TRACEY, MATTHEW A. (1850-1886)

TRACEY, MATTHEW A., newspaperman; b. Chatham (bap. 1 Nov 1850), s/o Patrick Tracey, a shoemaker from Newfoundland, and Catherine Bergin; d. Jersey City, N.J., 12 Apr 1886.

When James J. Pierce brought The Gleaner back into production in May 1870 after a shutdown of several months duration, he engaged Matthew A. Tracey as his printer and business manager. When he gave up the paper two years later Tracey became its proprietor and editor. He failed, however, to make a continuing success of it, and few, if any, numbers appeared after December 1873.

In December 1874 Tracey announced that he was about to launch a new semi-weekly paper to be called the Northern Herald. A few issues came off the press in the former Gleaner office in 1875, but the Herald proved to be no more viable than its predecessor. To make matters worse for him, his printing shop was broken into later that year and badly vandalized.

Tracey was co-publisher with Alexander W. Paterson of a reborn and newly-numbered Gleaner in 1876, but the partnership was short-lived. In 1877 he was working as a reporter in Ottawa. He later went to New York and joined the staff of The Tribune. He died of tuberculosis, at age thirty-five, at the home of his brother Daniel Tracey in Jersey City.