Andrew Cowie, Leather Manufacturer and Assemblyman, Liverpool

This small envelope carries a 5¢ blue Queen Victoria stamp and was posted at Halifax on 27 January 1866, addressed to “Andrew Cowie Esq. M.P.P., Liverpool, N.S.” Its recipient was a sitting member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, and the letter reached him less than three months before the House voted on the resolution that took the province into Confederation. Cowie, or a clerk, filed it with a note written up the left side: “Letter from James King relative to the Steamer Empiror 27 Jany 1866.” Following that note led to a fellow assemblyman, a Bay of Fundy paddle steamer, and a plan to bring her to Liverpool.

The Stamp and the Rate

The stamp is the 5¢ blue from Nova Scotia’s 1860–63 decimal issue, printed by the American Bank Note Company of New York and perforated 12 (Scott 10). It is well centred with good colour. The 5¢ exists on both white and yellowish paper; I have not yet settled which this copy is.

Nova Scotia adopted decimal currency in 1860, and 5¢ paid the inland letter rate per half ounce. This is a correctly paid single-rate letter from Halifax to Liverpool.

The Postmarks

The stamp is cancelled on the front by a barred grid, and the dated town mark, HALIFAX / JA 27 / 66 / NOVA SCOTIA, is struck on the back. That division of labour is normal Nova Scotia practice of the period: the grid killed the stamp, and the circular datestamp on the reverse recorded the office and date of posting. There is no other town mark, so this is the Halifax origin postmark rather than a transit strike. No Liverpool receiving mark is visible. 27 January 1866 fell on a Saturday.

The back flap carries an embossed rosette, a stationer’s decorative seal typical of 1860s envelopes, and shows the tear where the letter was opened.

The Docket: James King and the Steamer “Empiror”

The docket date matches the Halifax postmark exactly, so it records the day the letter was written and posted rather than the day Cowie received it. “Empiror” is almost certainly a phonetic spelling of Emperor.

Neither the correspondent nor the steamer is named anywhere else on the cover, but both can now be traced with reasonable confidence. One of the firm’s advertisements below describes Cowie and his sons as ship owners as well as tanners, and Cowie was also a member for Queen’s County, so a letter about a steamer could concern private business, a petition, a subsidy or a mail contract. James King does not appear among the Liverpool residents in McAlpine’s 1868–69 directory, which suggests he wrote from outside the town, most likely from Halifax, where the letter was posted.

There is a strong candidate. A Nova Scotia death registration records a James King, coach and steamboat proprietor, who died of apoplexy on 13 February 1892 at 125 Cunard Street, Halifax, aged 70 years and 5 months. That puts his birth about September 1821. He was married, of Scottish origin, born at Sussex, New Brunswick, and a Presbyterian. The death was certified by Dr N. E. McKay, and he was buried in Camp Hill Cemetery, where a Find a Grave memorial also records him under the same date of death. In January 1866 he would have been about 44, an established man of business.

The 1871 census fits him closely. In Ward 5 of Halifax West it lists James King, 49, born in New Brunswick, of Scottish origin, Presbyterian (entered as “U.P. Presb.,” probably United Presbyterian), and a steamboat proprietor. His age, birthplace, origin, faith and trade all agree with the 1892 death record. With him were his wife Eliza K., 46, also New Brunswick-born, and six children. The eldest, James, 23, was a clerk. James and Mary, 21, were born in New Brunswick, and Margaret, 19, and the younger girls in Nova Scotia, so the family had moved to Nova Scotia around 1850. Five years after the letter, then, a James King was running steamboats out of Halifax.

McAlpine’s 1868–69 directory for Halifax fills in the picture. Its entry is set in capitals, as paid listings were: “KING JAMES, mail contractor, h 16 Cogswell.” Directly below it is “King James, jun., clerk, h 16 Cogswell,” matching the 23-year-old clerk son in the 1871 census. So James King was not only a coach and steamboat proprietor but a contractor carrying the mails. In the 1860s the Nova Scotia government let contracts for carrying mail by coach and steamer, and a member for Queen’s County had a direct interest in how mail reached Liverpool.

Liverpool people already knew his name. In October 1865 the Liverpool Transcript, reporting fare reductions arranged for delegates to the Sons of Temperance meeting in Halifax, listed “James King’s line between Shelburne and Halifax.” This was the South Shore stage road, which ran through Liverpool itself. The same notice mentions “Andrew King’s line, between Annapolis and Windsor,” which met the Fundy steamers at Windsor. Andrew was presumably one of James’s brothers.

The steamer itself can now be identified with some confidence. Ronald J. Jack’s history of the Bay of Fundy boat service describes the Emperor as a side-wheel steamer built at Carleton, across the harbour from Saint John, for Bay of Fundy service. By 1869 she and her sister, the Empress, belonged to the Union Line of Small & Hatheway. The Empress was completed over the winter of 1865–66 and entered service in April 1866, so when King wrote in January 1866 the Emperor was very likely the working steamer on the run between Saint John and Windsor, where passengers and mail connected with the railway to Halifax. By 1869 the line’s boats were carrying the Halifax and European mails across the Bay. A Halifax mail contractor born in New Brunswick had every reason to be concerned with that crossing.

The Assembly’s own accounts supply the link. The financial returns printed as Appendix No. 1 to the Journal of the House of Assembly for the 1866 session list, among warrants paid for steamboats under the County of Hants, a payment to “King & Brothers” for “Aid to steamer ‘Emperor’”: $750 drawn for services before 1865, and $2,250 for 1865. Windsor, the Nova Scotia end of the Emperor’s run, is in Hants County. The Receiver General’s account in the same appendix shows the province paying about $10,666 in all on steamboats, packets and ferries, so the Emperor’s grant for 1865 was roughly a fifth of the whole, one of the larger items on the list. In 1865, then, the province was subsidising the Emperor, and the money was paid to a King firm. The return does not name the partners, but taken with the directory and the census it is hard not to see James King, Halifax mail contractor and steamboat proprietor, as one of the King brothers, probably with Andrew King of the Annapolis–Windsor coach line. Between them the brothers ran coaches on both the South Shore and the Annapolis Valley roads, as well as the steamer.

A Halifax newspaper supplies the answer. On 5 March 1866, five weeks after this letter was posted, the Halifax Sun and Advertiser carried two items on the plan. One reported that James King, Esq., intended to place the steamer Emperor “on the line between Liverpool and Halifax, touching at intermediate ports,” and hoped he would be well supported. The other, headed “Steam Communication,” passed on news from the Liverpool Transcript. The Transcript’s own notice, of 22 February 1866, reports that King had spent the past few days in Liverpool arranging a semi-weekly steam service between Liverpool and Halifax. He meant to put the Emperor on the route about the middle of April. She had been thoroughly overhauled, with repairs and additions, and would run between Halifax, Lunenburg and Liverpool, probably calling at Port Medway as well.

The timing fits. The new Empress was due to take over the Fundy run in April, which would free the Emperor for other work, and King was finding her a new route along the South Shore, the same coast his stages already served by road. His letter to Cowie on 27 January looks like the opening move, followed about three weeks later by a visit to Liverpool to make the arrangements in person.

So the letter to Cowie was almost certainly about that plan. Cowie was the member for Queen’s County, one of Liverpool’s leading merchants and a shipowner whose firm shipped leather and lumber out of the port. He was exactly the man King needed on side, both for cargo and passengers and for any provincial aid the new service might seek when the House met. King was himself a member of the Assembly: the House elected in 1863 included James W. King for the South Division of Hants, the county that contains Windsor, where the Emperor landed on her Fundy run. The cover is therefore one member writing to another, in the week before the session opened, about bringing a steamer to the colleague’s own town.

The Assembly list gives him a middle initial, W., which the census, the directory and the death record do not. A Halifax mail contractor and steamboat proprietor sitting for the county at the Nova Scotia end of his steamer’s run is a natural fit, but the initial is worth confirming against the Journal’s own list of members.

One wrinkle remains. By 1869, according to Jack, the Emperor belonged to Small & Hatheway’s Union Line of Saint John. Whether King & Brothers owned her in 1865, ran her under charter, or received the provincial aid as agents is not yet clear. The shipping registers should show her owners over time.

From Bellie to Liverpool

Andrew Cowie was born on 20 July 1798, the son of William Cowie and Elizabeth Milne. The Scottish baptism index records his baptism on that same date in the parish of Bellie, Moray, with parents “Wm. Cowie” and Elizabeth Milne. A same-day birth and baptism is possible. The 1881 biography also gives 20 July 1798 as his birth date, but index entries often carry only one date, so the birth may have been a little earlier.

The index does not name a farm or township, but the 1881 Canadian Biographical Dictionary does. It says he was born in the village of “Auchanhalrige, near Gordon castle, county of Banff” (Wikipedia’s “Auchanbalrige” is a mistranscription). His father was a small farmer, and Andrew was the seventh son. Gordon Castle stands at Fochabers in Bellie parish, so the biography, the baptism entry and the family tree’s Auchenhalrig all point to the same neighbourhood. The only disagreement is the county: the biography and one tree entry say Banff, while the baptism index says Moray. An image of the original Bellie register entry may name the farm and settle the spelling.

After a parish school education he learned a trade, and in the spring of 1816, aged 17, he came to Halifax. He worked there and at Lunenburg for two years before settling in Liverpool in April 1818, where he spent three or four years as a dry goods merchant. In 1821 he bought and repaired a small tannery and began making leather, enlarging the premises and the business gradually. He also served as a magistrate for some years.

His interest in shipping began early. The Atlantic Canada shipping registers list Andrew Cowie of Liverpool, described as a non-marine tradesman, as owner of 32 shares in the schooner Traveller, built in 1826 and registered at Halifax (registration H830036). British registry divided every vessel into 64 shares, so he held half of her. By 1881 his biographer could describe him as “a prominent leather manufacturer and vessel-owner,” and wrote that he and his sons had at one time owned several vessels and shipped lumber to the West Indies. The registers may show those other vessels, and may also reveal whether the family ever held shares in a steamer Emperor.

Several of his brothers stayed in Scotland, dying at Aberdeen, Forglen and Prentfield between 1829 and 1872. One, William, is recorded as dying in 1811 at “Warley Barracks, Yorkshire.” The well-known Warley Barracks was in Essex, not Yorkshire, so either the place or the county in the tree needs checking.

A. Cowie & Sons 

The firm ran full-page advertisements in at least two editions of a Nova Scotia directory. Both show what the business had become by the 1860s. The firm made sole, waxed, grained, neat’s, harness, goat, cordovan and sheep leather, and advertised prizes from the Provincial Exhibitions of 1854 and 1862 as well as an honourable mention for tannage at the London International Exhibition of 1862. It also made saddles, harness, trunks, leather belting, hose and buckets, trimmed carriages to order, and manufactured, dealt in and shipped lumber.

The two versions are nearly identical in wording, but the p. 908 version adds a line the p. 660 version lacks: “Ship Owners.” McAlpine’s Nova Scotia Directory for 1868–69 prints its Liverpool listings on pp. 648–649, where “Cowie Andrew & Sons, merchants and tanners” carries a “See Advertisement” note. That makes it very likely that the p. 660 advertisement comes from McAlpine’s 1868–69, though I have not seen its title page. If the p. 908 version is from an earlier directory, the firm had dropped “Ship Owners” by 1868. That would agree with the 1881 biography, which speaks of the shipping business in the past tense. Either way, the Cowies were in shipping close to the date of this letter about a steamer.

The same McAlpine’s page lists Andrew himself as “Cowie Andrew, J.P., merchant,” confirming his standing as a magistrate, with William and Alexander each entered separately as merchants.

The partners named at the foot of both are Andrew, William and Alexander Cowie, matching the 1881 biography, which says two of the sons had been in partnership with their father for several years. By then the firm had given up making lumber but still ran the saddle and harness shop next to the tannery. This is the best independent confirmation so far of the family tree’s two eldest sons, William (born 1824) and Alexander (born 1826).

Family

Andrew Cowie married Janet More of Liverpool on 8 January 1820. She was a Nova Scotian by birth, according to the 1871 census, and two years younger than her husband; the couple celebrated their golden wedding in 1870. The family tree gives them the following children, all born at Liverpool:

•      Elizabeth Milne Cowie, born 20 October 1820, died 1908 (named for her paternal grandmother)

•      William Cowie, born 1 May 1824, died 1899

•      Alexander Cowie, born 8 December 1826, died 1914

•      Martha More Cowie, born 5 June 1831, died 1925

•      Mary Isabella Cowie, born 8 January 1834, died 1916

•      Andrew James Cowie, M.D., born 13 October 1835, died 1929

•      Arthur Cowie, born 26 October 1838, died 1891

•      John Edward Cowie, born 4 June 1840, died 6 August 1840

•      John Edward Cowie, born May 1846, died 5 August 1846

Two sons named John Edward both died in infancy, the second given the name of the first. The 1881 biography, however, credits Janet with eight children, seven of them then living. The seven survivors match the tree exactly, so the difference lies with the infants: the tree has two, the biography implies one.

The 1871 census bears out much of this. Andrew and Janet’s household in Liverpool included three unmarried daughters: Elizabeth, 50; Martha, 39; and Mary, 36. Those ages fit the tree’s birth years, though Mary, born in January 1834 by the tree, should have been 37. The next two households on the schedule were headed by the sons William, 46, and Alexander, 44, each described like their father as a merchant and manufacturer. Both were married with young families.

Alexander’s household included his wife Elizabeth D., 37, whose origin is given as French, and a 17-year-old son Andrew, already a seaman. A published DeWolf family genealogy identifies her as Elizabeth DeWolf Spurr, born 21 April 1834 at Round Hill, Annapolis County, the daughter of Edward Spurr and Margaret DeWolfe. She married Alexander at Liverpool on 13 January 1853.

The same compilation gives Alexander’s birth as 8 December 1826 at Liverpool, matching the family tree, and adds that he was baptised at Trinity Church on 13 May 1827. It notes that he was not a “Jr.”; an Ancestry record calling him “Alexander De Wolfe Cowie” seems to have borrowed his wife’s name. It credits the couple with twelve children, all born at Liverpool, and the 1871 household matches them closely. The eldest, Andrew Judson Cowie, born 20 October 1853, is the 17-year-old seaman; he died in 1890 at Lancaster, New Brunswick. Another son, James Ratchford DeWolf Cowie, became a clergyman. Several children died young, including William Henry, who drowned in July 1863 aged four.

Alexander died in Manhattan in October 1914, but he and Elizabeth are buried in Trinity Churchyard at Liverpool. William’s household included his wife, also Elizabeth D., 46, of English origin, and seven children.

The younger sons, Andrew James and Arthur, do not appear in these three households, and the 1881 biography explains why. Andrew J. was a physician in Halifax, and Arthur had been a clerk in Halifax for more than twenty years with Black Brothers and Co., though in 1881 he was temporarily in New York. The three daughters, Elizabeth, Martha and Mary, were still at home. The tree’s dates for the children still need checking against baptism and vital records.

The Member for Queen’s, 1866

Cowie entered public life in 1851, when he was elected for the township of Liverpool. After four years he stood down for one term, in his own modest words “for a better man,” as his biographer reported. In 1859 his constituents insisted on returning him, this time for Queen’s County, and he sat until Confederation in 1867, when he retired. When this letter was posted he was 67, in his last term, and the House was about to meet for the session that decided Confederation. On 17 April 1866 the Assembly adopted Charles Tupper’s resolution authorising delegates to arrange a union of the provinces. I have not yet established how Cowie voted; the division list in the Assembly Journals or the published Debates for April 1866 will show it.

Later Years

In the 1871 census, Andrew Cowie appears in Liverpool as a merchant and manufacturer, born in Scotland, of Scottish origin and Church of England. His age is given as 73, a year more than his July 1798 birth date implies, a common census slip. The household kept two servants: Patrick Prendergast, 27, an Irish Catholic, and a German Methodist woman named Ellen, 24.

The census also settles his church, and the 1881 biography confirms it: he was a member of the Church of England. Every member of the family is listed that way in 1871, despite Andrew’s Presbyterian homeland, and the tie went back decades: son Alexander was baptised at Trinity Church in 1827. That fits Andrew’s own burial from Trinity, Liverpool’s Anglican parish. According to the family tree, in 1869 he gave land on the outskirts of town for St Andrew’s Sunday-school church. Given the family’s affiliation, this was presumably an Anglican mission connected with Trinity rather than a Presbyterian church, though I have not confirmed it.

The Cowies were still in Liverpool, still married, in 1881. That year his biographer, having passed his eightieth birthday in 1878, called him one of the best-preserved men he had met, a hard worker of temperate habits who seemed likel

y to reach ninety. He did. Andrew died at Liverpool on 21 October 1890, aged 92, and was buried on 24 October from Trinity Church. Janet died the following year.

Sources

•      The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-made Men: Quebec and the Maritime Provinces (Toronto: American Biographical Publishing Co., 1881), “Andrew Cowie, Liverpool,” pp. 417–418; accessed via Ancestry.

•      Wikipedia, “Andrew Cowie” (summarising the 1881 entry; gives the birthplace as “Auchanbalrige”).

•      Ancestry family tree for Andrew Cowie (1798–1890), with its cited census, directory and Scottish baptism records.

•      Scotland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950 (Ancestry): Andrew Cowie, baptised 20 July 1798, Bellie, Moray; father Wm. Cowie, mother Elizabeth Milne.

•      Canada, Seafarers of the Atlantic Provinces, 1789–1935 (Ancestry): Andrew Cowie, Liverpool, owner of 32 shares in the schooner Traveller (built 1826; Halifax registration H830036).

•      1871 Census of Canada, Nova Scotia, District 194 (Queens), Liverpool, Polling District No. 1, Division 2, households of Andrew, Alexander and William Cowie.

•      DeWolf family genealogy (“FFNS”), pp. 37–39, entries for Elizabeth DeWolf Spurr and Alexander Cowie (full title to be added).

•      A. Cowie & Sons advertisements, “Liverpool Advertisements,” pp. 660 and 908, Nova Scotia directories (p. 660 probably McAlpine’s 1868–69; p. 908 edition to be confirmed).

•      McAlpine’s Nova Scotia Directory, 1868–69, Liverpool listings, pp. 648–649; Halifax listings, p. 305 (James King, mail contractor, and James King, jun., clerk, 16 Cogswell Street).

•      Nova Scotia death registration, Halifax, Halifax County, 1892, book 1892, page 47, no. 61: James King, coach and steamboat proprietor, died 13 February 1892, 125 Cunard Street.

•      Find a Grave: James King, died 13 February 1892, Camp Hill Cemetery, Halifax.

•      Liverpool Transcript, 19 October 1865, p. 2, “Sons of Temperance” (James King’s line between Shelburne and Halifax; Andrew King’s line between Annapolis and Windsor).

•      Liverpool Transcript, 22 February 1866, p. 3 (James King in town arranging semi-weekly steam communication with Halifax).

•      Halifax Sun and Advertiser, 5 March 1866: two items on James King’s plan for the steamer Emperor on the Liverpool–Halifax line, one quoting the Liverpool Transcript.

•      1871 Census of Canada, Nova Scotia, District 196 (Halifax West), Ward 5, p. 1: household of James King, steamboat proprietor.

•      Wikipedia, “23rd General Assembly of Nova Scotia” (members 1863–67, including James W. King, Hants South, and Andrew Cowie, Queen’s).

•      Journal and Proceedings of the House of Assembly of the Province of Nova Scotia, Session 1866, Appendix No. 1, Financial Returns, Statement of Warrants, p. 41 (King & Brothers, aid to steamer “Emperor”); Receiver General’s account, p. 54 (Steam Boats, Packets, and Ferries).

•      Ronald J. Jack, “The EMPRESS and the boat-train – an 1869 incident jolted complacent Saint John,” The Lost Valley (blog), Article No. 356, 6 March 2021.

•      Nova Scotia House of Assembly, Debates and Proceedings, 17 April 1866, via The Confederation Debates, University of Victoria.

•      Minutes of the London Conference, December 1866, recording the Nova Scotia Assembly resolution of 17 April 1866.