John Baxter of Keswick, Ontario has contributed this profile of his family. The Smythe's were once valued residents of our Valley and his Great-Grandfather also had a leadership role in another 'Lost' community - the Irish immigrant enclave that toiled for several decades at Spurr's Cove in Fairville.
John wrote "Reading this Blog has reminded me of my days in Saint John's North End, particularly time spent in the area of the valley now “lost'”. More curious than those resurrected memories however, became the discovery that I had ancestors who lived in the valley some 100 years before me. My genealogical pursuits developed a new path when I realized that indeed there is a part of my family story buried in the forgotten places of the valley.
One very curious discovery was a street once called 'Military Road’. (now Magazine Street). Oddly enough, not once during my youth did it occur to me that 'Magazine' had a military connotation. My grandmother Minnie Smythe, lived on Military Road during the 1880's. I learned that her father was then Principal of St. Peter's Boys School, a fact that was already forgotten by the time I attended St. Pete's nearly a century later. It seems to me a colossal loss of collective memory and a failure not to have passed on such relevant history to succeeding generations.
Minnie’s father was teacher/principal Bernard B. Smythe. I am in fact a fifth generation descendant of an Irish Catholic immigrant baptized with the name Bernard. Our first 'Bernard' set sail from Newry, Northern Ireland circa 1844, settling in Saint John with his wife Sarah, along with their toddlers Mary and Bernard Bartholomew. Not surprisingly the latter went by the much abbreviated moniker of “BB”. He was raised on the West Side in Fairville. The neighborhood was called “Spurr’s Cove,” and also known as “Union Point”. Though his father worked in a sawmill, he apparently put enough by for his son's education.
“BB” became the teacher at the Catholic School, located at Spurr’s Cove in Fairville. It appears from a street plan in the 1875 Atlas of Saint John County, that the B. Smythe ("Smith") family property was adjacent to Union Point School. BB rose to leadership in that predominantly Irish Catholic community and was elected, though barely twenty years of age, vice president of the Catholic Total Abstinence Society. It may well have been his youthful fervor to serve that inspired him to move his young family of two daughters to Portland, where in 1880 Catholic teachers were in short supply. Following the proclamation of the New Brunswick School Act, the Irish Christian Brothers gave up teaching in two Saint John schools and the Portland school in 1877. This might well explain the trek BB and his wife Kate, (Monohan) made to a new home on Military Road, at the foot of the rocky slope behind Fort Howe.
It is sad and unfortunate that scant records have been compiled on the history of St. Peter’s School. I had little information beyond the bare facts of BB's ten years at what quickly became the epicenter of Catholic education in Saint John's North End. He was principal of the original Boy's School and taught grades 7 and 8. (It would be a marvelous undertaking for someone to research a detailed history of the school and its teachers). During their ten or more years on Military Road, "BB's" wife Kate gave birth to five more girls.Eventually, BB left his teaching career to become a Customs Inland Revenue employee and moved his family across town to Sydney Street. Ironically their eldest daughter there met Thomas Louis Baxter, son of a liquor dealer and mariner! How well did that sit with BB?! The Baxter’s were across Queen Square on Harding Street. Temperance leader BB passed away at the young age of 57 (in 1901) and not long after that Mary Elizabeth Smythe wed Tom Baxter at St. John the Baptist Church. Bernard's beloved name was bestowed upon the Baxter’s youngest child, Bernard John in 1915. Forty-one years later I was baptized with the identical name.
Widowed, Kate Smythe returned to the valley and lived for several years at 44 Paradise Row. Two of BB and Kate's daughters caught the eyes of young men in the valley. Regina married Thomas Morgan whose family had a dry goods store on Main Street. Mary Lauretto espoused Harry Kinsella, son of Paradise Row marble cutter, Augustine Kinsella. The Kinsellas lived at No.165. Their business was at 210-212 Paradise Row. Fifty years later I lived at No.137 which is the house pictured earlier in this blog. My dad worked not far from that house. He was a clerk and supervisor at the Canadian Pacific Express freight shed on Mill Street. It was a busy spot, trucks (with the CP beaver emblem), unloading boxcars at ramps and the CP office populated by men working away at old Underwood typewriters, filing their shipping documents. It seems like I can still smell the mix of tobacco smoke, paper and wooden floors that were dad's office environment. The Express office was relocated to South Bay in the late 1960's.
As the valley population disappeared, so too has the Smythe family. Fully half of the Smythe girls moved to 'The Boston States'; four died unmarried at young ages. My grandmother was the only Smythe to remain in Saint John, until her death at the family home, 17 Harding St., at the age of 54. Sketching this wee portrait has deepened my awareness of my Smythe ancestors, a project which I attribute to the enthusiasm Ron Jack has poured into The Lost Valley blog." - B. John Baxter
Minnie Smythe is in her 20's in this portrait made by the Climo Studio. Her father was Principal of St. Peter's Boys School through the 1880s._________________________
Because Spurr's Cove will be unknown to most readers, we have provided a map. It is now Lee Cove. John's ancestor was participant in one of the most divisive issues in the history of New Brunswick, the battle over separate schools. It's an amazing situation that a subject which once generated intense anger in Saint John, the question of who had the right to decide the education of children, is never resurrected save by students in graduate school. Too much of our collective memory, as John notes, has been lost.
Catholics fought tenaciously in the 1870s for the right to educate their children in their own way, but it would be many years before a sufficient number of trained teachers were available. Outmigration of teachers was a constant problem. In the case of the Union Point School located at Spurr’s Cove, in one year a bright fifteen year old Catholic girl was appointed Principal. Her talents and popularity were such that she was soon invited to teach at St. Malachy’s in Saint John. But there was also a Protestant school in Fairville, near the old train station. In 1878 Daniel McGinnis was invited down from Blissville to take charge of it. He lasted nearly five years by putting up with who knows what, because of his need to support his family. Then in April of 1883 he was ousted for the crime of being a Catholic.
The outrage of one editorial writer is left to us : “The Trustees for District No. 2, Lancaster at a meeting held April 29th passed a resolution dismissing Daniel O'Connell McGINNIS, School Teacher, for the reason that he was a Roman Catholic. It is it hoped that such bigots as themselves be removed from an office by such action they disgrace.” In 1883 Bernard Smythe was no longer in Fairville and was keeping busy as Principal of St. Peter’s Boys School in Portland.

Humphrey's wonderful painting depicts the green shouldered valley choked by a motley aggregation of mismatched, angular tenement buildings done in a style he would later describe as "semi-abstract paraphrases" which meant to him "a true enlargement of experience". His rapidly executed sketch is certainly abstract, with no attempt to register clutter such as chimneys, utility poles or drying laundry. It is a fine example of his abiding fascination with the juxtaposition of ancient rock surfaces and crowded patterns of living space his native city. This flash image is distorted by camera angle and the glare of artificial light on glass. The water colour is actually in pristine condition, having been hung facing a wall for many years. The suspension wire is evidence that this Lost Valley picture was subordinate to a Winter Scene which the owner preferred.

By way of comparison this sketch, VIEW NEAR FORT HOWE, made in the early 1930s, also emphasizes the chaos of angles and surfaces. It adds just enough reportorial detail that we might now use it to illustrate the era of the Hungry Thirties in Saint John history.
Jack Weldon Humphrey was born in Saint John on January 12, 1901. The son of a boot and show wholesaler, he early developed a keen love for his native city and had a burning desire to record a compelling landscape he understood was unique but also vulnerable to great change. He was particularly fond of the old Portland-Saint John valley and painted its length and breadth. He knew every rock outcropping and cinder surfaced alleyway firsthand, perhaps as well as the schoolboys who often scrambled up the valley walls to investigate the artist at his work. 











