In
1847 Major John Thomas Griffiths replaced
John Ffolliott Crofton as commander of 350 soldiers of the 6th Regiment of Foot that had arrived in the
Red River Settlement a year prior.
1 He was in line to assume the position of governor of Assiniboia, which
Crofton had declined, upon his return to Britain.
2But
George Simpson, who travelled to the colony with the major, decided that he was
altogether disqualified, as well from inaptitude for business as from temper.
3 When the regiment withdrew in
June 1848, Griffiths returned to Britain and penned a hearty denial of the charges of
Alexander Isbister and others against Hudson’s Bay Company activities in the colony.
4His support of the company, alleged by John McGloughlin to have been purchased, may
have led him to expect a positive response to his offer, in
1849, to lead a troop to, and presumably become governor of,
Vancouver Island. This can be seen in
this despatch.
5
- 1. E. E. Rich, History of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870, vol. 2, 1763-1870 (London: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1959), 542-43.
- 2. Ibid.
- 3. K. Wilson, Crofton, John Ffolliott, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
- 4. Alexander Kennedy Isbister, comp., Hudson's Bay Company (Red River Settlement), (London: Queen's Printer, 1849), 109-12.
- 5. John S. Galbraith, The Hudson's Bay Company as an Imperial Factor, 1821-1869 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 321.