Henry Anderson

Unidentified Anderson-Seton descendants — certainly not Henry Anderson and Hannah Renouf!

What do I write about today? The constant question, asked and answered every week!

While combing through my HBC Brigade files to find a subject that I have not yet covered, I ran across my Fraser’s Lake file, which had Henry Anderson listed as clerk-in-charge. Henry [called Harry by his family] was the son of Alexander Caulfield Anderson, and he was postmaster of that tiny fort between 1881 and 1883, according to the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives.

Henry Anderson was born at Fort Alexandria in 1843, and grew up both at Fort Colvile (1848-1851), and at Cathlamet, Washington, from 1851 to 1858. Family stories say that a very young Henry Anderson rode away from Cathlamet to join the American Army at Fort Steilacoom, and that his father had to ride after him to have him released. He was only fifteen years old when Anderson brought his family north to Fort Victoria, and so this occurred when Henry Anderson was only a teenager! Apparently he was always known as a draft-dodger after that adventure — but perhaps only by the American gold miners who he would meet many years later, when he was Constable Henry Anderson of the B.C. Police. 

James Robert Anderson remembers his younger brother, Henry Anderson, as he travelled on the two-stage journey from Fort Alexandria to Kamloops and on to Fort Colvile in 1848. “My sister [Eliza] and myself rode our own horses beside Mr. [Donald] Manson’s eldest daughter; my brother Harry, two years younger, also rode along, but firmly strapped to the saddle, he being but five years old and personally attended by Tout Laid, the native of ugly countenance previously referred to. [Tout Laid translates as “all ugly,” and it is the name given him by the Canadiens. Ugly or not, Tout Laid was a good-natured and trusted servant to the Anderson family at Fort Alexandria.] Now Tout Laid, in his imperfect French jargon, would every now and then, when he thought occasion demanded it, caution Harry in the following terms “Tiens bien toujours mon Harry,” pronounced in his patois “Cha ban toujours mon Hallie,” and Harry, always short of temper, would turn upon Tout Laid and say “Tais toi donc Tout Laid.” On one such occasion, when the trail took us down to the very beach of Kamloops Lake [where they could see the rainbow colours of the batholithic rocks at the Painted Bluffs], Harry in turning upon his attendant, was swept off his horse by the overhanging branch of a tree…”

The phrase, “always short of temper,” describes Harry Anderson perfectly!

Henry Anderson worked on the Anderson’s farm in North Saanich from 1859 to sometime in the 1860s, and may have been involved in the family’s general store in Victoria: the Anderson Bros. store. He was stabbed by a First Nations farm worker employed by his father on the farm, and almost immediately after, in 1868, he left Victoria and joined the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was working at Fraser’s Lake, according to James Robert Anderson’s journal. In 1876, A.C. Anderson’s letter to his own brother, William, indicates that “Harry is still in the Caribou.” [The spelling is his, I think]. 

However, the 1881 directory shows Henry Anderson in the Omineca, apparently mining for gold. In 1882 Henry ordered goods from Fort St. James: and it does not appear that he was an employee of the company, but a private citizen [but he must have been working for the company. Did he represent the company in the Omineca, perhaps?]. That same year Henry gifted his brother, James Robert Anderson, a hunting bag as a Christmas present. 

In 1883, Henry Anderson returned to Victoria after an absence of fifteen years: James said they were “quite strangers.” In a letter to his brother William, A.C. Anderson said that Henry was in Victoria and until last summer [1883?] had the charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Fraser’s Lake, but was now temporarily employed in the Land Office in Victoria. Did Henry leave Fraser’s Lake permanently, or was he on furlough? He was still in Victoria when his father died in April, 1884. However, in 1885, Henry Anderson was again in charge of the Fraser’s Lake post, apparently just before it was closed for two years. 

When did Henry and his soon-to-be wife, Hannah Renouf, meet and marry? According to James Robert Anderson’s journal, Hannah arrived at Victoria by ship in 1881 — she was the sister of his good friend. She would have met Henry Anderson in 1883, but she did not marry him then. If he was in the HBC trade for the closure of the Fraser’s Lake post, he must have returned there and remained there until 1887.

Clearly, he did not do that. Like his brother, Walter Birnie Anderson, Henry Anderson joined the fledgling British Columbia Police force, and was sent to Kootenay Lake as a Constable in 1884. In fact, my notes say that Walter was offered the Kootenay position, but that Henry Anderson took it.

The story of this year is a a long story that ends with the well-known murder at the Bluebell Mine, where on June 1, 1885, an American miner named Robert Sproule picked up his gun and shot the man (Thomas Hammill)  who he considered was stealing his mine. Hammill died a particularly painful death, with a shattered spine, while Sproule, thinking it safer to return to American territory, made his way south through the brush toward the boundary line and Idaho. (One report says he used a rowboat to get to the south end of the lake, but I don’t think that was true.)

As soon as the murder was discovered, someone summoned Constable Henry Anderson, and he set off in pursuit of Sproule by rowboat or canoe down the lake. The posse waited for the American at the bottom of the lake, and three days later, Sproule walked out of the brush and into their hands. Anderson transported him to Victoria where he was incarcerated in Victoria’s filthy jail. James Anderson’s journal notes that Henry had arrived in Victoria for a visit on November 18, 1885: that would be when he brought the prisoner in for trial. Sproule was tried for the murder and found guilty, and was eventually hung on October 29, 1886. In spite of the fact that he was just doing his job, Constable Henry Anderson was bullied and downright persecuted by the American miners, both in the Kootenays and in Victoria. Sadly, the fact that he was Métis, and his assistants were Ktuxana, may have had something to do with that! 

Now, Wild Horse Creek: in 1863, a ferocious gold rush had ensued at Wild Horse Creek, and hundreds of Americans had come north to find gold. They stayed there. In August 1884, two miners, Matt Hylton, and Bill Kemp, were murdered, and Henry investigated the case, although without much success. Three years later, in March 1887, the distinctive saddle of one of the murdered miners was seen in the possession of two Ktuxana men: Kapula; and Little Isadore. Henry Anderson arrested Kapula and threw him into the Wild Horse jail. An insulted and infuriated Chief Isadore [no relation to Little Isadore] rode into Wild Horse with twenty-five Ktuxana men stripped and dressed for war, and after frightening the jailer, Fred Aylmer, into releasing Kapula, rode on to Galbraith’s Ferry and ordered both Henry Anderson and Aylmer to vacate the area. They were also encouraged to leave by the other residents in the area, and so they did, and Henry arrived in Victoria on April 24, 1887, by the Princess Louise. In short order, Henry Anderson travelled up to Salmon River [Comox?], and on May 14 he returned from Cape Mudge: he might have been on a visit to his brother, Walter Anderson, who was the B.C. Police officer in Comox at that time. 

That was not the end of the story: the news of the “Indian insurrection” spread until it reached the ears of the then Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. Macdonald ordered Superintendent Samuel Benfield Steele, from the North West Police post at Fort McLeod, to Wild Horse  Creek, and instructed him to settle the insurrection. On August 1, 1887, Steele and his 75 soldiers, plus officers, reached Galbraith’s Ferry and had the two Ktuxana men tried: both were released for lack of evidence. Henry Anderson was at Fort Steele when the charges were dismissed, and the photographs of Sam Steele arriving at the new location of Fort Steele, which are found in the B.C. Archives, were taken by him.

Steele went on to build the new North West Police fort of Fort Steele, and once again, Anderson had to find new employment. And to make matters worse (although I doubt Henry Anderson learned of this), Little Isadore actually confessed to a local historian, Clara Graham, that he and Kapula had ambushed and shot the two American miners. 

It is hard to know where Henry Anderson was in 1887, or what he was doing. James Robert Anderson’s journal tells us that he was travelling back and forth to Nanaimo: he may have been the temporary B.C. Police representative up there. In March, 1888, he was off to the Kootenays again, posted to Lower Kootenay Lake. He was in fact the newly arrived Constable at Nelson, and he applied for a quarter section of land near where the modern-day orange bridge stands in Nelson today. There he laid out a townsite that he called “Salisbury:” the property being on the south side of the west arm of Kootenay Lake. His surveyor was Charles Wesley Busk. Busk laid out the townsite of Salisbury at Henry’s expense, and also surveyed parts of William Adolph Baillie-Grohman’s grant. Henry’s piece of property was surveyed in August 1888, and the Land and Titles Map ST3, drawn by Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, shows the Anderson house standing where Fairview is today. Unfortunately, Sproat drew this map for himself: he had previously applied for ownership of the same piece of land, and through a clerical error had not been granted it before Anderson made his own claim. When that error was corrected, Anderson lost Salisbury to Sproat, and had to shelve his plans. 

In February 1889 Henry Anderson arrived in Victoria from the Kootenays. At the end of January, James “called on Aleck Davie (a lawyer-friend) but got no hope for Harry.” On May 19, 1889, Harry travelled back to the Kootenays, and in 1889-1890 is listed as mining recorder and constable: where I do not know. In the same year, he was invited to resign as Constable because of his real estate dabblings in Nelson: somehow he was now a partner in Gilbert Malcom Sproat’s company! In December, 1890, Harry arrived from the Kootenays and made his way to Chicago: and he returned from that city in February, 1891. Why?

 In May 1891, Harry is back in Victoria from the Kootenays, as James writes: “Harry is sulky & left the table without finishing breakfast.” He then “left my house… without a word, taking his things. He left in evening by Kingston, I believe. I think it cruel the way he has treated us.” And this is when Henry and Hannah were secretly married, according to James Robert Anderson’s journal: she travelled with him to the Kootenays. Harry and Hannah would both appear in the census for the Kootenay district, with Henry listed as a 47-year-old unemployed conveyancer, and Hannah as a 32-year-old cook. A year later he was listed as Municipal Clerk at Kaslo, with the responsibility of collecting delinquent property taxes — quite a comedown from being a Constable in the B.C. Police! 

In 1893 Henry was in town but did not visit his family. On November 6, 1893, he died suddenly in Kaslo, of an apparent strychnine poisoning (that is unproven), sometime after the death of his first child and before the birth of his second. On November 7, James Robert Anderson read the notice of Harry Anderson’s death in the newspapers. “Harry died today. Oh my brother, my brother — I only know by the papers.” On November 11 he wrote: “reached Kamloops about 4 when I heard of my poor brother Harry’s death, which by the papers we see took place on Tuesday last. He and I were life long friends until he got married & I cannot but feel that but for his wife he would not have parted from me in anger when I last saw him — my poor brother. I hope he gave me a kind thought as he passed away & that we shall meet again — no snow at Kamloops.”

So that was the sad life and death of a HBC fur trader. Two of Henry Anderson’s brothers traveled to Kaslo to settle his affairs. Walter Birnie Anderson returned to Victoria, but my grandfather, Arthur Beattie Anderson, remained in the Kootenays as a logger and miner for many years afterwards. 

Henry Anderson’s child was born after Henry’s death. Hannah ran a boarding house at Ainsworth Hotsprings, before moving on  to Calgary, where she worked as a nurse and married for the second time. Henry and Hannah Anderson’s son grew up to become a newspaperman who was quite well known in British Columbia — H.H.C “Torchy” Anderson. Henry Anderson’s home in Kaslo became the Mermaid Hotel, and it might still stand. 

Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved. 

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