Samuel Denny Street

1751-1830

Samuel Denny Street (army officer, lawyer, politician, office holder, and poet) was born 16 May 1752 in Southwark (London) England. Street was apprenticed to a London attorney in 1766 and subsequently practised law briefly before joining the Royal Navy in the early 1770s. In 1775 he went to Boston on the Merlin. After his discharge in Nova Scotia in 1776, he enlisted in Joseph Goreham’s Royal Fencible Americans. On 1 May 1776 he went with his regiment to garrison Fort Cumberland (near Sackville, N.B.), and the following year, when he was promoted lieutenant, he assisted in establishing Fort Howe at the mouth of the Saint John River. By 1780 Street had been transferred to Fort Howe. In 1783 Street retired on half pay and was employed in surveying and laying out Parrtown and Carleton (Saint John, NB). He settled on the Saint John River at Burton and named his estate Elysian Fields. In February 1785 he was amongst the first to be admitted to the bar of the newly formed province of New Brunswick. In 1795 Street was elected to represent Sunbury County, and he served in the assembly until 1802 when he was elected as clerk of the House of Assembly. A verse satire (entitled “Creon”) by Street was published in the Saint John Gazette and General Advertiser (Saint John, NB) in four installments in October and November 1802. “Creon” is pieces of local narrative verse satire, a genre that occupied a significant place in the early literary culture of Maritime Canada. Six years later he was re-elected to the assembly for Sunbury, and he served until defeated in September 1816. In 1819 he was appointed to the Council. Street died 11 December 1830 in Fredericton, NB.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Burton, Fredericton

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