John Frothingham
| John Frothingham | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
June 1788 Portland, Maine |
| Died | 22 May 1870 (aged 81) Montreal, Quebec |
| Occupation | Partner of the hardware House of Frothingham & Workman |
John Frothingham (June 1788 – 22 May 1870) was a Canadian merchant. He established British North America's largest wholesale hardware house, Frothingham & Workman. He was President of the City Bank of Montreal from 1834 to 1849, and a generous contributor to Queen's University, McGill University and Montreal's Protestant schools. The house he purchased in the 1830s, Piedmont (demolished in 1939), was one of the early estates of the Golden Square Mile. In 1890, its ten acres of grounds were purchased for $86,000 by Lords Strathcona and Mount Stephen, on which they built the Royal Victoria Hospital.
In 1788, Frothingham was born at Portland, Maine. He was the son of The Hon. John Frothingham (1749-1826), a graduate of Harvard University who became a Judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts and kept a summer house at Portland. His mother, Martha (1763-1834), was the daughter of Samuel May (1723–1794), a prominent merchant of Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was a first cousin of Samuel Joseph May.
From an early age, John was employed in his uncle's, Samuel May's, hardware firm in Boston. In 1809, he was sent to Montreal to open a branch there. Following the War of 1812, Americans tended to be discriminated against both socially and in business, and he suffered a few early setbacks. However, Frothingham re-established himself by setting up his own hardware business in partnership with his younger brother, Joseph May Frothingham, who died in 1832.
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