HAVILAND, THOMAS (1825-1898)

HAVILAND, THOMAS, steamboat engineer and ferryman; bap. Saint John, 24 Sep 1825, s/o Barnett Haviland and Martha Thompson; brother of John Haviland; m. 1st, Margaret Jane Lee, and 2nd, 1860, Mary Bell, sister of George Baxter Bell; d. Douglastown, 9 Apr 1898.

Thomas Haviland was baptized in St Malachy's Catholic Church in Saint John, but he and other members of his parents' family later lived at Fredericton, where no Catholic affiliation would appear to have been maintained.

As indicated below, Haviland was said to have operated a ferry at Chatham for forty-five years prior to 1893; that is, from around 1848. He may have been in command of the first steam ferry, which was launched in the fall of 1847, and of the ferries subsequently owned by his brother-in-law George B. Bell, but few facts would appear to have been recorded concerning his first twenty years as a ferryman.

Haviland was master and eventual owner of a ferry named the Teazer, which was launched from the shipyard of Gilmour, Rankin & Co. in 1868. This was a single-storey steamer, roughly eighty feet long and twenty feet wide, of wood construction. It was succeeded in 1884 by the Sybella H., a slightly larger wooden steamboat which was built at the Miramichi Foundry yard and named in honor of one of Haviland's daughters.

The Miramichi public was much incensed in 1893 when government officials beached Haviland's ferry because he did not have a master's license. The move was in reaction to the accidental death of two passengers of the ferry Rustler at Newcastle while she was under the command of another unlicensed master, John Russell. The Union Advocate considered it to be absurd, however, that Haviland, who had been conducting a ferry for "forty-five years," should suddenly require a license to continue to do so. After a delay of several weeks the problem was somehow resolved in Haviland's favor.

Haviland was on board the Sybella H. as master in May 1896 when he suffered an epileptic seizure which presaged his death less than two years later. He was remembered as one who was kind, courteous, and accommodating of the public. Several children were born of each of his marriages. The children of Margaret J. Lee included Matilda Haviland, the wife of George Stothart, and those of Mary Bell, Sybella Haviland, for whom the ferry was named, and Henry B. Haviland, who assisted his father on the crossing for a number of years.