Jeffry Hall Brock (1850-1915)

Merchant, executive.

Born at Guelph, Ontario on 6 January 1850, son of Thomas Reese and Eleanor Brock, he received his elementary education at Guelph and his more advanced studies at the high school of McGill College, Montreal. He was employed in a book and stationery store in Guelph, then as an apprentice with a dry goods firm in Georgetown, Ontario, and later as a salesman in St. Louis, Missouri. From 1869 to 1872 he was business representative for R. G. Dunn & Company at Troy, New York, and from 1872 to 1877 was with Ogilvie & Company, a dry goods firm. When he came to Winnipeg in 1877, the firm of W. R. Brock & Brother was formed. Later he entered into partnership with G. F. Carruthers in a financial and insurance business.

In 1893 Brock was appointed one of the liquidators of the Manitoba Commercial Bank, and a member of the Provincial Board of Health. He was a director of the Northern Trusts Company, and the Northern Mortgage Company, and a promoter of the Winnipeg Mining and Developing Company. He supported the formation of the Red River Valley Railroad. In 1892 he founded the Great-West Life Assurance Company in Winnipeg, the first insurance company west of Toronto, and he was Managing Director until his death in 1915.

On 6 September 1876, he married Louisa Adelaide Clara, eldest daughter of Rev. John Gillespie. They had seven children; their daughter Irene Beatrice married R. B. McElheran. An Anglican, he served as delegate to the Synod and a warden and active supporter of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Winnipeg. He was a founding member of the St. Charles Country Club, in 1905.

Brock died on 27 March 1915 at Long Beach, California and was returned to Winnipeg for burial in St. John’s Cemetery.

More information:

Jeffry Hall Brock, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

Sources:

“Leading citizen dies in south” Manitoba Free Press, 29 March 1915.

Profile revised: 13 June 2009

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