“Crackie”

“Crackie””

The $umner Family Business Dynasty

A publication 1986, by author John Edward Belliveau.

Price: $15.00 + (shipping and handling is extra)

8″ X 5½”, 192 page of print & photos.
ISBN 0-88999-315-7

In this book, he is called “a local tycoon who might have been a Morgan or a Vanderbilt.” Frederick William Sumner was first mayor of the incorporated City of Moncton, and if he was a colorful, pugnacious millionaire his father was an even more striking personality. People called him “Crackie” because William Hunt Tyler Sumner was a Yankee trader who came from Maine and founded a family business dynasty, still controlled by the family after five generations.

This book is about such people as “Crackie” who ran a plaster works, started a general store, built ships and railroad lines and sold everything from telegraph poles to chinaware. While his son “F.W.” became a power in the province, another son was an exotic character who “never did any work but just moseyed around” and wound up on the coast of China. The Sumner family has been in North America since 1636 and produced many notable individuals but none more intriguing than the generations who have matched a city’s every step as it grew from a shipyard to a metropolitan community. It could well be called “The Sumner Saga.”