b. 1807(?)
d. 1871-10-01
William Frederick Crate, miller and HBC employee, was born between 1807 and 1813 in
London. Crate was employed by the HBC to found and run its first flour mills in the
Columbia District. Based at
Fort Vancouver, Crate was placed in charge of mills. From 1834 to 1843 Crate rebuilt and expanded
the HBC's network of mills east of
Fort Vancouver and completed the company's first water-driven grist mill. This mill, capable of
grinding 20,000 bushels of grain a year, supplied all of the flour for the HBC's western
posts and supply ships.
Crate left
Fort Vancouver in 1843 for England to marry his wife, Sarah. After returning to North America, Crate
lived briefly with his wife and two children in Vermont and then returned to his original
job at
Fort Vancouver in 1849. He built a new, larger grist mill and opened a sawmill which could cut 3,000
and 4,000 feet of timber in 12 hours. In addition to opening mills, Crate was in charge
of a five-man maintenance crew responsible for the general upkeep of
Fort Vancouver.
Despite the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which confirmed the
possessory rights
of the HBC to its land and property north of
the Columbia, the company had continued trouble with American settlers who took up claims to its
land around
Fort Vancouver. In order to protect some of the HBC's land claims, Crate filed personal land claims
around the mill, which may have led to his decision to stay at
the Fort after the HBC decided to relocate its operations to
Fort Victoria in 1860. Crate was ordered to ship the milling equipment north, but only sent the
equipment not fixed to the mill. The rest of the equipment he kept for his own and
then later sold.
Crate moved to
Victoria in 1863 and lived on Government Street until 1867, when he moved north to a farm
in the
Cowichan valley. He succeeded in opening a grist mill on Quamichan land. The government was
hopeful the mill would promote the sowing of grain by the Indigenous Peoples and white
settlers, and went so far as granting free transport of machinery and building material
on the government steamer. Crate died on 1 October, 1871.