John Frothingham (1788-1870)

Frothingham was a Canadian merchant. He established British North America's largest wholesale hardware house, Frothingham & Workman. He was President of the City Bank of Montreal from 1834 to 1849, and a generous contributor to Queen's University, McGill University and Montreal's Protestant schools. The house he purchased in the 1830s, Piedmont (demolished in 1939) was one of the early estates of the Montreal's Golden Square Mile. In 1890, its ten acres of grounds were purchased for $86,000 by Lords Strathcona and Mount Stephen, on which they built the Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1816, Frothingham was married to his first cousin at Brookline, Massachusetts. They had seven children but the eldest four did not reach adulthood.