Born 4 February, 1831 at Vale of Avoca, Ireland – Died 4 October, 1897 at Calgary, Alberta

Samuel (Sam) Henry Harkwood Livingston was a gold prospector and great innovator who brought the first examples of mechanized equipment to farming in the Calgary area. Usually wearing his traditional fringed buckskin clothes, broad-rimmed hat and long hair and beard, he looked every bit the old prospector that he was.

Prospecting Years

Still in his teens, Sam emigrated from Ireland to Wisconsin in 1847. He travelled to the California Gold Rush of 1849, visited New Mexico, and then travelled to Montana in 1859. He also participated in British Columbia’s Cariboo Gold Rush of 1858 by way of Pincher Creek and the Crowsnest Pass. He returned to Alberta through the Kicking Horse Pass in 1864, travelling with a group of prospectors who later disbanded.

Marriage and Homes

Sam married Jane Howse, daughter of Joseph Howse at Fort Victoria in 1865. Jane was born in 1848 at Red River Settlement. She died in 1919 in Calgary. Sam and Jane came to Southern Alberta with the Rev. John McDougall’s wagon train of twenty-nine wagons in 1872. In 1873,they established the Livingston Trading Post on the Elbow River. Their homesteading land was upstream on the Elbow River, later to be flooded by the future Glenmore Reservoir. The Glenmore Reservoir gets its name from Sam too; Sam and Jane started a school on their farm that Sam named ‘Glenmore School’ after a place in Ireland.

When the Northwest Mounted Police arrived to establish their fort, Sam agreed to move up the Elbow to the present site of Heritage Park. Sam supplied the NWMP post with meat and vegetables from his land. There Sam and Jane reared their family of fourteen children (he was Irish…). They became to be known as ‘Calgary’s first family’.

Death

Sam Livingston died in 1897 shortly after the birth of his 14th child. At his funeral, forty carriages followed Sam’s casket to Union Cemetery. The sandstone base for his marker is original, but the obelisk, adorned by the Masonic emblem, is a replica. The original is in the churchyard at Heritage Park, along with their house that heard 16 voices of laughter.