Wood, Josiah Leth

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: W. G. Godfrey, “WOOD, JOSIAH,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wood_josiah_15E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Merchant, industrialist, politician, and lieutenant governor; b. 18 April 1843 in Sackville, N.B., son of Mariner Ayer Wood and Louisa Cynthia Trueman; m. there 14 Jan. 1874 Laura Sophia Trueman (d. 1935), and they had four daughters, one of whom died at birth, and two sons; d. there 13 May 1927.
    • A native of Dorchester, N.B., Josiah Wood’s father established himself as a merchant in Sackville and built a successful wholesale and retail business, which eventually included agricultural, shipbuilding, shipping, and lumbering concerns. By the time of his death in 1875 his firm would be rated the leading commercial enterprise in Sackville with a “pecuniary strength” of $100,000 to $250,000. This considerable economic legacy was matched by the deep Wesleyan Methodist beliefs he passed on to his two sons, who were advised “to read and study the good word of God at least once or twice each day and pray for the holy spirit to accompany the exercise.”
    • In January 1871 M. Wood and Sons was created as a three-way partnership to continue the family business, all of which Josiah inherited on his father’s death, Charles having died in the interim. He enlarged the company’s operations, emphasizing wholesale sales, purchasing four ships for its fleet, and using the Intercolonial Railway to complement the seaborne trade and import Canadian-made goods. He also engaged in banking, real estate and industrial investment, and railway building.
    • At the urging of Conservative senator John Boyd, who thought him the only man in Westmorland able to defeat the sitting federal Liberal member, Sir Albert James Smith, and pressed as well by his uncle Acalus Lockwood Palmer, with whom he had studied law, Wood sought and won the Conservative nomination in 1882. Although the possibility of losing her husband, already frequently absent on business, to Ottawa rather disconcerted Laura Wood, it was still her earnest desire “that he shall get his election.” In June 1882 her wish was fulfilled when Wood obtained a majority of over 400 votes.
    • It was the tariff-protection and railway-building policies of the Conservative party that drew Wood into federal politics. He had become a substantial investor in Moncton’s emerging industrial base, which profited from the presence of the Intercolonial Railway and the National Policy. With such partners as John Leonard Harris he raised approximately $1,000,000 to fund enterprises that included a sugar refinery, a gaslight and water company, a cotton mill, and other textile- and metal-manufacturing concerns. Substantial real estate interests in Moncton were matched by the property he controlled in Sackville. 
    • Old dreams die hard, and, given Wood’s own experiences in the 1880s and 1890s, this one had surprising persistence. One by one almost all the Moncton industries in which he was a partner were bought out, or consolidated and put out of business, by central Canadian competitors as the branch-plant nature of the Maritime economy took hold. He remained active in Sackville utilities companies and, as the town’s first mayor from 1904 to 1907, oversaw the purchase of several of these concerns by the town council. In 1904 his son, Herbert Mariner, was made a partner in M. Wood and Sons, but the value of the family business had fallen to between $35,000 and $50,000 by 1905. In 1914 the federal government’s purchase, for $270,000, of the renamed New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island Railway, in which Wood had remained the majority owner, probably went a long way towards replenishing the family fortune.
  • Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=9262
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/128680075/josiah-wood