Simon McTavish

Simon McTavish
the Marquis
Born	c. 1750 Strath Errick, Scotland
Died	1804-07-06 Montreal, Lower Canada
Occupation	Fur trader, merchant, seigneur
Father	John McTavish
Partner	Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez

Simon McTavish (c. 1750 – 6 July 1804), nicknamed "the Marquis" by contemporaries, was a Scottish-born fur merchant and the dominant figure in the North West Company during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As the head of McTavish, he directed the reorganization and expansion of the NWC across the continent, including overseeing the company's costly relocation of its interior headquarters from Grand Portage to Kaministiquia — the site of present-day Thunder Bay — completed in 1803.

Early life

McTavish was born around 1750 in Strath Errick, Scotland, into a poor family. His father, John McTavish, served as a lieutenant in the 78th Foot Highland regiment and was stationed at Louisbourg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) when New France fell; he returned to Scotland following the regiment's demobilization in 1763. Simon emigrated to New York while still young and found employment with a local merchant, beginning his apprenticeship in commerce.

By 1771, McTavish had established his own business and petitioned the governor of New York for a 2,000-acre land grant in Albany County on his father's behalf. The following year he was at Detroit, where he formed a commercial partnership with William Edgar, one of the region's most important merchants. In 1773 he traded in the Niagara area. When the Quebec Act passed in December 1774, he wrote that the legislation would be "of infinite hurt to our Trade" and began contemplating a move from New York and Albany to Montreal.

Career in the fur trade

Early partnerships (1775–1779)

Economic considerations, accelerated by the political upheaval of the American Revolution, drew McTavish to Montreal. In 1775 he was at Detroit; in June 1776 his partner James Bannerman noted he had departed Michilimackinac for Grand Portage. By mid-August 1776 McTavish had returned to Michilimackinac and organized a new expedition with George McBeath as partner. By late September that year he was back in Montreal, preparing a cargo of pelts valued at approximately £15,000 for shipment to London, where he traveled to sell them and to visit Scotland, financing secondary education for nephews including Duncan McGillivray and William McGillivray.

The Bannerman partnership proved substantial: in 1777 alone they fitted out 27 bateaux, hired 108 men, and purchased trade goods worth £15,800; in 1778 they outfitted 8 canoes and 30 bateaux, engaged 178 men, and allocated £9,500 in goods. Bannerman retired at the end of the 1779 season.

Formation of the North West Company (1779–1787)

McTavish recognized that the fur trade's future lay in the northwest. His meeting with Benjamin Frobisher and Joseph Frobisher proved decisive. In 1779, a coalition comprising the Frobishers, McTavish, Charles Paterson, James McGill, Isaac Todd, Robert Grant, and others of secondary rank formalized into what became the North West Company.

By 1783 the Frobisher–McTavish group held 6 of the NWC's 16 shares. Benjamin Frobisher remained the company's leading mind at this stage, but his death in April 1787 created an opening. McTavish moved quickly: on 22 April 1787 he proposed amalgamating his firm with Joseph Frobisher's, and Frobisher accepted. McTavish then traveled to Grand Portage, where tensions had risen following the murder of John Ross, a partner in the rival Gregory, MacLeod and Company. At Grand Portage he proposed a NWC reorganization that incorporated the Gregory, MacLeod partners on terms highly favorable to the NWC.

When the firm of McTavish, Frobisher and Company was founded in November 1787, it controlled 11 of the NWC's 20 shares outright or through allied partners, while Gregory, MacLeod, Normand MacLeod, Peter Pangman, and Alexander Mackenzie together received only 4 shares. This reorganization eliminated hinterland opposition and established McTavish as the effective director of the NWC.

Leadership and expansion (1787–1804)

As the NWC's controlling firm, McTavish, Frobisher handled financing, the importing of trade goods, the hiring of men, and the external sale of pelts — a role previously played by the Frobishers. McTavish also established a London house, McTavish, Fraser and Company, managed by his cousin John Fraser, to handle fur sales, purchasing, shipping insurance, and credit on the other side of the Atlantic. By 1793–94, McTavish, Fraser's annual turnover on which both partners drew commission amounted to £311,400.

From around 1790, with European markets disrupted by the French Revolutionary Wars, the NWC began directing furs toward China, collaborating with Alexander Henry in Montreal and John Jacob Astor in New York. Initial shipments used American vessels; by 1798 the company had purchased the ship Northern Liberties (340 tons) and had the Nancy built for this trade. Shipment costs grew from £13,484 in 1792 to £22,824 in 1794.

The NWC underwent five major reorganizations between 1790 and 1804. The number of shares grew from 20 in 1787 to 46 in 1795 and 100 in 1804, partly to absorb opposition, partly as a mechanism for internal promotion. McTavish, Frobisher and Company's share grew correspondingly, from 7 of 20 in 1787 to 75 of 100 in 1804.

Explorations carried out under NWC auspices responded directly to the fur economy's need for new territory. Alexander Mackenzie's descent of the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean in 1789 and his overland crossing to the Pacific in 1793 served the company's production requirements, as did David Thompson's journeys to the Rocky Mountains in 1800 and toward the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811.

Move to Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay)

Grand Portage, on the southwest shore of Lake Superior, served as the NWC's key interior meeting place and transit point for decades. After Jay's Treaty of 1794 made American control of the Great Lakes posts a certainty, the company began planning a relocation of its rendezvous post to Kaministiquia — the site of present-day Thunder Bay, Ontario — which lay on British territory north of the border. The move was completed in 1803 at an estimated cost of more than £10,000, reflecting the central logistical importance the post held for the entire continental operation.

Competition and the XY Company

McTavish regarded all competition as damaging, not merely to his firm but to the fur trade as a whole. When the Ellice–Forsyth–Richardson group sought a share in a NWC reorganization anticipated for 1795 and was offered only two shares — which it declined — the outcome was the founding of the rival New North West Company (the XY Company) in 1798, backed by John Ogilvy, Daniel Sutherland, and Alexander Mackenzie. Mackenzie had served the NWC since the 1787 amalgamation but had grown frustrated with McTavish and William McGillivray over the company's direction; he joined the opposition. By 1804, after spending an estimated £70,000 in the contest, the XY Company accepted McGillivray's amalgamation terms, and Mackenzie was excluded from the reunited firm.

McTavish also sought to pressure the Hudson's Bay Company directly. In 1791 he petitioned Prime Minister William Pitt to rescind the HBC charter, without success. In September 1803, two NWC expeditions — one overland from Montreal, one by sea — met at Charlton Island in James Bay and took possession of it in the NWC's name. The rivalry between the two companies did not end until 1821, when the HBC absorbed the NWC.

Seigneurial and business interests

In 1802, with land values rising, McTavish acquired 11,500 acres in Chester Township and purchased the seigneury of Terrebonne near Montreal for £25,000. He operated a store and two flour-mills, built a bakery producing biscuit for the northwest trade, established a sawmill, and encouraged barrel manufacturing. His grain dealings brought him into contact with Montreal exporters and merchants including Louis Dunière, Jacob Jordan, Henry Caldwell, and Robert Lester.

In 1799, separately from these commercial acquisitions, he bought back the ancestral McTavish estate of Dunardary in Argyllshire, Scotland, which had for generations been home to the chief of the McTavish clan.

Personal life

In October 1793, McTavish married Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez, the 18-year-old daughter of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Chaboillez. The couple had four children, all of whom died in their twenties. At the time of his marriage McTavish purchased the house on Rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Montreal in which he had been living as a tenant for a decade. He held a lieutenant's commission in the British Militia of the Town and Banlieu of Montreal from 1788 until around 1794, and in 1796 received a commission as justice of the peace for the District of Montreal, renewed in 1799. His elegance, personality, and shrewdness earned him the nickname "the Marquis" from his contemporaries.

Death

McTavish died on 6 July 1804 in Montreal, shortly before completion of a large house he had begun building there. His estate was valued at more than £125,000. His will recorded close ties with the wider McTavish clan and expressed his continued regard for former partners Joseph Frobisher, John Gregory, and James Hallowell. He bequeathed £700 to his physician George Selby and Selby's son, and gave £2,000 to the Hôtel-Dieu and the Hôpital Général de Montréal. His nephew William McGillivray succeeded him as head of the NWC.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography