Old St. Andrews

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Samuel Tilley Gove House

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This house was built by Samuel Tilley Gove in 1859. At the time of an interview with the St. Andrews Beacon in 1903, Mr. Gove was at the age of 79 the oldest practicing physician in the Province. Dr. Gove came to St. Andrews from Saint John when the population of the Town was 3,000, with square-rigged ships in the harbour, and several on the stocks, but with the West India trade beginning its decline. He was a director of the Charlotte County Bank, and once undertook a dangerous mission to deliver 8,000 pounds to the Bank of New Brunwick, setting out on horseback with a brace of horse pistols and a hope that he wouldn't be waylaid by bands of sailors and fugitives which infested the roads at that time. He was a director of the St. Andrews and Quebec Railway, and at the time of the interview the only surviving member of the original board. He was also County Coroner and had charge of the Marine Hospital. He remembered that when the "Star" arrived here in 1847, with nine-tenths of her 200 passengers sick with the plague, he attended the sick on Hospital Island. 75 to 100 died, and Dr. Gove himself along with several others attending the immigrants caught the fever but recovered. Dr. Gove died in 1897, aged 84.

Later the Samuel Gove house was the residence of Frederick Worrell, local dentist and author. Mr. Worrell was multi-talented - he was an amateur astronomer, ornithologist, local chess champion. In his youth he was an award winning gymnast. His column "Shiretown Items," which ran in the St. Croix Courier for two decades, is the liveliest, most intelligent and most informative account of life in St. Andrews between 1930 and 1950. Dr. Worrell died in 1951 of a stomach ulcer.