In this post you will find both what it’s like to research at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), and the story of one of those finds. This is my second post about the HBCA. If you’d like read the first, see “Western Canadian migration before the CPR: Tracing the voyage of the Princess Royal, London to Fort Victoria (1858-59)“.
I was chatting with my friend Jeff when he casually mentioned he had a Hudson’s Bay Company connection. Immediately, my attention sharpened. I’d been wondering how to wrap my head around the HBCA in an upcoming trip to Winnipeg, and the very best way for me to understand an archive is by researching the life of one person.
A few days later, I asked for permission to feature Jeff’s 3X great-grandfather in a blog post. “You might want to use my full name,” he said, “It’s Jeffrey Thomas Braid.”
The probate file of Thomas Thomas (1830)
Probate files are fascinating documents. According to his probate file, Thomas Thomas Sr. (1766-1828) had little debt, and the bulk of his money was neatly tied up in dividend paying annuities.1 When he died in 1828, he left behind a sizeable estate, with George Simpson as executor. Given the will was probated in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, UK,2 it took a surprisingly short amount of time to be completed: fourteen months. The telegraph was invented in 1832, which means Thomas’s will was likely probated by snail mail, via HBC ships and the Royal Mail from York Factory to Southampton.
Above: York Factory, Ruperts Land, to Lambeth Palace, seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, under whose authority operated the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.
One wonders if Simpson might have used his leverage for his friend. The George Simpson in this file is possibly Sir George Simpson (1787-1860), fellow governor of HBC.3 Simpson may have been the executor but he employed others to do the work. In a memo dated 23 Decr 1829, a scribe at Hudson Bay House, London, wrote,4
I beg to acquaint you
that Mr. George Simpson the acting
Executor in the Will above named [Thomas Thomas]
has put into my hands the whole
of the papers stating to the above
estate.. he will not return from
Scotland for some time.
The correspondence shows the difficulty of probating a will across the distances. In a letter dated 28 Jany [January] 1830 to Wm Smith, Esq., Hudson’s Bay House, London, W.W. Higgs wrote,5
Sir-
After much trouble and more
expense – I found Thomas – last
night agreeable to my promise –
he thinks Mr Thomas died on the
14 November – as you thought the
month sufficient you may rely on
the month November – as for date you
must receive it as I have done – a think
The probate file gives the grand total – including cash, annuities, and dividends – as £13,695, 6 s, 6 d (thirteen thousand, six hundred ninety-five pounds, six shillings, six pence).6 According to The National Archives,7 which gives purchasing power for the British pound up to 2017, £14K in 1830 is the equivalent of £928,560.84.8 It’s the equivalent of 913 horses, 2564 cows, or 20,750 stones [131,769 kilos] of wool.
It’s a substantial estate for a York Factory governor.
How was the estate divided?
The Thomas family was likely living in the Red River Settlement after Thomas’s retirement there in 1819. Thomas was survived by his wife, Sarah (1779-1846), and eight children.9 The estate was divided among the children. The sons, Thomas Thomas, Jr. and William Thomas, each received £3850 in consolidated annuities.10 The daughters – Ann, Catherine, Elizabeth, Frances, Jane, and Sophia – each received £1000 in consolidated annuities, and £45 in cash.11 To get a sense of what this was worth in Georgian era British society terms, I am reminded of Jane Austen (1775-1817), who described her characters in terms of income.12 The Thomas heirs would have benefitted from their father’s generosity, but their eight-way split inheritance was not enough to retire wealthy. Historian Bruce Peel said Sarah received an annuity of £25 (£1695 in 2017). This small sum suggests Thomas expected others to take care of Sarah, 49, his lawfully married Cree wife.13
How much did the estate pay in probate fees?
The probate fees were inconsequential for an estate of this size: 1.74%. The will cost £238 16s 16 d to probate (£16,19265 in 2017), of which two-thirds were “Duties on the Legacies and Residue,” a.k.a. probate taxes. Executors had fourteen days after the estate was assessed to clear the debt. The penalties for lateness were severe: “…Treble the Amount of Duty.” It appears that Simpson, despite some trouble determining date of death and working from Scotland, was successful in paying the fees before the deadline.
Métis Heritage
Many Manitobans are interested in tracing their Métis heritage. Thomas Thomas Sr. and his wife, Sarah, “a Cree woman,” are among the founding HBC Métis families. Thomas, a wealthy HBC Governor and former Master of Fort Severn (1796-1810), may have initially married Sarah à la façon du pays (by local custom), but they married a second time (1821) under British law when he was 56 and she 42.14 The denomination was not provided. Researchers will note there is a discrepancy in the marriage information between the HBCA “Biographical Sheets” and the “Extracts from registers of baptisms, marriages and burials in Rupert’s Land…” The former notes the marriage date as 30 Mar 1821. The latter gives the date as 26 Jul 1832. The 1832 date is improbable given Thomas Thomas’s decease in 1828. The error in the extract could be another couple named Sarah and Thomas Thomas – perhaps Thomas Thomas Jr. also married a woman named Sarah – or it could be the right couple with a transcription error. As always, more research is needed.
Researching at the HBCA – will the real Thomas Thomas please stand up?
The HBC was a colonial superpower and the HBCA is its massive store of records. See more in my post here. Researching at the archives, it becomes apparent there are multiple men named Thomas Thomas in the records. Thomas was a very popular name for British boys, and fathers enjoyed naming their firstborn sons after themselves. Thus there are at least four men named Thomas Thomas in the archives:
- Thomas THOMAS, the Chief Factor and Governor, b. 1766
- Thomas THOMAS, Jr, son of the Chief Factor15
- Thomas THOMAS, b. 1791, a surgeon
- Thomas THOMAS, an “Indian of the Red River Settlement”
It was mildly disconcerting to find there were two men named Thomas Thomas who were surgeons working for the HBC and born in the 1700s.16 In this case, I was surprised to discover the Thomas Thomas I wanted was a very big deal. Jeff’s Thomas Thomas, who joined the HBC in 1789 as a surgeon, eventually became the Governor of Northern Development for the HBC.17 All family historians know there is a big difference in record availability when tracing the genealogy of the wealthy and well-connected. Immediately, my methodology shifted from trace every possible clue to be selective in deciding what to request. In my time at the archives, I located for Thomas Thomas:
- The card catalog file – which references a vertical (biographical) file of information previously gathered by an archivist, plus the related vertical file containing dozens of notes18
- The Dictionary of Canadian Biography – penned by Bruce Peel (of Peel’s Prairie Provinces), this is a two page biography of the life of Thomas Thomas
- the HBCA biographical sheet – a summary of Thomas Thomas’s life, his major career events and HBC appointments, his wife and children, and cross references to more information within the HBCA19
- Governor Thomas Thomas correspondence book – digitized and online20
- The will papers – the original will and probate papers 1828-3021
- The collected Métis genealogies of Warren Sinclair – Mrs. Sarah Thomas, wife of Thomas Thomas and mother to his eight children, was a Cree woman22
Any one of these would have provided enough clues to keep me going for months, but all six? Come on! Consequently I started with the card catalog file, deliberately stepping into the shoes of the long-ago archivists and librarians who knew their collection well. For my two full days, I was careful to make my file requests early in the day, then fill my time with the materials only accessible at the archives: the card catalogs and the binders of finding aids. It’s important to know that as much as archives are creating online databases of finding aids, they cannot digitize all the information previously created.
Finally, it helps me think through an archive when I can see binders and titles. When you’re working with a treasure trove like the HBCA, you need all the help you can get wrapping your head around what’s available, otherwise risk being overwhelmed with where to spend your precious on site research hours.
Afterword
In this post I wanted to share both what it’s like to research at the HBCA, and the story of one of those finds. It’s too easy in family research to want to start with the birth of one’s ancestor and never stop researching. With Thomas Thomas, chief factor and governor of HBC, the rich resources necessitated some hard decisions, both in terms of time spent researching, and time spent writing. Of the six records for Thomas Thomas, only two were original: his correspondence book, and his probate file. If there’s a choice, I will always choose the originals over the authored works.
Thank yous
Thank yous this week to Jeff Braid and to Ginny Braid for sharing their family genealogy with me and giving me carte blanche to dig into the story of Thomas Thomas. Also thanks to the archivists and librarians at the Archives of Manitoba and the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. And thank you to Upper Canada Genealogy’s Janice Nickerson for her talk “My Ancestors in the Hudsons’ Bay Fur Trade,” presented to the Thunder Bay Branch, Ontario Ancestors, on 17 Apr 2024.
References
1Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company [1670-?], museums and archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Keystone Archives Descriptive Database, Manitoba Archives, accessed 4 May 2024; “Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” (1829-1830), Location Code H2-77-2-4 (A.36/13 fos. 74-94 ), Microfilm No. 431; note “Date of death: 14 November 1828.”
2According to The National Archives at Kew, London, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) was responsible for “relatively wealthy individuals mainly in the south of England and Wales.” Was the PCC the jurisdiction for all HBC governors, or was it because Thomas Thomas was born in Wales?
3Shirlee Anne Smith, “Simpson, Sir George,” (20 Jan 2008, updated 4 Mar 2015), online encyclopedia, biography of Sir George Simpson (1787-1860), Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed 15 May 2024.
4“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” fo. 77.
5“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” fo. 80.
6“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” fo. 92.
7“Currency Converter 1270-2017,” undated, museums and archives, The National Archives, last accessed 15 May 2024.
8Roughly CAD$1.6M in 2024.
9Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company [1670-?], museums and archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024; Manitoba Archives, “Extracts from registers of baptisms, marriages and burials in Rupert’s Land sent to the Governor and Committee (1820-1851),” searchable index, burial index of Sarah Thomas, 67, 18 Aug 1846, Upper Church, Red River Settlement, Rupertsland, E.4/2 folio 141, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024).
10“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” fos. 89-90.
11“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” fos. 83-88.
12Katherine Toran, “The Economics of Jane Austen’s World,” (2015), blog, Jane Austen Society of North America, accessed 15 May 2024.
13Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company [1670-?], museums and archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024); Manitoba Archives, “Hudson’s Bay Company Archives – Biographical Sheets,” (dates unknown), downloadable PDFs, “Thomas, Thomas Sr. (1766–1828) (fl. 1789–1815),” Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024.
14See both the “Hudson’s Bay Company Archives – Biographical Sheets,” (dates unknown), downloadable PDFs, “Thomas, Thomas Sr. (1766–1828) (fl. 1789–1815)”; and Manitoba Archives, “Extracts from registers of baptisms, marriages and burials in Rupert’s Land sent to the Governor and Committee (1820-1851),” searchable index, marriage index of Thomas Thomas to Sarah Thomas, 26 Jun 1832, Red River Settlement, Rupertsland, E.4/1b folio 235, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024.
15Canada, Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, museums and archives, HBCA Card Catalogue, drawer “T,” “THOMAS, Thomas (Junior),” Archives of Manitoba, 200 Vaughn Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 1T5, archives@gov.mb.ca, (204) 945-3971: accessed 7 May 2024); vertical file.
16Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company [1670-?], museums and archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024; Manitoba Archives,”Servants’ Contracts (1780-ca.1926),” searchable index, employment index of Thomas THOMAS, surgeon, 23, 1789, “HB [MB] York Factory,” A.32/3, fo. 213, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024; also employment index of Thomas THOMAS, surgeon, [age nil], 1803, “HB [ON] Moose Factory,” A.32/17, fo. 112.
17“Hudson’s Bay Company Archives – Biographical Sheets,” (dates unknown), downloadable PDFs, “Thomas, Thomas Sr. (1766–1828) (fl. 1789–1815).”
18Canada, Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, museums and archives, HBCA Card Catalogue, drawer “T,” “THOMAS, THOMAS (SR) (c. 1766-1828),” Archives of Manitoba, 200 Vaughn Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 1T5, archives@gov.mb.ca, (204) 945-3971: accessed 7 May 2024); vertical file containing extensive biographical notes.
19“Hudson’s Bay Company Archives – Biographical Sheets,” (dates unknown), downloadable PDFs, “Thomas, Thomas Sr. (1766–1828) (fl. 1789–1815)”
20Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company [1670-?], museums and archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Keystone Archives Descriptive Database, Manitoba Archives, accessed 15 May 2024; “Governor Thomas Thomas correspondence book,” (1814-1815), downloadable PDF, Location Code B.239/b/85, Microfilm No. 1M258.
21“Records regarding the estate of Thomas, Thomas (2 of 2),” (1829-1830).
22Warren Sinclair, Ottawa, ON, “Warren Sinclair Métis Genealogies,” (1993-99), binders 1-8, “Series no. 1: Genealogical Research Notes,” Archives of Manitoba, 200 Vaughn Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 1T5, archives@gov.mb.ca, (204) 945-3971, accessed 7 May 2024); “Warren Sinclair Metis Genealogies, E.235/127 T, E.235/128 U-Y,” binder 8 of 8, pgs. 3627-3649, [genealogies of] Thomas Thomas (1766-1828) and Sarah ? (1779-1846).”