Collection MSG 433 - Joseph Frobisher Collection

Joseph Frobisher was born on April 15, 1740, in Halifax, England, and died on September 12, 1810, in Montreal. His parents were Joseph Frobisher and Rachel Hargrave, and he was the eldest of seven children. Along with his two brothers, Benjamin and Thomas, Frobisher moved to Quebec in the 1760s to form a family-owned fur-trading enterprise with Benjamin as the manager. After Benjamin’s death in 1779, Frobisher founded the North West Company along with Simon McTavish (1750-1804, a fur trader and politician). That same year, he married Charlotte Jobert (1761-1816, daughter of Jean-Baptiste Jobert and Charlotte Larcheveque) and had twelve children. Frobisher then purchased a one-fifth share in the Batiscan Iron Works Company and was one of the five original shareholders in the Company of Proprietors of the Montreal Water Works. He was a founding member and served as the secretary and chair for the Beaver Club, a dining club in Montreal that sought to bring together the English-speaking men that controlled Montreal’s fur trade. Frobisher was the landowner of one-fifth of the Chester, Halifax, Ireland, and Inverness townships, and a seigneury of Champlain, near Trois-Rivières, Quebec. In 1788, Frobisher was named Justice of the Peace and was elected to the 1st Parliament of Lower Canada for Montreal East in 1792, serving until 1796, and was a Major in the British Militia until 1806.