Collection search - Alexander Mackenzie collection [textual record (some microform)]

Record information – Brief
1
Alexander Mackenzie collection [textual record (some microform)]

Hierarchical level:

Collection

Date:

1794-1839.

Reference:

R5658-0-4-E, MG19-A7

Type of material:

Textual material

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

105373

Context of this record:

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Alexander Mackenzie collection
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Record information – Details
Collection includes:

2 lower level description(s)
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Date(s):

1794-1839.

Place of creation:

No place, unknown, or undetermined

Extent:

2 microfilm reels : negative and positive.
0.3 cm of textual records (9 p.). : photocopies.

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

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Collection consists of business records of Alexander Mackenzie & Company; and a letter from Alexander Mackenzie to John Graves Simcoe, 9 pages. The microfilmed material: letterbooks, journals, ledgers, invoices and other records of the firm of Alexander Mackenzie and Company, 1798-1839, are located on microfilm reels M-1349 to M-1351.

Provenance:

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Mackenzie, Alexander, Sir, 1764-1820

Biography/Administrative history:

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Mackenzie, Alexander, Sir, 1764-1820 : Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820) was born in 1764 at Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. He was the younger son of Kenneth Mackenzie (d. 1780) of Melbost farm and his wife, Isabella, née Maciver. With his father and two aunts, Alexander Mackenzie emigrated to New York in 1774 and, in 1778, was sent to school in Montreal to avoid the dangers of the War of the American Revolution. In 1779, he became a clerk in the firm of Finlay and Gregory (later, Gregory, McLeod and Co.), which in 1787 was absorbed by a larger partnership that was reorganized as the North West Company five years later.

Mackenzie became a partner in the company and in 1788 was put in charge of Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca. rom this post he made the 1789 expedition to the Arctic Ocean that gave his name to the Mackenzie River and became the prelude to his great journey to the Pacific in 1793. In 1799, Mackenzie returned to England, where he published his Voyages from Montreal, on the river St. Laurence, through the continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific oceans; in the years 1789 and 1793; with a preliminary account of the rise, progress, and present state of the fur trade of that country (London, 1801). He was knighted in 1802 and returned to Canada in the same year and became the leading partner in the XY Company.

When the XY Company amalgamated with the North West Company in 1804, Mackenzie was "excluded from any interference" in it and formed his own company to look after his interests within it. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada for the county of Huntingdon in 1805, but returned to Scotland permanently in 1808. In 1812, he married Geddes, daughter and co-heiress of George Mackenzie (d. 1809), a merchant of Tower Hill, London, whose estate of Avoch in Ross-shire he purchased in the same year. Returning with his wife and children to Avoch from Edinburgh, where he had gone for medical advice, Mackenzie died unexpectedly in a wayside inn near Dunkeld on 12 March 1820.

Finding aid:

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Textual records (Electronic) The finding aid provides a detailed listing of the volumes copied and a manuscript index of the material. MSS0566 (90: Open)
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000001591.pdf

Additional information:

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General note:

Business records, 1798-1939, microfilmed in 1968 from originals held by the Archives du Séminaires de Québec. Letters, 1794, 1818, copied in 1955 from originals held by the California State Library, Sutro and from D.W. Smith Papers held by the Toronto Public Library. Draft letter from Alexander Mackenzie & Co., to Ingliss, Ellice & Co., 1818. Copied from the original in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia.

Related material:

Further records of Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Co. are to be found in the Baby Collection, MG 24, L 3.
Subject heading:

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Business enterprises - Canada, 1798-1839 Alexander Mackenzie and Company, 1798-1839

Explorers - Canada, 1794-1839 Daniel Sutherland, 1802-1809

Pacific - Discovery and exploration, 1794, 1818 Montreal (Quebec), 1802-1809

Alexander Mackenzie - Journeys, 1794 Hudson's Bay Company, 1823-1825

Business enterprises - Finance, 1798-1839 John Graves Simcoe, 1794

Canada - Exploring expeditions, 1794 Inglis, Ellice and Company, 1818

Pacific Coast (B.C.) - Exploring expeditions, 1794

Fur trade Canada 19th century
Source:

Private

Former archival reference no.:

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MG19-A7
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Conditions of access:

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Textual records: microform

[Consultation90 Open]

Microfilm reel M-1349--M-1351

[Consultation 90 Open]

Textual records

[Consultation90 Open]

Finding aid box [FA 566] 56

[Consultation 10 Closed]

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