page_title: Joseph Frobisher
section_title: Beaver Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Frobisher / Beaver Hall
caption_attribution_description: English: Beaver Lodge/Hall, a meeting place of the Beaver Club at Montreal
context_page_description: The Hon. Joseph Frobisher M.P., J.P., was one of Montreal's most important fur traders. He was elected to the 1st Parliament of Lower Canada and was a seigneur with estates totalling 57,000 acres. He was a founding member of the North West Company and the Beaver Club, of which he was chairman. From 1792, his country seat, Beaver Hall, became a centre of Montreal society.
context_section_description: He had a large townhouse in Montreal on St. Gabriel Street and extensive land holdings throughout Quebec. In 1792, he built his country seat, Beaver Hall, which was one of the early estates of the Golden Square Mile. The wife of Lieutenant Governor Sir John Graves Simcoe observed in her diary that Mrs Frobisher, "lived in great style and comfort, and had an excllent garden". 
  Since retiring from the fur trade in 1798, the sociable Mr Frobisher had enjoyed the good life and developed a passion for sumptuous dining to the extent that he kept a diary specifically for recording his dinner parties. His dining room comfortably sat forty guests, and even though he was not in the best of health from 1806, he continued to dine out or entertain in his home every night of the week. He was secretary and chairman of the Beaver Club from 1807 until his death, and they frequently met at Frobisher's home. Frobisher died at Beaver Hall in 1810, and his home succumbed to fire in 1847.
caption: Beaver Hall, built in 1792 outside the old city walls of Montreal was Frobisher's home until his death in 1810
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