Flinn, Main & Montgomery was a Liverpool-based firm of managing directors of the Liverpool & Mississippi Steamship Co., conducting a large trade with the port of New Orleans. In 1872, proposals from the Dominion Steamship Line were made to the firm to send their steamers to Quebec and Montreal. The same year, the name changed to the Mississippi & Dominion Steamship Co Ltd. The firm operated steamship trading between Liverpool and Quebec, Montreal, Halifax, Boston, New York, and New Orleans.
Billa Flint was a businessman and politician born 9 February 1805 in Elizabethtown, Upper Canada (Brockville, Ontario). Flint left school at age 11 to work for his father, a merchant and innkeeper. He started his own business in Belleville when he was 24. His enterprise included the management of a number of mills along the Moira river, investment in steamships and other transport industries, and a general store. He was a major advocate of temperance, founding several temperance societies, including the Canadian Temperance League (founded 1845). Flint held a number of public offices including mayor of Belleville and member of the Legislative Assembly. He married Phoebe Sawyer Clement on 10 September 1827. Together they adopted a child, John James Bleecker. Flint died in Ottawa in 1894.
