Part Three in a Four Part Series on the Merchants: Allisons and Haywards
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| Saint John's bustling market |
I have the good fortune of
being directly related to individuals who founded thriving businesses in Saint
John, New Brunswick. I have written
about how the Haywards and the Allisons, through very different avenues, became
successful merchants. In the Haywards’
case, it was my third great-grandfather, William Henry, who started in the mercantile
business, while in the Allison case, my second great-grandfather, Joseph
Allison, got things going for the family in Saint John.
The Haywards – Hayward and Warwick
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| Princess Street exterior 1890 |
In Part One of this series, I ended with
William Henry Hayward (1829-1898) setting up shop at 85 Princess Street with
his brother in law William Warwick in 1855.
At the time, trade was done by
stagecoach and ship, and Saint John was a bustling maritime city. The trade in crockery well suited the
colonists, many of whom wanted to maintain close ties to roots in England.
He married Augusta Parlee in 1857
and their family began to grow in both size and prosperity.
The business did well, but by 1875
the partnership between Hayward and Warwick had dissolved. The business expanded to another site at
Princess Street. This was fortuitous as
the original shop was destroyed in the Great Saint John Fire of 1877. The business kept growing, adding buildings
and warehouses (a warehouse added in 1890 is still used today).
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| Prince William 1875 |
Harvey Parlee Hayward, W.H.’s son,
was destined to take over the family business.
He married Anne Everett Anderson in 1883. By the age of 21, Harvey was a clerk in the
family business, learning the trade with his successful father. Ten years later, Harvey was well entrenched
in the family business, and even at 61, William Henry was still listed as a
dealer in crockery (1891).
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| Harvey Parlee Hayward |
Harvey built a grand house in Saint
John (I will take you on a tour in another blog) and celebrated his success as
a merchant in the ever growing waterfront city of Saint John. In 1902, Harvey and Augusta incorporated the
business as WH Hayward - “the business
of buying and selling and dealing in all kinds of china, glassware, silverware
and plated ware, earthenware, jewelry, hardware, cutlery and fancy goods.”
A good friend will always return,
and by 1928, with the demands of the depression taking its toll, Hayward and
Warwick reunited their business partnership. The business passed eventually from
Harvey to his first-born, William Henry II, to his sonWilliam Henry III, then on to his sons Mark and David.
Mark Hayward and his brother David were the fifth and last generation of
Haywards to run the store when they sold it in 2012.
The Allisons – Manchester, Robertson &
Allison
Joseph Allison was the first of the
Allisons to head from Nova Scotia to Saint John. Part Two of this series talked about how Joseph left
the family home, and his father William, to learn the merchant trade in the
early 1850s. Just as William Henry
Hayward was establishing his new trade in crockery, Joseph was learning the trade as an apprentice in the dry goods business.
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| MRA 1930 |
Through some perseverance, Joseph
accumulated sufficient funds to join James Manchester and James F. Robertson in
a new business in 1866 known as Manchester, Robertson & Allison. In no time the partners had built up a fine
clientele for their trade in many goods, from clothing to furnishings. The
founders insisted on a business of “integrity and conscientious service”,
principles which made the department store something of a local institution,
and it soon became known as MRA to the locals.
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| MRA Interior 1900 |
The regular steamer service between
Boston and Saint John meant that MRA’s customers were spread far and wide. Americans who could no longer purchase high
quality British goods locally without exceedingly high tariffs, depended on import businesses like MRA to satisfy
their English yearnings.
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| Joseph, Helen and Walter |
In 1871, Joseph married Helen
Scammel, and within two years they had their first son, Walter Cushing
Allison. Walter joined the store at 17
to learn the trade from his father.
Walter’s ill health caused him to leave Saint John and go to Denver,
Colorado for the dry climate. It was
there that Walter met his first wife, Hattie Belle Ringen. He returned to Saint John in 1906 to a business that
continued to thrive. Hattie and Walter’s
life together was sadly short, and Hattie died shortly after giving birth to
their second child, Joseph Ringen in 1911. Walter persevered and continued to
rise through the ranks of MRA until he became president in 1925.
Walter retired in 1948, 59 years
after he started working at MRA. Walter’s legacy for MRA was to steer it
through almost a quarter of a century and at the end of his tenure initiate a rebuilding
program for the store, “a program with a great new ‘store of tomorrow’, an
outstanding shopping centre of Eastern Canada.”
MRA closed in 1973 after 106 years in business, and no
other department stores (other than Sears) tried their hand in the Saint John
market. The Allisons had passed down the
store through two generations and managed to take advantage of preferential
trade arrangements with England, but were unable to beat the tough economic
times that came to the city in the mid-twentieth century.
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| Walter Cushing Allison |
Were they rivals?
A question I asked of Mark Hayward was how two large business establishments could co-exist
in a relatively small market like Saint John, and do so successfully. Mark explained that their respective business
models were so different that they were well positioned to succeed without
competing with one another. I also
wondered why it was that other big Canadian department stores, such as Eaton’s
or The Bay didn’t try to work their way into the Saint John market. MRA enjoyed a high level of loyalty from the
locals, and given the size of the population, other department stores likely
felt that that wouldn’t succeed against such a well established business.
The fourth and final part in this series will focus on the marriage of the Haywards and Allisons - a social event that was the talk of the town!
Sources
I am
indebted to Mark Hayward, my second cousin, for his insights and historical
information on both MRA and Hayward and Warwick
Certificate
of Incorporation for WH Hayward (1902)
Walter C
Allison obituary and retirement newspaper articles
Newspaper
article by Mike Mullen
Various
census, marriage, birth and death records
Images
New Brunswick Museum
http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/Transition/english/details.asp?item=56
http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/Transition/english/details.asp?item=56
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