Cudlip, John Waterbury

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: C. M. Wallace, “CUDLIP, JOHN WATERBURY,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cudlip_john_waterbury_11E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Merchant and politician; b. probably in 1815 in Saint John, N.B., son of John Cudlip, a retired British naval officer, and Rebecca Waterbury; m. in 1852 Emily Allison, and they had seven children; d. 22 Nov. 1885 in Saint John.
    • He became a licensed auctioneer and by 1850 had entered a partnership with George E. Snyder, specializing in shipping, trading with the West Indies, and wholesaling. Cudlip early showed an interest in community affairs. By the later 1840s he was one of a group of aggressive and successful business and professional men, including Robert Jardine, Samuel Leonard Tilley, and John Hamilton Gray, who made Saint John into a dynamic commercial city.
    • Defeated again in the 1856 election, Cudlip was successful as a Liberal in 1857 and easily led the poll in the general elections of both 1861 and 1865. The negotiations among New Brunswick, Canada, and the imperial government over the Intercolonial Railway in 1862 and 1863 alarmed Cudlip. He wanted the railway to follow a more westerly route to aid Saint John’s trade with the United States rather than the North Shore route championed by the British for reasons of defence. The railway question forced Cudlip to break with Tilley and the Liberals. “If the British Government want a Military Road, let them build it themselves,” he said in 1863. He became a leading critic of government policy, especially after Tilley in 1864 united the construction of the Intercolonial with New Brunswick’s entry into confederation as the grand design of the province’s future. In the 1865 election he stood as an anti-confederate and received more votes than any other candidate in the province. Tilley and his government were defeated, and in 1866 Cudlip joined Premier Albert James Smith’s Executive Council.
    • Another election over confederation was forced in 1866, and the anti-confederates, including Cudlip, were routed at the polls. After the reorganization of federal and provincial governments in 1867, there were numerous vacancies in the New Brunswick legislature, and in March 1868 Cudlip stood unopposed in a Saint John by-election, even though his platform called for a repeal of the British North America Act and the annexation of New Brunswick to the United States. A year later he shocked loyalist sensibilities by proposing that New Brunswick do “what our people are doing individually, and ask the United States to admit us into the Union on fair and equitable terms.” Cudlip was labelled “treasonable and disloyal” and his motion was not permitted to be entered in the assembly’s journal. His political career was ended.
  • Grandson of Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=8840
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