Alfred Baumgarten (1842-1919)

He was born in Dresden and christened Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten. He grew up in the Royal Court at Saxony and took a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen. He was given management of a sugar beet refinery before leaving for New York in 1866 where he co-founded the Laurel Hill Chemical Works on Long Island. He managed the Long Island Sugar Refinery in New York and the Castro Syrup Company in Montreal before co-founding the Saint Lawrence Sugar Refinery in 1874 of which he became President, succeeding his wife's uncle, Walter R. Elmenhorst. By 1900, he was said to be a millionaire. He employed 400-men (no women nor boys) who were paid between $1.20 and $3.50 an hour. The refinery was constantly operational and the men worked one of two daily shifts: 6am to 6pm, or 6pm to 6am, with an hour's break on either shift.

He was a Director of the Bank of Montreal and was reckoned - along with Sir William C. Macdonald - to be its largest shareholder. He was a Director of the Royal Trust Company, Vice-President of the Montreal Archeological Institute, and wrote several papers on chemistry. He was Life Governor of the Montreal Western Hospital and Governor of the Montreal General Hospital, Alexandra Hospital, and Notre Dame Hospital. He also gave generously to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and was one of the most active Masters in the history of the Montreal Hunt, building a new clubhouse at Ste-Agathe-des-Monts at his own expense with a 45-foot ballroom and sunken baths. In 1885, he offered $25,000 to the government to equip and horse a troop of 50-huntsmen for active service in the North West Rebellion. Yet, the last five years of his life were consumed with guilt and mixed emotions as his homeland pursued war with his adoptive empire. In 1915, he was one of the first Montrealers to offer his mansion as a convalescent home for disabled soldiers.

The man who Sir George Drummond had described only a couple of years before as, "a man of excellence in every particular" was forced to resign from all his directorships (except for the Bank of Montreal who refused to give in to popular demand) when it became untenable to have German names on the boards of Canadian businesses - even though he was by then a Canadian citizen/British subject. The once jovial and generous host lived out his final years in seclusion between his mansion at 34 McTavish Street and his summer home at Ste.-Agathes-des-Monts. On June 28, 1885, he married Martha Donner, a great-granddaughter of Conrad H. Donner. They had two daughters whose first husbands (one of whom was a first cousin of Hamilton Gault) both fought in the war.