Hudson Bay Company Records - a useful archive... A very interesting site which has some quite detailed records of employees of the Hudson Bay Company - many emigrants, particularly from Scotland, went to these areas to work for a time... you might find some useful information here. http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/biographical/index.html Here is a short sample record for William Wylie of the Orkney Islands...some records list parents, siblings, references to obituaries etc... Do you remember that in the last newsletter I wrote about a great-uncle of mine who died of typhoid in New York in 1893 when he was just 20 years old? Whilst researching the new TNA record set for this article I found that at the age of 15 he'd joined the Navy as a "Boy, 2nd class" but bought himself out at a cost of £8 after just two and a half months on the training ship HMS Boscawen. Maybe the Navy didn't suit him, but he clearly wanted to roam, as at the age of 17 he was on his way to New York for the first time.
|