| 1. | Sen. Peter McLaren was born on 22 Sep 1831 in Lanark Twp, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada (son of James McLaren and Margaret McLaren); died on 23 May 1919 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada. Other Events and Attributes:
- FindaGrave Memorial ID: 45706365
- _UID: 62C51BCCCB794997976B28777046B0CB0406
- Occupation: 1844, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Gilles Lumber Company shanty crew on Clyde River
- Occupation: Bef 1850; By his mid-teens became a 'timber cruiser' for John Gillies
- Census-Household Member: 1851, Lanark Twp, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Canada
- Occupation: 1853, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Partnership, Gillies and McLaren Company was established.
- Occupation: Bef 1866, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Winters in the lumber shanties along the Clyde and Mississippi
- Land & Property: 1869, Carleton Place, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Purchased the Gilmour mills
- Residence: 1870, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Purchased Nevis Cottage, 61 Drummond Street West and adjoining 400 acre farm of Matthew Bell.
- Legal: 1875; Control of river improvements challenged.
- Legal: 1879; Conflict with the Caldwell Lumber Company
- Legal: 1880; Sought injunction against Boyd Caldwell in the Court of Chancery
- Land & Property: 1881, Pincher Creek, Claresholm District, Alberta, Canada; Purchased a 50 square mile timber limit east of Pincher Creek, Alberta.
- Land & Property: Bef 1897, Fort MacLeod, Claresholm Census Division, Alberta, Canada; Opened a second Alberta mill
- Land & Property: 1900, Blairmore, Crowsnest Pass, Canmore Census Division, Alberta, Canada; /built a modern mill and damed Allison Creek to move logs to the mill
- Land & Property: 1902, Pincher Creek, Claresholm District, Alberta, Canada; Mountain Mill operation was closed when buildings and equipment were destroyed by a flood.
- Hobby: 1908, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; Purchased the first motor car owned by a resident of Perth - a Maxwell touring model
- Land & Property: 1920, Covington, Virginia, United States; Douthall Tract
Notes:
McLAREN, Hon. Senator Peter ? Retired lumberman, Perth, Ont.; owner of 100,000 acres of valuable timber lands in Virginia, upon which are also valuable ore mines. Born in Lanark, Ontario, Sept. 22, 1831, son of the late James McLaren formerly of Perth, Scotland, and the late Margaret McLaren, daughter of the late Peter McLaren, of Lochiels Regiment, which engaged in quelling the Irish Rebellion, 1815. Educated: Public Schools. Began to learn the lumber business, 1844, gaining a thorough knowledge of hauling timber, rafting and milling; a partner, Gillies & McLaren, Carlton Place, 1855, which firm bought out the large Gilmour business, consisting of about three hundred square miles of timber on the Mississippi River, Ont., as well as working the Madawaska limits; became Sole Proprietor, 1890; the firm manufactured all kinds of sawn lumber and square timber, the former being for Canadian and United States markets, and the latter for European trade. Summoned to the Senate, 1890. Married Sophia Lees, daughter of the late William Lees, Lanark, Ont., and Granddaughter of the late Col. Playfair, of the old Canadian Parliament, Nov. 22, 1867; has two sons and three daughters. Conservative; Presbyterian. Residence: "Nevis Cottage," Perth, Ont.
Who's Who and Why
A Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of Canada and Newfoundland
Volumes 6-7, Page 1319
FindaGrave Memorial ID:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/45706365
Occupation:
Once a timber site was close to being 'logged out', timber cruisers surveyed un harvested territory to select new job sites. The value of timber, access to streams and rivers and the logistics of purchasing and delivering supplies and other factors could make the difference between profit and loss.
Census-Household Member:
Role: Household Member
Occupation:
"Gillies, in the informal way of the day, told him they would work henceforth as partners, and such was the basis of an agreement on which the Gillies and McLaren Company was founded, and on which a generation later, the adjustment o hundreds of thousands of dollars turned."
A Hundred Years A-Fellin', 1842-1942, edited by Charlotte Whitton (1942).
Peter McLaren was 22 years of age.
Occupation:
"For 20 years, from the time he first went into the bush in the winter of 1844, Peter McLaren had no permanent residence. Initially he passed his winters in the lumber shanties along the Clyde and Mississippi, and the summer seasons back on the family farm in Lanark township. As he became more deeply involved in the Gillies Lumber Company business, cruising new limits, and then as a partner from 1853, he seemed to have lived periodically at Carleton Place, Lanark, Snow Road, and at the shanties he supervised. In the census of 1851 he was living with his widowed mother and siblings in Lanark township. The census taker af 1861 failed to find him, probably deep in the bush somewhere in the Mississippi River basin."
?i?Mississippi Lumber Baron, Ron Shaw, 2016 ?/i?
Land & Property:
At the same time, the Boyd Caldwell company built the second large sawmill in Carleton Place. By 1875 his steam powered mill, managed by son William, employed 75 men working 10 hours per day, six days a week.
Residence:
Drummond Twp, Concession 2 Lots 3 & 4.
In the 1870s, McLaren made two additions to the house, more than doubling its original size to 7,700 square feet. Main house is stone, additions are of yellow brick, with a turret and copper tile roof. He hired the firm of Jones and Fuller who between 1850 and 1866 had built the centre block of the Canadian Parliament buildings and St. James Anglican Church in Perth.
?i?Ron Shaw?/i?
Legal:
Until this time lumbermen operating on the upper Mississippi River conceded, without complaint, to Gillies-McLaren, and later to McLaren, the right to control their improvements on the river. Competing companies paid tolls to pass their logs through the slides and channels, or held back their drives until McLaren opened his dams and booms.
In 1875, The Buck and Stewart Company forced its spring drive down river, cutting through the McLaren boom at Ragged Chute in Palmerston Township (Frontenac County) and opened a 20 foot gap in the McLaren dam at High Falls in North Sherbrooke township, Lanark County. McLaren sued for damages but legal action was terminated when company owner Buck was committed to the Ontario Insane Asylum.
?i?Ron Shaw?/i?
Legal:
In 1878 the Caldwell Lumber Company bought timber limits on the upper Mississippi. The following spring, taking a page from the unfortunate Buck, Caldwell cut McLaren dams and booms and drove his logs, from a timber limit adjacent to Buckshot Creek below Buckshot Lake, through to Carleton Place.
Legal:
When Boyd Caldwell tried to force another drive through the McLaren works in the spring of 1880, Peter McLaren sought an injunction against Boyd Caldwell." The judicial decisions 'ping ponged' between for and against Caldwell/McLaren. Caldwell moved on to the political front. Caldwell was successful in obtaining rapid legislative action via his hephew, William C. Caldwell, a member of Mowat's Liberal Pary representing South Lanark County. Although McLaren's father-in-law, William Lees, was also a member of the legislature, he was a member of the opposition Conservative Party.
McLaren protested the low toll rates proscribed by the bill and turned to the Federal government of Sir John A. Macdonald who promptly overturned the Ontario Provincial legislation. The two levels of government battled for control through 1882-1883.
In 1882, Caldwell's men cut through McLaren dams blocking a drive at the foot of Long Lake and brought 10,000 logs down river to Carleton Place in 1883.
McLaren took his case to the Supreme Court of Canada who, on 28 November 1882, ruled in his favour.
Caldwell took his case to the highest of all courts, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britian which ruled in 1884 that all waterways were open to all, although private interests could charge a reasonable amount for the use of any improvements leading to the 'Rivers and Streams Act'.
?i?Ron Shaw?/i?
Land & Property:
The timber limit encompassed Mill, Star, Allison and York creeks and a sawmill on York Creek. The mill had been established by the Canadian government in 1879 as a project to support a nearby First Nations reserve, but after two years the government declared the venture a failure and sold it to McLaren. Under the management of his brother-in-law William Robert Lees, the mill was quickly turned into a profitable operation and the centre of the new village of Mountain Mill.
Land & Property:
The second Alberta mill was opened 40 miles to the east of Mountain Mill in time to profit from the 1897-98 construction of the Crowsnest Pass Railway. McLaren sold the CPR railway ties and his loggers hand hewed the numerous Douglas firs in advance of the track layers. The new rail line also served to open market access for the McLaren Lumber Company mills, allowing lumber to be shipped east.
Land & Property:
Telephone stations were built along the six miles of flume to report log jams so that the water flow could be shut down. The Blairmore plant had an annual capacity of seven to eight million board feet. In the early 1880s coal had been discovered in the area and when commercial extraction began at Beaver Mines in the early 1900s, the mines provided a huge market for timber pit props and other constructions.
Land & Property:
When his estate put the Virginia holdings on the market, the anticipated repatriation of sale proceeds boosted the value of the Canadian dollaar against the American currency by 12%.
?i?"A property of 100,000 acres of Virginia timber and ore lands was bequeathed to the widow, three daughters and two sons of the late Hon. Peter McLaren of Perth, a member of the Canadian Senate. Senator McLaren died in May 1919 and the estate was probated at $1,000,000.
Baltimore interests are now completing, or have completed, negotiations for the purchase of the McLaren property. The authority in the negotiations is the New York office of J. Pierpont Morgan. The price mentioned in the deal is between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000 cash."
?/i?
However, despite the hype, the Virginia iron mines had not been profitable. Six years later, the mines were still on the market when an Ontario judge noted that,
?i?"the estate of Peter McLaren was found to be in a very involved condition, his main estate consisting of a large tract of land in Virginia of very uncertain value and which has so faar proved to be unsaleable. The resources of the estate have been somewhat taxed to meet the outgoing obligations for taxes, etc. and the result has been that comparatively small sums have been paid to the beneficiaries. Owing to some dissention in the family as to the management of the estate, an administration decree has been pronounced..."?/i?
His trustees were dismissed and disputes over the estate's real value led to litigation for years. Shareholders sued and finally settled for about half the value of their claims. Nevis Cottage remained in McLaren hands for another 35 years. Widow Sophia Lees McLaren died there in 1923 and it was only when daughter Annie Kathleen died in 1954 that the household was broken up. The ?i?"prestigious auction house of Ward-Price of Toronto were brought in and the Senator's chattels fell under the hammer at enormous prices."?/i?
Died:
On Friday, May 23, 1919 Peter McLaren, aged 87 years, died at his Nevis Cottage home in Perth.
"His early years were spent as a boy on the parental farm and later in the lumbering woods, where he became an expert in the occupation which was his special work and occupation in after years, and by which he acquired great wealth and influence.
After the sale of his limits and mills, Mr. McLaren retired from industrial life, and to bear with dignity the honors of new political life, he having been made a member of he Dominion Senate in the year 1890 by the Conservative Government of the day.
The hardships of his youger days in the lumbering and in the drivers' camps entailed intermittent attacks of rheumatism, and these lasted until the end of his life.
His funeral took place on Sunday, May 25th, to Elmwood Cemetery, the Rev. Dr. Scott ?i?(Alexander Hugh Scott, grandfather of figure skater, Barbara Ann Scott)?/i? of St. Andrew's Church, conducting the service. Pallbearers - David McLaren, nephew ?i?(1844-1926 a cousin, not nephew, son of Peter 1813-1890 and Janet Stewart 1802-1896)?/i?, Drummond; Judge W.S. Senkler ?i?(William Stevens)?/i?, Perth; Dr. Preston, MPP ?i?(Richard Franklin)?/i?, Carleton Place; George Ritchie, Barrister, Toronto; P.J.C. MacDonnell, Manager Bank of Montreal, Perth ?i?(Philip John Cotter)?/i?; W.B. Hart, Perth ?i?(William Brown)?/i?.
?i?From the Canadian Lumerman and Woodworker:?/i?
Peter McLaren, of Perth, Ont., a veteran figure in the lumber and legislative world has joined the silent majority. Early in life he entered upon a successful and honorable business career, and he leaves a name and record revered by all and by none more than his fellow residents in Perth, where he spent so many years.
The [McLaren] firm manufactured all kinds of sawn lumber and square timber, the former being for the Canadian and United States, and the latter for the European trade. A few years ago, he retired from active business to enjoy life at his beautiful residence 'Nevis Cottage', Perth, Ont.
For nearly 30 years Mr. McLaren occupied a seat in the Dominion Senate, having been summoned to that distinguished body in 1890. He was a Conservative and a Presbyterian.
Peter married Sophia Elizabeth Lees on 22 Nov 1867. Sophia (daughter of William Lees and Mary Playfair) was born on 7 Nov 1845; died on 29 May 1923 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
Children:
- Margaret Elsie McLaren was born about 1869; died on 3 Apr 1954 in Oshawa, Durham Regional Municipality, Ontario, Canada.
- Mary Isobel McLaren was born about 1874; died about 1927.
- Annie Kathleen McLaren was born on 9 Nov 1875 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; died on 31 Jan 1954 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.
- James Lyon Playfair McLaren was born on 29 Dec 1878 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; died on 14 Sep 1934 in Springfield, Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.
- William Lees McLaren was born on 13 May 1880 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; died on 2 Sep 1932 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.
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1831 - 1919 (87 years)
