Dear Liza,
Fort Vancouver, Washington, is a historically accurate re-built fort that the Hudson’s Bay Company used as the hub of its fur trading network here in the northwest from 1825 to 1866. Seeing it again this week with a proper guide, I learned so much!
Britt, a wonderful Lone Fir volunteer who portrays “Bunko Kelly” on the Tour of Untimely Departures, had made the arrangements after learning that some folks connected to the Fort are buried right here in our own Lone Fir Cemetery.
Tammy Williams was our guide. She is so knowledgable and enthusiastic that she made the fort come alive! Her explanations of artifacts and the actual smells of the cookhouse let us feel the daily routines of trading pelts for goods, cooking for twenty people or more at a meal, and raising children of white, Indian, Hawaiian, and mixed lineage.
In particular, Tammy told us of Eloisa, one of Chief Factor John McLoughlin’s children. McLoughlin is often called the Father of Oregon for his running of Fort Vancouver in support of the American Pioneers who first came to Oregon.
Eloisa was born in Fort William, Ontario, while her father was stationed there. She was seven years old in 1824, when her family came to Fort Vancouver.
She married William Glen Rae, a man of violent temperament. They moved to Fort Stikene, Alaska, when William was assigned to the Hudson’s Bay Fort there. Eloisa hated the place, which was badly run and riddled with alcohol-fueled violence. She gave birth to her second child on the boat from Alaska back to Oregon.
William moved to another of the Company’s forts in Yerba Buena, what we call San Francisco. After her recuperation from childbirth, Eloisa and the children joined him.
Eloisa described Yerba Buena as a vibrant, interesting place. She saw bull and bear fights and partied with Spanish ladies and gentlemen.
William’s drinking and bad decision-making lead to his death by suicide, and widowed Eloisa and her children returned to Fort Vancouver. She re-married a manager of The Hudson Bay Company, Daniel Harvey, and had three more children. Sadly, Eloisa was a widow again at age fifty.
Eloisa’s life was exciting and tragic, full of experiences that were rare for women of her age, like traveling by steamship to Hawaii, and common, such as being widowed twice by age fifty. Eloisa passed away in 1884 at the age of 66, and is buried in our own Lone Fir Cemetery, alongside Daniel Harvey, Sr., and her sons Daniel Harvey, Jr., and James William McLoughlin Harvey. I will visit her next time I am in the neighborhood.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 