Outstanding Men of New Brighton: Edward Dempster (Demp) Merrick

Written by Jane Mihalko

Edward Dempster (Demp) Merrick was born in Jordan, New York on August 24, 1832 into a family that would become one of the most wealthy and influential families of early New Brighton. His family moved to Fallston in 1837 and later in 1846 to New Brighton when his father built their home across the Beaver River on Third Avenue. When Dempster was young, he was fascinated by the great painters and spent his free hours reading about them and dreamed of becoming an artist. When he told his father his dream, the response was “There is nothing to it. They all starve to death. Go into manufacturing. Do something to make money”.

In 1851 the railroad came to New Brighton and an office with a telegraph line opened in the station. The telegraph was new to New Brighton and greatly interested Dempster, and he spent his free time in the office watching the operator send and receive messages. He was given a copy of the Morse alphabet which he studied while watching and listening to the operator send and receive messages. In a few months he was given the job of operator. He then became an operator in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. In 1859 Dempster decided being an operator was not much of a business and had no future for him and he quit.

In 1861 the Civil War began and the government called for telegraph operators. Dempster went into the service and stayed about a year until his health failed and he had to resign. In 1862 the United States called for volunteers for three months and Dempster served in 1862 and also 1863.

After the war, times were good and in 1867 Dempster and his brothers Charles and Frank along with K.K. Buckley formed a partnership to manufacture stoves, grates, fenders and all types of castings. In 1870 he took out a patent on an anti-dust grate and in 1884 on a shaking grate which they manufactured. After eighteen years they sold the business in 1885.

Dempster was now free to follow his boyhood dream of being an artist. He was a 53-year-old bachelor and didn’t want to go back to school to learn to paint, so he went to nature. He went to the woods and painted the stillness. He went to the ocean and painted the changing moods. He hired male and female models and studied them in various poses and moods. He admitted he was struggling without training and felt that painting a fine picture was the greatest achievement of man.

In 1885, about the same time Dempster, Charles and Frank sold the foundry, the horse shoe nail works owned by Charles and Fred burned and was totally destroyed. The brothers rebuilt the works and Dempster was fortunate enough to take enough stock in the new company (Standard Horse Nail Company, now Stanho) to insure he would have ample finances for the rest of his life.

Dempster considered himself to be only as good as an art student, and since he had not created any paintings good enough to be sold, the paintings were accumulating at an alarming rate. Since he had no place to store his paintings, he bought the old train station where had started as a telegraph operator and hung the pictures there. He then went to New York and continued to paint during the winter and started to buy paintings. He soon had the gallery full and bought the property next door and built a two-story addition with two galleries, one downstairs and one upstairs. In 1901 he bought the old Methodist Church next door and planned to build a museum.

By this time Dempster had 420 paintings on the walls. He had bought 200 for about $20,000 and 220 were his paintings. The pictures he bought ranged in price from $10.00 to $485.00 and averaged about $100.00 each. He got some great bargains. He paid $50.00 for one painting and $57.50 for another which were each worth $1000.00. He had examples of French, German and American art. He said” If my life is spared a few years longer I hope to have a fine institution built up. In case of my death at any time, I have by will provided a constantly increasing fund for the care and protection and increase of the galleries and museum perpetually; and to always be kept open free to the public”.

Edward Dempster Merrick died on June 10th, 1911 and is buried in Grove Cemetery. The first thing the executors of the will did was to weed out Dempster’s paintings so that only the paintings he bought were displayed. The gallery was not managed as planned and became a great disappointment to the people of New Brighton. The beautiful paintings hung in the gallery in dust and darkness until 1959 when Robert Merrick was named Second trustee of the Merrick Art Gallery. By this time the gallery was run down. The roof was leaking badly, the building had no electricity and the furnace was spewing coal dust on the priceless paintings. Robert’s wife Eva sprang into action, rallied many volunteers and had the roof repaired and electricity and a new furnace installed. The Merrick Art Gallery today is a beautiful destination for the entire family.

Dempster’s cousin, Ethel Miner Kenah, wrote about her cousin Dempster in her 1938 memoir “New Brighton Girlhood 1870-1890”. “Cousin Dempster was and artist who loved good pictures, knew good pictures when he saw them but painted terrible ones. Cousin Demp was a bachelor and after his mother’s death and the breaking up of the old home, kept house for himself. His housekeeping was a disgrace as was also his cooking. His recipe for cooking chicken and digestive tablets together to make the resulting dish digestible was certainly new and original.” None of Dempster’s original paintings remain.

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