Part 35
=Turnbull, William Wallace=, Merchant, of the firm of Turnbull & Co., Flour Dealers, Commission Merchants, and Importers of West India Goods, St. John, New Brunswick, was born on the 23rd of May, 1828, at Bear River, Annapolis county, Nova Scotia. His father was William Baxter Turnbull, and his mother, Relief Ann Tucker. His father’s grandparents emigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland, in the last century, and settled at a small place now known as Bay View, about three miles distant from the town of Digby, N.S., and here the father of the subject of our sketch was born. His mother’s grandparents were U. E. loyalists, and came to Nova Scotia from the United States shortly after, or during, the revolutionary war between Great Britain and that country. Mr. Turnbull, sen., was characterized by his keen sense of humour, his cheerfulness, and his affectionate nature, his sympathy for the weak and suffering, his strong religious convictions, and by his fealty to whatever he believed to be just and right. He died at the comparatively early age of forty-five years, and was buried at Bear River, greatly respected and beloved by all who knew him. William’s education was confined to the English branches, and was obtained at the Grammar School at Bear River, and also by attendance, for a short time, at the Grammar School at Albion Vale, a place about one mile distant from Annapolis, N.S. The school at Albion Vale was taught by the late Andrew Henderson, and it was at the time a somewhat celebrated place of instruction. Mr. Turnbull, sen., died, in July, 1845, leaving a widow and nine children (two sons and seven daughters), William being the younger of the two brothers. On the winding up of his estate, and the payment of all just debts, what remained for the family did not much exceed $1,000. For some time previous to this event William’s health was in such a precarious condition that it created a good deal of anxiety to the family, and it may be readily supposed he could do little towards the support of his mother and sisters, and to add to their troubles one of the younger sisters, eight years old, died. In the following spring (1846) all of the family except the brother removed to St. John, and shortly after their arrival in that city William obtained a situation as clerk with W. D. W. Hubbard, auctioneer. In this office he remained for about eighteen months, when he became book-keeper for G. & J. Salter, a firm then largely engaged in the West India trade, and as shipbuilders and shipowners. On the 1st May, 1851, he left their employ and struck out for himself as a wholesale flour, provision, and grocery merchant, adding thereto a few years afterwards shipowning and sailing, and in this business he is engaged at this time. When he started business he had a capital of about $200.00, very small indeed, but he had himself earned this money, and therefore knew its value. Owing, perhaps, to his youth and inexperience, for many years his progress was very slow, he having made a good number of bad debts and unwise ventures, yet notwithstanding these drawbacks he managed to meet all his liabilities as they matured, and now the reflection that throughout his business career he has been able to meet every honourable obligation, affords him the greatest satisfaction. Since his removal from Bear River he has always lived in St. John. The changes or experiences that he has had are perhaps such as are common to men engaged in business for so long a period as thirty-six years, particularly during a time when railroads, steamships and telegraphs have wrought such great changes in the methods of business, and to which we may add the change resulting from the confederation of the provinces into the Dominion of Canada. When Mr. Turnbull was about twenty-four years of age he became a member of the order of Sons of Temperance, but after a few years he withdrew, not because he had ceased to believe in the soundness of total abstinence principles, but because he became so immersed in business that his mind seemed to be wholly absorbed by it, and he felt, owing perhaps to the limitation of his capacity, unable to keep up his interest in the organization. He has always been, and still is, a total abstainer, but is not at present associated with any society having for its object the dissemination of temperance principles. During his connection with the Sons of Temperance he held a number of offices in the division, and afterwards became its presiding officer; and still later a member of the Grand Division of the province of New Brunswick. In May, 1884, Mr. Turnbull was elected president of the St. John Protestant Orphan Asylum, and also a director of the Bank of New Brunswick, which positions he still holds. He, with about a dozen other persons, built a railway from Gibson (opposite Fredericton) to Edmundston, a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles, with branches in addition to Woodstock, N.B., and Fort Fairfield, Maine, and he continued to be connected with this enterprise until the road was sold in 1880 to a number of capitalists in Montreal. He is a member of the Board of Trade of the city of St. John. In 1883 he took a trip to the Old World, and spent some time abroad, visiting Britain, Germany, and Switzerland. Mr. Turnbull’s father was a Presbyterian of the old school, and of course the son was brought up in the same faith; but he now attends the Episcopal church with his family. He, however, is not a member of this or any other church, not that he objects to churches, but simply that his mind is unsettled as to what is really the orthodox doctrine of faith and practice. One thing is certain, however, Mr. Turnbull finds great pleasure in relieving the wants of the deserving poor, and in doing all the good he can to his fellow-men. He does not consider himself in any sense a politician, yet nevertheless he holds decided opinions on most of the political questions that now agitate the country. He is strongly opposed to what is known as the national policy, for he believes it wrings large sums in taxes from the pockets of the people, without its being able to give them in return any compensating advantages. He is also strongly opposed to the expenditure of large sums of money on public works of an unremunerative character, and on public works which exist, as he is satisfied many in Canada do, only by reason of sentiment or false pride. While he recognizes that free trade, in its entirety, owing to the enormous debt of the Dominion, is not now practicable, he holds that it is thoroughly sound in principle, and being so would work the greatest good to the greatest number of our people, he would therefore favour its adoption to as large an extent as might seem to be practicable. He believes in the fullest individual liberty and freedom, consistent with a just regard for the rights of others, and is in favour of all measures having for their object the elevation of the masses. He is, in its true sense, a Liberal, but with enough conservatism in his composition to cause him to oppose any change in the laws of our country that he did not feel firmly convinced would be for the better. Mr. Turnbull was married at Maugerville, Sunbury county, on June 6, 1854, to Julia Caroline, daughter of the late Calvin L. Hatheway, of that place. Mr. Hatheway was of loyalist stock, his father having taken a somewhat prominent part in the revolutionary war between Great Britain and the United States. Mr. Turnbull’s wife’s mother was a daughter of Lieutenant James Harrison, who was also a loyalist, and who came to this province from the United States. He has a family consisting of five children living, namely, three daughters and two sons.
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=Sprague, Thomas Farmer=, M.D., Woodstock, New Brunswick, was born on the 30th of August, 1856, at Brigus, island of Newfoundland. He is a son of the Rev. S. W. Sprague and Jean Manson Sprague. Thomas was educated at Mount Allison Academy, Sackville, New Brunswick, and at the Provincial Normal School. After leaving school he adopted the profession of teaching, which he successfully followed for some years, and then, in 1877, moved to the city of New York, and began the study of medicine. He entered the medical department of New York University, and successfully graduated in the spring of 1880 from this institution. Dr. Sprague then removed to Welsford, in New Brunswick, in April of the same year, and began the practice of his profession. He remained in that place for two years, and in June, 1882, went to Hartland, New Brunswick, where he stayed until June, 1883, and then took up his abode in Woodstock, county of Carleton, New Brunswick, where he has been successfully practising ever since. The doctor was brought up in the faith as taught by the Wesleyan Methodists—his father being a clergyman of that church—and he has seen no reason to change his religious belief since growing up into manhood. He married on the 17th of June, 1884, Loella Nourse, of Boston, Mass.
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=Gaynor, John Joseph=, M.D., St. John, New Brunswick, was born of Irish parents, at Chatham, New Brunswick, on the 19th of March, 1854. They were educated Irish Catholics, his father being a native of the county Meath, and his mother of the county Clare, Ireland. They might well be classed as Irish-Americans, as they were both brought by their respective parents to this country while yet infants. Dr. Gaynor’s father, Thomas Gaynor, was educated at the Grammar School, Chatham; and his mother, Catharine Buckley, at a seminary for young ladies, conducted by a Mrs. Merry at Newcastle, New Brunswick. This privilege, so exceptional for Irish Catholics in those early days, was doubtless the reason which determined the doctor’s parents to bestow in turn a liberal education on their own offspring. On his father’s side Dr. Gaynor comes of the best blood of historic Meath, being a descendant of the same family that in the last century produced General Hand, of revolutionary fame as adjutant-general to Washington during the war of American Independence, and that in the present century gave birth to such eminent churchmen as the late Father Hand, founder of All Hallows College, Dublin, and the present patriotic Bishop of Meath, the illustrious Dr. Nulty. According to family tradition also, one of Dr. Gaynor’s ancestors fought under King James at the ill-fated battle of the Boyne, and was killed while defending the “Bridge of Slane.” His name, the same tradition says, was Thomas Gaynor. While on his father’s side Dr. Gaynor is thus descended from a liberty-loving race, on his mother’s side he is connected with that aristocratic class known in Ireland as “Castle Catholics.” His mother, who was born at Ferhill Castle, Blackwater, county Clare, was also closely allied by ties of blood to the famous fighting “Goughs of Clare,” whose name is historical through General Gough, of India fame. Dr. Gaynor is the eldest member of a family of twelve, eight of whom are still living. One of his brothers, the Rev. William C. Gaynor, is Roman Catholic pastor of Richmond, in Carleton county, New Brunswick. Father Gaynor is a writer of great power on theological questions, and is the author of “Papal Infallibility,” published in 1885, and of a Commentary in Latin on the _Summa Theologica_, of Thomas Aquinas, now in press in Paris. Another brother, P. A. Gaynor, is a member of a large lumbering house in Pennsylvania, and is now in the Redwood district of California, where he has established a branch firm. Dr. Gaynor was educated partly at St. Michael’s College, Chatham, and partly at St. Joseph’s College, Memramcook. In the former institution he studied mathematics and the exact sciences under the most distinguished teacher of his day in New Brunswick, Thomas Caulfield, M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin. His subsequent studies in logic and metaphysics were pursued at St. Joseph’s College, Memramcook. In this institution he taught the higher mathematics. It was here also that in 1877 he began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. H. E. Boissy, resident physician to St. Joseph’s, and leading medical practitioner among the Acadians of New Brunswick. From St. Joseph’s Dr. Gaynor went in 1878 to Buffalo, New York. There he attended the lectures in the medical department of Buffalo University. He followed also the different courses of the newly established College of Physicians and Surgeons in the same city. Graduating in 1881, after a four years’ course, he carried off the honours of his class, and was immediately offered the chair of chemistry and toxicology in his _alma mater_. This honourable position he declined at the insistance of his friends in New Brunswick, and immediately returned to his native province. Shortly after his return he read by invitation a paper on “Chloroform as an Anæsthetic,” before the Medical Society of New Brunswick. Establishing himself at DeBec, Carleton county, he soon acquired a lucrative practice. It was here that for the first time in the history of medicine in New Brunswick nitro-glycerine was employed, by Dr. Gaynor, for remedial purposes. Finding that his sphere of labour was too circumscribed, and desirous of entering into a larger field, Dr. Gaynor removed, in 1884, to St. John city, where he has since resided. On February 20, 1884, he was united in the bonds of holy wedlock to Nora Costigan, of St. John, a relative of the Hon. John Costigan, Minister of Inland Revenue. By her he has three children—Walter and Frederick, born February 16, 1885, and James, born August 28, 1886. During his vacations, while yet a medical student, Dr. Gaynor travelled extensively through the Northern, Western, and Middle states, spending some time in the Oil regions of Pennsylvania, and at the watering places on the Atlantic coast. In politics he is a Liberal-Conservative, with no love, however, for toryism as it exists in the mother country. The descendant of a family that fought and bled for human liberty, he is naturally a liberal in sentiment and aspiration. It is his belief, however, that so far as principles are concerned, there is no essential difference between the Conservative party led by Sir John Macdonald and the Liberal party led by Edward Blake. It is tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee; and in the end the people always rule. Such being his opinion of the two great political parties into which the Canadian people are divided, Dr. Gaynor has pronounced views as to the position which his Irish Catholic co-religionists should take in dominion politics. They should, he believes, adopt Parnell’s famous motto, _Support the party which does the most for you_. They would thus as a body be bound to neither political party, and would gravitate from one to the other consistently with the fair or unfair, just or unjust, treatment they might receive from either party. Outside his native province Dr. Gaynor is best known as a writer on _materia medica_. He has made a specialty of the study of new drugs; and his articles in the “Investigator”—a medical monthly of Buffalo—on this and kindred subjects, have attracted unusual attention from the medical profession in America. He also wrote and published in the same journal a series of articles in explanation and defence of the Catholic doctrine on craniotomy. In those articles he triumphantly refuted all the objections brought forward by his adversaries, and abundantly proved, in defence of the Catholic position, that the rational soul animates the human fœtus from the very first moment of conception, and that consequently it is as great a violation of divine law to destroy the living embryo as it would be to murder the new-born child. Dr. Gaynor’s views of medical practice are wide and comprehensive. His motto as regards remedial agents is:
“Seek the best where’er ’tis found, On Christian earth or pagan ground.”
Yet he is not an eclectic in the narrow sense of the word, which is now practically synonymous with homœopath. A thorough knowledge of anatomy, a complete acquaintance with the physiological effect of every drug or remedy, a no less complete acquaintance with pathology, and a virility of character sufficient to elevate the mind above the crude ideas of past generations, whether sanctioned by usage or made sacred by great names, must in future, he contends, be characteristics of the successful medical practitioner. A determined opponent of everything irrational or unintelligent in medicine, Dr. Gaynor has ever raised his voice against that hit-or-miss method, facetiously yet correctly styled “shot-gun practice,” which combines, for example, in one prescription three, four, or six different remedies, with the hope that if one misses some of the others will touch the target. He is, by consequence, a strong believer in the single remedy in every prescription. Dr. Gaynor is also a specialist in gynecology, his practice in St. John being almost limited to this department of his profession. He resides at number 2 Germain street.
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=de Martigny, Adelard Le Moyne=, Notary and Cashier of _La Banque Jacques Cartier_, Montreal, was born at Varennes, on the 25th of December, 1826. He is the son of Jacques Le Moyne de Martigny, seigneur of de Martigny, St. Michel and La Trinité, and of Dame Suzanne Eléonore Perrault, daughter of the late François Perrault, prothonotary of the Superior Court at Quebec. Mr. de Martigny is descended from that distinguished family of Le Moyne, who arrived in this country in 1611, of whom were the de Longueuil, de Ste. Hélene, d’Iberville, de Bienville, de Chateauguay, de Sévigny, and de Maricourt; one of his ancestors, J. B. Le Moyne de Martigny, was at the capture of Fort Bourbon by d’Iberville, and was left there as commander of that fort. Having terminated his classical studies at the Montreal College, under the gentlemen of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, he studied law under J. N. A. Archambault, notary, at Varennes, and was admitted to practice in January, 1848. In August, 1856, he was appointed registrar of the county of Beauharnois; and in 1871 manager of the branch of the Merchants Bank of Canada, established in the town of Beauharnois. He, however, resigned these different positions to accept the one as manager of _Le Crédit Foncier du Bas Canada_ in 1875; and finally he was offered the position of cashier of _La Banque Jacques Cartier_ in Montreal in 1877, which he accepted and still occupies. He is one of the executors of the estate of the late Hon. Charles Wilson. Mr. de Martigny is one of the owners of a large asbestos estate in Coleraine, Megantic county, and one of the proprietors of a pulp and paper mill in Sorel, and was president of the Joliette Railroad Company at the time of the sale of that road to the government. In 1855 he married Aglaé Globensky, daughter of Lieut.-Colonel Globensky, one of the officers under Colonel de Salaberry, at the battle of Chateauguay. He has four sons by this marriage, one of them, the oldest, Louis Le Moyne de Martigny, is manager of the Jacques Cartier Bank at Salaberry de Valleyfield. He was married again to his first cousin, Marie Malvina Le Moyne de Martigny, daughter of Hugues Le Moyne de Martigny, seigneur of de Ramezay and Bourgchemin.
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