b. 1828
d. 1859-01-11
Andrew Muir worked as a coal miner for the Hudson’s Bay Company at
Fort Rupert, before he settled in
Victoria in 1853 and became the town’s first sheriff.
1 As
this document shows, Muir provided a statement for the incident in which three British seamen were
killed near Fort Rupert.
Muir sailed from Scotland in 1848 with several family members, including his father,
John, who became a prominent settler, with a logging and sawmilling operation in
Sooke.
2 Upon their arrival at Fort Rupert, the Muirs discovered they had been misled about
the conditions, and when local officials ignored their complaints, Muir and his cousin
John McGregor organized a strike.
3 Fort Rupert manager
George Blenkinsop called Muir
a rebellious person [who] kept the men off their duty,
and had he and McGregor imprisoned at the fort for six days.
4Muir left Fort Rupert soon after, and worked briefly in
San Francisco and
Astoria,
Oregon, before moving to southern
Vancouver Island in 1851.
5 He arrived in time to submit a written complaint about his treatment at Fort Rupert
to the departing governor,
Richard Blanshard, which led to Blenkinsop and other officers being criticized by the HBC’s
London committee.
6 Blanshard discusses the complaint in
this letter. Muir completed his term as sheriff and then promptly died of chronic alcoholism
on January 13, 1859, the day of his daughter Isabella Ellen’s baptism.
7 He was 31.
8
- 1. Daniel T. Gallacher Muir, Andrew, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
- 2. Ibid.
- 3. Ibid.
- 4. Ibid.
- 5. Ibid.
- 6. Ibid.
- 7. Ibid.
- 8. Ibid.