Henry Franklin Bronson

Henry Franklin Bronson (February 24, 1817 – December 7, 1889) was an American-Canadian lumber baron known as one of Ottawa's early entrepreneurs, establishing a large lumber mill at Chaudière Falls on the Ottawa River. Bronson's efforts helped to convert a fledgling small town into a prosperous city.

Bronson was born in Moreau Township, Saratoga County, New York in 1817 and studied at Poultney Academy in Vermont. He was hired as a clerk in John J. Harris' lumber business; he became a junior partner in 1840. Harris, a friend of Bronson's, had land in northern New York state, and mills on the upper Hudson River lakes. He had been impressed by Bronson's "integrity, resolute will, sound constitution and capacity for hard work".

Bronson's pioneering entrepreneurship preceded many other notables, who also came from the United States, namely Perley and Pattee [Chaudière Falls mill], as well as Eddy, and Canada's largest sawmill builder, John Rudolphus Booth.

Bronsons and Weston Lumber Company was incorporated, 1888, under c. 103, and its name was changed to "Bronson Company", 1899, c. 96.

Bronson died at Ottawa in 1889. Erskine Henry continued to manage the company until 1899 when it became a holding company, the Bronson Company.

"Erskine Henry Bronson and Walter Goodman Bronson carried on the family business after the death of their father in 1899, followed by Frederick Erskine Bronson after the death of Walter Goodman Bronson in 1932. In the sixties, Frederic Bronson donated a large portion of the Bronson Company's land holdings to the National Capital Commission. A few years later, the National Capital Commission expropriated the rest of the company."