Person

McLoughlin, John, 1784-1857

1784-1857

John McLoughlin was born in 1784 near Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, and died in 1857 in Oregon City (Oregon). His parents were John McLoughlin, an Irish-born farmer, and Angelique Fraser (1759-1842), and he was the second of their seven children. Around 1810, McLoughlin married Marguerite Waddens (c.1775-1860) “a la façon du pays,” who was a mixed Cree woman and the widow of Alexander McKay (c.1770-1811). They had four children named John Jr. (1812), Eliza (c.1814), Marie Eloisa (1817), and David (1821). They were formally married on November 19, 1842, in Fort Vancouver by the Roman Catholic missionary Francois-Norbert Blanchet. McLoughlin had another son named Joseph with an unknown Ojibwa woman shortly before 1810. McLoughlin was fourteen years old when he decided to study medicine and began an apprenticeship with Dr. James Fisher of Quebec and was granted a license to practice in Lower Canada in 1803. Also in 1803, he signed an agreement with McTavish, Frobisher and Company to serve as a physician and apprentice clerk for five years. McLoughlin was sent to the North West Company depot in Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay, Ontario). He moved to Rainy Lake in 1806 and built a post at Sturgeon Lake in the Nipigon department in 1807. In 1814, McLoughlin became a wintering partner for the North West Company and was stationed in the Lac la Pluie district, but moved to Fort William (formerly Kaministiquia) one year later. In 1815, a crisis between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company developed around the Red River (Manitoba) settlement established by Lord Selkirk (1771-1820, Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk), where McLoughlin was arrested for his military occupation of Fort William. The four partners arrested were all acquitted at their trials in York (Toronto) in October 1818, and their trials are known as one of the most controversial series of trials in Canadian legal history. McLoughlin continued to be stationed at Fort William after the trial, until he had been taken ill and went to stay with his brother David in Paris from 1821 to 1822. In 1822 and 1823, McLoughlin was appointed chief factor of the Rainy Lake District and was assigned to the district depot in Fort George (Astoria, Oregon) in 1824. From 1824 to 1846, he was chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Columbia district, where he oversaw a domain that stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, between Alaska and California. He spent the last few years of his life in Oregon City, where he was an active merchant and mill owner, and engaged in lumber export trade and other commodities. McLoughlin was mayor of Oregon City for a brief period. His home in Oregon City is now the McLoughlin House Museum and he was one of the two pioneers chosen to represent Oregon in the National Hall of Statuary in the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Revised on June 11, 2024, by Leah Louttit-Bunker

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mcloughlin_john_8E.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McLoughlin https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/mcloughlin_john/