Richard Cartwright UE (1759 - 1815)

Born 1 Feb 1759 in Albany County, New York

Ancestors

Husband of Magdelaine (Secord) Cartwright — married about 1784 in Kingston, Upper Canada

Descendants

Died 7 Jul 1815 at age 56 in Kingston, Upper Canada

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Biography

This profile is part of the Kingston, Upper Canada One Place Study.

Richard Cartwright was a United Empire Loyalist.
UEL Status:Proven
Date: Undated

Richard Cartwright UE is/was a significant Ontarian .

Richard was born in Albany, N.Y. He was christened on March 16, 1759.^[1]

Richard was educated for a career in the church. However, the American Revolution altered his future. He came to Canada in 1778 and served at Niagara as secretary to Colonel John Butler. In 1780, he formed a partnership with Robert Hamilton to become merchant middlemen and provisioners to the military. Together they controlled much of the commerce of Upper Canada, transshipping goods from Montreal and exporting wheat flour, pork, lumber, potash and pearlash downstream from Upper Canada. Cartwright's general store in Cataraqui (Kington), where he settled in 1784, was the most important business in town. Among myriad enterprises, he was active in shipbuilding, owned a blacksmith shop, and the flour, saw and fulling mills at Napanee. By 1801, 25% of the flour shipped to Montreal was Cartwright flour. At his death, he bequeathed 27,000 acres of land situated throughout the province.

Cartwright's interests reached beyond commerce. He served as justice of the Mecklenburg Court of Common Pleas, magistrate of the Court of Quarter Sessions (1788), Legislative Councillor (1792), colonel of the militia (1807) and commandant of the Midland District during the 1812-14 War. He was a close adviser to successive governors of the province.

Concerned for the education of his children, he brought John (later Bishop) Strachan from Scotland in 1799 to serve as tutor and schoolmaster, and was active in church matters. He seems to have been a stern, scrupulously upright individual, with a photographic memory, superior education and intellect, and a mania for detail.

Cartwright married Magdalen Secord in 1784 and they had eight children. The deaths of the four eldest children clouded the final years of Cartwright's life and he died of a lingering illness in 1815. He was buried in the Lower Burial Ground of St. Paul's Anglican Churchyard in Kingston.^[2][3][4]

Sources

1. ↑ "New York Births and Christenings, 1640-1962", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V2HD-4GX : 20 January 2020), Richard Cartwright, 1759.
2. ↑ Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society, "Kingston's Lower Burial Ground 1783-1863"
3. ↑ https://billiongraves.com/grave/Richard-Cartwright/68357059
4. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/162516161/richard-cartwright

• http://www.uelac.org/Kingston/stories.html
• George Rawlyk and Janice Potter, “CARTWRIGHT, RICHARD,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 14, 2016, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cartwright_richard_5E.html.