3710-W-THE FORMAN FAMILY- PT 1

THE FORMAN FAMILY

JAMES JAMES PRINGLE JAMES RICHARDSON

1795 -1874 1764 - 1856 1823 - 1901

JAMES FORMAN

1795 -1874

EARLY DAYS

James Forman was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in May 1795. He was the eldest son of James Pringle Foreman and Mary Newell. His father, who had been born in 1763 at Coldstream, a town on the Scottish side of the eastern end of the border with England, was the son of John Foreman, a prosperous landowner and merchant. James’ mother came from a Loyalist family. She and her sister Hannah and her parents, John and Diana, were part of the wave of 30,000 American colonists that had come to Nova Scotia after the American War of Independence. As a young man James Pringle had joined the house of Sir Brook Watson in London, which at that time had a large export business with Nova Scotia. In 1789 James Pringle and a colleague called George Grassie were sent out to Halifax to set up, what in effect, was a branch office to represent the interests of Brook Watson.

THE NEWALL SISTERS - MARY AND HANNAH

For the next twenty years this firm, known as Foreman and Grassie, prospered. In 1812 the connections with Brook Watson and the partnership between Forman and Grassie were ended and James Pringle set up another partnership with a merchant called John Leonard. The new partnership also thrived, doing particularly well during the War of 1812. His son, James Forman junior had had a privileged

upbringing as part of a large and prosperous family. Having left school at the age of about fifteen he would have probably undertaken an apprenticeship in either his father’s firm, or that of a relation and then started working with his father in about 1817.

However in August 1820 his father decided to retire from business and devote himself to public service at the same time dissolving his partnership with John Leonard. James Pringle’s decision seems to have left James without clearly defined employment for the next ten years. In March 1821, at the age of 25 and only seven months after the disappearance of his job, James married his first cousin Margaret Ann Richardson. His bride was the daughter of his mother’s sister Hannah. For the first five years of their marriage James and Elizabeth lived at the home of James’ parents and for the first part of this period eight of James’ siblings were still living at home. To this number James and Elizabeth were adding a family of their own. Mary, born in Dec 1821, James Richardson, born in 1823 and Louisa, future wife of William King-Hall, in 1824. In 1825 James’ bought a plot of land from his father.

LIFE AS A BANKER

In 1830 James was 35 years old. He was happily married with a family of four children and had a house of his own. However he does not seem to have done very much else with his life. This situation was shortly to change. James Forman was about to enter the world of finance as a bank manager. As we will learn this proved to be, financially, a very rewarding decision.

To most Canadians banking was an unfamiliar profession. In the early 19th Century financial arrangement in Canada were chaotic. Although the £ Sterling was the official unit of account a wide variety of specie and dubious paper money was in circulation, including the US dollar, Spanish silver dollars and gold doubloons. There were no banks in Canada at the beginning of the Century and it was not until 1817 that the Bank of Montreal was established, followed soon afterwards in 1820 by the Bank of New Brunswick. Nova Scotia did not have a bank until 1825, when the Halifax Banking Company, a private bank, was set up by some of the town’s leading citizens. This bank abused its monopoly position and in early 1832 the Bank of Nova Scotia Bill was introduced to the House of Assembly and received the Royal Assent on 30 March 1832.

The first Director’s meeting was held on May 4th and a fortnight later James Forman was appointed Cashier - or in modern terms Bank Manager or Chief Executive Officer - of the Bank with a salary of £300 a year. The setting up of a bank in Canada in the 1830s is not directly relevant to our main story but the reader may be interested, and in one case amused, by three incidents connected with the setting up of the Bank of Nova Scotia [PAGE3711]. It is also worth recording that an important early account obtained by the bank was that of Samuel Cunard, who in 1839 founded the Cunard Shipping Co. The services of this company played an important part in the early married life of William and Louisa and, as we will learn later, on one occasion subjected the latter to a terrifying experience . With James Hall now launched on his banking career, let us now return to his domestic circumstances. In May 1838 James bought a property, for £1100, which was to be his home for the next 34 years. He called this new home Thorndean. It was at this house that William would court his future wife, Louisa, nine years later.

THORNDEAN TODAY

FAMILY MAN AND RESPECTED CITIZEN

It was against this comfortable and apparently prosperous background that James Forman’s family grew up. In 1850 his eldest daughter, Mary, married a Benjamin Shaen in Halifax. Little is known of this family except that after returning to England for a while they ended up in America where Mary died in 1879. Their son, Harry, became a wool broker and kept in touch with his English cousins until he died in 1920. A great deal more is known of the second child and elder son, James Richardson. In 1870 at the age of 17 he left Canada for Scotland to train as a civil engineer. Having completed his training, he remained in Scotland for the next seven years working in the booming railway industry. In 1847 he married a childhood friend, Isabel Hill, who had come to Scotland to visit relations.

In the early 1850’s it was decided to link Halifax to Windsor, a distance of about 40 miles. James Richardson obtained the post of Chief Engineer to this project and in early 1853 returned to Nova Scotia. At first all went well but in 1857 the government of Nova Scotia changed and James Richardson’s patron, the Chairman of the Railway Board, resigned. For largely political reasons the new administration became extremely critical of the management of the project and in August 1858 James Richardson was dismissed, the line having been officially opened two months earlier. James Richardson returned to Scotland and rejoined the firm from which he had received his initial training. In 1860 he became a partner and director of this firm, which was renamed Robson, Forman and M’Call. He died in 1894, prosperous and respected, having had eleven children and numerous grandchildren. Reference to him and his family appear frequently in George King-Hall’s diaries.

Robert Forman was James Forman’s youngest child. On leaving school he became a merchant. In October 1857 he married Louisa Tremain and they went to live in Londonderry, a town sixty miles from Halifax where he opened a general store. In 1860, shortly after the birth of their first child, Louisa died. Two years later Robert married again and with his second wife had seven more children. Over the years Robert prospered In 1883 he died, one of the richest and most prominent citizens of Londonderry. He will reappear briefly later in this story.

Lastly we come to James Foreman’s younger daughter, Louisa, from whom many readers of this story will be descended. Her story has been told earlier and perhaps all that needs be said here is that at first sight William would not appear to have been a very suitable husband for the daughter of one of Halifax’s more prominent citizens. Although a very personable young man and doing very well in the navy, having been promoted Commander at the age of 32, he did not come from a well-to-do family with influence. He was therefore unlikely to be able to provide his wife with the comforts that she would have become used to at her parent’s home. However he seems to have met with the approval of James Forman and the couple were married at St Paul’s Church, Halifax on June 18th 1848.

While these family comings and goings were taking place James Hall’s banking career and other interests appeared to be prospering. In 1837 a friend of James Forman, Mather Byles Almon, had become President of the bank. This placed James in a position of great trust and in fact the President and Chief Cashier were the only two individuals who had their own set of keys and 24 hour access to the vaults of the bank. In parallel to his banking career James Forman had other financial interests, not all of which appear to have been successful. He practiced privately as a trader of bills of exchange, a money broker and private banker and in the 1850s and 60s became involved in property development. One example of this side of his activities, where he provided financial backing for a builder named George Lang in the 1860s, nearly ended in financial disaster. It is from court cases that resulted from his association with George Lang that we learn about two of his less successful financial dealings. Apparently he lost $40,000 when, during the Civil War, the US Government commandeered two locomotives that he had bought and at about the same time he lost similar a sum of money from two false bills of exchange that he had bought from another Haligonian, Alexander Keith, who subsequently turned out to be a notorious criminal [PAGE3712].

Beside his family and working life, James had an active social life. Although technically his position in the bank’s hierarchy was only one level above that of the clerks, in practice his social position was completely different and his social friends came from within the professional and merchant classes of Halifax. He also carried out a great deal of good works and was an active member of the community with many responsibilities and interests. He was, for instance, a prominent mason, President of the North British Society of Halifax, Treasurer of the Halifax Mechanics’ Institute and Trustee of a Building Society. He was also a member of the Nova Scotia Literary and Scientific Society, the Horticultural Association and International Show Society.

In the summer of 1870, at the age of 75, this comfortable and rewarding lifestyle came to an abrupt end. We return to the story of his disgrace and the final years of his life when we come to the diaries of George King-Hall in the early 1870s [PAGE5210].

[Acknowledgement: It would not have been possible to write this and the later section on the Forman family without the help and advice of Patricia Lotz, the authoress of Banker – Builder – Blockade Runner. This fascinating book tells the story of James Forman. From it, his descendants have learnt that their Canadian ancestor was a man of unusual talents!]