Samuel Henry Harkwood Livingston (4 February 1831 – 4 October 1897) born in Ireland, he came to Canada following an unsuccessful venture in the

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

of 1849, and eventually found his way to Jumping Pound,

North-West Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

, in 1873 where he opened a trading post. He was going to settle near the confluence of the Bow and

Elbow River The Elbow River is a river in southern Alberta, Canada. It flows from the Canadian Rockies to the city of Calgary, where it merges into the Bow River. Course The Elbow River originates at Elbow Lake in the Front Range of the Canadian Rocky ...

s in 1875 but, when the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian para-military police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory ...

(NWMP) arrived and established Fort Calgary, Livingston and his family moved further up the Elbow River to the current location of the Glenmore Reservoir. When the

Glenmore Dam Glenmore may refer to: Australia * Glenmore, Queensland, a suburban district of Rockhampton, Queensland ** Glenmore Homestead, Rockhampton, an historic property near Rockhampton, Queensland *Glenmore, Victoria *Glenmore Park, New South Wales **Glen ...

was built and the area flooded, part of the Livingston house was preserved and now stands at Heritage Park. Sam Livingston was an important man to Alberta's history. 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. Glenmore is a village in

County Kilkenny County Kilkenny ( gle, Contae Chill Chainnigh) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the South-East Region. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the local authority for the cou ...

and quite close to his birthplace in

County Wicklow County Wicklow ( ; ga, Contae Chill Mhantáin ) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is bordered by t ...

. Sam Livingston married Jane Howse in 1865 and settled at Fort Victoria for a while. He also started a business which included trading for buffalo hides. By 1874 he had relocated his operations southward to be closer to the trade with the plains Indians and was doing business near the Roman Catholic mission, Our Lady of Peace, on the Elbow River. In the summer of 1876 Livingston moved with his family closer to Fort Calgary, the newly established NWMP post on the river. Here, in 1876, he began cultivation and with

John Glenn John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling ...

was one of the first farmers in the area. Livingston was a great innovator who brought the first examples of mechanized equipment to farming in the

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

area. Some people call Sam Livingston "Calgary's first citizen", but George Clift King is also given that title. In fact John Glenn was the first documented European settler in the Calgary area, in 1873. In 1872, Alexis Cardinal (Métis) had built a shack for Father Constantine Scollen. In March 1873, Scollen moved there and established the first mission to the Blackfoot Confederacy in what would later become Alberta. Bow Valley Pioneers - Bow Valley Ranche Pioneers
Sam Livingston died in 1897 shortly after the birth of his 14th child. His funeral procession was 40 carriages long.

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- Pioneers 1897 deaths 1831 births Pre-Confederation Canadian businesspeople {{Canada-business-bio-stub