John Pugh (1821-1900) of Dublin and Halifax

See here for more stories of Dun Laoghaire

The Constable of the Night’s Ramble by Herbert Pugh (fl.1758-1788), also known as Drinking Wine in a Dublin Brothel, before 1771. Was Hugh Pugh a kinsman!!?

John Pugh (1821-1900) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was an Irish-born merchant, shipmaster, and politician whose life can be traced from County Dublin into the Catholic and commercial world of nineteenth-century Halifax.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Pugh, a shoe dealer, and Ann Burns, born in August 1821 at Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), County Dublin. Thomas and Ann had two sons and a daughter.

He is remembered in Nova Scotia as a merchant, commission agent, member of the Board of Works, school-board figure, and Conservative MLA for Halifax County.

Early Dublin Background

Dublin and Irish maritime records show Pughs active in shipping, commerce, and associated professions from the later eighteenth century onward. A Thomas Pugh, son of Charles and Sarah Pug(h), was baptised in St Paul’s, Dublin, on 17 December 1775, showing the surname established in the capital well before John Pugh’s birth. Shipping notices from 1791 place a John Pugh as master of the Brothers on Irish Sea routes linking Newry, Belfast, Chester, and Liverpool, while another Pugh appears in 1807 on the ship John trading between Liverpool and Waterford. A further notice records the death in 1818 of Thomas Pugh, formerly surgeon of the Lady Louisa packet, indicating that members of the wider Pugh circle were engaged not only in command and trade but in the professional life of the packet service.

These fragments do not yet prove a line of descent from the late eighteenth-century Dublin Pughs to Thomas Pugh, father of John of Halifax. Even so, they establish a persuasive social and occupational milieu. That pattern is reinforced by an 1822 notice of “John Pugh & Sons” subscribing to relief for distress in Ireland, suggesting a family of some means and standing, and by later evidence of a Thomas Pugh, glass merchant, in Dublin in 1870.

At Sea

John Pugh himself belonged to this maritime tradition. He went to sea in boyhood and eventually became a captain. By one account, he left home at about eleven and served a five-year apprenticeship before entering long-distance voyages. He was a ship’s captain from about 1843 to 1857, which makes his later status in Halifax intelligible: he did not arrive merely as an immigrant trader but as a man formed by the Atlantic world, with practical command experience and commercial connections across British North America and the Irish Sea.

Marriage, Faith and Halifax

His decisive move into Nova Scotian society came through his marriage in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St Mary’s in Halifax on 19 April 1847. The parish record states that “John Pugh, Ireland” married Alice Saunders, daughter of James Saunders and Joanna Evoy of Ferryland, Newfoundland. Alice brought John into the orbit of the Newfoundland Irish Catholic diaspora, especially the Ferryland community, which had deep roots in Irish migration to the North Atlantic.

Uncle Jack

After leaving the sea, Pugh established himself in Halifax as a merchant and commission agent. A Rogers commercial view of Bedford Row places “John Pugh, Commission Agent” at 34 Bedford Row, situating him in the heart of the city’s commercial district.

He sat as chairman of the Board of Pilot Commissioners for the port, served under Sir Charles Tupper on Nova Scotia’s Board of Works from 1864 to 1867, sat on the Halifax school board, and represented Halifax County in the House of Assembly as a Conservative from 1878 to 1882. The Nova Scotia Historical Quarterly describes him as “Uncle Jack,” suggesting not only public prominence but a well-known personal standing in local society.

John and Alice hey had six children, four of whom were still living at the time of his biographical sketch here in 1900, namely:

1. Henry J. Pugh was, 1900, then managing a branch of the Union Bank at Mordaunt, near Winnipeg, married to a Miss Nelson with three children.
2. Minnie
3. Margaret
4. Alice, who married Herbert Kingsford, of Peru, South America.

Justina Alice Pugh and the Kingsford story

The family dimension becomes especially vivid in the figure of his daughter Justina Alice Pugh. Genealogical summaries identify her as a daughter of John Pugh and Alice Saunders, born about 1853 in Nova Scotia. On 15 September 1881, she married Herbert M. Kingsford in Halifax. She apparently sang in a Halifax choir and that Kingsford first fell in love with her on hearing her voice.

I strongly suspect he was the man named here who joined the electrical staff of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company in the early 1870s.  According to family recollection, Kingsford was involved in laying the transAtlantic cable when he met Justina, and after their marriage in Halifax the couple had a child before heading south for further cable work associated with the Panama region. They had three children all up, including Margaret Hypatia Kingsford, who was born on 25 Apr 1888 in Dover, Kent.

If I have the right man he was, in 1886, appointed engineer to the Central and South American and Mexican Telegraph Companies, and continued in their service (latterly as superintendent) until his death. By 1906, he was superintendent of the Central and South American Telegraph Company. That year, the Faversham Times and Mercury and North-East Kent Journal of 29 December 1906 noted:

‘Mr. Herbert Kingsford, of Lima, Peru, superintendent of the Central and South American Telegraph Company, and cable engineer to that company and to the Mexican, landed at Liverpool by the “Lucania” from New York, for London, having business in both cities. Within a few hours his wife landed by the “Virginian” from Halifax, having visited her home and sisters after an absence of 22 years. A few days ago Mr. and Mrs. Kingsford passed through Dover for Paris, to spend Christmas with their three daughters who have been educated in Hanover, Geneva and Berlin. The eldest is a very gifted violinist and has been cultivating music at the conservatoires. When quite a young girl she played before Herr Joachim, who expressed a high opinion of her powers.’

Herbert died of cancer in Lima, Peru, on 5 February, 1916.

On Saturday 26 May 1923, the Kentish Express announced the engagement between Captain Thomas Somerville Reeves, only son of the late Rev. J. S. and Mrs. Reeves, Caheragh Rectory, Co. Cork, and Olive, youngest daughter of the late Mr Herbert Kingsford of Dover. and Lima, Peru, and Mrs Kingsford, 33, Queen’s Gate-terrace, London, SW7. They were the parents of the wonderful Sheila Reeves Smyth (c 1925-2018) of Hardymount, County Carlow.

Death and Significance

John Pugh died in Halifax on 23 September 1900. His burial has not yet been pinned to a specific cemetery in the sources presently consulted, but the family context strongly supports the tradition that he was buried in a Catholic graveyard in Halifax.

His exact genealogical bridge to the earlier Dublin Pughs also awaits firmer documentary proof.

Liverpool and Roadstone

Was this family might connect to the later Liverpool firm John Pugh & Co., remembered as partnering Roadstone around 1960 in exporting stone from Slane through Drogheda to Liverpool quayside? At present, that connection remains unproven.

Sources