Christian Jacob Wachter was born about 1780 in Biessenhofen, Thurgau, Switzerland. In 1813 he arrived in Canada with the regiment de Meurons as part of the British army. In 1816, the regiment was disbanded and Wachter was one of the soldiers engaged by Lord Selkirk to accompany him to Red River. They left Montreal in 1816, spent the winter at the Northwest Company’s Fort William, and arrived at the colony in 1817.
Wachter remained at the settlement and received a grant of land. His name is on a list of settlers of 1818 as a household of one. In 1820 he married Marie Cadieux who had come to Red River from Lower Canada in 1813. A surveyor’s list in 1822-1823 shows Wachter’s lot on the east side of the river.
On 28 November 1822, Christian Wachter and 28 former de Meurons signed a petition titled The Petition of the Meuron Soldiers, Settled in Red River. Wachter signed with an ‘X’. The petition was presented to Andrew Bulger, Governor of Assiniboine. The men requested their passage home or the means of ‘removing ourselves & families to the United States of America’.
The couple had five children at the settlement although two died very young. The family left Red River about 1828 and eventually settled on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Christian and his son Charles were among the first commercial fishermen in the area. Christian died in 1854 and Marie in 1883.