Tag: hardware

Thomas Workman’s Legacy

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A wealthy Montreal businessman during his lifetime, Thomas Workman (1813-1889) has been largely forgotten, however, several of the companies he helped to found still exist, and his bequest to McGill University supports cutting-edge research today.

Thomas Workman, 1869

Thomas was the eighth of the nine children of Joseph Workman (1759-1848), a teacher turned estate manager, and his wife, Catherine Gowdy (1769-1872). Thomas was probably born at the family home in Ballymacash, a village near Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). His parents were strict and ambitious for their children and believed that too much hugging would spoil them.

Members of Thomas’s family moved to Canada a few at a time. In 1819, the oldest son, Benjamin, decided to start a new life in North America and booked passage on a ship bound for Quebec. Over the next few years, brothers Alexander and John followed. Fourteen-year-old Thomas, accompanied by Samuel (16) and Francis (12), arrived in Montreal in 1827, following a hazardous voyage across the Atlantic. The brothers lived with Ben and his wife and attended the Union School that Ben owned, studying grammar, mathematics and the classics. Their parents, sister Ann (who was my two-times great-grandmother) and brothers William and Joseph followed in 1829.

In Ireland, the family attended the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in Dunmurray, and, like its minister, they strongly believed in freedom of thought in religion. When Thomas first arrived in Montreal, he attended a Presbyterian church, but after his brother Benjamin played a key role in founding a Unitarian congregation in the city in 1842, Thomas became a life-long Unitarian.

Like a number of Irish-born Protestants, Thomas joined the Doric Club, an organization founded in Montreal in 1836 to help maintain Lower Canada’s British connection.1 Along with a number of other Doric Club members, Thomas participated as a loyalist volunteer in the bloody battle of Sainte-Eustache during the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837-38. The following spring, he was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

Thomas was described as someone who did not show much emotion, but he did have a life-long close bond with his brother Dr. Joseph Workman, who lived in Toronto. They visited each other and shared interests, such as the new theory of evolution.2 In 1845, Thomas married Scottish-born Anna Eadie (1822-1889). Although they had no children, they moved into a large house at the northwest corner of Sherbrooke and University Street in 1877.

The house built by Thomas Workman, on Sherbrooke Street, near University, Montreal. Photos of this house have sometimes been erroneously identified as his brother William Workman’s home.

Thomas began his business career working for a Montreal merchant. In 1834, he was hired as a junior clerk at the hardware firm Frothingham and Workman, where his brother William was a partner. Nine years later, Thomas became a partner, and when both William Workman and John Frothingham retired in 1859, Thomas became head of the company. At this time, Frothingham and Workman was the largest hardware wholesaler in Canada, importing tools and supplies from Britain and the U.S. and with its own manufacturing facilities near Montreal’s Lachine Canal. 

Like many of his peers, Thomas was involved with several companies over the course of his career. He was a director and later the vice-president of Molson’s Bank, which was incorporated in 1855 and merged with the Bank of Montreal 70 years later. He was a founding director and first president of Sun Mutual Life Insurance Company of Montreal (now simply known as Sun Life) from 1871 until his death 18 years later. He was also involved with the City and District Savings Bank, founded by the Bishop of Montreal and a group of city business leaders to help working people save money. It is now the Laurentian Bank. His other business interests included shipping, insurance and real estate.

A Liberal in politics, Thomas was elected in 1867 to Canada’s first federal parliament, representing the riding of Montreal Center. He did not run in the following two elections, but in 1875 he returned to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Montreal West. The topics he addressed in parliament mainly focused on business interests such as canals, railways and exports and imports.   

Governments did not fund health and social services as they do today, so Montreal’s wealthy citizens gave generously to a variety of causes. Thomas donated to the Mackay Institution for Protestant Deaf Mutes (now the Mackay Centre School), and he was president of the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society for two years. He was also a governor of the Fraser Institute and Free Library of Montreal, known in recent years as the Fraser Hickson Library.

Thomas’s wife Anna died in June 1889, and his brother Joseph commented that when Thomas succumbed to diabetes a few months later, he probably died of a broken heart.

Thomas and Anna are buried in the Workman family plot in Mount Royal Cemetery where their massive headstone is inscribed with their names on one side, and the names of his parents and brother Samuel on the other. 

The smith workshop in the Workman Engineering Building, McGill University, around 1901.

Thomas was reputed to be a millionaire – a rare achievement in Canada at the time. The organization that benefited the most from his estate was his neighbour, McGill College, now McGill University. He bequeathed his house to McGill, and it became home to the School of Music. The Otto Maass Chemistry Building is now located on this spot.

In addition, he left $120,000 to the fledgling department of mechanical engineering, then known as the Applied Science Faculty. Half of that sum paid for the construction of a new building to house machine and technical shops, including a foundry, hydraulics and electrical science.3 The Governor General of Canada laid the building’s cornerstone at a ceremony on Oct. 30, 1890.4 The Workman Wing of the Engineering Building is still there, although it has undergone many changes over the past century and a quarter.5

Thomas also provided long-lasting funds for research. The current Thomas Workman Professor of Mechanical Engineering studies satellites and space robotics, while the current Thomas Workman Emeritus Professor’s expertise is in the interactions between fluids and structures, with applications in the power-generating industry and the aeronautical industry.

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

Photos credits:

Thomas Workman, Montreal, QC, 1869. William Notman, I-36832, McCord Stewart Museum

Thomas Workman’s House, Sherbrooke Street, Montreal, Quebec, 1912-13. Wm. Notman & Son, VIEW-12850, McCord Stewart Museum

Smith’s Shop in the Workman Building, McGill University, Montreal, about 1901. Photographer unknown. MP-000025286, McCord Stewart Museum

Sources:

1.  Gerald J. J. Tulchinsky, “WORKMAN, THOMAS,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed May 4, 2026, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_thomas_11E.html.

2.  Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 94. 

3.  MacDonald Engineering, the Workman Wing and the Electrical Wing. https://cac.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/Macdonald_Engineering.html, accessed May 4, 2026.

4.  Keen Science’s New Home. Laying the Corner Stone of McGill’s Latest Buildings, The Gazette, Oct. 31, 1890, p. 2. www.newspapers.com accessed March 10, 2026.

5.  McGill. Civil Engineering. History of the Department, https://www.mcgill.ca/civil/about-us/history, accessed May 4, 2026.

William Workman: Public Successes, Personal Problems

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The Workman family plot in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery is a large one, including six large tombstones engraved with the names of almost 30 people. But William Workman (1807-1878), a successful businessman who served as mayor of Montreal for three years, is not buried there. He was laid to rest alone, in a large mausoleum some distance from the family plot.

Before I started researching the Workmans, a cemetery staff member told me that William had wanted family members to be buried in the mausoleum with him, but they refused. Neither of us knew why, but now I have an idea.  

William Workman, 1866, Montreal, QC, William Notman Studio, McCord Stewart Museum online collection, I-22186.1.

Born in 1807, William was the fifth of nine children. The family lived near Belfast, in what is now Northern Ireland, where his father was a teacher and estate manager. In 1819, William’s oldest brother, Benjamin, immigrated to Montreal. Three brothers followed soon after and, in 1829, the rest of the family moved to what was then Lower Canada.1 Before emigrating, William worked as a surveyor for the Royal Engineers, mapping Ireland for the Ordnance Survey project. In Montreal, his first job was as assistant editor of theCanadian Courant and Montreal Advertiser, a weekly newspaper owned by brother Benjamin. Soon, however, William found his true calling: as a businessman.

Montreal Gazette, June 6, 1859, Newspapers.com, entry for Frothingham and Workman

He found employment with a hardware firm, Frothingham & Co., and within a few years he became a partner. As of 1836, the company was known as Frothingham and Workman, and it became the largest wholesale hardware company in Canada, selling scythes, shovels, augers and nails. When William retired from the hardware business in 1859, his brother Thomas took over running the company.2

Montreal was growing rapidly, and William found opportunities to invest in fields such as banking, transportation and real estate. William was elected president of the City Bank in 1849 and served in that capacity until 1874.3 In 1846 he was one of a group of prominent Montrealers who founded the City and District Savings Bank, established to help ordinary people save their money, and he was president of that institution for several years.

William invested in Canada’s first railway, the Champlain and St Lawrence, completed in 1836 to connect Montreal to Saint-Jean on the Richelieu River.4 He was also a shareholder in the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, and he collaborated with several other individuals to found the Canadian Ocean Steam Navigation Company in 1854.

Around 1850, he and a business partner became real estate developers. They bought a piece of land south-west of Montreal’s city limits, near the Lachine Canal. The canal attracted industries such as brass foundries and rolling mills, and nearby manufacturing facilities belonging to Frothingham and Workman employed hundreds of people. The partners laid out streets, built sewers and divided the property into housing lots. The area, known as Sainte-Cunégonde, became a village in 1876 and a tiny independent city in 1890, but eventually it became part of the City of Montreal.5 Workman Street, named after William, still exists in the area.

William was also a generous philanthropist. He was president of the St. Patrick’s Society at a time when that organization was involved with both the Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. Later, he supported the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. In 1864, he helped create the Montreal Protestant House of Industry and Refuge, serving as president from 1874 to 1877. He was also president of the Montreal Dispensary and Hospital for Sick Children.

He was not deeply involved in politics, but he was elected mayor of Montreal from 1868 to 1872 and proved to be very popular. This aspect of his life will be the topic of another story.

Frothingham and Workman, Iron Mongers, Montreal, John Henry Walker, McCord Stewart Museum online collection, M930.50.7309.

Around this time, wealthy merchants began building large homes on the slopes of Mount Royal, an area that became known as the Golden Square Mile. William bought a full block on the north side of Sherbrooke Street, between Drummond and Stanley, and built a mansion he called Mount Prospect.

William Workman and Elizabeth (Eliza) Bethell were married at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on February 10, 1831. Eliza came from the same part of Ireland where William had grown up, so perhaps they had known each other there. They had seven children, so the house should have been full of activity, but it didn’t turn out that way.

It was all too common for children to die young in 19th century Montreal, and William and Eliza lost three little ones. Their firstborn, Elizabeth, was born in December 1831 and died the following summer. Their third child, Emma, was born in August 1837 and died in April 1839. Another girl, Malvina, was born in July 1845 and died in April 1847. Two daughters, Louise (or Louisa) and Elizabeth (Eliza), grew to adulthood, but Eliza, who married Robert Moat, died in 1871. Louisa married Joel C. Baker, a lawyer who went into the hardware business with Louise’s uncle Henry Mulholland. But William found the death of his only son, also named William (1840-1865), the most devastating blow of all. By then, he and his wife may have already been living apart.

“Plan of property belonging to the Estate of the Late W. Workman Esq. subdivided into lots.” H.M. Perrault, 20 Novembre, 1879; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, entry for William Workman, https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3394052?docsearchtext=William%20Workman

An image of the 1861 census suggests that Eliza was not living at Mount Prospect house, but with her married daughter Louisa Baker and her husband,6 so perhaps William and Eliza had unofficially separated by then. In the 1871 census, seven people were listed as living at Mount Prospect, including a cook, a coachman and a horseman. William was the only family member listed.

In a book about William’s brother, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry, Joseph Workman, author Christine Johnston remarked that Joseph did not have a high opinion of William, commenting in his diary that he thought Wiliam had damage in his head, as well as bumps outside it.7 Perhaps William was also concerned about his own mental health: Johnson wrote that William visited a phrenologist in the United States to examine those external bumps. Johnston also noted that family records suggested William was an alcoholic. If true, that might explain the difficulties in the Workman household.

Nevertheless, many people admired him. When he died, Montreal’s English-language newspapers published extensive obituaries, describing William’s many accomplishments as well as the long and painful illness that led to his death.8 According to one newspaper account, some 400 people attended his funeral at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, and many followed the hearse to Mount Royal Cemetery.

William Workman seemed to have everything, but without his family surrounding and supporting him, his life appears to have been a sad one, and those problems followed him to the grave.

This article is also posted on the collaborative blog https://GenealogyEnsemble.com  

Notes

William’s sister Ann (1809-1882), who married hardware merchant Henry Mulholland, was my great-great-grandmother.

Some photos of brother Thomas Workman’s house on Sherbrooke Street are erroneously identified as William’s house. I have not found a photo of Mount Prospect.

There are several photographs of a young man identified as William Workman in the McCord Stewart Museum’s online photo collection. This must the son who died in 1865.  

Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience in the 19th century. Its proponents believed that the measurements of the skull were indicative of mental faculties and character traits.

See also:

Benjamin Workman: Leading the Way, Writing Up the Ancestors, March 12, 2025, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2025/03/benjamin-workman-md-leading-the-way.html

“Dr. Joseph Workman, Pioneer in the Treatment of Mental Illness” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct 26, 2017, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2017/10/dr-joseph-workman-mental-health-pioneer.html

“The Miller of Moneymore”, Writing Up the Ancestors, May 14, 2025,      https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2025/05/the-miller-of-moneymore.html

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

Mulholland Bros. Hardware Merchants, Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 15, 2025, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2025/01/mulholland-bros-hardware-merchants.html

“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.   Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and Their Brothers and their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 2. 

 2.  John Frothingham, Obituary. The Portland Daily Press, May 24, 1870, p. 3. Newspapers.com, accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

3. Nicholas Flood Davin, The Irishman in Canada, London: S. Low, Marston, 1877, p. 334, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/irishmanincanada00daviuoft/page/334/mode/2up accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

4. G. Tulchinsky, “Workman, William,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–,  https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_william_10E.html accessed January 5, 2026

5. Olivier Paré, “Les bâtisseurs de la Petite-Bourgoyge” Encyclopédie du MEM, https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/memoiresdesmontrealais/les-batisseurs-de-la-petite-bourgogne5 accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

6. Ancestry.ca, 1861 Census of Canada. entry for Joel C. Baker, Canada East, Montreal. Library and Archives Canada, Canada East Census, 1861, p. 4210. accessed Jan. 6, 2026.

7. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 122. 

8. “Late William Workman”, The Gazette, Feb. 25, 1878, p. 2. Newspapers.com, accessed Dec. 30, 2015.