Hamilton, George, 1781-1839 (family) : George Hamilton (1781-1839) was born at Sheephill, County Meath, Ireland, on 13 April 1781. He was the third son of Charles Hamilton (d. 1818) of Hamwood and his wife Elizabeth (née Chetwood). He came of a Scottish family that claimed descent from Sir James Hamilton of Evandale but which had established itself in Ireland in the early seventeenth century. While his eldest brother Charles (1772-1857) inherited the family estate, George and the other younger sons, Robert (d. 1822), William Henry (d. 1833) and John (d. 1823) went into commerce.
Operating largely out of Liverpool, the Hamilton brothers traded in Madeira wine and Baltic timber, and it was probably in 1802 that George Hamilton came to Quebec to establish a branch of the family business there. After 1807, when Napoleon's continental blockade cut them off from their Baltic timber supplies, the Hamiltons transferred at least part of their timber operations to the Canadas. In 1809, George and William established themselves at New Liverpool in Lower Canada and then, in about 1811, they took over the deal mill that had been established by Thomas Mears and Dr. David Pattee (1778-1851) at Hawkesbury in Upper Canada.
While William took charge of the Hawkesbury operation, George remained in Quebec to negotiate sales and contracts. There, in 1816, he married [Lucy] Susannah Christiana (b. ca.1799), a daughter of the late executive councillor John Craigie (ca.1757-1813). Also in 1816, George moved to Hawkesbury to replace William, who retired from the firm at the end of the year and became the collector of customs at Stanstead, L.C. John then moved in at New Liverpool, while Robert continued to manage the financing and marketing end of the business in Liverpool, England. As an integrated company, the Hamiltons were able to handle all aspects of the timber business (production, sales and shipbuilding in Canada, as well as transportation and sales in England) themselves, without middlemen, and this advantage over other up-country lumberers enabled the firm to grow rapidly.
Between 1819 and 1823, however, misfortune after misfortune struck George Hamilton, and John's efforts in Liverpool to replace Robert, who died in 1822, were cut short by his own death in 1823. Legal complications over John's estate badly hampered the firm's recovery, but by 1825 it was once more growing steadily on a sound foundation. In 1830, a new partnership with a trusted employee, Charles Adamson Low, permitted the company to handle almost one half of the deals exported from the Ottawa valley and to become one of the three largest lumber firms in the Canadas.
In December of 1838, as the result of a trip to Plantagenet in bitter weather to review a reserve company of militia, of which he was lieutenant-colonel, George Hamilton caught a severe cold. He died at Hawkesbury on 7 January 1839 and was buried near St. Andrews, L.C. He bequeathed his business to his sons Robert (1822-1872) and George (1824-1851) and they were later joined, on the completion of his education in 1843, by their brother the Hon. John Hamilton (1827-1888), who carried on the business until his death, when it was sold to the Hawkesbury Lumber Company. George Hamilton's fourth son, the Most Reverend Charles Hamilton (1834-1919), was Anglican archbishop of Ottawa and metropolitan of Canada, 1909-1915.
