From the shops and wharves of Souris to Herman MacDonald’s enterprises at Black Bush, business linked the parish with a wider world.

On this page

• Trade and everyday life
• The man behind Hermanville
• John Knight
• Matthew & McLean
• An economy adapting
• Sources

A merchant’s business might include a shop, a wharf, a fishing enterprise, a farm, or a factory. Together, these activities connected the work of local households with customers and markets far beyond eastern PEI.

Where farms, fisheries, and households met

The general store was one visible part of a larger trading economy. Families needed goods they could not make or grow; producers needed buyers and ways to move their products. Coastal commerce brought those needs together through stores, workshops, wharves, and transport.

The Souris business directory on the 1863 Lake Map gives a glimpse of that working town. It lists general-merchandise dealers Donald Beaton, John Knight, C. O. Carlton, Edward Kickham, and Richard Conway, alongside merchants, a baker, a blacksmith, a harness maker, and a block maker. These were different businesses sharing a commercial centre. ¹

For families in St Margaret’s and neighbouring communities, the history of trade therefore reaches beyond a single parish boundary. A rural household could be connected to a local shop, a coastal fishing operation, and a Souris merchant at the same time. Those connections form part of the setting in which our cemetery families lived.

Herman MacDonald and the naming of Hermanville

Black Bush was the earlier name of the Lot 45 community now known as Hermanville. In Chapter 13 of Genealogy of St Margaret’s Parish, Jenny McQuaid identifies the man commemorated by the later name: Herman MacDonald. ²

Herman was born in Hay River/Clearspring, the son of John MacDonald and Christy MacIntosh. McQuaid describes him as well educated. After marrying, he moved to Black Bush and established a remarkable range of enterprises: a farm, hotel, general store, post office, and lobster factory. ²

Those activities help explain his prominence. His business interests touched the land, the fishery, accommodation, everyday purchases, and communication. Rather than being remembered for a single shop, he appears in the parish account as a businessman whose work reached several parts of community life.

McQuaid explicitly says Black Bush was renamed Hermanville in his honour. She also leaves one part of the story open: she does not know whose idea the change was. We can recount the naming tradition without inventing a public ceremony, a petition, or the person who first suggested it. ²

The geographical-name index reproduced by Island Register independently connects the names Black Bush and Hermanville. It also records a Hermanville post office for 1884–1914. That is useful context for the community’s postal history, although those dates do not establish how long Herman himself served as postmaster. ³

A family story beyond the store

McQuaid continues the account with Herman’s son, John Alfred. A graduate of Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, he became a certified surveyor after civil-engineering studies and was remembered for his skill in that profession. ²

Father and son illustrate two forms of opportunity within one family: the combination of rural enterprises that made Herman locally prominent, and the education and professional work pursued by John Alfred. They give a human dimension to a place name that otherwise might pass without explanation.

Herman’s story here follows McQuaid’s original printed page 164. Exact birth and death dates are omitted because the older project compilations disagree. No cemetery burial is inferred from his importance to the community.

John Knight and the growth of Souris

John Knight’s story brings us from a rural community to the port through which much of the region’s commerce passed. The Town of Souris’s historical background credits him with acquiring a small wharf and building a breakwater, helping establish Souris as a commercial port. ⁴

He also appears in the 1863 directory as a general-merchandise dealer. Together, the wharf history and the business listing show the relationship between waterfront development and trade: a more useful port created opportunities for merchants, while merchants gave producers reasons to bring goods to the waterfront. ¹

For a region of farms, fishing communities, and shipbuilding sites, that connection mattered. Harbour infrastructure was part of the commercial system through which local work reached other markets.

Matthew and McLean and the reach of a general store

Uriah Matthew and John McLean began their mercantile careers with Heartz and Son in Charlottetown. With financial assistance from Benjamin Heartz, they established their own general merchant business in Souris in 1869. ⁵

Their activities spread beyond hardware and dry goods. The heritage record describes a branch store and starch factory at Dundas by 1887, the later move of that store to Bridgetown for access to the Boughton River, and supplies sent to stores in the Magdalen Islands. In the 1880s, their lobster canneries employed local residents and shipped products to Boston and the West Indies. ⁵

The provincial historic-places guide describes farms, fishing boats, lobster factories, a tin-can factory, wharves, and warehouses within the enterprise. At its height in the 1920s, it employed more than 200 people. That is a measure of how far a business founded as a store could extend into the region’s working lives. ⁶

A business that changed across generations

After the Second World War, competition increased. The provincial guide explains that Matthew and McLean gradually withdrew from its other activities and retained the store. Babe Matthew closed the store in 1974; the heritage designation records the company giving up its charter in 1982. The shop’s closure and the later corporate date are distinct events. ^{6 5}

The building at 95 Main Street now provides a place to explore that commercial history. The Community Museums Association describes its museum collection as relating to the general merchant business, bringing the region’s trading past into a setting visitors can still recognize. ⁷

Business in a changing coastal economy

These stories also add detail to the history of shipbuilding’s decline. The loss of wooden-ship construction could remove customers and income from related trades, but the regional economy did not stand still. Fishing, canning, farming, retailing, and transport provided other opportunities, though they did not replace every lost livelihood.

Herman’s lobster factory and the diversified operations of Matthew and McLean show why the history cannot be told through shipyards alone. Different businesses expanded, contracted, or changed purpose at different times. For some households, a new local industry offered work. Others continued to look beyond the Island.

The surviving records can bring this history closer: a merchant’s name in a directory, a post-office entry, an advertisement, an invoice, or a ledger account may connect a family to a particular business. Such documents help us trace the ordinary exchanges behind the larger story of community growth and change.

Sources and further reading

1. The 1863 Lake Map business directories, Souris listing, reproduced by Island Register. Names are retained as listed rather than equated automatically with cemetery records.
2. Jenny O’Hanley McQuaid, Genealogy of St Margaret’s Parish (2022), Chapter 13, printed page 164, directly reviewed from the supplied scan. Principal source for Herman MacDonald, his businesses, the naming of Hermanville, and John Alfred.
3. Geographical Names of Prince Edward Island, H–L, Hermanville entries, reproduced by Island Register.
4. Town of Souris, Official Plan background study and community profile, historical background, drawing on Adele Townshend’s Ten Farms Become a Town.
5. Canadian Register of Historic Places, Matthew and McLean Heritage Building, statement of significance.
6. Government of PEI, Prince Edward Island Historic Places, Matthew and McLean Building, printed page 31.
7. Community Museums Association of PEI, Matthew and McLean Building Heritage Historium.

Developed from the project’s earlier merchants document, checked against the sources above. Regional prominence and parish connections do not, by themselves, establish burial in either St Margaret’s cemetery.