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11 - Determination

[The Miller Flanger] had been invented by a John Hamilton of the Fredericton Branch Railway. However, since he was coloured, his boss, Mr. J. H. Miller obtained the patent and it became known as the Miller Flanger. 
(NB Railway Museum, n.d.) 
John Hamilton- true inventor of the Flanger
#2 engine of the Fredericton Branch Railway, equipped with the Miller Flanger, invented by John Hamilton. Pictured here at the York Street crossing in Fredericton are Alexander "Boss" Gibson and Fred B.Edgecombe, 1st Station Agent at Fredericton; Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, P5-323


Mary Matilda Winslow
Mary Matilda Winslow, UNB Archives & Special Collections,
Series UA PC 13, Item no. 48

In this section we wish to highlight the faces and the names of some of the members of Fredericton’s Black community in the 18th and 19th centuries. To name only a few, there’s Mary Matilda Winslow (1880 – 1963), the first Black woman to attend the University of New Brunswick; Lucy Hammond (1820 – c. 1901) born a slave to the Barker family in Barker’s Point; Jack Patterson (c. 1755 – post 1814), a Black Loyalist who apprehended the notorious Lunar Rogue thief in Lincoln (just outside Fredericton); Georgiana Jacques (c. 1806 – post 1884) who operated a fortune telling establishment in Fredericton in 1871; Salomie Gosman (1854 – 1918) after whom “Salomie’s Well” is named; and John Hamilton (born c. 1853), the true inventor of the world’s first engine-flanger (for the removal of snow from the rails during winter) in 1873.