52 ancestors in 52 weeks (26): Fighting Frank Carvell, a politician’s politician

My husband and I have lived in New Brunswick for more than 50 years now. As I’ve mentioned previously, aside from my husband’s very strong roots in NB, my paternal grandmother, Annabelle Carvell (Currie), who died long before I was born, grew up in Fredericton, NB (where we live) before immigrating to Boston. Interestingly, in these 50+ years I’ve never once encountered anyone with the last name of Carvell. This is a small place, and the Carvells first came here in the Loyalist wave of the 1780s, so they have been here a long time. I idly wondered if they’d all left for Boston at the same time. And then my husband mentioned, a long time ago now, that he’d heard of someone known as Fighting Frank Carvell, who’d been a politician of note upriver in the early 1900s. One weekend we drove up river to Carleton County (which I now know is where “my” Carvells resettled from just outside of Fredericton in 1813) looking for evidence in cemeteries, plaques, historical societies, etc., but to no avail. (Although we did have a black bear cross in front of us on a back road on our way home, which was a highlight of the trip.)

Map of New Brunswick’s counties, showing Carleton County just up the St John River (Wolastoq) from Fredericton, bordering Maine.

And then, in 2003, a book came out: “Fighting Frank” Carvell: Partisan and Patriot, by Russell Cook. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to get myself a copy. He didn’t come across as exactly my kind of guy, but the book was a very interesting historical read about  New Brunswick and Canadian politics and a force of nature.

My copy of “fighting Frank” Carvell: Partisan and Patriot

I wondered from time to time about whether there could be some connection, but there were never any Carvells around and I figured it wasn’t likely, since he had been way upriver anyway. He must have been another Carvell. Or was he? Of course, that was long before I started this journey through my ancestry, and long before I realized how deeply embedded in that part of New Brunswick my more distant ancestors had been, before they headed for the big lights of Fredericton. 😉

Now that I have access to the miracles of the Internet and familysearch.org, it only took me about an hour to find the connection: my grandmother Annabelle Carvell (Currie) and Fighting Frank Carvell were second cousins; their grandfathers were brothers. To complete the picture, Sgt. Jacob Carvell, who I wrote about in Week 8, and his wife, Lavinia Slason Carvell, who I wrote about in Week 9, were Annabelle’s and Frank’s great-grandparents. And when I look at how many kids each of them had as the Carvell family tree kept expanding, I marvel that there aren’t more Carvells to be found in New Brunswick.

This book about Fighting Frank is nearly 500 pages, but I’m going to give you a taste of his political personality and his political impact through excerpts from the book’s introduction rather than the less colourful Wikipedia or Canadian Biographies entries for him. Keep in mind that this was written 20 years ago. See what you think.

From the Introduction:

In Carleton County, New Brunswick, where politics is still serious business and party allegiance flows through blood lines, old men still have memories of “Fighting Frank” Carvell nearly 80 years following his death. Even those too young to have actual memories vividly remember the stories told around the kitchen table years earlier. The tone of the tales was often dictated to a large extent by the political leanings of the family, and Carvell was invariably described either as the greatest political figure in the history of the county or its most notorious partisan. Yet today the memories have faded and only the fortunate few among the current generation have ever heard anything about the man who came closer than any other New Brunswick Liberal to becoming Prime Minister of Canada.

…

Of all those who exercised the conscience of government in exposing wrongdoers, Frank Broadstreet Carvell, a plainspoken country lawyer from Carleton County, New Brunswick, held first rank. Though primarily a federal politician, he was the most powerful Liberal in New Brunswick and was largely responsible for leading the rebuilding of the provincial party following its near extermination in 1912. By 1914 he, along with Liberal organizers Peter Veniot and E.S. Carter, forced the most popular Premier in the history of the province [James Flemming, father of Hugh John Flemming] to resign in disgrace.

…

He could have been a judge or the leader of the Liberal party in New Brunswick (and unquestionably within a short time Premier), for both had been offered to him, but he chose to remain in federal politics.

…

From the Montreal Star, in advocating him as the only obvious leader in the House of Commons in the autumn of 1917:

“Rugged as one of the rocks of his own ocean-wafted province, immovable, implacable, stern, ruthless, yet kindly, good natured, agreeable, even-tempered when “off duty”, Frank Carvell was born to be a leader. Circumstances may prevent him from becoming the leader of the nation now – the Conservatives hate him worse than the Philistines did Samson and Ontario is cold – yet stranger things may happen than that he will some day. He has been responsible for so many commissions that when they have nightmares Carvell must be always the central figure. The Conservatives would have smashed him in the past if they could. They would do it now, but his life and career are too clean.”

He was also cold, calculating, completely partisan, short-tempered, and intolerant of those who wasted his time. In Parliament it was said that he made more friends and more enemies than any other member of the House. … Carleton County Councillor Frank R. Shaw noted that Carvell “was not much given to shoulder patting, but he is a solid man, a sincere man, and it has never been hinted that he had at any time betrayed the people’s trust.”

There you have it, Fighting Frank Carvell, M.P. for Carleton County, New Brunswick, politician par excellence!

Franklin Broadstreet Carvell (1862-1924)