Hello, thank you for this Montreal info, it's v interesting! Below is an extract from a letter written by HEM shortly before he sailed back to England at the end of 1849, where he settled down & had a large family.
"Here, in Montreal, I have got a few more orders since I wrote you, & am now fairly begun to make my calls on the business folk here, as my time of departure is drawing nigh. I intend leaving New York on the 12th December in the Steamer Canada, & hope to be in Liverpool on or about the 23rd, when I trust to find a despatch from you awaiting me at Allan & Gillespie’s.
Mr Edmonstone will be home at the same time & will probably expect a few lines from you too, reporting progress as to the ‘City of Hamilton’ & so forth. Symes, Torry, Philip Holland & Davie Mair, all go home in the steamer of the 12th.
Immediately on my arrival at Liverpool I shall make tracks straight for London to engage an office, & if you have any instructions, advice or information to give on that head, you had better have it in waiting for me. Some of the quiet streets (if such an article is to be had in London) off Cheapside or Leadenhall Street or Lime Street will, I think, be the best location for us to squat in."
Hard to know why the idea took root that he died in Montreal...! Montgomerie & Greenhorne were in fact based at 17, Gracechurch Street in the City of London - a street featured in 'Pride & Prejudice', I find - "Once upon a time, Cheapside and Gracechurch Street were in the commercial heart of the city of London. It was the main shopping district in Jane Austen’s day...", though wrecked during the Blitz of WW2. And HEM himself lived variously in Regent Street, central London (as a single man), then, once married, in SE London and W London with his family, dying at 61 West Cromwell Road, Kensington, London, on 2 June 1891.
We must be cousins of some sort ...?
