Fitz Randolph, Archibald Drummond

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Kathryn Wilson, “FITZ RANDOLPH, ARCHIBALD DRUMMOND (A. F. Randolph),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/fitz_randolph_archibald_drummond_13E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Businessman, politician, and philanthropist; b. 24 July 1833 in Digby, N.S., son of James Horton Fitz Randolph and Susan Byles Menzies; m. 9 Sept. 1858 Amira Donaldson Turnbull, sister of William Wallace Turnbull, in Saint John, N.B., and they had eight children, five of whom survived him; d. 14 May 1902 in Fredericton.
    • Archibald Fitz Randolph was educated at the grammar school in Digby. At age 16 he began his business life in his father’s dry-goods store there, and when he was 17 he entered the employ of a Saint John stove dealer as a clerk. He moved to Fredericton after three years to become a clerk and bookkeeper to Abraham Tyler Coburn, a leading lumber merchant. There, in 1855, he opened his own retail store, selling hardware, dry goods, and groceries. His shrewdness, enterprise, and uncommon common sense soon expanded the business. Ten years later he established a wholesale grocery store specializing in West Indies goods and flour, and in 1878 he built a large new building on Phoenix Square to house his increasing trade. One of his sons joined him in 1883 and another followed in 1892, when the firm’s name became A. F. Randolph and Sons.
    •  Fitz Randolph had a variety of business interests. When in 1864 the government of Samuel Leonard Tilley had passed an act subsidizing railway building, he was one of those Fredericton entrepreneurs anxious to develop links to existing lines and thus encourage commercial growth in the capital. He served as treasurer of the Fredericton Railway Company, incorporated in 1866 to build a line to connect with the Western Extension railway from Saint John to the state of Maine, a task it accomplished in 1869. He was also associated with the New Brunswick Railway Company, formed in 1870. The line it undertook to construct from St Marys Parish, opposite Fredericton, northward to Woodstock and Edmundston was completed in 1880. Taking advantage of the boom in railway building, Fitz Randolph and others moved in 1875 to incorporate the Miller Flanger Manufacturing Company, for the manufacture of railway cars and parts.
    • After an active career in business and in the service of his church and his community, Fitz Randolph died in May 1902. A letter of 1848 from his loyalist grandfather Joseph Fitz Randolph had admonished the young man to be “an ornament to society and the name of Randolph.” That, Archibald Drummond Fitz Randolph most certainly was.
  • Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=2828
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/114285171/archibald-b-fitzrandolph