The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives staff have created hundreds of biographical sheets of employees who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company fur trading companies, and the information is available online.
This is not a new resource, but it may be one you have not explored.
The biographical sheets outline the person’s employment history and may also include the parish of origin or place of birth; positions, posts and districts in which the person served; family information, such as names of wives and children; and references to related documents, including photographs or drawings.
Places of birth for these employees include Canada, Scotland, England, and Ireland.
A diagram explains what the bios contain, and the second page describes the occupations.
The sheets are arranged in alphabetical order, which makes it easy to look for family names. In an ideal world, it would be nice to search by place of origin to look at how many from a particular area joined the fur trade. This would perhaps lead to discovering more ancestors.
Although biographical sheets have not been created for every employee, the good news is the conversion of existing biographical sheets to the website is ongoing.
You can search for family names in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives on the Manitoba Archives website.
