Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/90

Rh Alexander Caulfield Anderson was born at Calcutta in India, in 1814, and educated in England. At about twenty years of age he entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Northwest Coast, but was not so much at Fort Vancouver as north of that fort. From his manuscript History of the Northwest Coast much valuable and interesting matter has been obtained.

Doctor Forbes Barclay came to Oregon in the service of the company in 1839, and remained at Fort Vancouver till 1850, when he became a resident of Oregon City and a naturalized American citizen. Barclay was a native of the Shetland Islands, and was born on Christmas-day, 1812. While but a lad after calling at the S. Islands, about August 1st. The apprentices were transferred to the Cadboro, for the coast—but all hands were ill with the ague (we called it). We had to go into tents in Baker's Bay. I was the last to fall ill, and was sent to Fort George when the ship sailed for the Northwest Coast. I went to Vancouver in February and assisted Douglas (Sir James), who was then a clerk on £100 a year. When the expedition to the Stikeen was fitted out in '34 I applied to join my school-mates, but on the return of the expedition, in the winter of '34–35, I had had enough of the sea, and resumed my former berth, though for one year I kept the school of some 50 Indian children—it must have been after S. H. Smith ran off with our old baker's Indian wife. I was then employed in the office and stores till Dr McLoughlin's departure for England, when Douglas assumed charge, and took me for aid instead of Mr Allan to oversee the men. We had about 100 to 150, sometimes 200, and I was the overseer. I continued in this with the exceptions of a month or two at Cowlitz farm in '39, Oregon City in '40, and Champoeg in '42. I left that season, November '42, for England, with Captain McNeill, as a passenger of course. The doctor and Douglas, then the board of management, read to me their public letter commending me to the governor and committee, and thoughtfully asking them to allow me to return if I was so disposed, breaking the rule of the service in my case—generally there was no return to the service. We reached London by way of the Islands, 10th of May '43. I was soon tired of home, where I was out of place and a nobody, and availing myself of the thoughtfulness of the doctor and Douglas, married my first cousin, Miss Martha Cable, of Aldborough, and sailed from Cowes, Isle of Wight, 5th of December, on board the bark Brothers, Captain Flere, a chartered ship; and arrived at the Islands in April, where we took as fellow-passenger Rev. George Gary, who was coming to settle up the Methodist Mission business after the death of Jason Lee. [Mr Gary set out before the death of Jason Lee.] We arrived safely at Vancouver in May '44. From thence on to December '46, I had charge of the company's depot, wholesale business, that is, I received and shipped all cargoes, kept separate account of each post and ship. I may say that up to that time I had a better acquaintance of all things at Vancouver than anybody else. I came young, soon learned French and Indian, knew where everything was, and everybody. I hardly think there was a book or paper that I hadn't fullest access to. I went to take charge of the Cowlitz farm in 1846. In '48 came the measles, and a scene of death; in '49 a typhoid or camp fever, of which my poor wife died in July '50. In '55 I married Miss Rose Birnie, of Aberdeen, Scotland.'