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426 St. Lawrence Street (ex-3 St. Lawrence)
Built 1892
Designated 2011

Robert & Margaret Horton

This house illustrates Italianate architecture as it was adapted to the West Coast, and specifically a waterfront site. It also symbolizes the success and the place in society of an important Victoria pioneer. The wood frame house has an unassuming one-storey façade on the street side, but a dramatic two-storey aspect on the water-side, dominated by a two-storey porch and balcony, and originally crowned with a "widow’s walk."

Robert Horton played an important role as a Victoria pioneer. He came to Victoria from Scotland about 1858, and from an early date was a fur buyer for the HBC. He remained in their employ for some 40 years, rising to manage their fur department. (He married Margaret Boyd, daughter of another HBC pioneer.) He lived much of his life in the area now known as James Bay, and in 1892 had this house built on the edge of a small cove, close to downtown Victoria. However, although he rose to one of the most important roles in the Company, he built by the water: While many of the early Victoria gentry were building their homes high on Rockland in the 1890s, Horton remained a tradesman. (Significantly, William Charles, HBC factor, lived at 1038 Fort St. (now an antique shop) --half-way up the hill to Rockland.)

For recent decades, this house has been largely invisible, obscured by trees and bushes. However, one early picture, believed by the B.C. Archives to date from about 1900, shows the way it once dominated the area west of Fisherman’s Wharf –and could do so again.… It seems likely that Horton rowed to the Bay warehouses on the Inner Harbour, and this site lends itself to possible future "Heritage Harbour Tours." (These could include "Roslyn", "The Dingle," "Craigflower," "Pt. Ellice House" and the whole complex of the Fort and Harbour, especially the surviving former HBC buildings.) This house is also important because it is adjacent to, and was long owned by, an important Canadian sculptor -- Elza Mayhew, designed by an important Victoria architect.

Robert Horton (c.1834-1912) was an HBC furrier who came to Victoria from England in 1858. In 1865 he married Margaret Mills Pateson Boyd (1841-1940), who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and came to Victoria in 1863. Her father, John Boyd, was a prominent early Victoria cloth merchant. Robert became manager of the HBC fur department in Victoria, and may have rowed to work through the Inner Harbour to the HBC warehouse on the waterfront below Wharf Street.
The Hortons lived here until c.1895. Robert died in San Francisco in 1912. By 1898, Robert and Margaret’s daughter Lucretia (1867-1952) and her husband Lewis Herbert Hardie (1865-1935) were listed as the primary occupants. They married in Victoria in 1895. Born in Manchester, Lewis came to BC c.1890. For many years he was associated with B. Wilson & Co, and then became a commission agent. The Hardie family moved to Vancouver by about 1902 where they resided until about 1910 before returning to Victoria.

Widow Kate Chapman (c.1864-1955) was living here by 1901. She married William Chapman in Victoria in 1900, but he died in Ontario on his way to England in 1902. He was a Staff Sergeant, and was buried with full military honours in Montreal. Kate remained in this house after William’s death and in 1914 it appears that she married George Bohun Martin (1841-1933) under the name Catherine Hallinan. George was a widower. In 1866 he had married Anne St. Paul, an indigenous woman, and they had six children. She died in Yale in 1900.

George was born in Nottingham, England, into a naval family, and at the age of 14 joined the Royal Navy with his two brothers. After serving two years on the HMS Victory, George was stationed in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War. He was then shipped to India with the East India Co. George became ill and returned to England, and after recuperating he made way to the Pacific Coast, and arrived in Victoria in 1862 on the SS Jonathan. On his arrival, George joined the HBC and was sent to Kamloops. He stayed with the HBC for three years, then purchased a large ranch on the South Thompson River and pursued ranching. He also entered politics and represented Yale in the legislature for 12 years. He served four years as Minister of Lands and Works under Premiers Theodore Davie and J.H. Turner, and then retired. He lived at this house on St. Lawrence until he died in 1933. Catherine lived here as a widow until the late-1940s and died at Mt. St. Mary’s Hospital in 1955.

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