Louisa Goddard Molson | |
Birth Name: | Louisa Goddard Frothingham |
Birth Date: | 15 April 1827 |
Birth Place: | Montreal, Lower Canada |
Occupation: | Philanthropist |
Spouse(S): | John Henry Robinson Molson |
Parents: | John Frothingham Louisa Goddard (Archibald) Frothingham |
Relatives: | Frederick Frothingham (brother) Thomas Molson (father-in-law) Harry Markland Molson (nephew) |
Louisa Goddard Molson (Frothingham; April 15, 1827 – August 12, 1910), known socially as Mrs. John H. R. Molson, was a Canadian philanthropist.
Louisa Goddard Frothingham was born in Montreal, Lower Canada, the daughter of John Frothingham. Her father had a hardware business.[1] She was the namesake of her mother, Louisa Goddard (Archibald) Frothingham; she had a similarly named sister-in-law, Louisa Davenport Hayward Frothingham.
When she was 18 years old, Frothingham joined the management committee of the Montreal Protestant Orphan Asylum. She continued to be active in the administration of the asylum for the next 64 years.[2] She was also a manager of the Protestant Infants' Home of Montreal, a manager of the Mackay Institute,[3] and a life governor of the Montreal Maternity Hospital. Beginning in 1890, she served on the board of governors at the Protestant Hospital for the Insane. She was the second president of the Montreal Ladies' Educational Association, succeeding her sister-in-law Anne Molson.
Molson had an inherited fortune, and made significant donations and bequests to many of her causes, including the above-named charities, McGill University,[4] [5] Montreal General Hospital,[6] the Art Association of Montreal,[7] the Mount Royal Cemetery,[8] the Montreal Ladies' Benevolent Society, and the Unitarian Church of the Messiah. In 1895, she was an honoured guest at the opening ceremonies for the new medical campus at McGill.[9]
Frothingham married businessman John Henry Robinson Molson in 1873. They were close to Molson's nephew, Harry Markland Molson, the mayor of Dorval, who was a passenger on the Titanic (he did not survive).[10] She was widowed in 1897,[11] [12] and she died in 1910.