P5034

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Alexander%20Bartlet%20circa%201875

Details

ID Number

P5034

Item Name

Image

Maker

C.M. Hayes & Co

Title

Alexander Bartlet / Alexander Bartlet

Title (Fre)

Alexander Bartlet

Date

ca 1875

Description

Black and white photo of Alexander Bartlet circa 1875; portrait of upper torso, head, and shoulders; wearing a dark jacket, with tie; beard; portrait by C.M hayes & Co.

History

Alexander Bartlet was nineteen years old when he sailed across the Atlantic with his brother and sister-in-law in 1841. He settled with his brothers in Amherstburg, where he met another Scottish immigrant five years his junior named Helen Noble. The pair married in 1851, and two years later they moved to Windsor, a young town whose future they and their children would dramatically help to shape. Although William Bartlet built Windsor's first Town Hall in 1856, it was Alexander who would become known as the city's "Grand Old Man". He began a half century of public service in the Presbyterian Church, of which he was a founding member. On the first of September in 1857, a group of Presbyterian Windsorites - mostly Scottish immigrants or the children of immigrants - met in the Town Hall to establish St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. Alexander Bartlet was elected a clerk and an elder, along with David Johnston. He was among "the devoted few who nursed the congregation through its struggle for existence up to sturdy self-support and finally to ... affluence," even working as the parish's janitor "when the congregation was small in numbers and short of means." 3 The prominence Alexander earned in church affairs enabled his rise in the secular public sphere. His "sterling integrity and moral probity" garnered him such a solid reputation that he was elected City Clerk after just a year's experience in church administration. 4 The following year (1859), he was elected Secretary-Treasurer of Windsor's Board of Education, a position he maintained until 1893. After serving on the Board of Education and holding the position of City Clerk for twenty years, the Ontario Government appointed Alexander Police Magistrate. He served the city in that capacity for thirty years, from 1878 until his retirement in 1908.

Place made

Canada - Ontario - Windsor

Collection Name

Museum Windsor

Subjects

Bartlet, Alexander

Beards / Barbes

C.M. Hayes & Co.

Men / Hommes

Portrait photographs / Portraits photographiques

Studios

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