(died 1869), businessman. (John R. Smith) The following italicized reports about the background of John R. Smith are summarized from Rhodes Grant’s history of Martintown:
John R. Smith’s father was a shipowner in Liverpool, England, called Shipping Smith. John R. Smith was educated at Cambridge University and was being trained for the law when his father suffered financial disaster when he lost his ships in a storm while engaged in the timber trade from Quebec City. Another son, Thomas Henry Smith, became a grain merchant in Manchester and grew to be “one of the leading men of England.” John R. Smith was sent to Martintown in the 1830s to act as an agent there for his brother’s firm in the purchase of flour, wheat, and other grains. Obviously, the cautious reader will wonder whether every word of this account is wholly true, and the present author’s inquiries have turned up no verification. But if it seems surprising that someone of John R. Smith’s alleged background should come to pioneer, backwoods GC, it may be noted that the presence there of Dr James Grant at Martintown and of John Rae a little earlier at Williamstown is hardly less remarkable. John R. Smith was not a remittance man, since he earned his own living.
John R. Smith was a partner at Martintown with Robert Blackwood in the operation of a store. Later, he had a store of his own in Martintown. In 1846, John Rhodes Smith of Martintown, apparently a general merchant, became bankrupt. He seems to have been released from bankruptcy the following year. Smith was one of the eminent local people who attended one of 19th-century GC’s most memorable celebrations, the great ball and supper held in Alexandria in 1857 on the occasion of the completion of Donald A. (Sandfield) Macdonald’s steam mill. In 1857 Smith was listed in Lovell’s directory as a general storekeeper and insurance agent at Martintown. At some stage, he was involved in the lumber business on the Ottawa River. He is said to have suffered badly financially when his timber raft was lost on the Ottawa River. He was clerk of Charlottenburgh Township, and did legal work for the people of the Martintown area. In 1868, he left Martintown and moved to a place named Harrison (perhaps Harriston is meant), near Elora in Western Ontario. He died there the next year. He was married on 11 March 1840 to Janet Grant, daughter of Peter Grant, laird of Martintown. Their daughter Christy Smith (d. 1954, aged 95), who in 1881 married her cousin John Malcolm Grant (d. 1934), also laird of Martintown, was the mother of Rhodes Grant the historian of Martintown. In 1899 another John Smith and his wife were praised for befriending James McGrieson, the black shoemaker assaulted at Martintown. (Cornwall Freeholder 10 Nov. 1899)
Rhodes Grant, i, 128 * obituary of Mrs Christy Grant, Glengarry News 9 Dec. 1954 * Thomas B. Wilson, Ontario Marriage Notices (1982) 62 * Archives of Ontario, SDG County Court, Misc. Papers 1861-1879: Bankruptcy 1844-1848 * 1857 ball and supper: Montreal Evening Pilot, 17 Jan. 1857, repr. GN 16 Aug. 1935 (as condensed by Ottawa Citizen) and 9 Aug. 1946 * Lovell 1857 549 * becomes recording secretary of the newly formed Charlottenburgh Branch of the British American League, Montreal Transcript, 14 June 1849