The Hudson’s Bay Company played an important part in the history of many Orkney families. Although I’ve found no HBC connection to my own Orcadian roots I do have an interest in the history of Victoria, the city I’ve called home for most of my life, and this inspired me to contribute an article which I hope may help others researching their Orkney ancestors. What began as a modest attempt to document Orcadians buried in Ross Bay Cemetery mushroomed into a larger study of Orkney pioneers at Fort Victoria. This is by no means the definitive list, simply the 66 individuals I’ve identified through cemetery records, newspaper archives and on the Internet. This article highlights some of those pioneers and provides a brief history of their new home on the west coast of British North America.
In the early 1840’s Fort Vancouver, situated on the lower Columbia River, was the HBC’s Western headquarters, however its future was a precarious one as hundreds and then thousands of American settlers began arriving in the Oregon territory. HBC Governor Sir George Simpson felt it was only a matter of time before the Columbia District was ceded to the Americans and so in 1842 he ordered a new fort be constructed on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. James Douglas, a Chief Factor who had risen through the ranks and who would one day become Governor of British Columbia, was tasked with selecting the site. Construction of Fort Victoria began in the spring of 1843.
For the first six years the fledgling fort was manned by HBC men from forts up and down the coast. It is possible, likely in fact, that some of these were “Orkney men” however I was unable to find any definitive proof. James Douglas’s preference for Orkney men was well documented, including a letter[1] written to the HBC Governors on 6 November 1847 in which he stated:
We have to request that the following Tradesmen intended to be stationed at Fort Victoria may be engaged in the Orkneys, on contracts of 5 years at the usual wages and sent out by return of the barque Columbia.
• 1 good blacksmith acquainted with Shipwork
• 1 Cooper
• 1 biscuit Baker
Several years later he would make a similar request in another letter[2] :
I would suggest, that not over 10 engaged servants be sent out by sea from England, at one time, unless at our special requisition, and these should be chiefly from the Orkneys, which supply the most orderly, faithful and honest men, in the Company’s employ.
The Hudson’s Bay Company Western headquarters was moved from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria in 1849, the same year Vancouver Island became a Crown Colony. The British government then handed over control of the Colony to the HBC in exchange for 7 shillings a year and, more importantly, a commitment to establish a settlement of colonists within five years.
On 31 May 1849 a 22-year old cooper named John Flett gazed out from the deck of the barque Harpooner as it lay anchored off Fort Victoria. The Stromness native, one of 26 passengers, had just completed the arduous 6-month journey from Britain to the Pacific coast by way of Cape Horn. The colonists first impression of Fort Victoria may well have been one of disbelief as at that time the settlement was little more than a collection of wooden buildings surrounded by a timber palisade and protected by a pair of small bastions. John Flett was under contract to the HBC but most of those aboard the Harpooner were not. Eight members of the Muir family had arrived to work the coal deposits at Fort Rupert while another eight were here to work for the colony’s first independent settler, Walter Colquhoun Grant.
John Flett served the early part of his HBC contract on the nearby San Juan Islands, making barrels for salt fish and pork, however the company archives indicate he spent the majority of the next 10 years as a cooper in Fort Victoria. They also revealed that Flett married his first cousin Janet Flett at Stepney, London in 1854 and had four sons, John William (b. 29 July 1854), James (b. 16 March 1857), Alfred (b. 10 April 1859) and Peter (b. 26 November 1861). After his years with the HBC Flett became a successful farmer in Maple Bay, a community 25 miles north of Victoria. He died on 4 February 1886 and is buried in Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery.
On 21 March 1850 the barque Cowlitz arrived at Fort Victoria with 10 HBC employees including Apprentice Clerk Hamilton Moffatt. Some sources state that Moffatt was from Orkney however his obituary states he was born in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. He was the nephew of Dr. John Rae and in 1852 he became the first European to cross Vancouver Island. He spent nearly 22 years with the HBC, moving throughout British Columbia and rising to the rank of Chief Trader. Unfortunately Douglas’s initial impression of Moffatt, stated in a personal letter[3] to Sir George Simpson, wasn’t favourable:
“Moffat has talents, but is lazy, conceited, careless and indifferent, and has yet to learn how to do things well.”
Moffatt married Lucy McNeill, the daughter of Capt. William Henry McNeill (of the HBC SS Beaver) but the couple had no children. They retired to Victoria and he joined the Indian Department in 1873. He died on 13 April 1894 and is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery.
The May 1851 arrival of the Barque Tory brought at least three more Orcadian pioneers to Fort Victoria. According to the HBC Archives Thomas Craigie shared a steerage room with five other HBC labourers during the 6-month journey. Craigie spent two years working on HBC farms in the Puget Sound area before returning to Victoria to raise a family of 6 children. He died 18 June 1882 at age 53 and is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery.
John Irvine and his wife Jesse (nee Goar) were also aboard the Tory. Jesse’s obituary implies that when she stepped off the ship in 1851 the population of white women in Fort Victoria immediately doubled. John was a native of Calfsound, Eday and while the HBC Archives record only 5 years of HBC service Jesse’s obituary claims it was over 40. The Irvines eventually settled in an area of Victoria known as Cedar Hill. John died 18 February 1906 and Jesse on 18 March 1907. They are buried together at Ross Bay Cemetery.
In the autumn of 1851 the Norman Morrison arrived with Peter Merriman who, according to his son’s obituary, worked as valet to James Douglas. He married Margaret Leask in Sandwick on 27 December 1849 but his wife did not join him in Victoria until 1856. Merriman later became manager of Douglas’s 418-acre “Fairfield Farm” which is today one of Victoria’s most popular residential neighbourhoods. The HBC archives indicate Merriman left the Company in 1860 at which time he farmed his own land near Cedar Hill. Peter Merriman died on 29 December 1869 and is buried in the Old Burying Ground. Margaret died on 7 November 1879 and is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery.
Some of Victoria’s early pioneers were on the west coast long before Fort Victoria was established. One of the earliest and longest serving Hudson’s Bay employees was John Spence, a boat builder and carpenter from Stromness who joined the Company in 1820. He spent 8 years (1825-1833) in Fort Vancouver and Fort Simpson and another 26 serving on HBC ships up and down the coast. He retired to Victoria in 1861 and died on 29 September 1865. He is buried in the Old Burying Ground’s Naval corner and a photo of his memorial stone is available on the Old Burying Ground Burial Database.
James Goudie retired to Victoria in 1851 having worked with the HBC as a Blacksmith since 1829. He spent many years in Fort Colville (Oregon Territory) and it was there that he married his first wife, Catherine Jane Shwayip and fathered 7 children. Catherine died in Victoria in 1853 and he remarried Jane Fydler Fraser, also of Stromness, in 1861. Jane, a widow, came to Victoria in 1858[4] with her daughter Jane (nee Fraser) and son-in-law William Spence. James Goudie died on 23 April 1887 and Jane a year later on 17 July 1888. Both are buried together in Ross Bay Cemetery. An excellent ‘Rootsweb’ page exists for James Goudie.
Captain James Murray Reid was born in Orkney in 1802 and joined the HBC as a Second Mate aboard the Prince of Wales in 1836[5]. He spent 17 years on HBC ships and was in command of the brig Vancouver when he resigned in 1853 to pursue mercantile interests in Victoria. He died on 24 April 1868 and is buried in the Old Burying Ground.
In early 1858 Fort Victoria, despite the steady arrival of pioneers, remained a tiny and remote outpost numbering a few hundred settlers. Alfred Waddington, in his book “Fraser Mines Vindicated”, described the fort as follows:
“No noise, no bustle, no gamblers, no speculators, or interested parties to preach up this or underrate that. A few quiet gentlemanly behaved inhabitants, chiefly Scotchmen, secluded as it were from the whole world…”
This was to change forever with the discovery of gold in the Thompson River and the subsequent 1858 Fraser River Gold Rush. Some estimate that the population of Fort Victoria grew to 20,000 that summer and although the population would fluctuate wildly over the next decade this sudden influx of speculators prompted the creation of a new Crown Colony on the mainland named British Columbia.
In 1862 Victoria was incorporated as a city and by late 1864 the last of the Fort’s old structures were demolished. In 1866 the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia united and in 1867 the legislature was moved from New Westminster to Victoria. In 1871 the Colony of British Columbia became the sixth Province in the new Dominion of Canada.
‘Orkneymen’ and their families continued to settle in Victoria throughout the late 19th century and I’ve done my best to record those whose final resting place is in one of Victoria’s two oldest cemeteries. No doubt there are other Orcadians buried in Ross Bay Cemetery and should you know of one I would be happy to provide a photograph of a memorial stone if one exists.
Footnotes:
Footnote 1 Page 17, “Fort Victoria Letters 1846-1851” The Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1979
Footnote 2 Page 89, “Fort Victoria Letters 1846-1851” The Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1979
Footnote 3 Page 112, footnote 1, “Fort Victoria Letters 1846-1851” The Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1979
Footnote 4 The obituary for William Spence (Jane Fydler Fraser’s son-in-law) indicates he came to British Columbia in 1852 and not 1858 as stated in Jane Fydler Fraser’s obituary.
Footnote 5 a web page entitled On the Reids of Victoria claims Reid joined the HBC as early as 1822.
