Born at Insch, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1830, he came to Dundas, Upper Canada [now Ontario] at the age of eight, where he was educated. During the American Civil War he served with the Union Army as a veterinarian, stationed in Chicago. After the war, he went to Montreal and worked with his half-brother D. Ritchie in the retail and wholesale tobacco business.
In 1871 he headed for Duluth, Minnesota and worked in the wholesale liquor business before arriving in Winnipeg in 1873 aboard the first stern-wheel steamboat, The Cheyenne with a load of furniture (“a better class of house furnishings”). He opened the first furniture store in the West. He later went into the wholesale and retail grocery business with his brother-in-law, Robert Dundas Bathgate. His real estate investment begun in 1880 included practically all of Princess Street and much of the Hudson's Bay Reserve south of Portage Avenue, as well as for land along Sherbrook, Maryland, and Furby streets. In 1880 he built the Grand Union Hotel, later the Princess Opera House, the Gerrie Block, and the Palace stables.
He married Margaret Bathgate (1842-1889) and they had five children: Charles Alexander Gerrie, Mrs. Adam Patterson, Mrs. Lawrence Johnstone, Mrs. Frank Johnstone, and Mrs. William Moir. His health declined following a street assault in 1889 in which he lost an eye, but he helped open the West End in the early years of the twentieth century and was known as the “father of the Winnipeg Boom.”
He died at his Winnipeg home, 352 Furby Street, on 29 January 1908 and was buried in the Brookside Cemetery.
See also:
Robert Gerrie, Dictionary of Canadian Biography XIII, 379-80.
Pioneers and Early Citizens of Manitoba, Winnipeg: Manitoba Library Association, 1971.
Death registrations [Margaret Gerrie, Robert Gerrie], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
“A noted pioneer,” Winnipeg Tribune, 29 January 1908, page 1.
“Death removes a Winnipeg pioneer,” Manitoba Free Press, 30 January 1908, page 8.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 4 December 2024
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