Minnie Bell Sharp Adney (January 12, 1865 – April 11, 1937) was a Canadian music teacher and businesswoman. From childhood on she was actively involved in her family's orchard and nursery business. She owned and operated music schools in Victoria, British Columbia and Woodstock, New Brunswick. She was the first New Brunswick woman ever to run in a Canadian federal election.
Family, early life and education
She was born in Upper Woodstock, New Brunswick, one of eight children of Francis Peabody Sharp and his wife Maria Shaw. Their first three children had all died of diphtheria within one week in 1861. Minnie Bell was the eldest of three sisters. She had one older brother and one younger.
Her father, a noted experimental pomologist, owned orchards and fruit nurseries which grew to be the largest in Canada by 1890. Minnie Bell Sharp later described her childhood and youth as "a glorious life" and her family's home as "a veritable fairyland". She recalled having "an unlimited capacity for hard work" and being "up at daylight packing and shipping apples and plums" during the harvest season.
She was educated mainly by her mother, with one year spent at Compton Ladies' College, an Anglican boarding school in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, when she was 14. Later she attended St. Margaret's Hall school in Halifax, where she excelled in music. Encouraging her musical development, her father purchased the first Steinway piano in New Brunswick
In the general election of 1921 she again put her name forward, offering her support to the Liberal Party. Among the items in her platform were "more pay for the soldiers", "mothers' bonus such as obtains in Ontario", and "return to old high license of a liquor law or such a system as Quebec or British Columbia have, whereby the national debt could be liquidated in two years". On this occasion she presented her nomination papers on time but did not have the $200 deposit required to file the papers.
In the general election of 1925, her name appeared on the ballot as an independent candidate. Her nomination papers were filed and a $200 deposit was paid by an "agent", Helen McKibbin. She was the first woman ever nominated in a federal election in New Brunswick. The seat was won by the Conservative candidate James Kidd Flemming. Minnie Bell Adney, whose campaign slogan was "By their fruits ye shall know them", received 84 votes. Mary Ruth Adney worked with Sharp at the conservatory in Victoria from 1893 to 1896 and Tappan Adney visited the city for five months in 1895. He worked as an actuary for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York from the early 1930s until he retired in 1966. He died in 1983 in Ramsey, New Jersey, where he had lived for 50 years.
She suffered from Fuchs' dystrophy, a degenerative eye disease, and became blind in the last years of her life. In 1933 she and her husband returned to Woodstock from Verdun, Quebec, where they had been living.