Category: Ireland

Henry Mulholland, Montreal Hardware Merchant

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With one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day parades in the world, Montreal has long celebrated its Irish heritage. Waves of Irish immigrants came to Canada in the 19th century, peaking in 1815 and 1831, and a surge of immigrants arrived during the famine in Ireland, between 1847 and 1849.

Many Irish Catholic immigrants settled in Montreal, while the majority of Protestants moved on to the United States or Upper Canada, but my great-great-grandfather Henry Mulholland (1809-1887), an Irish-born Protestant, put down deep roots in Montreal. 

Henry Mulholland

I do not know where he was born or who his parents were, but the name Mulholland is most common in Ulster (now Northern Ireland). Nor do I know when, why or with whom, if anyone, he came to Canada. The first record I have found is his 1834 marriage to Ann Workman at Montreal’s Anglican Christ Church. 

Mulholland may have known the Workman family in Ireland. They immigrated from Ballymacash, near Belfast, in the 1820s. Ann Workman’s six brothers established themselves in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa in the fields of publishing, business, medicine and politics. Her brothers William and Thomas were partners in Frothingham and Workman, the largest hardware importing, wholesale and manufacturing company in Canada. 

Mulholland also went into the hardware business. Perhaps he started his career with his brother-in-law’s company, or perhaps he worked his way up in Benjamin Brewster’s hardware firm. In 1842, the first year Lovell published its annual Montreal city directory, there was a listing for “Brewster, B. and Company (H. Mulholland and John Evans), wholesale and retail hardware.” Lovell’s 1851 directory of Canadian businesses listed “Brewster & Mulholland, importers of shelf and heavy hardware of every description, 177 and 179 Saint Paul Street.”

In 1859, Mulholland joined with a new partner, Joel C. Baker, to form Mulholland and Baker, hardware merchants and ironmongers. A lawyer, Baker was married to Louise Workman, daughter of William Workman. 

Lovell’s 1876 edition advertised Mullholland and Baker as “Importers of hardware, iron, steel, tin, Canada plates, window glass; manufacturers of cut nails, and also of the new chisel pointed cut nail.”  Their customers included small shopkeepers, merchants and blacksmiths in southern and central Quebec. The company opened a branch in Guelph, Ontario and began importing raw materials and manufacturing nails.   

During this period of Montreal’s history, industries and railways were being built, utilities developed and banks established. Like many of his business colleagues, Mulholland was involved with several of these enterprises. Many of these men also knew each other through their memberships in the Mechanics’ Institute of Montreal, an organization founded to provide education to working men and youth for a modest fee. 

Mulholland was a director of the New City Gas Company, founded in 1847 to compete with the Montreal Gas Light Company. New City Gas burned coal to produce gas that was used to light the homes and streets of Montreal. Some years later, when the Sun Mutual Life Insurance Company of Montreal was founded in 1871, Henry Mulholland was a member of its first board of directors.

Henry Mulholland’s house was near the corner of Sherbrooke Street and Drummond. This photo appeared in a book called The Saga of Sherbrooke Street, Yesterday and Today, by Arthur Kittson

He was also one of 15 managing directors of the Montreal City and District Savings Bank. Most of Montreal’s banks were set up to serve commercial interests, but the City and District was founded in 1846 by the Bishop of Montreal and a group of businessmen to help ordinary workers save their money. In 1866, the year Mulholland was serving as president of the City and District, a group of Irish-Americans known as the Fenians raided the Canadian border.

Many customers were afraid the crisis would cause the bank to fail and demanded their deposits back, but Mulholland and two other bank directors formed a committee to deal with the situation and prevented the bank’s failure.  

Mulholland did not succeed, however, in preventing the bankruptcy of his own hardware company. It went out of business in 1879, a situation that appears to have been fallout from the bankruptcy of an individual whose mortgage Mulholland had guaranteed. 

Mulholland had to sell his family’s home to cover his debts, and he and his wife moved to a smaller house nearby. For the next few years, court battles and appeals took up much of his time. After his wife died in 1882, he moved in with his daughter Ann, her husband, Dr. George Wilkins, and their children. Henry Mulholland died in 1887.   

Photo Credit:

“H. Mulholland, Montreal, QC, 1886”, II-79921.1, Wm. Notman & Son, McCord Museum, http://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/II-79921.1?Lang=1&accessnumber=II-79921.1

Notes:

Several of the organizations Mulholland helped establish are still in operation today. The Montreal City and District Bank is now the Laurentian Bank and the Sun Life evolved into Sun Life Financial. The Mechanics’ Institute of Montreal is now known as the Atwater Library and Computer Centre.

Several years ago, archaeologists from the Pointe-à-Callière museum explored the site of Mulholland and Baker’s tool sharpening service. See “Pointe-à-Callière Archaeological Field School: The Mulholland and Baker Years”, http://www.ecoledefouilles.org/default.asp?id=60.  

“Old Montreal, Mulholland and Baker in 1873”, http://www.vieux.montreal.qc.ca/inventaire/fiches/eng/mulholland.htm briefly describes the history of Mulholland and Baker.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/index.php, has biographies of many of Mulholland’s business associates, including William Workman, Thomas Workman and John Fotheringham. Mulholland also knew entrepreneur and politician Luther Holton. See Henry C. Klassen. Luther H. Holton, A Founding Canadian Entrepreneur. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001.

For an account of the City and District’s early days, see the “Origins and Early History of the Montreal City and District Savings Bank 1846-1871” by John Irwin Cooper, http://www.cchahistory.ca/journal/CCHA1945-46/Cooper.html

“New City Gas and Mechanic’s Institute” http://montrealhistory.org/2010/01/new-city-gas-mechanics-institute/, outlines the early history of gas lighting in Montreal. The site montrealhistory.org publishes articles focused on people and events associated with the Mechanics’ Institute.

Highlights of the history of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada can be found on the website La Mémoire du Québec (in French only.) http://www.memoireduquebec.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sun_Life_Assurance_Company_of_Canada_%28compagnie_d%27assurance-vie%29  

To search issues of the Lovell Directories for Montreal from 1842 to 2010, go to http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell/

Henry and Ann Mulholland had seven children, five of whom grew to adulthood: Benjamin, Joseph, Ann, Jane and Henry. I will write about the family in another post.

The Infamous Voyage of the George and Anne

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On May 20, 1729, the George and Anne set sail from Dublin, Ireland for New Castle, Delaware, taking 180 immigrants to their new lives in colonial America.1 More than four months later, the survivors of that terrible voyage disembarked on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, several hundred miles from their intended destination. Some 80 passengers, many of them children, had died at sea.

Among the passengers were several members of the Thompson family, possibly including my seven-times great-grandfather James Thompson.2

The George and Anne was a chartered vessel. Many of the passengers were friends and neighbours of a man named Charles Clinton,3 of County Longford, Leinster Province, Ireland, who organized the trip. Many were members of Corboy Presbyterian Church near Edgeworthstown, County Longford.  

Clinton’s diary noted the first hint of trouble came on the night of June 1 when a strong wind “loosened our bowsprit with hazard of our masts. June ye 2d we had a fair breeze on our westerly course, on the 3rdditto” Then, he reported, his daughter and his son “fell sick of the measles.”4

On June 5, a child died, and a second child died three days later. As the deaths continued over the following weeks, Clinton recorded them, but it is hard to determine exactly how many there were since he appears to have repeated some of the names. Clinton himself lost a son and a daughter, 12 members of the MacDowell family died, and James Thompson lost his wife and three children. Clinton did not note the causes; measles could have been a factor, while poor sanitation, lack of food and overcrowding no doubt led to disease. The desperation most people on board the vessel must have felt led directly to one death as a servant accompanying one of the passengers threw himself overboard and drowned. Several accounts of the voyage written by other families accuse the captain of trying to starve the passengers to death so he could steal their money. 

In July, Clinton reported, gale-force winds from the northwest blew the ship far off course and, for a short time, it was becalmed off the north coast of Africa. Clinton did not say whether this was bad luck or poor navigation on the part of the captain. 

When America finally came into view, it was October 4. Accounts of what happened next vary. One says the passengers had to pay a ransom to the captain before he would allow them to leave the ship, another says the passengers seized the captain and a crew member brought the ship to shore.5

The surviving passengers spent the winter on Cape Cod. They had originally intended to settle near Philadelphia, but instead some bought land a few miles west of the Hudson River, north of New York City. There they founded a community they called Little Britain in Ulster County. Today, some of their descendants still live in this area, now part of Orange County, New York. 

There is some confusion about the identities of the Thompson family members on the voyage.  Orange County genealogy researcher Elmire L. Conklin wrote, “The Charles Clinton diary listed James, Mary and William [Thompson] for a passage of four. The fourth passage was probably for the children of James [Jr.] and Mary, three of whom died on the voyage.”6

Most Thompson family historians have assumed that the William Thompson mentioned was the husband of Ann Jenkins. But Mrs. Conklin suggested this is incorrect. She suggested that the William Thompson mentioned in the diary was actually the brother of James Thompson Sr., who was also with the Clinton party, and that William Thompson and Ann Jenkins (my six-times great-grandparents) came to America later.7

Ann gave birth to daughter Sarah in February, 1729 so perhaps the family remained in Ireland that year rather than risk travelling with an infant. Also, the minister of their church gave them a reference letter to use in America, dated August 1737.8 It is more likely that they brought this letter with them than that they acquired it eight years after their arrival. If in fact they came to America on a ship other than the George and Anne, they made a lucky choice.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “The Thompsons: from Scotland to Ireland and America,” Writing Up the Ancestors,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2015/11/the-thompsons-from-scotland-to-ireland.html

Notes

  1. Jeffrey Clinton, “George and Anne Ship 1729 Passengers.” Genealogy.com,   http://www.genealogy.com/forum/regional/countries/topics/ireland/17044/, posted July 5, 2000. List transcribed from Orange County Genealogical Society, vol. 3 no 4 (Feb. 1974), copied by Elizabeth S. Smith. 
  2. Elmire L. Conklin, “The Two George Thompsons of Early Orange County, N.Y.,” Orange County Genealogical Society, vol. 21 no. 1 (May 1991), 9; Thompson vertical files. Orange County Genealogical Society, Goshen N.Y.
  3. Charles Clinton (1690-1773), was of English descent but was born in Ireland where his grandfather, a military officer, had been given land. One Thompson source says he was a cousin of the Thompsons, but I have not confirmed that. Once settled in New York, Clinton became a farmer, justice of the peace and militia colonel. He was the father of George Clinton, who served as Vice President of the United States from 1804 to 1812, and grandfather of DeWitt Clinton, a New York politician who was instrumental in the construction of the Erie Canal. Leslie Stephen, editor. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XI, New York: MacMillan & Co., 1887, 91. https://books.google.ca, accessed Nov. 21, 2015. 
  4. Thomas J. Barron, “Presbyterian Exodus, Co. Longford, 1729,” http://www.from-ireland.net/presbyterian-exodus-1729-longford/; article originally appeared in Breifne, no. 18 (1977-78), 253; accessed Nov. 6, 2015.
  5. Fergus D. H. MacDowall and William L. MacDougall. The MacDowalls, Clan MacDougall Society of North America Inc., 2009, 60; https://books.google.ca, accessed Nov. 21, 2015.
  6. Conklin, “The Two George Thompsons of Early Orange County, N.Y.”
  7. Ibid.
  8. “Thompson Genealogy (also Hudson and Duryea)” Orange County Genealogical Society, vol. 8 no. 4 (Feb. 1979), 30. Thompson vertical files. Orange County Genealogical Society, Goshen N.Y.