Henry Franklin Bronson
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Source: Library and Archives Canada
Henry Franklin Bronson (February 24, 1817 – December 7, 1889) was an American-born Canadian lumber baron.
He was born in Moreau Township, Saratoga County, New York in 1817 and studied at Poultney Academy in Vermont. Bronson was hired as a clerk in John J. Harris' lumber business; he become a junior partner in 1840. In search of new sources of timber, Bronson visited the Ottawa Valley in 1848; the Harris and Bronson company set up a mill at the Chaudière Falls on the Ottawa River in 1852 and acquired timber limits on the Gatineau, Dumoine and Madawaska Rivers. The company mainly supplied markets in the northeastern United States. Bronson settled at Bytown in 1853. When Harris retired in 1866, wholesale lumber merchant Abijah Weston and Bronson's son Erskine Henry joined the firm, now known as Bronsons and Weston Lumber Company. The company operated wholesale outlets in Albany, New York, Boston and Burlington, Vermont, acquired cutting rights to redwood forests in California and established their own bank. When the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States ended in 1866, Bronson lobbied for reinstating the treaty; he became a supporter of the Liberal Party federally and provincially.
With William Goodhue Perley and James Skead, Bronson was also a promoter of the Upper Ottawa Steamship Company.
He died at Ottawa in 1889. Erskine Henry continued to manage the company until 1899 when it became a holding company, the Bronson Company.
Bronson Avenue in Ottawa was named after Henry Franklin Bronson.
