grave post - Chisholm

This mausoleum near the church of St Vincent de Paul in Niagara-on-the-Lake was erected by Hugh J. Chisholm, a millionaire of New York. The bodies of his father and mother, Alexander Chisholm and Mary Chisholm, first buried in the graveyard, were transferred to this solid structure.
This Roman Catholic church is located on the next street over from St Mark's Anglican Church (where the last two grave posts were taken). Until this church was built in 1834 all denominations used St Mark's graveyard.


Hugh J Chisholm was the fifth of Alexander and Mary Chisholm's ten children. Born in NOTL, he left school at age 13 after the death of his father in 1860. His career as a paper manufacturing magnate and railway president started with being a newsboy delivering papers on the Grand Trunk Railway. He met and became friends with another entrepreneur, Thomas Edison, who was also working on the same line selling candy and newspapers on the train between Port Huron and Detroit. (Port Huron is at the border of Michigan and Ontario). Hugh eventually became a distributor of newspapers, magazines and books and with one of his brothers moved on to create Chisholm Bros Publishing in Maine. Not completely satisfied with that career, he continued to expand into lithography and photographs and postcards, then into pulp and paper mills. Many, many pulp and paper mills. One of them, the Oxford Paper Mill, even began producing all the postcards for the US Post Office in 1901 and was the largest bookpaper mill in the world. It has been in continuous operation to this day, though under several different companies. He had moved to Maine where he became quite a dominant figure in the development of the state's pulp and paper industry and married Henrietta Mason of Portland in 1872 with whom he had one son, also named Hugh. His Chisholm Bros Publishing is still in operation under a Colin Chisholm III. Although he became a US citizen by the 1870s, I found at least two articles in the NYT where he mentions several times that he is a Canadian born American. He seems to have been rather well connected politically in both countries. His entrepreneurial and philanthropic interests extended to creating industrial villages and planned communities for his mill workers. He died in 1912 at his home at 813 Fifth Avenue NYC.
And in 1900 he had this mausoleum built for his parents. However, I could find no other information on any other members of his large family. He seems to have overshadowed them all.
You can read a bit more about Hugh J Chisholm here


find more graves and stories of rich and poor at Taphophile Tragics