RUSSELL, WILLIAM JR (1822-1906)

RUSSELL, WILLIAM JR, teacher and business manager; b. Newcastle, 3 Feb 1822, s/o John Russell and Elizabeth Alice Love, natives of Ireland; m. 1852, Jane Loggie, sister of Robert Loggie; d. Victoria, B.C., 3 Apr 1906.

After finishing his formal education at the Newcastle Grammar School under John H. Sivewright, William Russell Jr studied law with Street & Kerr, but he left in 1844, deciding not to become a lawyer. Instead, he taught school for several years in Blackville and Alnwick parishes and then became a clerk and accountant with Robinson Crocker at Chatham Head. From 1865 onward he was head clerk, or business manager, for Richard Hutchison at Douglastown, and he was his successor as keeper of the Douglastown post office. He retired in 1891 and moved to Victoria, B.C., where several of his children were living.

Russell served as an elder of St James Presbyterian Church in Newcastle and was one of the founders of St Mark's Church at Douglastown. He possessed an alert mind and displayed a lifelong interest in Miramichi history. He was "a regular mine of information" to Dr Robert Nicholson in 1891 when he was gathering historical data for William F. Ganong. Later he had several letters on historical themes published in the Union Advocate, and before he died he committed a brief history of the Russell family to paper. His narrative was used by Charlotte G. Robinson for her chapter on Elizabeth Russell (his mother) in her book, Pioneer Profiles of New Brunswick Settlers (1980).

Russell and his wife, Jane Loggie, who died at age forty in 1875, had ten children. Included among them were William L. Russell, a pioneering psychiatrist in the United States on whom biographical information may be found in Who's Who in America and other national publications; several sons who were teachers and school administrators in Victoria; and Alma M. Russell, who earned an entry in the Canadian Who's Who for her accomplishments as librarian at the provincial library of British Columbia.