opportunities of doing kind and helpful things." Although he was a member of the Presbyterian church, he assisted liberally with the building of St Samuel's Catholic Church at Douglastown. He helped finance the academic and professional studies of promising students (including Lord Beaverbrook), and he handed out money constantly to the poor. He did this without ostentation and without seeking credit or publicity.

In August 1899 Sinclair led the poll in the election for the first Newcastle Town Council, but he resigned in February 1900, complaining that a majority of the councillors were behind the times in regard to the public services required by the town. He described them as "plodding along in eighteenth century style," and stated that he had "too few years to live to waste his time wrangling over water works and other essentials that towns with far less wealth and advantages possessed." At that time, without his knowing it, he had fewer than sixteen months of life remaining. He died of a "brain illness" in May 1901, at age fifty-eight.

The Edward Sinclair Co. was incorporated by Sinclair's heirs shortly after his death, but for a number of years the future of the firm was uncertain. In 1906 it was bought by John McKane, but it was not placed on a stable footing until 1909, when McKane sold it to Sinclair's sons, William M. and E. Hubert Sinclair. William M. Sinclair had been a lumber operator in California, and he and his brother carried on the business successfully. It was sold in 1928. In the late 1940's Fraser Companies Ltd built the first Northwest Bridge pulp mill on the former Sinclair site.

Sinclair and his wife, S. Jane Willard, had three daughters and three sons who lived to adulthood. A son not mentioned above was Oliver Willard Sinclair, who was a physician in California. A daughter was Florence Sinclair, the wife of John McKane. Sinclair gave his name to Sinclair Lake, near the head of the Little Southwest Miramichi; to the former Sinclair Bridge over the Northwest, near his place of business; and to the former Sinclair Arena in Newcastle, which was named in his honor by its donor, Lord Beaverbrook, whose benefactor he had been. Finally, there is a Miramichi folksong entitled "The Edward Sinclair Song," which was published by Manny and Wilson in their Songs of Miramichi.