Unsworth, Joseph Lennon, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, acting superintendent of the Prince Edward Island railway, was born in Liverpool, Great Britain, May 12th, 1840. His father was James Stanley Unsworth, and his mother Mary Hatton, who was a sister of the celebrated music composer, John L. Hatton, of London, England. Mr. Unsworth, senior, was born in Goshen, in the eastern part of the county of Lancashire, of an old-time family. An ancient tradition published in “The Pictorial History of the County of Lancaster,” gives the following legend of the Unsworth family: “One of the most interesting places in this part of the country, at Goshen, about a mile and a half on the south side of Bury, is an old farm-house, the residence in former times of a family of some note, and still occupied by a lineal descendant. The family of Unsworth has possessed this property, according to tradition, ever since the time of the conquest, and there are certainly relics to prove its antiquity. Amongst other curiosities, the house contains a carved oak table, which is a source of some interest as being connected with an old legend. The story is that in olden times there lived near here a fierce and terrible dragon, which resolutely defied the prowess of sundry brave heroes, who would fain have immortalized their names by freeing the country from such a scourge. One, Thomas Unsworth, a warrior of the beforementioned family, more courageous, or more fortunate, than the rest, at last succeeded in the attempt, which he accomplished in a manner that certainly did much credit to his ingenuity. Finding that bullets were of no avail, he inserted his dagger in a petronel, and, rousing the anger of the dragon, shot it under the throat at the moment of raising its head. The table was made after this event, and, it is said, carved with the dagger by which the monster was shot. Round the table are St. George and the dragon, the lion and unicorn, the Derby crest, and the veritable dragon which the aforesaid Thomas Unsworth killed. There is also hung over the table in the old parlour, a painting of the Unsworth arms, which were given them in former times for deeds of honor, surmounted by another carving of the dragon. The crest is a man in black armour, holding a hatchet in his hand, and it is said to be the portrait of the renowned family ancestor, in the armour which he wore during the battle, and in which he was encased at the time he performed the celebrated feat which won him so much fame. Whatever credence may be given to this story (and the present family firmly believe in its truth), it is certain that a portion of land was once granted to one of their ancestors for having freed the country from some dire monster, of whatever kind it might be, and of course the property granted was that said to be the favorite resort of the dragon; nor is it improbable that the large and adjoining township of Unsworth, has originally derived its name from some one of this family. They also possess several very old books, treasured with due ancestral pride, and other relics more or less interesting.” Mr. Unsworth, the subject of our sketch, received his education in Montreal, and at St. Hyacinthe, in the province of Quebec. Shortly after leaving school, in 1855, he entered the service of the Grand Trunk railway company, at Longueuil, as an apprentice, under W. S. McKenzie, and was employed by that company until March, 1872. From May, of the same year, to November, 1874, he was engaged on construction of the Inter-colonial railway between Rivière du Loup and Causapscal; from November, 1874, to November, 1881, he was master mechanic on the same railway at Rivière du Loup, and from November, 1881, to May, 1887, he was mechanical superintendent of the Government railways in Prince Edward Island, and from May, 1887, to the present time (Feb., 1888), in addition to the latter duties, he has been the acting general superintendent of the above government railways. For six years he was lieutenant in the Grand Trunk railway volunteer regiment. He is a member of the Canadian society of civil engineers. Mr. Unsworth, during his busy life, has found time to devote to travelling, having crossed the Atlantic and visited his fatherland. He has also travelled the greater part of Eastern Canada and the United States. In religion he is an adherant of the Episcopal church. He was married June 27th, 1866, to Mary Jane Lomas, daughter of Adam Lomas, woollen manufacturer, of Sherbrooke, P.Q., and sister of Alexander Galt Lomas, mayor of Sherbrooke.
Shearer, James Traill, Contractor, Montreal, is a specimen of what well-directed energy and perseverance can accomplish. Born at Rosegill, parish of Dunnet, not many miles from far-famed John O’Groat’s, Caithness-shire, Scotland, on the 31st of July, 1822, he received his education in the parish school of Dunnet, and at Castletown, in the same county. Leaving school before he had scarcely entered his teens, he was obliged like many a lad in the far north of Scotland, to begin work early, and was accordingly apprenticed to a carpenter and millwright in the village of Castletown, and with him he faithfully served the alloted term. To perfect himself in his trade, he removed to Wick, and worked for about a year under D. Miller, a builder, who was erecting a church in Putneytown. When he reached his twenty-first year he resolved to try his fortune in Canada, and taking passage in a sailing vessel, on 30th May, 1848, reached Montreal, where he has since resided. Shortly after his arrival he entered the employ of Edward Maxwell, an extensive carpenter and builder, as a general house-joiner and stair-builder, branches of the business at which he was very proficient. After terminating a three years’ engagement with Mr. Maxwell, he went to Quebec city to take charge of the joiner and carpenter work on a new bomb-proof hospital then being built by the British government on Cape Diamond. Finishing the job to the entire satisfaction of the British officers in charge, he returned to Montreal, and began the study of steamboat architecture, especially cabin work, and soon became an adept at the business. Work flowed in upon him, and he found many customers, among others the late John Molson and David Torrance, for whom he fitted up many steamboats for the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, and he still carries on very extensively this branch of business, along with the manufacture of other kinds of wood-work for house building purposes. Mr. Shearer is the inventor of what is known as the hollow roof, for houses and large public buildings, which is considered the best suited to the climate of Montreal. This roof is of a concave design, and carries the water down the inside of the building, instead of the outside, thereby avoiding the freezing up of pipes. It was used on the Windsor hotel, Montreal, and has since been adopted generally throughout America. He has also been the chief promoter of what is known as the “Shearer scheme,” the object of which is to improve the harbor of Montreal and prevent the flooding of the city, but owing to the strong opposition urged against it by the Grand Trunk authorities, he has had to abandon it for the present. However, it will have to be considered at no distant day. If once adopted it will greatly improve the harbor of Montreal, and prove a source of wealth to the inhabitants. The plans are now in the possession of the Dominion government, and although he has twice applied for an act of incorporation for the “St. Lawrence Bridge and Manufacturing Company,” who are prepared to carry it to completion, he has not yet succeeded in getting this company incorporated. Mr. Shearer a few years ago designed and built for himself a house on Mount Royal, and it is perhaps the best finished house in that city of fine dwellings, all the internal work being of purely Canadian wood. The view from it is most charming, and cannot be surpassed in the Dominion. A visitor can take in at a glance the Chambly hills, Belle Isle, Mount Johnston, the river St. Lawrence for many miles, the Victoria bridge, the Lachine rapids, and the full extent of the beautiful city of Montreal. In politics Mr. Shearer is a Liberal; and in religion one of those who does his own thinking, and has no objection to others doing the same. He was married in Montreal, on the 23rd of June, 1848, to Eliza Graham, and the fruit of the union has been eight children. The two eldest sons are now engaged with their father in business.
Armour, Hon. John Douglas, Cobourg, Judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench, was born in the township of Otonabee, Peterborough county, Ontario, on the 4th May, 1830. He is the youngest son of the late Rev. Samuel Armour, who was for many years rector of Cavan, county of Durham, and was during his lifetime widely and favorably known through that part of Upper Canada. In his boyhood Judge Armour attended the schools in the neighborhood of his home, and on the 27th January, 1843, entered as a student Upper Canada College, Toronto. In 1847 he matriculated at King’s College (now Toronto University), and his career at college was very creditable. He gained the first university-scholarship in classics, and subsequently the Wellington scholarship. He graduated in 1850, carrying off the gold medal in classics. This same year he entered the office of his brother, Robert Armour, and began the study of law, and completed it in the office of the late Hon. P. M. M. VanKoughnet, who afterwards became Chancellor of Upper Canada. He was called to the bar in Michaelmas term, 1853, and removing to Cobourg, began to practise his profession there, forming a partnership with Sidney Smith, who some years afterward became postmaster-general of Canada. This partnership lasted until the 7th November, 1857, when Mr. Armour began to practise alone. He subsequently formed a partnership with H. F. Holland, which lasted between three and four years, when Mr. Armour was raised to the bench, and a dissolution consequently followed. During these years, various public offices were held by Mr. Armour from time to time. On the 28th March, 1858, he was appointed county attorney of the united counties of Northumberland and Durham, and during the following year he held the position of warden of those counties. On the 2nd May, 1861, he was appointed clerk of the peace for the same counties. On the 8th January, 1859, he was elected a member of the Senate of the University of Toronto. On the 26th June, 1867, he was created a Queen’s counsel. In 1871 he was elected a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada, and on the 30th of November, 1877, was appointed puisné judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench, a position he has ever since filled with honor and dignity. Hon. Judge Armour is a man of wide reading, multifarious knowledge, and great shrewdness and common sense. By heredity and tradition he is a Conservative both in religion and politics, but, nevertheless, he is a Liberal in thought and education, and a firm believer in the great future the land of his birth has before her. On the 28th of April, 1855, he married Eliza Church, daughter of the late Freeman S. Church, of Cobourg, by whom he has had eleven children, ten of whom are now living.
Molony, Thomas J., LL.B., Advocate, Quebec, is a prominent member of the Quebec bar, and one of the representative Irishmen of the ancient capital, honored with the confidence of his own element and esteemed by all classes of the community for his abilities as a lawyer, and his sterling integrity as a professional man and a citizen. He was born at Kingston, Ontario, on the 4th July, 1846, and is the youngest son of the late John Molony, and his wife, Catherine O’Connor, of that city. Thus on both sides, he sprang from good old Irish stocks. His father’s family were natives of the County Clare, Ireland. McGeoghegan, the Irish historian, ranks the Molonys among the oldest settlers of the Green Isle, and the county of Clare is the part of it around which the traditions of the family or sept have principally clustered from time immemorial. The old family, too, seem to have retained their territorial influence and social importance in the home of their ancestors down to a comparatively recent date. Up to the celebrated Daniel O’Connell’s time, they appear to have practically controlled the representation of Clare in Parliament, and readers of Irish history will readily recall the name of Sheriff Molony, in connection with the memorable election for that county which resulted in the signal defeat of Vesey Fitzgerald and the English government, and opened the door of the British Parliament to the great Irish Liberator, and to Catholic Emancipation. Burke, in his genealogy of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, says, pp. 1022-3; speaking of their lineage: —
The Milesian family of Molony is one of great antiquity in the sister island. O’Halloran (Hist. of Ireland, Vol. III, p. 498), says: From Cormac Cas (who was of the line of Heber, eldest son of Milesius) are descended 1st, O’Brien, chief of Thomond . . . . Besides these hereditary officers the following noble families are derived from this great source: O’Dea, . . . O’Mollowney and others, and in his “List of Ancient Irish Territories, and by what Milesian families possessed before and after the invasion of Henry II,” Ceiltannan, (otherwise Kiltanon) is mentioned among the rest as the estate of O’Molony. The Molonys were formerly princes of Clare, where they possessed a large tract of country called the O’Molony’s Lands, as may be seen from the old maps of that county. In Catholic times, three members of the family attained the mitre, as appears from the epitaph on the tomb of John O’Molony, Bishop of Limerick in 1687 (second son of John O’Molony, of Kiltanon), who after the siege of that city, followed King James II. to Paris, where he assisted in the foundation of a university for the education of Irish priests, in the chapel belonging to which he was buried in 1702. The bishop’s nephew, James Molony, of Kiltanon, the first of the family who laid aside the prefix “O,” served first in King James’ army, but subsequently sided with William.
Mr. Molony’s maternal ancestors, the O’Connors, bear a name even still more famous in Irish annals, and though his mother was born in London, the metropolis of England, she was as noted as her husband, our subject’s father, for love of Ireland, and knowledge of and preference for the old Irish tongue, alas! now so rapidly dying out. Our subject was chiefly educated at his birth-place, Kingston. At a suitable age, he began the study of the classics there under the late John O’Donnell, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and one of the most accomplished classical scholars that Canada has ever had, as well as one of the most successful teachers of his day. Among the pupils who issued from his school to grace the learned professions may be mentioned Sir John A. Macdonald, the present premier of the Dominion, the late Hon. John Sandfield Macdonald, premier of Ontario, and several others of their most distinguished contemporaries. In 1860 Mr. Molony entered Regiopolis College, Kingston, which was then under the rectorship of the Rev. John O’Brien, afterwards the most Reverend Dr. O’Brien, Roman Catholic Bishop of Kingston, and it is touchingly noteworthy that eighteen years afterwards, when that prelate was suddenly stricken down by the hand of death at Quebec, while on his way back from Europe, Mr. Molony was the one acquaintance in the ancient capital upon whom devolved the sad duty of making the necessary arrangements there for the funeral of his old college rector, and the transportation of his remains on to Kingston. After a full course of philosophy and mathematics, our subject completed his studies at Regiopolis, and having decided on the law as his future profession, in December, 1865, he entered into articles of clerkship at Kingston, with the late Daniel Macarow, barrister, at one time a partner of the well-known James O’Reilly, Q.C., and afterwards county judge. In June following, he left Kingston to study for the legal profession in Lower Canada, and entered for the purpose at the office of M. A. Hearn, Q.C., ex-bâtonnier-general of the Quebec bar, and senior member of the legal firm of Hearn, Jordan & Roche, of Quebec city. At the same time he followed the courses of Laval University, from which he took his degree of Bachelor of Laws on the 4th July, 1879. On the 19th of the same month, he was admitted as a practitioner at the Quebec bar, and on the 12th of September following he married Isabella, daughter of the late John Jordan and Catherine James, of Quebec, by whom he has had issue four children, three of them surviving and all in their teens. For some years after his admission to the bar, Mr. Molony held a provincial government appointment as English Translator to the Queen’s printer’s department, from which he rapidly won success and distinction by his talents, punctuality and devotion to the interests of his clients. At present, his standing at the Quebec bar is among the highest, and few practitioners enjoy a larger share of the respect of the bench and the public. He has been a commissioner for the province of Ontario, at Quebec, since 1874, and for the province of Manitoba, since 1883. Journalism has also successfully occupied our subject’s attention, and his contributions to the local press have been much remarked for their masterly and vigorous dealing with the subjects handled. Having always taken an active interest in municipal matters, he was twice elected by acclamation a member of the Quebec City Council for Montcalm Ward in 1884 and 1886, and rendered himself conspicuously useful to his fellow citizens by his able support of Mayor Langelier’s policy of reform of the civic administration, including the improvement of the city water-works checks. During his connection with the council, he also served on several of its most important committees, was a member of the civic deputation sent some three years ago to Ottawa to press Quebec’s claims to the C.P.R. short line to the seaboard on the favorable consideration of the Federal Government, and, though the youngest member of the council, has been called upon in the absence of the mayor to preside at important meetings, on account of his intimate acquaintance with the rules of debate, and recognized ability in the solution of points of order or knotty questions of procedure. As secretary of the relief committee for the benefit of the sufferers, he further did good service to Quebec and the cause of humanity, after the disastrous conflagration which swept St. John and Montcalm wards almost out of existence in the summer of 1881. On the temperance question, Mr. Molony holds advanced views, and every movement on the subject in Quebec for the last fourteen or more years, has had his earnest advocacy and support. He was long the president of the St. Patrick’s Total Abstinence Society, and at the monster meeting held a few years since in the skating rink, in the interests of the temperance cause, under the joint presidency of Archbishop, now Cardinal, Taschereau, the Anglican Lord Bishop of Quebec, and the local clergy of all denominations, he appeared on the platform with other leading citizens, as the special representative of the Irish Catholic body. As might be expected from the stock from which he has sprung, Mr. Molony has taken a most active and patriotic interest in Irish national matters since his boyhood. For the last twenty years he has acted a leading part in all the Irish national societies and movements at the ancient capital. From 1871 to 1875 he was treasurer of the St. Patrick’s Society, and in 1876 he was chairman of the meeting at which the first branch of the Home Rule League in Quebec was organized. Some years later, he was one of the organizers of the Irish Land League in Quebec, and in 1878 he was elected 1st-Vice-President of the Catholic League, formed at Montreal. Mr. Molony was called upon at the last moment to preside at the monster meeting held on Durham terrace, Quebec, when the French and Irish Catholic population assembled to protest against the Orange processions in Montreal, during Mr. Beaudry’s mayoralty. On this last occasion his remarks and conduct met with general approval, Protestants and Catholics alike joining in praising his tact and moderation under the most trying circumstances, and Hon. H. G. Joly, then Prime Minister of the province, warmly congratulated him on the skill which he had shown in controlling an excited gathering, while upholding the views which it had come together to assert on one of the most burning questions of the hour. Mr. Joly told him personally that he had heard from members of the Local Legislature, who were present, the highest encomiums of his action, adding that in his opinion it was an awful responsibility to assume the management of a crowd of people excited to the highest pitch. Indeed the crowd on the occasion wanted to proceed straight off to wait on Mr. Joly, but to give time to their excitement to cool down, Mr. Molony, as chairman, wisely insisted on their only sending a delegation to represent their views to the premier, and finally carried his point, when they peaceably dispersed. A fervent Roman Catholic, and a member of the St. Patrick’s congregation of Quebec, he was elected a trustee of their beautiful and historic church in 1876, and thrice afterwards, making twelve years of office in succession, but, at the last triennial elections, he refused to serve any longer, deeming it unfair to other prominent members of the congregation that one set of hands should continually monopolize the honors. During his trusteeship of St. Patrick’s, it was his good fortune also to be chosen to present the address of the Irish Catholics of Quebec, to their distinguished countryman, His Excellency the Papal Ablegate, the late lamented Bishop Conroy. Although a Liberal in his political principles, Mr. Molony never took part in politics, except to record his vote for parliamentary candidates on personal grounds, until 1883, when he interfered actively for the first time. Since then he has rendered good service to the Liberal cause in the district of Quebec, the Irish Catholic vote there, which had previously gone almost always Conservative, being won over to it largely by his vigorous advocacy on the hustings and in the press, as well as by his personal influence, and this result being made evident by the Liberal triumphs of the last few years in Quebec west, Levis, Megantic, Dorchester, Montmorency and Portneuf counties. Mr. Molony is a passed cadet of the Kingston Military School, and holds a commission as ensign in the Quebec Reserve Militia. His travels have been confined so far to Canada and the United States. Though educated at an English college, he has since acquired a thorough knowledge of, and is a ready and fluent writer and speaker of, the French language. Firmly attached to his own religious tenets, he has always evinced the highest respect for the convictions and rights of his fellow citizens of every other creed. A young man still, he has already attained an enviable position in the section of the Dominion which he has made his home, and the future probably holds in store for him a career of still greater distinction and public and private usefulness.