Henry Morgan (merchant)
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Henry Morgan (born November 14, 1819 - died December 12, 1893) was a Scots-Quebecer department store pioneer in Canada who founded Henry Morgan & Company.
Henry Morgan was born into a family of humble circumstances in Saline at the time an isolated village six miles northwest of the royal burgh of Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. He received the basic education then available before taking a job with a wholesale dry goods firm in the city of Glasgow.
In 1844, after gaining sound knowledge of the textile business and having saved a small amount of money from ten years of hard work, an ambitious Henry Morgan decided to emigrate. Encouraged by David Smith, a fellow Scot in Montreal, Quebec, Morgan believed a better life existed in Canada vis-à-vis the shambles made of Scotland by the aristocracy through the Clearances. Ambitious, plans were made to put his training to good use and open a business in Canada. Immediately upon his arrival in Montreal, Morgan joined with his friend to began preparations to set up a retail dry-goods store in rented premises on Notre-Dame Street. Henry's brother, James Morgan had also been trained in the business and he invested in the store but remained in Glasgow to oversee the purchasing and shipping of goods to Montreal. In May of 1845, Smith & Morgan opened for business despite intense competition from similar merchandisers on the same street. Records show Henry Morgan working 18-20 hour days, but the hard work brought an immediate success. Their product line and astute merchandising of draperies and curtains, sewing fabrics, household linens and a variety of woollen goods was the equal or better than their competitors.
Under the terms of the business contract, the partnership with Smith ended in 1850. Believing he could do better without David Smith, Henry Morgan did not renew their partnership and set up Henry Morgan & Company to buy out the business assets. While Smith moved on to Chicago, Illinois in the United States, Henry's brother James emigrated to Montreal to take over his responsibilities in the store. Henry Morgan then hired a representative in London where he could choose from an enormous variety of goods available from the many textile importers and manufacurers' representatives located in that huge metropolis. Within a few years, Morgan's was one the largest stores of its kind in Montreal.
Henry Morgan traveled to Europe on merchandise buying trips and it was in Paris, France that he visited Le Bon Marché, that country's first department store. Impressed by what he saw, and aware that Americans had begun copying the idea, in 1866 he opened what became the first department store in Canada. The business occupied four floors of a new building on St. James Street, carrying a selection of merchandise with a wholesale cost of more than half a million dollars. Gifted with a keen marketing sense, Morgan came up with the idea for window displays, frequently changing the products in order to catch the eye of passers-by.
With a store that was the marvel of his adopted city and the entire country, as he approached sixty years of age, two of Henry Morgan's nephews joined the firm. Over time, he handed over more and more of the day-to-day management of the business to the younger generation, but in the mid 1880s, Morgan began plans to build a huge new department store. He had been part of enormous growth in the Montreal economy, and the expanding city was creeping from its business hub at the waterfront up the hillside to the residential plateau below Mount Royal. In 1891, Morgan opened his massive new ultra-modern department store on Sainte-Catherine Street. Others followed, and the area soon became the new centre for retail merchandisers.
Two years after his magnificent new store opened, Henry Morgan died and was interred in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal. His company continued to prosper well into the second half of the 20th century and stores were opened in several major cities in the province of Ontario. Henry Morgan and Company remained a private family business through four generations until 1960, when it was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company. The large store Henry Morgan built on Saint Catherine Street operated under the Morgan name until 1972. Today, it remains as one of Montreal's most important shopping venues under the Hudson’s Bay brand name.
