Mathew MacNider (1732-1804)

He was born at Paisley, Ayrshire. His family ran a considerable import-export business and taking advantage of the British Conquest of Quebec in 1759, Mathew arrived there in about 1760. He quickly established himself as one of its leading merchants, selling Canadian timber and supplies to the Royal Navy while trading in wine and spices from Europe and the British West Indies. Living in Quebec City, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace and in 1788 he purchased the Seigneuries of Grondines and Bélair. He represented Hampshire County in the 1st Parliament of Lower Canada from 1792 to 1796. In 1801, he purchased the Barony of Portneuf County, Quebec, and the Seigneury of Sainte-Croix on a 50-year lease from the Ursulines of Quebec. He built several stone mills and a manor house by the Portneuf River; and, in 1802 he paid £1,800 for the Seigneury of Metis (36-square miles with a very considerable water front). After his death he was succeeded in the family business by his nephew, John MacNider.

Having been a very successful businessman, politician, and a major landowner, things started to unravel by the end of his life: "Between unsound business dealings gone sour, and unanticipated attacks by con artists, Mathew MacNider found all his lands seized by a Sheriff's writ of execution, in mid-May, 1805. Surprisingly, this practice was quite prevalent during the Seigneurial era, not only in large urban areas.... Mathew MacNider, at that time, owned not only the Métis Seigneury, but several hundred pieces of land, Seigneuries, mills and other estates, that were all seized (after his death)". He was married firstly in Scotland and then in Quebec to a Genevieve Dauphin sometime before 1768.