A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
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Williams, Thomas, Accountant and Treasurer of the Intercolonial Railway, Moncton, New Brunswick, was born at Handsworth, near Birmingham, England, on the 3rd of June, 1846. He is the youngest son of Joseph and Hannah Williams. His father’s ancestors can be traced back several centuries as farmers and occupiers of land in the adjoining parish of Perry Barr. His mother’s ancestors, the Coulburns of Tipton, in South Staffordshire, have been connected with the development of the iron industries there for several generations past. Thomas Williams was educated at the parish schools, and subsequently at the Bridge Trust School—a grammar school founded from the proceeds of a legacy for repairs of bridges in the parish, for which after the organisation of the Highway Board, its existence for its original purposes was not necessary, and the accumulated funds were devoted to the erection and endowment of a superior school. In 1868, he entered the service of the London and North-Western Railway of England as freight clerk, and was subsequently appointed freight agent at Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, and station master at Marton, near Rugby. He resigned in June, 1870, to come to Canada, and in December, 1870, entered the service of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway, at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, as clerk to the general manager. Mr. Williams left the service of that railway in August, 1873, to enter upon duties of clerk in accountant’s office of the Intercolonial (Government) Railway, at Moncton, New Brunswick, and was subsequently appointed chief clerk in mechanical department of the same railway. In November, 1875, he was sent to Charlottetown, to organise the system of accounts of the Prince Edward Island Railway, and was appointed accountant and auditor of that railway. And on the 1st of July, 1882, he was appointed chief accountant and treasurer of the Intercolonial Railway at Moncton, which position he at present holds. Mr. Williams was a member of the Church of England until December, 1873, but in consequence of Ritualistic practices having been introduced into the church he was in the habit of attending, he left it, and was among the first to join the then newly organized Reformed Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s, in Moncton. He has held the office of vestryman and warden in this church, almost continuously since. On the 12th of January, 1875, he married Analena, daughter of the late John Rourke, merchant, St. John, New Brunswick, and has a family of seven children.
Pickard, Rev. Humphrey, D.D., Methodist Minister, Sackville, New Brunswick, was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, June 10th, 1813. His parents, Thomas Pickard, was the son of Deacon Humphrey Pickard, and was born at Sheffield in 1783, and Mary Pickard, daughter of David Burpee. Mrs. Pickard was also born at Sheffield in 1783. Both Deacon Pickard and Squire Burpee, came, while yet mere youths, from Massachusetts, New England, with a party of the earliest English settlers on the Saint John river, about the year 1762. The subject of this sketch, after receiving a fair English education in Fredericton, was sent to the Wesleyan Academy, North Wilbenham, Massachusetts, United States, in 1829, where he commenced a classical course of study, and having prepared for matriculation, he entered the Freshman class in the University at Middletown, Conn., in 1831. He, having completed the Freshman course of study, retired from the university in 1832, and spent the following three years in mercantile pursuits. In 1835, he entered the Methodist ministry, as an assistant to the Rev. A. Des Brisay, in the Sheffield circuit. In 1836, he was received on trial as a Wesleyan missionary, by the British Methodist Conference, and laboured for a year as such on the Miramichi mission and Fredericton circuit. In 1837, he resumed his course of university study at Middletown; in 1839, he graduated, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and re-entered the work of the Methodist ministry, being stationed at Richibucto, until 1841, when he was appointed to St. John. In 1842, he was ordained and received into full connection with the English Conference as a Methodist minister, and appointed editor of the British North American Methodist Magazine, which was published at St. John. In November of the same year, he was elected principal of the Mount Allison Academy, and removed with his family to Sackville at the close of the year. The academy was opened on the 19th of January, 1843, with a very few students, but under his skilful management, it rapidly rose into importance in public estimation, and attracting students from all parts of the Maritime provinces, soon took position in the very front rank of the educational institutions of Eastern British America. The catalogue for the term from January to June, 1855, contains 250 names of students in actual attendance, viz.: of 134 in the male branch, and 116 in the female. In 1862, the Mount Allison College was organized at Sackville, by the authority of an Act of the Legislature of New Brunswick, and Mr. Pickard was appointed its president, and he continued to act as president of the college and principal of the academy until 1869. At the annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the united institutions, held May 26, 1869, the following resolution