Richard Hall, the last of the old guard
Born in Smith Township, he became a prominent business leader and a key player in the Nicholls trust
The Peterborough Examiner published a special edition in
1927 to mark the 60th Anniversary of Confederation which contained several articles of historical interest. One particularly intriguing article, unsigned but written by F.H. Dobbin, was a feature on Richard Hall titled
The Last of the Old Guard.
Richard Hall (1843-1928) was active in Peterborough at the time of Confederation, in 1867, and 60 years later he was still an important public figure.
Dobbin considered Richard Hall “a living link with that glamorous past of volunteer firemen, with their feeble hand pumps and their stout hearts and dashing spirit, of stage coaches, ten cent butter, coal oil lamps” and more.
Richard Hall was born in
Smith Township, the son of John Hall and Isabelle Johnston. John Hall (1791-1885) had three wives and several children, seven of which were still living in 1885.
John Hall built the first mill in Buckhorn and was the partner in building the Government Mill in Peterborough, and developing the waterpower that eventually served Dickson’s and Quaker Oats. He emigrated from County Cavan Ireland in 1820, and came from New York to Peterborough in 1826. He was a friend and sometime partner of A.T. Stewart, the New York department store merchant.
In 1867, Richard Hall was the secretary of the Volunteer Fire Company which organized the calithumpian parade for the celebration of the Queen’s Birthday, May 24. Calithumpian parades were designed to turn the world upside down, to let ordinary people make fun of the elite. However, Dobbin described the Volunteer Fire Department as “forerunner, almost prototype in its public service of the Rotarians, Kiwanis and similar welfare organizations.” On that occasion, Hall was assisted by Aaron Comstock and J. O’Donnell. The evening featured “the glorious superabundant banquet in Cronn’s restaurant.”
Besides his time as a volunteer firefighter, the 24 year-old Richard Hall was employed as a clerk. He joined the general store firm of Nicholls and Hall in 1858, when only 15, and quickly became a mainstay.
Dobbin noted others who began their careers with the town’s major general store, located on Simcoe Street, included Peter Connal, Adam Hall and Robert Innes.
When the Nicholls and Hall partnership was dissolved in 1873, the dry goods business passed to Richard Hall, Robert Innes and Robert Hall; the grocery part became the Metropolitan Grocery.
After the retirements of Robert Hall, who became a customs clerk, and Robert Innes, the store was styled in 1895 to 1897 Hall, Gilchrist & Co. with the principals being Richard Hall, John Gilchrist and S.D. Hall. The dry goods business was carried on by Richard Hall and his son, S. Dickson Hall. The store was on the north side of Simcoe Street, where the St. Alphonsus Lyceum building was built.
Dobbin shared his colourful description of the Simcoe Street store of his youth as remembered in 1926. “The dry goods store on Simcoe street with the long, brass tube railing protecting its expanse of plate glass … remains a pleasant and vivid memory with those of us who were small enough to trail our mothers on shopping tours through the lanes of cottons, linens, silks that seemed never to grow less. Shining brass beyond finger tips was a lure to leap up, and inside wasn’t there the thrill of the elevator. A busy, fragrant place it was on those Saturdays.” He remembered Richard Hall as a “tall, quiet and gentle man.”
The new home of Richard Hall and Son, now styled a department store, was at 351-353 George Street just south of Simcoe
Street. It was tagged as “Peterborough’s Modern Store” at its grand re-opening during fair week in 1898. The new store was a couple of doors south of the south-west corner of Simcoe and George. At the time, Kingan Hardware, its new neighbour, was on that corner. The corner next to Hall’s was later the site of Kresge’s and Walkers.
The Halls, for the 1898 re-opening, wanted people attending the Peterborough Exhibition to drop in, and at great expense installed lights so the store could be open until 9 p.m. The Halls wanted a roomy and bright store that made shopping a pleasure. The successful store, they felt, must be large, and offer nearly everything under one roof. They purchased many goods directly from “Paris, Berlin, London and New York.”
The store had eight display windows across its 68 foot frontage. The main floor was divided north south by four aisles, with different departments on each side of the aisle. There were counters and shelving at each end of the store. Each department carried a full stock and great variety. The men’s department was larger than men’s stores elsewhere in the downtown. The first floor of the “palatial store” contained men’s wear, ladies wear, linens, notions, hosiery, gloves, silk and velvet, skirts, cottons, flannels and dress goods. “All the wonders of the looms of Europe are shown here.”
The store had an elevator to take customers to the upper floors. The second floor had millinery; mantles, coats and capes; and carpets and house furnishings while the third floor had “floor oil cloths.”
S. Dickson Hall was a clerk by 1891, and soon became the main buyer for the store; he made annual trips to London and Paris and brought current fashions to Peterborough from the 1920s to the 1940s. Local seamstresses and tailors recreated the fashions for local shoppers. Dickson Hall, who lived at home until his 20s, eventually bought a house overlooking Inverlea Park.
Richard Hall lived in the spacious house at 813 Water Street. Hall bought the Benson home in 1875, and it became the home of the Halls for the next half century. In 1901, the house was home to Richard and Eliza Hall, and six sons, Samuel Dickson, 27; John Herbert, 27; Hamilton, 15; Martin, 13; William, 12; and Wilford, 6. As well, Richard’s sister, Frances Brown, and her son, 13 also lived here. There were two servants. There were also married daughters.
Quite apart from being a leading merchant in the downtown, Richard Hall was part of an interconnected business elite. In the 1870s, Peterborough aspired to be the Manchester of Ontario, and the plate glass windows on the stores was a symbol of that; Hall’s store had plate glass windows. The business community supported and invested in new initiatives that might help the industrial infrastructure. Richard Hall was one of the investors in 1882 for the Central Bridge Company which was a success over the next 15 years.
A group of prominent local citizens, led by James Stevenson, T.G. Hazlitt, Arthur Stevenson, Richard Hall, T.E. Bradburn, William Walsh, Charles Clementi and lawyer A.P. Poussette, applied for a charter for the Peterborough City Railway Company Limited, with a capital stock of $200,000, which wished to have powers to construct a street railway in Peterborough. This preceded the establishment of the Peterborough and Ashburnham Street Railway Company, which was founded July 3,1891.
Ken Brown, in a great article in the November 2016 special issue of the Heritage Gazette of the Trent Valley, unravelled the connections behind the property and water rights that became part of Quaker Oats when they were attracted to town in 1901.
Richard Hall was directly connected by his father’s development of the Government mill, of the links with Robert Nicholls, and by marriage to Jane Dickson, was one of the principals in the Dickson estate created after Samuel Dickson’s drowning death in the great flood of April 1870.
Richard Hall’s connections were sufficient to win the Liberal nomination in the federal elections of 1891 and 1896. However, he lost both elections to the Conservatives. James Stevenson was the winner in 1891 and James Kendry in 1896; both also had impeccable connections in Peterborough’s business community.
However, Robert and Charlotte Nicholls highly valued the character and good sense of Richard Hall. Hall was a trusted advisor to Charlotte Nicholls, and was influential in the development of Nicholls Hospital, and was a lifelong member of its Board of Trustees. Richard Hall and Charles McGill, of the Ontario Bank, were the key figures in the creation of Charlotte Nicholls’ will, and the members of the original Board of Trustees of the Nicholls Hospital included high profile members of the local business community including George A. Cox, Joseph Flavelle, James Stratton, R.S. Davidson, John McClelland and A.P. Poussette.
At the closing up of the Nicholls Estate, in 1908, the trustees, out of the residue, apportioned a handsome sum to the endowment fund, which served to make the hospital practically selfsustaining until the 1940s. The new Civic Hospital succeeded the Nicholls Hospital, and opened in 1951.
Richard Hall had a remarkable career and truly was the “last of the old guard.” Peterborough had grown rapidly from the 1870s to the 1920s but except for Richard Hall, his contemporaries were gone. Six months later, in January 1928, Richard Hall passed away. Elwood H. Jones, the Trent Valley Archivist, can be reached at elwood@trentvalleyarchives.com. The public is invited to an Open House with original art at Trent Valley Archives, 567 Carnegie Avenue, on April 7, 1-3 p.m.