Anderson, Alexander Caulfield

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Anderson, Alexander Caulfield

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  • Anderson, Alexander
  • Anderson, Alexander C.

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Dates of existence

March 10, 1814 - May 8, 1884

History

Alexander Caulfield Anderson was a Hudson's Bay Co. (HBC) fur-trader and civil servant. He was born March 10, 1814 near Calcutta, India, the son of Robert Anderson and Eliza Charlotte Simpson, and diedMay 8, 1884 at Saanich, near Victoria, BC. Alexander Caulfield Anderson’s father, a retired British army officer, operated an indigo plantation in Bengal. He prospered, returned to England in 1817, and settled in Essex, where his sons received a good education. In March 1831, Alexander joined the HBC; his initial contract was for five years at an annual salary that increased progressively from £20 to £50. He sailed for Canada in April, accompanied by an older brother, James, who had also joined the HBC.
Alexander spent his first year of service at Lachine, Lower Canada. In November, 1832, he was sent to Fort Vancouver and the following year he was second in command of the party that built Fort McLoughlin (Bella Bella, B.C.). In 1834, he was with Peter Skene Ogden when the company’s attempt to establish a post on the Stikine River was blocked by the Russians. The next year, Ogden took charge of New Caledonia, the HBC department encompassing present-day north central British Columbia, and Alexander was also transferred to that district, spending the next five years there. His first assignment, which was to cross the Rockies to Jasper House, meet a party of new recruits, and bring back 40 packs of moose skins needed for shoe leather, nearly ended in tragedy. An early onset of winter forced the party to return to Jasper House, and a shortage of provisions there made a further retreat to Edmonton House (Edmonton) necessary. Anderson was severely criticized by some in the company for his management of the party, but an investigation exonerated him from all blame for its misfortunes. In 1836, he took charge of the post on Fraser Lake where he remained until 1839. He was then stationed for a year at Fort George (Prince George, B.C.), after which he returned to Fort Vancouver. In 1840–41 he took temporary charge of Fort Nisqually (Wash.) and was there when the exploring expedition under Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy visited the post in May 1841 in the course of its survey of Puget Sound and the Columbia valley. In 1842 Anderson commanded the annual brigade to York Factory (Man.), and on his return was appointed to Fort Alexandria on the Fraser River, where he was based until 1848. On August 21, 1837, he had married Eliza Birnie, daughter of an HBC clerk, James Birnie; they would have 13 children. Birnie had retired to Cathlamet (Wash.) on the lower Columbia, and the Andersons settled nearby.

Anderson is now best remembered as leader of three exploring expeditions carried out in 1846–47. Anderson's great achievement was finding a good trail to the Cariboo from the coast. On the way he met "Blackeye" a First Nations man who gave important help by guiding Anderson's party north to Kamloops. Anderson did his exploring years before anybody knew there was gold, in 1846 and 1847, but when the gold rush started his good friend Governor James Douglas sent him back to the Cariboo to turn his route into a proper trail for the miners - this became known as the Douglas Trail. In 1876 he was appointed dominion inspector of fisheries with jurisdiction over British Columbia coastal and inland waters. The same year, the federal government asked him to act as its member on a dominion-provincial joint commission on Indian land in British Columbia. This proved a frustrating assignment for Anderson, because the efforts of the commission to delimit Indian reserves were defeated by the hostility of the provincial government. The appointment ended in 1878. In 1882, when travelling on fisheries business, he was forced by an accident to spend a night on a sand-bar. He suffered severely from exposure and never fully recovered his health. Anderson went on to work as the first Collector of Customs in Victoria, and in his spare time he wrote and published a Hand-book and map to the gold region of Frazer's and Thompson's rivers in 1858 to help the miners use his trail, and included some "Chinook jargon" to help them communicate with the First Nations people they would meet.

He died at the age of seventy, soon after travelling as Inspector of Fisheries to find a site for a salmon hatchery on the Fraser River. Anderson is commemorated in the naming of Anderson Lake in BC, the Anderson River (a small tributary of the Fraser), and Anderson Island, in Puget Sound near Nisqually.

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India
England
British Columbia

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HBC Fur-trader
Inspector of Fisheries

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IN-AAC001

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Revised July 2018.

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