Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57
This collection of correspondence – letters sent to Hudson’s Bay Company men by their families and loved ones but never delivered – offers a rare and human history of ordinary people, many of whom were the early settlers of the Pacific Northwest.
Description
In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson’s Bay Company sent men to its furthest posts along the coast of North America’s Pacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for those men followed them in the Company’s supply ships. Sometimes, these letters missed their objects – the men had returned to Britain, or deserted their ships, or died. The Company returned the correspondence to its London office and over the years amassed a file of “undelivered letters.” Many of these remained sealed for 150 years and until they were opened by archivist Judith Hudson Beattie, when the Company archives were moved to Canada.
Reviews
Within this volume reside the biographies of numerous ordinary men who performed mostly mundane tasks, and occasionally extraordinary feats, in the service of the fur-trading merchant adventurers ... The letters are often written by women - wives, mothers and sisters - who faced enormous hardships and performed no less daunting feats to better themselves and preserve their families. Together, their stories afford an unprecedented glimpse into the worlds, new and old, in which they lived.
- John Geiger
While revealing impressive details about the lives of men living and working in Canada for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the mid 1800s, the letters also contain vivid details of the lives of the people left behind.
- Lynne Stefanchuk
In their relentless search for authenticity, coauthors Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen Buss have struck the motherlode ... It ought to become the template for similar collections of unclaimed letters from other HBC districts in other times.
Judith Hudson Beattie and Helen M. Buss bring to readers what has been unread for more than a century and a half. The letters offer an unusual look at a broad spectrum of lives, largely from the perspective of the women who remained behind. At turns vivid and poignant, the writings are a powerful invocation of the past.
- The Beaver, December 2002/January 2003