.gif)
Henry Morgan (merchant)
Encyclopedia
Scots-Quebecer
The Scot-Quebecers , are Quebecers who are of Scottish descent.-Background:Few Scots came to Quebec before the Seven Years War. Those who did blended in with the French population...
department store pioneer in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
who founded Henry Morgan & Company
Morgan's
Morgan's was a Montreal-based Canadian department store chain. At its peak, the company had stores in Quebec and Ontario...
.
Henry Morgan was born into a family of humble circumstances in Saline
Saline, Fife
Saline is a village in Fife, Scotland, some to the north-west of Dunfermline.At the 2001 Census the population was 1188, a decline from the 1235 recorded in the 1991 Census...
at the time an isolated village six miles (10 km) northwest of the royal burgh
Royal burgh
A royal burgh was a type of Scottish burgh which had been founded by, or subsequently granted, a royal charter. Although abolished in 1975, the term is still used in many of the former burghs....
of Dunfermline
Dunfermline
Dunfermline is a town and former Royal Burgh in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to a 2008 estimate, Dunfermline has a population of 46,430, making it the second-biggest settlement in Fife. Part of the town's name comes from the Gaelic word...
, Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. He received the basic education then available before taking a job with a wholesale dry goods firm in the city of Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
.
In 1844, after gaining sound knowledge of the textile business and having saved a small amount of money from ten years of hard work, an ambitious Henry Morgan decided to emigrate. Encouraged by David Smith, a fellow Scot in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Morgan believed a better life existed in Canada than in a Scotland faced with "the Clearances"
Lowland Clearances
The Lowland Clearances in Scotland were one of the results of the British Agricultural Revolution, which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland in the seventeenth century...
, and he planned to put his training to good use and open a business there. Immediately upon arrival in Montreal, Morgan joined with his friend, David Smith, to began preparations to set up a retail dry goods store in rented premises on Notre-Dame Street. Morgan's brother, James, had also been trained in the business and invested in the store but remained in Glasgow to oversee the purchasing and shipping of goods to Montreal. In May 1845, Smith & Morgan opened for business. Records show Morgan working 18-20 hour days, but the hard work brought success. The product line was draperies and curtains
Curtain
A curtain is a piece of cloth intended to block or obscure light, or drafts, or water in the case of a shower curtain. Curtains hung over a doorway are known as portières...
, sewing fabrics, household linens and a variety of woollen goods.
Under the terms of the business contract, the partnership with Smith ended in 1850. Believing he could do better without Smith, Morgan did not renew their partnership and set up Henry Morgan & Company
Morgan's
Morgan's was a Montreal-based Canadian department store chain. At its peak, the company had stores in Quebec and Ontario...
to buy out the business assets. While Smith moved on to Chicago, Illinois, James Morgan emigrated to Montreal to take over his responsibilities in the store. Henry Morgan then hired a representative in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where he could choose from a variety of goods available from the many textile importers and manufacturers' representatives. Within a few years, Morgan's was one the largest stores of its kind in Montreal.
Morgan traveled to Europe on merchandise buying trips and it was in Paris, France he visited Le Bon Marché
Le Bon Marché
Le Bon Marché is the name of one of the best known department stores in Paris, France. It is sometimes regarded as the "first department store in the world". Although this depends on what is meant by 'department store', it may have had the first specially designed building for a store in Paris...
, that country's first department store. Impressed by what he saw, and aware Americans had begun copying the idea, in 1866 he opened what became the first department store in Canada. The business occupied four floors of a new building on St. James Street, carrying a selection of merchandise with a wholesale cost of more than half a million dollars. Morgan came up with the idea for window displays, frequently changing the products in order to catch the eye of passers-by.
As he approached sixty years of age, two of Morgan's nephews joined the firm. Over time, he handed over more and more of the day-to-day management of the business to the younger generation, but in the mid 1880s, Morgan began plans to build a huge new department store. He had been part of enormous growth in the Montreal economy, and the expanding city was creeping from its business hub at the waterfront up the hillside to the residential plateau below Mount Royal
Mount Royal
Mount Royal is a mountain in the city of Montreal, immediately west of downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the city to which it gave its name.The mountain is part of the Monteregian Hills situated between the Laurentians and the Appalachians...
. In 1891, Morgan opened his massive new ultra-modern department store on Sainte-Catherine Street. Others followed, and the area soon became the new centre for retail merchandisers.
Two years after his new store opened, Morgan died and was buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery
Mount Royal Cemetery
Opened in 1852, Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165-acre terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The burial ground shares the mountain with the much larger adjacent Roman Catholic cemetery -- Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges...
in Montreal. His company continued to prosper well into the second half of the 20th Century and stores were opened in several major cities in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. Henry Morgan and Company remained a private family business through four generations until 1960, when it was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
. The large store Henry Morgan built on Saint Catherine Street
Saint Catherine Street
This article is about the street in Montreal called the rue Sainte-Catherine in French. For other streets of this name, see Rue Sainte-Catherine ....
operated under the Morgan name until 1972. Today, it remains as one of Montreal's most important shopping venues under the Hudson's Bay brand name.