(4 Oct. 1818-2 Feb. 1891), businessman, farmer, public figure. (Little Jim) Referred to as the Patriarch of Loch Garry. Born at South Lancaster. Parents: James Fraser (Big Jim, or Jim the Blacksmith) and his wife Isabella Grant. His childhood was spent in Dundee Township, Que. He studied at an academy at Fort Covington, N.Y., served in the GC militia in the Rebellion of 1837-1838, was a store clerk in Dundee and GC, and worked also in Cornwall and Kingston. He was associated from an early period with the Sandfield Macdonalds. In 1846 Fraser settled at the west end of Loch Garry, GC. There he was a merchant (general store operator), and involved in lumbering and potash and pearl-ash manufacturing. The little Loch Garry village grew up about his store.
He gave up business in 1866 and thereafter concentrated on farming. (Harkness 228) It was probably James Fraser, the subject of the present article, rather than his son Jim (1847-1896), who worked with his father on the Fraser farm, who is referred to by the Alexandria Glengarrian, 14 March 1890, in the statement that “We are glad to learn that another good man has fallen in line with the progress of the age. Mr. James Fraser, of Lochgarry, is getting out the lumber necessary for the erection of a silo this summer. Who’s the next man?” He was presumably also the J. Fraser who is mentioned in the same issue for having a sugaring-off celebration in his maple grove at Loch Garry.
James Fraser, the subject of the present article, besides being a large-scale landholder, was postmaster at Loch Garry for 31 years, from the establishment of the Loch Garry post office till his death. This post office originated, perhaps through the influence of Fraser’s political associate the Hon. D.A. Macdonald, at a time when there were few post offices in GC, and it closed in 1898. Fraser was a JP, a member of first Kenyon Township Council, 1850, and on the Kenyon Township Council for a quarter-century. He was often reeve of Kenyon, and was warden of SDG in 1865. He belonged to first board of trustees of Alexandria High School. (Harkness 347; school established 1864) He was elected in 1872 to the Board of Directors of the Montreal and City of Ottawa Junction Railway Co. (Witness 29 May 1872) Later, he was one of the directors of its more fortunate successor, the Canada Atlantic Railway. He promoted the building of the cooperative cheese factory which was established at Loch Garry about 1880. In politics, he was a Reformer (Liberal). He was an active supporter of the temperance cause, and served as president of the Glengarry Temperance Society. Also, he was chairman of the Board of License Commissioners for GC for 10 years. His descendant R.J. Fraser notes that he attended the funeral of the explorer Simon Fraser in 1862. (p. 284)
James Fraser was a Presbyterian. He and his family attended church first at Martintown, where he was an elder in the Free Church (Burns Church). Afterwards he took part in founding the first permanent Protestant congregation in Alexandria, where in 1873 he was ordained one of its earliest elders. Then again from 1880 the Frasers attended the Burns Church at Martintown.
In 1844 he was married to Isabella McDonald (1819-30 Dec. 1902) of Dundee Township. (five children) She operated the post office for some years after her husband’s death. James Fraser died at Loch Garry. At his funeral there were “over 100 sleighs in the cortege.” (obituary) His pallbearers were J. Rayside, MLA, A. McNab ex-MP, John Simpson, J.A. McDougald, and a McArthur and Kennedy who were probably Archibald McArthur and Peter Kennedy of the present dictionary. James Fraser was noted (as this list suggests) in his own time as a prominent citizen and supporter of the community and was known by posterity as the founder of a distinguished line. He was the father of Angus W. Fraser and John Fraser (auditor general) and grandfather of Robert James Fraser. See also Ranald Sandfield Macdonald.
Cornwall Freeholder 6 Feb. 1891 (repr. Fraser Obits. 69-70), Cornwall Standard 6 Feb. 1891, Gleaner 12 Feb. 1891 * Fraser (1959) (much biog. information, portrait and other illustr.) * Harkness: index (portrait) * Ross, Lancaster, 65 * unfavourable refs. to in report on the Kenyon Town Hall confrontation of Dec. 1881 of D. A. Macdonald by Macdonald’s enemies, Cornwall Reporter 31 Dec. 1881