Item 13 - Letter from Alexander Henry to Simon McTavish, 24 January 1796

Alexander Henry (also known as Alexander Henry the Elder) was born in 1739 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and died in 1824 in Montreal. He was the eldest son of merchant John Henry and Elizabeth Henry (her maiden name is unknown). Henry married an unknown Indigenous woman “a la façon du pays” and was said to have had several children, though only one daughter is recorded. After returning to Montreal in 1785, he then married Julia Calcutt Kittson (Julia Ketson, 1756-1835), who was the widow of John George Kittson, an Anglo-Irish army officer. They had around five known children and Henry was the stepfather of two children. From the age of twenty, Henry worked as a merchant out of Albany, New York, and supplied the British army during the French and Indian War (the North American front of the Seven Years’ War). In 1760, Henry was the first known Englishman to have visited the area of Milwaukee and he soon after secured a fur-trade pass for the area. He travelled to Michilimackinac when the Ojibwe had yet to make peace with the English and met the war chief Mihnehwehna (also known as Minweweh), who admired Henry’s bravery for entering Ojibwe lands. In the winter of 1761, another Ojibwa chief named Wawatam, adopted Henry as a brother. Between 1762 and 1763, Henry did business in Sault Ste Marie, where he formed friendships with Jean Baptiste Cadot Sr., and Sir Robert Davers. When the Ojibwe warriors attacked Fort Michilimackinac, Davers was killed, and Henry was captured. Henry was taken to Mackinac and ended up as a possession of the Ojibwe leader Minavavana. Wawatam ensured Henry’s protection by taking him in to live with him for nearly one year, where Henry followed Wawatam and his family on their seasonal hunting and fishing moves in lower Michigan. In 1765, Henry acquired a license to trade in the Lake Superior region and in 1767 to 1768, he wintered on the Michipicoten River and formed a partnership with Sir William Johnson and others, forming a company to mine silver found in copper ore on the shores of Lake Superior. Along with Cadot, Peter Pond, and brothers Thomas and Joseph Frobisher, Henry stopped at Cumberland House and built a trading post on Amisk Lake to challenge the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1776, Henry set off by foot to Fort à la Corne, following the Saskatchewan River. He purchased twelve-thousand additional beaver skins from the Chipewyan during a trip up the Churchill River. Henry returned to Montreal and gave the governor, Sir Guy Carleton, a large map of the western region through which he had travelled. He then sailed to England in the autumn of 1776 with a proposal for the Hudson’s Bay Company and then went to France where he was received by Marie-Antoinette in the French Court. In 1792, Henry and his nephew Alexander Henry the Younger obtained one share in the North West Company for six years. Four years later, he sold his interest to William Hallowell but continued to buy furs from traders to export to England. Henry served as captain in the militia and from 1794 to 1821 served as justice of the peace. In 1812, he was appointed vendue master and King’s Auctioneer for the district of Montreal. He wrote a memoir of his life titled Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories: Between 1760 and 1776, which he published in 1809.