Tremain, Richard

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: David A. Sutherland, “TREMAIN, RICHARD,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/tremain_richard_8E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Merchant, miller, militia officer, justice of the peace, and office holder; b. 20 June 1774 in New York City, son of Jonathan Tremain and Abigail Stout; m. 1801 Mary Boggs in Halifax, and they had seven daughters and five sons; d. there 30 July 1854.
    • Richard Tremain’s father emigrated in 1760 from England to New York City, where he built up a successful mercantile business. Having fled to Quebec as a loyalist refugee in 1783, he moved on to Halifax in 1786. There he resumed trading, which he complemented by investment in flour milling, fishing, land, and coal mining. The family, through its close association with Lieutenant Governor Sir John Wentworth and other leading loyalist families, enjoyed a secure place within the local oligarchy.
    • Richard, the second son, probably served a commercial apprenticeship under his father. In 1801, immediately after his marriage to a daughter of another prominent loyalist family, he formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, Charles Boggs, to operate a general store and brewery. Finding trade more profitable than brewing, Tremain concentrated on the import-export operations connected with the store.
    • Thus by the mid 1830s Tremain had the status of a gentleman able to live in considerable comfort at Oakland, his estate in Halifax’s south suburbs. He enjoyed community recognition through his service as president of the chamber of commerce, churchwarden of St Paul’s, chairman of the Halifax firewards, lieutenant-colonel in the local militia, and director of the Nova Scotia Bible Society.
    • Richard Tremain is best seen as an embodiment of the old régime in Nova Scotia. He was not so much corrupt as conventional, discharging his offices of public trust by the norms of the pre-reform era. He achieved notoriety essentially because the standards by which he had been brought up had become obsolete. Rather than adapt, he resisted, and thereby assured the destruction of his public career.
  • Son of Loyalist in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=12000
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/258094305/richard-tremaine