MERRY, NICHOLAS (17??-1837)

MERRY, NICHOLAS, teacher, b. Ireland, 1770s; m. Margaret - ; d. Newcastle, 1837.

Nicholas Merry, his wife, and five children came to the Miramichi around 1819. He and his wife were career teachers of a parish, or common, school in Newcastle. He taught until shortly before his death in 1837, and his wife continued until after 1849, when she was past seventy. One of their pupils, Agnes (Russell) Vanderbeck, who was born in 1825, told many years later of attending school "in a log school house" in which "Mr. and Mrs. Merrie taught, one in each end of the building." "I remember Mrs. Merrie making us sit with our backs against the hewn logs," she stated, "to keep our shoulders straight." As noted elsewhere, another student of Mrs Merry's was Catherine Buckley, the mother of Father William C. Gaynor, who felt that she had received a superior education at this "seminary for young ladies." There were eleven boys and fifteen girls enrolled in 1844-45.

Margaret Merry died in Newcastle in 1866, at age eighty-nine.