David Monro (merchant)

David Monro (ca. 1765 – September 3, 1834) was a seigneur, businessman and political figure in Lower Canada. His surname was also sometimes spelled Munro.

Life

He was born around 1765 in Scotland. The date of his arrival at Quebec is not known but, in 1791, he was involved in administering the dissolving of a partnership between Alexander Davison and John Lees. Monro later became partners with Mathew Bell and, with George Davison, they purchased the Saint-Maurice ironworks in 1793. George Davison died in 1799, which left Monro and Bell the sole owners of the ironworks at Saint-Maurice. In 1804, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada for Saint-Maurice and generally supported the English party.

In 1807, Munro married Catherine MacKenzie, who was the sister of Mathew Bell's wife. He helped found the Quebec Committee of Trade in 1809. He also served in the local militia, becoming major in 1813. Monro served as justice of the peace for Trois-Rivières and Quebec districts. He was a member of the management committee of the Union Company of Quebec, which operated the Union Hotel at Quebec. Monro retired from the business in 1816, selling his share to Bell. In 1817, he bought the seigneury of Champlain with Bell. He was offered a seat on the Legislative Council in that same year but declined as he was planning to leave the province.

Monro died at Bath in England in 1834.

Family

Monro's daughter Margaret married Thomas Levett, of Wychnor Park, Staffordshire, in 1831, three years before Monro's death. (Levett later hyphenated his last name to Levett-Prinsep, and inherited Croxall Hall, Derbyshire,[1] a holding of his uncle Thomas Prinsep's family.)[2][3] That same year Monro's daughter Helen married Sir Edmund Filmer, 8th Baronet.

References
  1. Mansions and Country Seats of Staffordshire, Alfred Williams, Walter Henry Mallett, F. Brown, 1899
  2. The daughter of Thomas Levett-Prinsep and Margaret Monro was Margaret Catharine Levett-Prinsep, who married in 1860 her cousin Robert Thomas Kennedy Levett, JP, the son of John Levett of Wychnor Park and his wife Sophia Eliza Kennedy, daughter of Hon. Robert Kennedy
  3. After the death of his wife, the former Margaret Monro, Thomas Levett-Prinsep married as his second wife Caroline Mary Templer, daughter of Rev. John James Templer of Newton Abbot, Devonshire, the rector of Teigngrace and a member of the Templer family who owned Stover House and the 80,000-acre Stover Estate in Devon, later sold due to Templer family financial troubles to Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset. Rev. Templer's daughter Henrietta was married to Thomas Levett-Prinsep's brother Theophilus Levett. The son of Theophilus Levett later lived at his 'Colehays' estate near Bovey Tracey, which his son Major Edward Levett sold in 1913.
  • "Biography". Dictionnaire des parlementaires du Québec de 1792 à nos jours (in French). National Assembly of Quebec.
  • "David Monro". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2016.
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