James Hargrave

James Hargrave
Born	1798-11-19 Hawick, Scotland
Died	1865-05-16 Brockville, Canada West
Occupation	Chief factor, Hudson's Bay Company
Father	Joseph Hargrave
Mother	Jane Melrose
Partner	Letitia Mactavish Margaret Alcock

James Hargrave ((1798-11-19)19 November 1798 – 16 May 1865(1865-05-16) (aged 66)) was a Scottish-born Hudson's Bay Company chief factor who spent the bulk of his career at York Factory and passed through Fort William during the pivotal merger of the fur-trade companies in 1821.

Early life

Hargrave was born on 19 November 1798 in Hawick, Scotland, the son of Joseph Hargrave and Jane Melrose. He received his education at Fysshe's Academy in Galashiels, and after completing his studies at around age eighteen he taught school in a nearby village for a brief period before emigrating.

Fur trade career

Hargrave arrived in Canada in 1820 and entered the service of the North West Company, being posted as an apprentice clerk at Sault Ste Marie in 1820–21. In the spring of 1821 he traveled to Fort William, where he came to the attention of John George McTavish, a senior officer of the North West Company. That same year the union of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company was concluded, and Hargrave was retained in HBC service as a clerk, assigned to York Factory under McTavish's direction.

Between 1823 and 1827 he was stationed in the Lower Red River District, travelling annually with the brigades to York Factory. From 1827 he was permanently based at York Factory, serving successively as clerk, warehouse manager, and shopkeeper. Governor George Simpson noted his sound commercial judgment and upright conduct, though Simpson also observed that Hargrave lacked proficiency in Indigenous languages and had a reputation among colleagues for a somewhat sour disposition. In January 1833 Hargrave secured a chief tradership and assumed management of the post; he was formally given charge of the York Factory District in 1835.

In 1837 Hargrave took a year's furlough to Scotland, where he met Letitia Mactavish, the sister of William Mactavish and Dugald Mactavish, both HBC officers. Recalled unexpectedly to York Factory in early 1838, he returned to Scotland in the autumn of 1839. On 8 January 1840 he and Letitia were married, and he brought her to York Factory on the annual supply ship later that year. Four children were born to them at York Factory, including a son, Joseph James Hargrave, who later became a historian of the Red River settlement. Hargrave was promoted to the rank of chief factor in 1844 after nearly a decade managing the post.

Throughout this period Hargrave was frustrated by Governor Simpson's repeated refusals to allow him to attend the annual Council of the Northern Department at Norway House, Manitoba. He was permitted to attend only once, in 1846, during a furlough taken partly because his wife's health was failing. He placed his son Joseph James in school in Scotland at this time, and the family returned to York Factory in the summer of 1847.

The late 1840s brought further difficulties: a shortage of trained staff, heavy orders from the Red River colony, and the loss of the supply ship Graham in 1849. In the summer of 1851 Hargrave relinquished York Factory to William Mactavish and traveled overland to Sault Ste Marie, where he took up the post of supply depot manager for the Lake Huron and Lake Superior districts. His wife joined him there in the summer of 1852.

Later life

Letitia Hargrave died suddenly in September 1854, and the youngest of their children died only a few months later. Hargrave left Sault Ste Marie in the summer of 1855 for Scotland, seeking extended leave, but Governor Simpson judged him the only officer capable of replacing the ailing William Mactavish at York Factory and refused to grant further leave. Hargrave accordingly returned to York Factory in 1856.

He officially retired from the HBC on 1 June 1859, following a final year's leave spent in Scotland. During that same furlough, in June 1859, he married Margaret Alcock in Scotland. After spending approximately a year in Toronto the couple settled at Burnside House, Brockville, in Canada West. Hargrave died there on 16 May 1865 and was buried in St James' Cemetery in Toronto, beside his first wife.

Legacy

Hargrave was a prolific correspondent throughout his career, and his letter books and personal papers — running to some twenty-six volumes — constitute one of the richest documentary records of life in the interior HBC trade during the mid-nineteenth century. He was devout in his religious convictions and, unlike many contemporaries in the fur trade, declined to form a domestic union with a Indigenous woman, insisting on a formal Christian marriage. His son Joseph James Hargrave drew on the family's experience at Red River to write a history of that settlement.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography