FORSYTH, PETER ALEXANDER (1863-1946)

FORSYTH, PETER ALEXANDER, building contractor and bridge supervisor; b. Whitneyville, 24 Sep 1863, s/o James B. Forsyth and Margaret Russell; m. 1st, 1895, Alice Maude Waltman, of Zionville, N.B., and 2nd, Lily Pedolin, d/o Ferdinand Lorek Pedolin and Mary T. Fowler; d. Newcastle, 15 Sep 1946.

Peter A. Forsyth grew up at Whitneyville, where he attended school and later learned the carpentry trade. He was working in Doaktown in 1896 and took contracts that year for the erection of warehouses and other buildings at Blackville. In 1900 he was the general contractor for the Daniel Sullivan residence and store at Red Bank, and he erected St Stephen's Presbyterian Church there in 1907 from a design supplied by James M. Troy. He also built the extension to the Hotel Miramichi in the summer of 1907 and was "manager and inspector" of construction for the new salmon hatchery which was built by the federal Department of Marine and Fisheries at South Esk that fall. He built the Millerton Superior School in 1908 and the Catholic chapel at Millerton in 1909. The following year he "remodelled and beautified" the Ferguson Church at Derby, "within and without." In 1915 he rebuilt and enlarged William M. Sullivan's store at Red Bank after it had burned in a sawmill fire on the property. He also took bridge construction and repairing contracts and was later a government-appointed bridge supervisor for Northumberland County.

In 1909 Forsyth succeeded Clifford Somers as postmaster at Whitneyville, and he conducted the post office there until 1927. In the same period he was civil court commissioner, as well as a county councillor for North Esk parish. In 1916 he was named to the County Almshouse Commission, of which he was elected chairman in 1924. He was also an early trustee of the Miramichi Hospital. In 1919 he was an elder of St Philip's Presbyterian Church at Whitneyville. He moved to Newcastle to live in 1933.

Forsyth and his first wife, Alice Waltman, had a daughter. She and his second wife, Lily Pedolin, were his named survivors in 1946.