John Walsingham Cooke Meredith - Canada

Canada

According to the London Free Press Meredith came to Canada 'seized with the wander-spirit of youth to seek his fortune farming'. Two of his first cousins, William Collis Meredith and Henry Howard Meredith (1815–1892), were then starting their legal careers in Montreal (though Henry soon after moved to Port Hope, Ontario where he rapidly became a successful land developer), but he passed them by and carried on out west. He stopped at the township of Westminster in Upper Canada, eight miles from London, Ontario, where he bought a bush farm and settled down to commence his new life.

Farming did not prove to be as profitable as he had hoped, and as such soon afterwards Meredith moved the eight miles into London itself and turned his hand to business. He carefully bought land before selling it on for a profit, as well as loaning money and offering insurances to new and old settlers alike. He bought and rented out buildings on London's principal street, Dundas Street, and when the much desired position of deputy collector of customs at Port Stanley, Ontario was offered to him he readily accepted it. He also served as market clerk at London, Justice of the Peace, and finally clerk of the Division Court, a position he held until his death.

• Mrs Sarah (Pegler) Meredith and one of her sons outside their house in London, c.1880

In 1846, Meredith built a substantial home for himself and his family at 565 Talbot Street, on the corner of Wellington Street and facing Victoria Park, which remained in his family for just under one hundred years before it was demolished to make way for the Centennial Hall. The Meredith family home was described as being 'rich in cultural elements'. An article on Meredith's sons appeared in the June, 1913, edition of MacLean's magazine, which gives an account of John Meredith,

The father (JWCM), while far from being parsimonious, was a man who understood the value of money and was exceedingly careful in handling it. He lived simply, spent next to nothing on entertainment, joined no societies, and kept his nose steadily to the grindstone. When he had gathered together a little capital by the exercise of frugality, it was not difficult for him to make it grow like the proverbial snowball. In the fifties, sixties and seventies, what seems today an excessive rate of interest was commonly charged on loans and Mr Meredith was not slow to collect his twenty-five per cent on the money he advanced. He made large profits on land sold for taxes, which he bought cheap, held and disposed of later on. When he died it was reported that an estate valued at nearly a quarter of a million dollars was divided among his children.