James Anderson

James Anderson, born 1775 in Orkney(1), came to Rupert’s Land as a Hudson’s Bay Company servant in 1796 and was employed as a tailor during his years of service with the Company. His first posting was at Churchill and from there he went to the Albany district and later to Brandon House.  In 1823, he left the Company service and settled with his family at Red River.

James’s ‘country wife’ was an Indian woman known as Mary(2). It is commonly held that Mary was a woman from the Brandon House area. This seems plausible as HBC Chaplain John West described her as a Saulteaux woman when he solemnized their marriage at Brandon House. In their applications for scrip, her children described her as an Indian woman. Her son Caleb’s application stated that she was Cree.

John Walsh

John Walsh and his wife Honora (Healy) arrived at the settlement in 1812 with the first group of settlers. There is no extant passenger list of the Robert Taylor, but Owen Keveny sent a list of settlers and servants to Lord Selkirk. The Walshes were recorded as being from Sligo, Ireland, and John’s age as 22. (1)

The 1812 group spent the winter at Pembina, where they established Fort Daer, and by summer 1813 Walsh had decided that life at Red River was not for him. In July 1813, Miles Macdonell wrote Lord Selkirk relating the many problems he was facing at the settlement, including the information that John Walsh had deserted to the North West Company. John Wills, one of the partners of the NWC on his way to Fort William, had taken Walsh into his canoe and engaged him for the NWC.

JAMES GADDY

James Gaddy was born about 1774 in St. Ola, Orkney. He entered the service of the HBC in 1791 and the Company accounts show that he began his service as a labourer in the York Factory inland district. Beginning in 1794, he worked in the Company canoes for 10 years and then returned home. He rejoined the Company in 1896 as a labourer in York Factory, inland district, where he attained the rank of Assistant Trader by 1811. According to the Company records, he retired to the Colony in 1823.

During his years with the HBC, James Gaddy and his “country wife”, an Indian woman known as Mary, had four children (Isabella, James, William, and John) who came with him to Red River. The children were baptised at the settlement in 1822, so it seems that the family were in Red River a year earlier than the HBC records shows. A son Charles was baptized in 1824.

Mary died in January 1833 and later that year James married Angelique Beaulieu (country marriage), with whom he had one son, Alexander. James drowned at the settlement in July 1833 and Alexander was born after his death. Angelique died in the Moose Jaw area in 1870.