James Hargrave - Letters from Ruperts Land, 1826-1840: James Hargrave of the Hudsons Bay Company

LETTERS FROM RUPERTS LAND, 18261840

RUPERTS LAND RECORD SOCIETY SERIES
Jennifer S.H. Brown, Editor

1 The English River Book
A North West Company Journal and Account Book of 1786
Edited by Harry W. Duckworth

2 A Country So Interesting
The Hudsons Bay Company and Two Centuries of Mapping, 16701870
Richard I. Ruggles

3 Arctic Artist
The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 18191822
Edited by C. Stuart Houston
Commentary by I.S. MacLaren

4 Ellen Smallboy
Glimpses of a Cree Womans Life
Regina Flannery

5 Voices from Hudson Bay
Cree Stories from York Factory

Compiled and edited by Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts

6 North of Athabasca
Slave Lake and Mackenzie River Documents of the North
West Company, 18001821

Edited with an Introduction by Lloyd Keith

7 From Barrow to Boothia
The Arctic Journal of Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease, 18361839
Edited and annotated by William Barr

8 My First Years in the Fur Trade
The Journals of 18021804
George Nelson
Edited by Laura Peers and Theresa Schenck

9 The Spirit Lives in the Mind:
Omushkego Stories, Lives, and Dreams
Louis Bird
Edited and compiled by Susan Elaine Gray

10 Memories, Myths, and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader
William Berens as told to A. Irving Hallowell
Edited and with Introductions by Jennifer S.H.
Brown and Susan Elaine Gray

11 Letters from Ruperts Land, 18261840
James Hargrave of the Hudsons Bay Company
Edited with an Introduction by Helen E. Ross

JAMES HARGRAVE of the
HUDSONS BAY COMPANY

Edited with an Introduction by Helen E. Ross

McGill-Queens University Press 2009
ISBN 978-0-7735-3573-2

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2009
Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Hargrave, James, 17981865
Letters from Ruperts Land, 18261840 : James Hargrave of the Hudsons Bay Company / edited by Helen E. Ross.

(Ruperts Land Record Society series ; II )
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7735-3573-2

1. Hargrave, James, 17981865 Correspondence. 2. Hudsons Bay Company History. 3. Fur trade Canada, Western History 19th century. 4. York Factory (Man.) History. 5. Frontier and pioneer life Canada, Western. 6. Northwest, Canadian History To 1870. 7. Fur traders Canada, Western Correspondence. I. Ross, Helen E. II. Hudsons Bay Company III. Title. IV. Series: Ruperts Land Record Society series ; II

FC 3213.1. H 375 A 4 2009 971.201 C 2009-901968- X

Set in 11/14 Adobe Caslon with Voluta Script
Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital

To Martin, Francesca, and Federico

ONE
3 January 1826 24 March 1827

TWO
24 March 1827 1 December 1827

THREE
2 December 1827 1 August 1828

FOUR
25 August 1828 11 July 1829

FIVE
13 July 1829 24 June 1830

SIX
25 June 1830 7 July 1831

SEVEN
8 July 1831 25 July 1832

EIGHT
25 July 1832 19 July 1833

NINE
20 July 1833 1 September 1834

TEN
2 September 1834 13 July 1835

ELEVEN
14 July 1835 31 May 1836

TWELVE
2 June 1836 13 March 1838

THIRTEEN
15 March 1838 15 September 1838

FOURTEEN
15 September 1838 25 July 1839

FIFTEEN
26 July 1839 18 May 1840

We are beguiled. It happens mostly in our old age, when our personal futures close down and we cannot imagine sometimes cannot believe in the future of our childrens children. We cant resist this rifling around in the past, sifting the untrustworthy evidence, linking stray names and questionable dates and anecdotes together, hanging on to threads, insisting on being joined to dead people and therefore to life.

Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock

This book is an outcome of my rifling around in the lives of my great-great grandparents: James Ross was the first of my Scottish ancestors to cross the Atlantic and his wife, Mary, was a younger sister of the Hudsons Bay Company fur trader James Hargrave. In the early 1820s, James Ross chose a lot on a narrow point of land between the Chteauguay and Outarde rivers southwest of Montreal to settle his wife and growing family while he helped build the Lachine canal. I turned to his brother-in-laws letterbooks written more than a thousand miles away on Hudson Bay to try to uncover more of his story. I was beguiled by these letterbooks. I mean by this that they fascinated and captivated me, and not, I trust, that they particularly deceived or misled me about the lives of my great-great grandparents and their relations. Through the handwritten words of James Hargrave, I discovered far more than I expected about his life and the lives of his family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic and about what it meant to be an emigrant to British North America in the first half of the nineteenth century. To him, therefore, I owe my gratitude.

A number of people have given generously of their time and knowledge in the course of the editing of Hargraves letterbooks, and I would especially like to acknowledge the contributions of Jennifer S.H. Brown. Dr. Brown responded positively to my initial approach to the Ruperts Land Record Society (RLRS) about the possibility of publication of the letterbooks as part of the RLRS series in the McGill-Queens University Press and has provided invaluable editorial advice on succeeding drafts of the manuscript since that time. Dr. Brown also generously offered bed and board and access to the library at her home during my three-day visit in May 2008 to the Hudsons Bay Company Archives, the Manitoba Archives, and the University of Manitoba Archives in Winnipeg. She introduced me to her administrative assistant, Anne Lindsay, at the Centre for Ruperts Land Studies, who worked efficiently and enthusiastically at finding obscure facts in the HBCA collection for some of the footnotes in the manuscript.

Copies of the microfilms of the letterbooks from which I transcribed the letters in this volume were provided to me by Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. The copyright on these letterbooks has expired. Thanks are due to Marielle Lavertu at the Bibliothque et Archives nationales du Qubec for permission to include a transcription of James Hargraves 1820 engagement contract with the North West Company. I also wish to thank Dr. Richard Virr of McLennan Library, McGill University, for permission to publish a transcription of Hargraves 182829 Journal.

The artwork and maps included in the book were drawn from many sources and I wish to acknowledge the following individuals and institutions for their permission to publish these images: Debra Moore, Head, Acquisition and Special Media, at the Hudsons Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, for a map of Hudsons Bay Company Posts c. 1832 and an 1835 bill of lading; Sharon Foley at the Archives of Manitoba for a portrait of John George McTavish; Kelly-Ann Turkington at the Royal BC Museum for portraits of James Hargrave and Letitia Mactavish; Lucy Berkley, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator at the Oregon Historical Society, for a portrait of Sir George Simpson as a young man; Nicola Woods, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator at the Royal Ontario Museum, for a painting of Sir George Simpson by Henry James Warre; Veronica Denholm, Access Manager at the National Library of Scotland, for portraits of Robert Fyshe and Reverend Douglas from