Up the Columbia River
In August 1849, clerk Thomas Lowe journeyed up the Columbia River as far as Fort Nez Percés, following the same river route that the York Factory Express had travelled in…
Read moreMeasles and Dysentery
I wrote about the 1847-1848 measles epidemic in my first book, The Pathfinder, in which I said: Measles began to sicken a few Dakelh around the fort [Fort Alexandria, Fraser…
Read moreBetsy Birnie
Betsy was the eldest daughter of James and Charlot Birnie, born in 1822 at the North West Company’s Spokane House. She was a toddler at Fort Okanogan. When she was…
Read moreJames Birnie, Alexander Caulfield Anderson, and Reverend Herbert Beaver
In this section of the James and Charlot Birnie thread, we left Birnie’s story as he and his family were sailing south from his posting at Fort Simpson in 1836.…
Read moreMeasles in the Columbia district, summer to fall 1847
In my first book, The Pathfinder, I wrote a little of the measles epidemic in the Columbia district, that finally reached Fort Alexandria [in central British Columbia] in January 1848.…
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