Tag: hardware

Mulholland Bros. Hardware Merchants

In 1878, two brothers from Montreal opened a hardware store in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Prairie city, known as the “gateway to the west,” was growing rapidly, and for several years the store appears to have been profitable, however, it went bankrupt in 1889. After that, the brothers’ lives took very different paths.

Mulholland Bros. Hardware Merchants was owned by Joseph Mulholland (1840-1897) and his younger brother Henry (1850-1934). Hardware must have been an easy choice for them since their father and several of their uncles had been very successful in the hardware business.  

Joseph Mulholland, , Montreal, QC, 1865, source: William Notman, I-1757421, McCord Stewart Museum

Their father, Henry Mulholland (1809-1887), was born in Lisburn,1 near Belfast in the north of Ireland, and immigrated to Montreal as a young man. He soon found employment with a wholesale and retail hardware firm owned by Benjamin Brewster. By 1851 he was a partner in the Brewster and Mulholland hardware company. He later went into partnership with a member of the extended Workman family, Joel C. Baker. The hardware firm of Mulholland and Baker was in business from 1859 to 1879.

Henry Mulholland sr. married Ann Workman (1809-1882) in Montreal in 1834. The Workman family had also come from the Lisburn area. Four of Ann’s brothers were in the hardware business, including William Workman (1807-1878) and Thomas Workman (1813-1889),who were partners in the firm of Frothingham and Workman, reputed to be the largest wholesale hardware company in Canada. The country’s population was growing, and hardware and building materials were in great demand.  

Henry and Ann Mulholland had several children who died very young, but two daughters (Ann and Jane) and three sons (Joseph, Henry and Benjamin) lived to adulthood. Both daughters remained in Montreal. Ann married Dr. George Henry Wilkins, while Jane and her husband, banker John Murray Smith, were my great-grandparents. Son Benjamin died of tuberculosis in Toronto in 1882.

The 1870 Canadian census found Joseph, 29, and Henry, 19, living in Montreal with their parents. Joseph was identified as a merchant, probably employed by his father’s firm. According to one newspaper account, he lived in Guelph, Ontario for a time prior to going to Winnipeg.2 Henry also worked for the family-owned hardware companies at the beginning of his career. Then, in 1878, Joseph and Henry headed to Manitoba. Many families were doing the same thing, attracted by the vast expanses of prairie farmland

The city of Winnipeg, incorporated in 1873, was a service center for the surrounding grain farms and, about a decade later, it became an important stop on the newly built Canadian Pacific Railway. The first CPR train steamed into the city in 1886. Optimists envisioned Winnipeg as a future “Chicago of the North”. In 1873, the city had a population of about 1900 people; that had risen to 8000 by 1881 and 42,000 in 1901.

When Joseph and Henry opened their Winnipeg store in 1878, it faced stiff competition, and the large newspaper advertisement announcing the opening of Mulholland Bros. ran alongside ads from several other hardware stores. Over the next few years, the newcomers focused on basic items like fencing wire and wood stoves.

Source: Manitoba Free Press, p. 4, May 26, 1880, Newspapers.com

Running a business with a sibling had its challenges. In a letter to his father in 1884, Henry must have mentioned that he and Joseph did not see eye to eye on a bookkeeping entry. Henry senior replied, “Joseph is a good-hearted, generous fellow, and I trust that you and he will get on cordially together, as it will be for your natural interest to continue the business without any wrangling and refer any differences of opinion between you and him to your Uncle Thomas [Workman] and me who have had long experience in co-partnership businesses and in keeping accounts between the copartners.”3

Henry senior continued to offer sensible advice and encouragement: “I am glad to hear that you are making no bad debts and that you have no large accounts due to you in the books and that your stock is well selected and next to this never be tempted to offer any customer to increase his indebtedness by selling him more goods on credit in hope of obtaining payment of a past due debt.”

It appears that Joseph was the more outgoing sibling. His name appeared frequently in Winnipeg newspapers as he was involved with the Board of Trade. He was for a time president of the Winnipeg Liberal-Conservative Association, and he was briefly a candidate for mayor of Winnipeg, but withdrew his name. Several newspaper clippings following his death described him as a very likeable fellow. 

Meanwhile, Henry’s name never appeared in the newspapers, so perhaps he was the quiet one, busy running the store. It is also possible he was distracted by family obligations. Henry was married to Ontario-born Christina Maria Shore and the couple had six children.

Henry and Christina Mulholland with five of their six children. source: Mulholland family collection.

On June 25, 1885, Mulholland Bros. ran an ad in the Manitoba Daily Free Press listing the many new items they had in stock, including blacksmith and livery stable supplies as well as articles for barbers, butchers, hunters and gardeners. They also carried bird cages and ivory-handled table knives.

Few of Winnipeg’s citizens were wealthy, the local economy was dependent on a good grain harvest, and shipping costs to Winnipeg were high. The business may have over-extended its inventory. In February 1889, a bankruptcy sale notice for Mulholland Bros. appeared in the paper, listing egg boilers and dog collars among the many items to be disposed of.4

Joseph returned to Montreal and, in 1890, he married Amelia Bagg (1852-1943). Amelia had inherited Montreal real estate from her father, Stanley Clark Bagg, and she was an independently wealthy woman. She was generous to family members in need, and in return, she was loved and respected by members of both the Bagg and Mulholland families. For Joseph, marriage to Amelia not only brought companionship, it also brought him a job in the Bagg family business as a real estate agent.

His good fortune did not last long, however. Joseph died of heart failure brought on by extreme heat in Montreal on July 15, 1897.5

As for Henry, after the Winnipeg store failed, he remained in Manitoba for a time — the family was still there in 1891 when the census was taken — but they eventually moved to Toronto, where Henry continued to work as a hardware merchant. After his death, his youngest son, Toronto lawyer Joseph Nelson Mulholland, commented that Henry had never regained his stride following the bankruptcy.6 When Henry died in Toronto in 1934, at age 84, his obituary did not mention the Winnipeg venture.7

This article is also posted on the collaborative family history blog https://genealogyensemble.com

Thanks to my distant Mulholland cousin for contacting me and telling me about his ancestor Henry. I had no idea that Joseph he and Joseph ran a hardware store in Winnipeg.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Henry Mulholland, Montreal Hardware Merchant”, Writing Up the Ancestors, March 17, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/henry-mulholland-montreal-hardware.html

Janice Hamilton,  “The Life and Times of Great-Aunt Amelia”,  Writing Up the Ancestors, June 21, 2023, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2023/06/the-life-and-times-of-great-aunt-amelia.html

Janice Hamilton, “The World of Mrs. Murray Smith”,  Writing Up the Ancestors, Feb.24, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/02/the-small-world-of-mrs-murray-smith.html

Sources

  1. “The Late Mr. Mulholland”, The Montreal Star, Feb. 19, 1887, p. 8, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/740882983/?match=1&terms=Henry%20Mulholland
  • 3. Letter from Henry Mulholland sr. to Henry Mulholland jr., Dec. 8, 1884, Mulholland family collection.
  • 5. “Late J. Mulholland. a man who was cordially liked by many friends in this city”, The Winnipeg Tribune, July 10, 1897, p. 5, Newspapers.com,
  • 6. Letter from Nelson Mulholland to Fred Murray Smith, June 22, 1943, Mulholland family collection.

Dr. Joseph Workman, Pioneer in the Treatment of Mental Illness

If you have been watching the miniseries “Alias Grace” on CBC television or Netflix, you may remember a scene featuring a grey-haired gentleman with long sideburns. That character was based on the real-life physician Dr. Joseph Workman, known as the Father of Canadian Psychiatry.

The television show is based on the book of the same name by Margaret Atwood, a fictionalized account of the life of Grace Marks, an Irish-born servant girl convicted in 1843 of a double murder near Toronto. Grace was held at the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto at about the time that Dr. Workman became superintendent of the asylum.

Neither the book nor the television show makes it clear whether Grace was insane, or whether she was guilty of murder. There is little doubt, however, that Joseph Workman was a kind and intelligent man who made important contributions to the treatment of mental illness. In fact, he came from quite an extraordinary family.

Joseph (1805-1894) was born in Ballymacash, near Lisburn, County Antrim, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). His parents were Joseph Workman Sr. (1759-1848) and Catherine Gowdie (1769-1872). Joseph Jr. was the fourth of nine children — eight boys and one girl. His only sister, Ann Workman (1809-1882), who married Montreal hardware merchant Henry Mulholland, was my direct ancestor. 

The Workmans brought up their children to value hard work, education and Christian charity. Holding liberal views, they were members of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland and they eventually became Unitarians. 

The Workmans were not wealthy and they lived in a cozy cottage in the village, surrounded by fields and farmland. Joseph Sr. worked as a miller and as a teacher, then as land steward (manager) for a local landowner.

Joseph Jr. attended school around Lisburn and, after graduation, worked as a land surveyor for three years. In 1819, his oldest brother, Benjamin, immigrated to Montreal, where he became a teacher and newspaper publisher. Over the next 10 years, the Workman siblings, tired of the poverty, poor harvests and religious strife around them, all left Ireland for Canada. Joseph and his parents arrived in Montreal in 1829.

Joseph taught school and studied to become a doctor at the same time, obtaining a medical degree from McGill University in 1835. His thesis focused on the infectious nature of cholera (a radical idea at the time) after he watched the deadly disease sweep through the city in 1832 and 1834. 

He married Elizabeth Wasnidge in 1835 and the couple eventually had 10 children, four of whom died young. In 1836, they moved to Toronto, where Joseph ran the Wasnidge family hardware business. For 10 years, he kept up his reading on medicine before finally leaving the business to concentrate on medicine. He built up a busy practice and taught at the Toronto School of Medicine.

He was appointed superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in 1853 and remained there until 1882.

At first, Joseph knew little about mental illness, but it was easy to see that the asylum was filthy and overcrowded, and that the patients were neglected. He improved the institution’s efficiency and made sure the patients had good food and generous amounts of alcohol. His treatment approach focused on moral therapy:  kindness, truthfulness, social entertainment and religious instruction. Although cure rates did not improve, he did make progress in the humane treatment of the mentally ill. 

The Workman brothers all achieved success in Canada. Alexander Workman became mayor of Ottawa, William was a successful hardware merchant and mayor of Montreal, Thomas became a prosperous businessman, and Benjamin had several careers, including teaching and medicine. Joseph and Benjamin were instrumental in establishing the Unitarian Church in Toronto and Montreal.

But biographer Christine L.M. Johnston considered Joseph to be the greatest of them all “because he radically changed the whole field of psychiatry, and not just in Canada. He influenced as well American superintendents of Lunatic Asylums…. Like most pioneers, he did not claim to be totally original – he introduced the new ideas initiated in Europe. Yet he was constantly exploring new avenues on his own after that.” 1

This article is also posted on www.genealogyensemble.com

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Henry Mulholland, Montreal Hardware Merchant,”Writing Up the Ancestors,March 17, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/henry-mulholland-montreal-hardware.html

Footnotes: 

  1. Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and their Brothers and their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 6.

Other sources: 

Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000.

Thomas E. Brown, “Joseph Workman,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto Press/Université Laval, 1990, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_joseph_12E.html, accessed Oct. 23, 2017. 

The Digger, One Family’s Journey from Ballymacash to Canada, Lisburn.com, http://lisburn.com/history/digger/Digger-2011/digger-19-08-2011.html, accessed Oct. 20, 2017.

There is an extensive database of the Workman family online called A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~database/WORKMAN.htm