Stockton, Alfred Augustus

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. G. Bell, “STOCKTON, ALFRED AUGUSTUS,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/stockton_alfred_augustus_13E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Lawyer, professor, politician, and writer; b. 2 Nov. 1842 in Studholm Parish, N.B., son of William Augustus Wiggins Stockton and Sarah Oldfield; m. 5 Sept. 1871, in Halifax, Amelia Elizabeth Pickard, daughter of the Reverend Humphrey Pickard, and they had ten children; d. 15 March 1907 in Ottawa.
    • Alfred Stockton’s New Jersey ancestors migrated as loyalists to one of the most fertile tracts of New Brunswick, where for generations they held the militia and parochial offices that were the badges of the rural gentry. Educated first at Mount Allison Wesleyan academy and college in Sackville, Stockton pursued higher studies with an ma from Mount Allison in 1867 and an llb and earned lld from Victoria University (Cobourg, Ont.) in 1869 and 1887. In 1883 the busy Stockton also obtained a phd by examination and dissertation from Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington, Ill.). Having been articled to his uncle the Saint John lawyer Charles Wesley Stockton, he had been admitted an attorney in 1867 and called to the New Brunswick bar the year following.
    • Stockton made his living as one of Saint John’s leading lawyers. His most famous – albeit unsuccessful – case, tried on appeal in 1892, resulted in judicial acceptance of the “independence and autonomy” of the provincial level of government as one of the cornerstones of Canadian constitutional law and took Stockton before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
    • Stockton’s service to legal education continued despite an active career in electoral politics. In the political contests of the 1860s he had been an anti-confederate, and he remained sternly critical of New Brunswick’s place in the dominion and a proponent of Maritime union. In 1883 he entered the House of Assembly in a Saint John by-election, and he would sit until defeated narrowly in 1899. At first he was a supporter of the Liberal-dominated coalition of Andrew George Blair, but Blair’s decision in 1889 to make a place for Solicitor General Robert John Ritchie as police magistrate of Saint John by ousting the much-respected Benjamin Lester Peters prompted Stockton to resign and thus helped precipitate the 1890 general election. Stockton led the campaign that turned the six Saint John seats against the government and nearly cost Blair his office.
    • Stockton was subsequently recognized as leader of the opposition and came to be regarded as a Conservative provincially. True to their Liberal formation, Stockton’s political ideas display a strong democratic tinge. He upheld the principle of universal suffrage and favoured elective lieutenant governors and senators. As early as 1886 he urged the New Brunswick assembly to grant the vote to all adult women; he introduced resolutions in support of female enfranchisement in at least 1889, 1894, 1895, and 1897. His rationale was both progressive – that history was the story of the gradual elevation of women towards equality – and utilitarian. “Women,” he urged, “were specially interested in temperance and educational questions, and . . . in these matters the province would be the gainer by giving the legislative franchise to women.” While Stockton’s resolutions were neither the earliest nor the most radical New Brunswick proposals, and while they were unsuccessful (albeit narrowly), his status as leader of the opposition made him the foremost legislative spokesman for woman’s suffrage in the 1890s.
  • Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=8117
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/40449277/alfred-augustus-stockton