GNB
Archives provinciales du Nouveau-Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

1 109 entrées disponibles dans cette base de données
IntroductionIntroduction | Index des nomsIndex des noms | Index des professionsIndex des professions | Index des organisationsIndex des organisations | Recherche plein texteRecherche plein texte | Le DictionnaireLe Dictionnaire

Langue de présentationLangue de présentation
Page 1035 de 1109

Aller à la page
VYE, CHARLES (1761-1843)

VYE, CHARLES, ship carpenter and master builder; b. Dorset, England, c1761; m. Hannah (Peely?); d. Miramichi, 15 Aug 1843.

Charles Vye is among the forebears of all persons of Miramichi origin with the Vye surname in their ancestry and of a large proportion of those who possess this relatively rare surname in the rest of the world. He emigrated from England around 1785 and became a master shipbuilder in Trinity, Nfld, where the merchant Benjamin Lester built ships for his own extensive fishing and trading business, as well as for the Royal Navy.

In 1799 Vye stated that he had been living on the Miramichi for three years. Since his arrival he had constructed two vessels: the Lovell, of 200 tons, and the schooner Lively, of 110 tons, for Fraser, Thom & Co. He had a second ship under construction for this firm. During the next twenty-five years he built a number of other vessels, largely, it is thought, for Fraser & Thom and their business successors, but the specifics were evidently not recorded.

Vye made his home at Miramichi Point and operated a ferry service for several years between the Point and Beaubear's Island. He had a license to sell spiritous liquors in 1813 and was probably conducting an inn. He was bankrupt in 1829, at which time his property was sold at auction by the sheriff. It was bought by John Ambrose Street, who out of consideration for Vye's "misfortune and old age" reconveyed the residential portion of it to him in 1835 for the nominal sum of five shillings.

Vye and his wife had six sons and four daughters who lived to maturity. Several of their older sons also entered the shipbuilding business, but they came to economic ruin when a ship which they built for themselves was lost at sea in 1826. Their youngest son, Henry Vye, was a successful farmer and jack-of-all-trades at Derby, where he and his wife, Jane Appleby, raised a family of thirteen.

Sources

[d] Vye family data / Generations 48, p.48; Mercury 31 Mar 1829; county records (34/443, Street to Vye, 6 Nov 1835); DCB (re. Benjamin Lester); PANB (petitions #417, #661)


4.11.1