Peter Skene Ogden
A Sailing ship in a bottle, from early 1900’s
Peter Skene Ogden is the next gentleman to be placed in charge of Fort St. James, New Caledonia. He arrived at the post in 1835, but there is not a lot of information about him in Jamie Morton’s history of Fort St James, 1806-1914: A Century of Fur Trade on Stuart Lake, found at https://parkscanadahistory.com/series/mf/367.pdf Take a look at this manuscript, and for that matter, at the entire site. There is lots of information to be found there, but it is not a secure site.
There are many old trade journals that no longer exist, and the Fort St. James journals seemed to suffer losses of their records more than many other HBC posts. There is still lots to learn about the time in other resources, and I have most of the information but its scattered everywhere throughout my papers and it would take a long while to sort it all out. But I am doing that, and so you can follow along here for more information about Peter Skene Ogden in the years when he served as Chief Factor in charge of New Caledonia, and what happened to him on his way to this position.
So who is Peter Skene Ogden, and where did he come from? Peter Skene Ogden was baptized in Quebec, Lower Canada, in the year 1790. You can confirm this information for yourself in the PRDH — that is, the Progamme de Recherche en Démographic Historique (Research Program in Historical Demography), at https://prdh-igd.com This is, by the way, the best site for researching your Quebec-born ancestors, whether French or English. Although Peter Skene Ogden was generally the name he was known by, the name on his baptismal certificate was Peter Skeene Ogden. I don’t know who made the spelling error, because Peter’s godfather was a member of the Skene family in Montreal, and the English branch at least spelled their name Skene.
At the time of his birth, Peter’s father, the Honourable Issac Ogden, was a judge in the Admiralty Court at Quebec and a leading citizen among the United Empire Loyalists then residing in the city. Peter’s mother was Sarah Hanson, from Livingston Manor near New York City. Peter’s grandfather was Judge David Ogden, a graduate of Yale College and one of the most highly trained lawyers in the State of New Jersey. Most of the information I am giving you in this post came from T.C. Elliott’s article, “Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader,” published in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society in September, 1910. Its a good article, but he didn’t get everything correct (and who would, when it was written in 1910, long before the internet existed.)
The Ogden name was an old name both in England, and in the United States. The name was of Saxon origin and derived from the words “Ock” and “Dean,” meaning Oak Vale or Valley. Two branches of this family had long resided in the United States: the Fairfield branch in Connecticut, and the Elizabeth Town branch in New Jersey. Peter Skene Ogden was a descendant of the Elizabethtown Ogdens. John Ogden (the Pilgrim) had come from England about 1642, and settled at the easterly end of Long Island, where he founded the city of Southampton. John the Pilgrim then moved to New Jersey about 1668, where he and his family acquired land in what is now Elizabethtown and Newark. The family was one of the most prominent English families in the region at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775.
Peter Ogden’s father, Isaac Ogden, was likely born in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated in the first class that came out of King’s College (now Columbia University), and after his graduation he distinguished himself as a lawyer. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he supported the American side, but in 1776 he affiliated himself with the Royalists, according to T.C. Elliott. When the Americans turned against him (and the other Englishmen), he sought safety as a refugee in New York. When the British Army was chased out of New York in November 1783, he, too, took his family to England and abandoned his American properties.
The sacrifices that Isaac had made eventually drew the attention of the British government, who appointed him Judge of the Admiralty at Quebec, Canada, in 1788. (It seems a long time to have to wait for attention from the British government, as he must have left the Americas with the large scale mass evacuations that occurred between April and November of 1783, after the war ended.) Isaac at once packed up his family and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean once again, to Quebec. Here he regained some of his wealth, and it is here where his wife gave birth to their son, who was baptized Peter Skeene Ogden. As I told you above, the Skene name came to infant Peter from another United Empire Loyalist family who then also resided in Quebec. The two families became close friends: a common bond developed because of their shared history, both as United Empire Loyalists, as well as both men being judges.
In 1794, when Peter was about four years old, his father was appointed one of the Puisne Judges of the District of Montreal. The term Puisne judge meant that he was a junior judge (as most justices were), rather than the chief justice of a certain court. Judge Issac Ogden immediately removed his family to that city, and Montreal became the place where young Peter grew up and was educated in the law, possibly by a Rev. Mr. Doty of Three Rivers, and Mr. Shakel of Montreal, who had taught his older brother Charles Richard.
Young Peter had no interest in the law, it seems. Instead, he was drawn away by his interest in the North West Company’s explorations in the wilderness of New Caledonia and the Columbia. “The record is brief, but clear enough,” historian T.C. Elliott begins.
It comes from the late Archibald McKinlay, his son-in-law, and from the late Elwood Evans, of Tacoma, both of whom took it from Peter Skene himself. It is this: In the year 1811, that is, at the age of seventeen, in the Spring he entered the service of the Northwest Company as clerk; previous to that he had begun the study of law, and previous to that he had been in the employ for a short time of John Jacob Astor [of the Pacific Fur Company] as clerk. This takes him pretty well back toward boyhood, and as to that period–well, what real boy is not mischievous! Where he was employed by Mr. Astor is not stated, but presumably in Montreal. In 1810 the organization of the Pacific Fur Company had been completed and the activity of that enterprise was at Montreal rather than New York. The partners and employees of that company took their start, both the overland party and those going by sea, from Montreal. Peter Skene’s oldest brother, David, twenty-two years his senior, was already a leading solicitor in Montreal and a few years later was one of the chief counsel[s] for the Northwest Company in their litigation with Lord Selkirk. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that the family were influential in favoring [sic] the strong and wealthy Canadian fur company in preference to the more hazardous enterprise of Mr. Astor.
The author believed that Ogden was born in 1794 and put him at seventeen years old in 1811. He was not. Peter Skene Ogden was probably 21 years old when he joined the North West Company, if he joined it in 1811. Except he joined the Company in 1810, and so was twenty years old when he was set loose in the NWC’s Ile-a-la-Crosse post. The NWC post opposed the HBC post Fort Superior at Lac Ile-a-la-Crosse, where Peter Fidler was in charge.
So Peter Skene Ogden must have left Montreal with the canoe brigades sometime in early May, 1810. He would transfer to the canoes heading for Ile-a-la Crosse, perhaps at Rainy Lake but more likely at the NWC’s inland headquarters of Fort William. At Ile-a-la-Crosse he would fall in with Samuel Black, who had arrived at the NWC’s post from Athabasca Lake on June 21, 1810. In his Journal of Occurrences, Peter Fidler recorded the situation as it was occurring in July 1810.
Their House before is not above 150 yards distant from ours & on the South side of us, and now they are building on the [North?] side so very near us for the express purpose to prevent a single Native from entering our Doors. They stand at nothing to get every thing the Indians kill, nor do I now expect a single native will be able to give us any thing privately as none will be suffered to enter our Doors. What a most unpleasant Thing to prevent the Natives from coming to Trade with us openly — as they all in General wish to do — as they always receive from us a better treatment & more Goods considerably for their Peltries than the Canadian will give them.
The House that the NWC men are building on the other side of the HBC post is a “Watch-House,” which they built only ten feet away from the palisades of the HBC post. These are the same tactics that the NWC people used at Nottingham House in the early 1800s, and the same used at Fort Wedderburn when George Simpson arrived there, as you will see. It was a very creepy and a very intrusive tactic, and it worked! It intimidated all the HBC men at the fort, as you will see. It also intimidated and frightening the First Nations people away from the HBC posts — which was the point, after all.
Fidler described Black as “the best calculated I ever knew to do any unjustifiable action.” He said that Black “would not rest in the night, but kept nightly a constant watch to keep all Indians from coming to our House & alarmed & Disturbed every one within.” On July 5, Fidler described how “Mr. Black goes about our House hallowing Loud on purpose to disturb us exactly as he did at the Athapescow [Athabasca] Lake.” The NWC men also cut up the HBC fishing nets and took potshots at the HBC flag they flew, and they hacked at their palisade fence with axes, sometimes throwing the broken palisade into the lake.
So this is the toxic and unpleasant atmosphere into which 20-year-old Peter Skene Ogden was delivered. Samuel Black had been a NWC man since 1804, and was ten years older than Ogden. Ogden himself is first mentioned in Peter Fidler’s Journal of Occurrences on September 21, 1810, when Fidler lists the men who remain at the NWC post for the winter. They are John Duncan Campbell, the master; with clerks “Mr. Ogden” and Samuel Black; Cartier, the guide; and twenty-two common men, making twenty six NWC men against the HBC’s eight. The men at the HBC post are badly outnumbered by those who are employed at the NWC post, as you can easily see.
Ogden had little difficulty in joining the NWC campaign of harassment and intimidation, although it seems to have taken a month before he did so. Perhaps he needed to be convinced that it was necessary. Whatever delayed his prompt action, on October 12
Mr. Black & Ogden went over there [to the new stockade fence] & the Latter came into our Garden & walked through it & over the stockades near their Watch house — previous to this Mr. Campbell was in the Watch house & when he thought we had near finished them he sent a Man from the Watch house to fetch Mr. Black & Ogden. They remained at our Front Gates near 10 minutes armed with Pistles [sic] & Daggers — when Ogden was in our Garden Campbell called out “have you got your Hanger.”
I don’t know what the Hanger might be — a holster, perhaps, or a scabbard in which to sheath the daggers? I can’t imagine how it could be anything else, under the circumstances.
Anyway, this thread will continue. We are at a fork in the road — Donald Manson was the next man to take over at Fort St. James, and when I write his story it will appear here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/whatever-i-call-it/
When I continue Peter Skene Ogden’s story, it will appear here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/whatever-i-call-it/
And to find the beginning of the thread that leads you through the gentlemen who managed Fort St. James over the years, then go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/fort-st-james-2/
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2026. All rights reserved.