Joseph Outerbridge

Sir Joseph Outerbridge (born in 1843) was a prominent Bermudian business man and philanthropist in Newfoundland.

Joseph Outerbridge was born in Pembroke, Bermuda, in 1843, the son of Alexander Ewing Outerbridge and Laura Catherine Harvey, who had married in 1840. The Outerbridges are a prominent Bermudian family based in Bailey's Bay, an unincorporated community in Hamilton Parish, with branches in the United States and Canada. Alexander Ewing Outerbridge was a shipping merchant, and moved his family to Philadelphia in 1844.

Two of Joseph Outerbrige's brothers, Albert Albouy and Alexander Outerbridge, and three sisters, Catherine Tucker (Mrs. Aubrey George Butterfied), Harriet and Laura Outerbridge, remained in Pennsylvania (a fourth sister, Mary Ewing Outerbridge, died aged thirty-one on Staten Island in 1886), at Chestnut Hill and Germantown, while three other brothers, Augustus Emelius, Eugenius Harvey, and Adolphus Outerbridge, became merchants in New York. Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge also became the first chairman of the Port of New York Authority.

Following his education at St. Mark's School in Philadelphia, Joseph Outerbridge moved to St. John's, Newfoundland in 1862 at the age of nineteen to work with his uncle in Newfoundland's oldest company, Harvey & Company Ltd. (founded in 1767). He became the senior director of the firm, and devoted considerably to philanthropic causes. He was a friend and supporter of Dr. Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, and involved himself in the improvement of the conditions of the fishermen of Labrador. He represented the Newfoundland Chamber of Commerce and the Government of Newfoundland in tariff negotiations with the Government of Canada at Ottawa in 1879. He was Treasurer of the Fire Relief Fund from 1892 to 1894, following the Great Fire that devastated St. John's in 1892, and was thanked by the British Government for his efforts. He was the Commanding Officer of the Church Lads' Brigade from 1890 to 1894. He was the Vive-Chairman of the reception committee for the royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York to Newfoundland in 1901. He assisted in raising funds for the 1911 Festival of Empire as Chairman of the Newfoundland Festival of Empire Committee, and was the representative for Newfoundland at the festival in London, where he arranged for the Newfoundland Building and Exhibition at Crystal Palace. He was created a Knight Bachelor by King George V on 2 June 1913. During the First World War, he was the Vice President of the Patriotic Association of Newfoundland, which raised and maintained the Newfoundland Regiment (which was built on the framework of the Church Lads' Brigade).

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