Records of Orcadians who headed for Hudson’s Bay span over a century
Company’s enrolment papers gifted to Orkney Library archives
By Brian Flett
(From The Orcadian dated October 10, 2002)

Copies of the enrolment papers for every Orcadian who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1780-1911 have just been gifted to the archive department of the Orkney Library.

The records, which span more than a century, are contained on 34 rolls of microfilm and have been sent across from the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives based at Winnipeg in Manitoba.

The main point of contact between the Canadian authorities and Orkney is local assistant archivist, Mr Phil Astley.

He spent six weeks in Manitoba last year carrying out research into the role that Orcadians played in the development of the Hudson’s Bay Company and, consequently, the opening up of Canada.

Mr Astley told The Orcadian: “One of the really interesting things about the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives is that they are regarded as archives of the nation of Canada, because it was so fundamental in the opening up of the country. The company is the largest corporate landowner the world has ever known. They had trading posts right up into the Arctic and throughout Canada, but also all along the western seaboard of the United States, even in Hawaii.

Assistant archivist at the Orkney Library, Phil Astley, examines one of the 34 rolls of microfilm which have been gifted to Orkney by the Hudson's Bay Company Archives containing the enrolment contracts for more than 10,000 individuals who signed up to work for the company between 1780 and 1911, many of whom were Orcadian. (www.orkneyphotographic.co.uk)

“These records give a complete run of the servants who worked for the company from the late 18th century to the early 20th century at a time when a lot of Orcadians joined up. The contract documents show the names of the persons who signed up and a lot of them give the name of the farm or place that they came from in Orkney. The standard length of a contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company was for five years, but quite often people stayed on longer. The contracts also indicate what duty the person had signed up for.”

Phil Astley added that he had already copied quite a few documents from Orkney for the Provincial Archives in Manitoba, including a series of journals or diaries of J. W. Sinclair who had worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company on Baffin Island in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s.

He said that he was also in the process of writing something for the Hudson’s Bay Archives website about the connections with Orkney.

One example he used to illustrate the details contained in the archive involved a Mr John Pottinger from St Ola who had signed a contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1862, in the office of their agent in Stromness, Mr Edward Clouston. Mr Pottinger had signed on as a labourer for five years, for which he would be paid the sum of £22 Sterling (vastly more than a farm labourer could expect for the same period of service). The contract was countersigned by two witnesses. Instructions were that Mr Pottinger should report to the Hudson’s Bay headquarters in Canada – York Factory – and proceed from there as directed.

The unusual thing about this document is that there is a caveat, on the outside, stating that “This John Pottinger, having refused to obey orders when lawfully given, do hereby agree to cancel the foregoing contract and renounce all claim for wages.”

Phil Astley explained that he was not aware of the circumstances of the cancellation of the contract. He suggested that it could have resulted from the person deciding not to go to Canada in the first place or not observing the terms of his contract while there.

He said: “The thing that strikes you when you look through these contracts is that the bulk of the Orcadians who went out, signed up as labourers, which meant that they were doing the donkey work of the company. Occasionally you come across a clerk, blacksmith or cooper, who attracted considerably higher fees, and the very great exception was the likes of John Rae, who signed up as a surgeon.

“The other interesting thing to note from some of the contracts, is that the occasional placenames of farms or crofts in Orkney have since disappeared. From examination of the Fur Trading Post Journals or daily diaries of the various trading centres, it is very obvious that many Orcadians were out trading with the Indians, and in certain cases they picked up more than furs, when you read accounts of men contracting venereal disease.

“They were usually away for months during the summer on their expeditions. But they wintered in the trading posts themselves. During this period we have the records of people like Alexander Kennedy and James Sutherland, both from St Margaret’s Hope, who rose to rank of Chief Factor with the Hudson’s Bay Company which means that they were very senior administrators.”

Phil Astley explained that the most famous Orcadian to join the Hudson’s Bay Company and rise up through its ranks to become its York Factory Governor and Chief, Inland, was Mr William Tomison from South Ronaldsay. But he pointed out that Mr Tomison who left a legacy to endow the formation of a school in his name in the South Parish of South Ronaldsay, signed up and made his fortune in the Nor’ Wast in the 1760s, prior to the date of these records.

The 34 rolls of microfilm contain the contracts for every employee of the company, which Phil Astley says, “included not just Orcadians, but many French Canadians, Norwegians, people from the Western Isles and some Shetlanders – among them Isaac Cowie who wrote a detailed account of his time with the Hudson’s Bay Company in a book called The Company of Adventurers.”

He added: “It is very useful to have these records here, so that anyone with a Hudson’s Bay connection can look it up in the archives in Kirkwall, rather than having to access that information in Canada. We can also copy off the details for them. If they want further information on the kind of work that individual traders were involved in, they can request copies of the Fur Trading Post Journals on an inter-library loan from Canada.

“The gift of these archive records will certainly raise the profile of the Hudson’s Bay Company connection with Orkney. Since I began my research into the subject, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of inquiries from members of the public in Orkney and from people in Canada. I hope to continue the work I started last year creating a ‘finding aid’ for these archives. The surnames are all listed alphabetically, but I want to narrow that down – so that someone who wants to search for a particular name and knows roughly the dates that they served with the Hudson’s Bay Company, can go straight to their details, without having to trawl through the whole of that letter of the alphabet.”

Anyone wishing to view the Hudson’s Bay Company contracts on microfilm should contact Phil Astley at the archive department of the Orkney Library in Laing Street, Kirkwall, telephone him on 01856 873166 or e-mail him on phil.astley@orkney.gov.uk.

Orkney archivist Phil Astley recalls his six weeks spent in Winnipeg researching the goldmine of information at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives