With funding from Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program, a museum in Gaspé in eastern Quebec has begun digitizing the archives of the Robin, Jones and Whitman Company — Canada’s oldest retailer after the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The museum, the Musée de la Gaspésie, received almost $30,000 to digitize 50,000 pages of the corporate archives by the end of this March. The Robin, Jones and Whitman Company archives cover a major part of the 250-year history of the company, from 1776 to 1949.
Founded in 1766 by Charles Robin, a merchant from the Channel Island of Jersey, the Robin Company became a fishing giant, with connections in Great Britain, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and South America.
The archival collection contains employee lists and work contracts, correspondance from founder Charles Robin with contacts in Europe and the United States. His letters refer to the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Rebellions of 1837 and 1838. About 95 percent of the material is written in English.
Charles Robin, 1743-1824.
Charles Robin was born in 1743 in St. Aubin, Jersey. When he was 22 years old, he and his two brothers, Philip and John, joined two other family members to form Robin, Pipon and Company. Their primary business was fishing on the Gaspé shore where cod was plentiful. For more than two centuries, the Robins made Gaspé cod a staple of Mediterranean cuisine. They also traded with the Acadians and Micmacs.
During the American Revolution, American privateers attacked the company’s facilities, seizing the cargo ship and burning what they could not take with them. Charles Robin was taken prisoner, but managed to escape and he fled to Jersey.
After the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1783, giving Americans fishing rights off Newfoundland, but not to dry or cure fish on land, Charles Robin returned to the Gaspé to head a new business, the Charles Robin and Company.
In 1910, a merger caused the company to change its name to Robin, Jones and Whitman Company.
According to the Gaspesian Heritage WebMagazine, until about 1928, Jersey firms sent a number of apprentices every year to work for the Robin Company. “The young men of fifteen or sixteen who came out to the Gaspé were too young to have families, and in the early years of the Company, particularly if they were in management positions, they were not allowed to marry without the approval of Charles Robin himself. ” Many of the descendants of these men live there today.
Hats off to the Musée de la Gaspésie for preserving this important part of Canada’s history.
Last week, there was a lot of interest on social media about another project that received funding from LAC’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program. You can read about the project here.
