The Stern’s of South Bay.

As you drive towards the city on the old Westfield Road in Saint John, New Brunswick, there is a bend just before you hit the Gault Road that has a train bridge traversing a small body of water emptying into South Bay. If you park your car just before the train bridge there is a path that takes you to the top of a large meadow that overlooks South Bay. There are ruins of an old farm house on the hillside. The farm once belonged to Samuel Stern. Samuel was an immigrated Jewish Romanian farmer who moved north of the border from Staten Island, New York, where he and his family operated a farm.

In 1919, Samuel’s daughter Anna convinced the rest of her family to move north after she married a Saint John business man named Herman Wiezel (who co-owned the Wiezel shoe shop on Union Street, later on King Street). Samuel set up his farm in South Bay and raised a large family until the end of the 1920s at which point most of the family moved south to Vineland New Jersey. Anna and Herman had three children, one being Gladys who married an engineer who became one of Saint John’s most beloved mayors, Samuel Davis.

Sam’s son Gary Davis (also my good friend Anthony’s father) and I travelled to Vineland, New Jersey to film part of a family tree documentary about the Stern family. Not only did we get to give Samuel Stern’s only surviving son Alfred a piece of rock from the South Bay farm, we also had the chance to explore all the old remnant sites of the Stern family farm and business.

Gary took this picture of me filming inside the remains of the Stern produce distribution center. There was nothing inside the building but a few beer bottles and some graffiti. The sign bearing the Stern family name still stands bold and strong…bold and strong like the family stories that make the heritage of Saint John so rich and so very interesting.