When Stanley Bagg signed a contract to excavate the Lachine Canal
in 1821, it was the largest and most complex job he had ever taken on. Although
he was just 33 years old, this Montreal entrepreneur and his business partners had
gained enough experience from a series of projects for the British Army that they
were able to land the contract of a lifetime.
Stanley Bagg, 1788-1853 |
Stanley Bagg was born in Massachusetts in 1788 and moved to
Lower Canada with his family around 1795. He grew up in La Prairie, across the
St. Lawrence River from Montreal, where his father ran an inn. In 1810, when he
was 22, Stanley and his father opened the Mile End Tavern at a crossroads just
north of the city. The tavern was a great place to make business contacts, and
by this time, Stanley was already selling firewood to the British Army.
The army played a huge role in Montreal’s economy at that
time. Britain had reorganized its defences of British North America after the
American Revolution. In the past, a fort on the cliffs of Quebec City
overlooking the St. Lawrence River had protected the colony from attack. Now
there was a long southern border to defend, and Montreal played a key role in protecting
its own location, and in moving troops and equipment to Upper Canada. The army needed
firewood to keep its soldiers warm, fresh beef and flour to feed them, and
people with horses, carts and bateaux (flat-bottomed river boats) to help with
transportation. Large and medium-sized local suppliers bid against each other
for these contracts, then usually subcontracted the work to smaller
enterprises.
The outbreak of war with the United States in 1812 led to a
boost in military spending and provided Stanley with his first big business opportunity.
In December 1813, he and business partner Oliver Wait signed a contract to
transport sixty long guns (cannons) from Montreal to Kingston, on Lake Ontario.
The contract paid well, but it was a risky undertaking, not only
because of the danger posed by the enemy; if they failed to deliver the cannons
safely and on time, they would be penalized. The fact that the job was to be
done in winter posed an additional challenge. Normally, goods were transported on
the water, but the St. Lawrence marked the border between the U.S. and Canada
for much of the distance between the two cities, so the cannons were transported
on the winter road, hidden from the enemy by the trees. Stanley and Oliver subcontracted
the task to others, and the cannons arrived intact.
Over the next several years, Stanley was involved in a
variety of projects. He and Oliver transported several large anchors to
Kingston for the military, and Stanley contracted to sell beef to the army (the
meat was supplied by his future father-in-law, butcher John Clark,) but most of
his activities were in the civilian sphere. He ran the tavern and the farm on
which it was located; he bought, sold and rented buildings in and around
Montreal; he had a share in a steamboat called Car of Commerce; and he was a partner in an unsuccessful dry goods business. For fun, he built a race track near
the tavern. Then, in 1818, he placed a notice in the newspaper indicating he
planned to move to Upper Canada and sell all his properties in Montreal.
A year later, he had discarded that idea and seized new contracting
opportunities with the army. Stanley got married in Montreal on August 9, 1819.
Five days later, he and Oliver Wait signed a contract with the army’s engineers
to level Montreal’s Citadel Hill. The citadel, where arms and ammunition had
been stored since the days of New France, was located in a heavily populated
area of the city. The army realized this was dangerous and decided to demolish
the building and level the hill. Stanley and Oliver contracted to remove 48,000
cubic yards of earth from the hill and dump it into a hollow area nearby.
The army replaced the old citadel with two new forts, with
construction beginning simultaneously in 1819. Stanley, with Oliver Wait and
two other partners, Andrew White and Thomas Phillips, worked on both projects.
Parks Canada tour guide, Fort Lennox |
One of the forts was on Saint Helen’s Island, in the St.
Lawrence River near the port, well located to protect the city from an attack by the
Americans. The initial phase of this three-year construction project included a
blockhouse, powder magazine and storehouses. In the summer of 1821, Bagg and
Wait obtained a series of contracts to supply 300,000 bricks and 5,000
cartloads of sand, as well as large amounts of stone, lime, pine, oak and cedar
for the new fort.
The other project, Fort Lennox, was on Île aux Noix, on the
Richelieu River not far from Lake Champlain and the American border. The French
had also used Île aux Noix to defend New France, but the old fortifications were
no longer adequate. Stanley and his partners agreed to provide timber and other
construction materials for Fort Lennox.
They had not completed these contracts when, in the summer
of 1821, there was a call for tenders to excavate the Lachine Canal. The
foursome (Bagg, Wait, White and Phillips) were not canal builders, but neither
was anyone else in Montreal. What they did have was the experience managing
people and moving material required for this huge project.
Photo credits:
private collection; Janice Hamilton
See also
http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2015/02/stanley-bagg-and-lachine-canal-part-1_27.html
and
http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2015/03/stanley-bagg-and-lachine-canal-part-2.html
See also
http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2015/02/stanley-bagg-and-lachine-canal-part-1_27.html
and
http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2015/03/stanley-bagg-and-lachine-canal-part-2.html
Notes
The main source of this material about the army is an
unpublished article by Sherry Olson and Jean-Claude Robert, “Wheelbarrows for
His Majesty: the Commissariat and its Contractors in Early Nineteenth-Century
Montreal.” The authors based their research on contracts and agreements, many
of which were handled by notary Henry Griffin. The agreement to transport guns
is the act of Griffin 187-372, 9 December 1813. For the contract regarding the
leveling of Citadel Hill, see Griffin 187-2745, 14 August 1819. You can search the indexes to notarial documents
online at http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/.
Some acts have now been digitized.
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Fort Lennox |
Olson, Professor Emeritus of Geography at McGill University,
became familiar with the Bagg family while researching a book about the
demographics of 19th century Montreal. Written with co-author
Patricia Thornton of Concordia University, the book is Peopling the North American City, Montreal 1840-1900. Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011.
During the War of 1812, anyone who had been born in the
United States and wanted to remain in British North America had to swear an
oath of allegiance to the king or leave. Both Bagg and Wait were American-born,
so they must have been very trustworthy subjects of His Majesty to be allowed
to transport arms.
To see a cannon of the type that Bagg and Wait contracted to
transport, check out www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISpTzv_nMas.
In this video, a 24-pounder long gun is loaded and fired in a demonstration at
Fort Wellington, Prescott, Ontario, however, the comments below suggest that
the boom in the demonstration was disappointing.
On March 7, 1818, the Montreal
Herald ran an ad in which Stanley Bagg announced he was leaving for Upper
Canada and wanted to sell his investments and settle his accounts in Montreal.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_CE1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=5isDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5665,962917&dq=stanley+bagg+montreal&hl=en
I do not know why he wanted to leave, or what made him change his plans.
You can visit the Stewart Museum, located in what was once
the arsenal of the fort on St. Helen’s Island. See www.stewart-museum.org/en/st-helen-s-island-heritage-site-71.html. Today, Île Sainte-Hélène is home to Parc
Jean-Drapeau. In the 1960s, it was one of the sites of Montreal’s world’s fair,
Expo 67.
Fort Lennox National Historic Site, less than an hour from
Montreal, is also a great destination for a family outing. Take a picnic. See http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/qc/lennox/index.aspx.
Also of interest is Andre Charbonneau’s book The Fortifications of Île aux Noix: a portrait of the defensive
strategy on the Upper Richelieu Border in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Ottawa: National Historic Sites, Parks Canada, 1994. It can be
ordered from www.globalgenealogy.com.