THE APPOINTMENT OF GOVERNOR BLANSHARD
By: Willard E. Ireland
B.C. Historical Quarterly – July 31, 1944.
Much of interest has been added in recent years to our knowledge of the old Crown Colony of Vancouver Island. In part this has been the result of a careful re-examination of records long preserved in the Provincial Archives. Other details have come from new acquisitions in the manuscript collection, and in particular from papers that belonged originally to James Douglas or John Sebastian Helmcken. Finally, the courtesy of the Governor and Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company has made it possible, for the first time, to lay under tribute the immense store of documents in the archives of the Company. Although further searching for and through old records must still be done before a definitive account of the Colony can be written, many aspects of its history have now been fairly thoroughly explored. Amongst them is the official career of the first Governor, Richard Blanshard. Ridicule has been heaped upon his brief and uncomfortable tenure of office, and it is usual to assume that Blanshard himself was insignificant. But even if this were true, the fact remains that the reading of his commission marked the commencement of formal British rule in Western America—a circumstance which makes his arrival an event of constitutional and historical importance.
The establishment of a British colony on the Pacific Coast was a direct result of the Oregon Boundary settlement of June, 1846. The Hudson’s Bay Company, which had seen American settlers overrun Oregon, feared that they might likewise pour into the country north of 490 unless some counter settlement were started by the British. In September 1846, Sir John Pelly, Governor of the Company, made a preliminary inquiry regarding the advisability of the Company acting as the colonizing agency. The reaction thereto of Lord Grey, the Colonial Secretary, was significant.
“This is a very difficult and important quest[io]n. Looking to the encroaching spirit of the U.S. I think it is of importance to strengthen the B[ritislh hold upon the territory now assigned to us by treaty by encouraging the settlement upon it of B[ri]t{is]h subjects; & I am also of opin[io]n that such settlement c[oul]d only be advantageously effected under the auspices of the Hudson’s Bay Co. wh[ich]. I am therefore disposed to encourage.[i]
From the outset it thus became apparent that the Government, fully aware of the necessity for colonization, was favourably disposed towards the Hudson’s Bay Company. Thus encouraged, the Company in March, 1847, informed Grey that it was “ready to receive a grant of all the territories belonging to the Crown which are situated to the north and west of Rupert’s Land.”[ii] This sweeping proposal was quite impracticable, owing to the state of political opinion, which, in spite of the attitude of the Colonial Secretary, was none too friendly to the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was therefore whittled down in subsequent correspondence, and by March, 1848, the Company expressed its willingness to have the grant “limited to the territory north of 490, bounded on the east by the Rocky Mountains, or even to Vancouver’s Island alone.”[iii] Grey was of the opinion that “in the first instance” it should in fact be limited to the Island, and discussions regarding terms and conditions commenced upon that assumption.[iv]
Negotiations did not proceed this far without arousing opposition. Some opposed any grant to the Company on principle. Others had rival schemes of settlement to offer. Of the latter, the most vocal was one James Edward Fitzgerald, who in June 1847, submitted to the Colonial Office a detailed colonization plan to be carried out by a joint-stock company. Later Fitzgerald’s interest shifted to the coal deposits on Vancouver Island, and he discussed with Pelly the possibility of forming a company to work the mines, on terms agreeable to the Hudson’s Bay Company. According to Fitzgerald, Pelly actually offered him a grant of the mines, terms to be arranged. In the late spring of 1848, however, word reached London that Sir George Simpson, senior official of the Company in North America, had already entered into an arrangement by which the Company itself would work the mines and supply coal for the steamers of the new Pacific Mail Steamship Company.[v] Infuriated by this news, Fitzgerald launched a vigorous attack upon the Hudson’s Bay Company and all its works, declaring roundly that the Company was seeking the grant in order to prevent rather than to encourage the founding of a strong colony. In 1849 he embodied his criticisms in a book entitled An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with Reference to the Grant of Vancouver’s Island.[vi]
As this title implies, the Company meantime had received the grant of the Island. Most of the details had been settled by September 1848, and the formal grant itself was made by Proclamation in January 1849. Vancouver Island was handed over to the Hudson’s Bay Company, upon condition that a settlement was established there. Even at this late date it is difficult to see what other course the Colonial Office could have pursued, assuming that the Government itself was not prepared to sponsor the colony. The year 1848 was a year of unrest and revolution. The financial world was much upset. Even Fitzgerald himself admitted it would be most difficult to raise capital, and it seems clear that he was proposing a counter scheme which he would have been incapable of carrying into effect. It is significant that one of Pelly’s letters bears a minute in Grey’s handwriting stating that there was “no probability of the capital required to begin being raised unless by the Co’s assistance . .”[vii] Moreover, the Hudson’s Bay Company had an unrivalled first hand knowledge of the country, for it had been trading on or around Vancouver Island for almost thirty years. Finally, the Company already possessed an exclusive right to trade with the Indians which would not expire until 1859. To extend its rights, (rather than to require it to share control of the Island with another authority, seemed a sensible course to pursue.
Although the sale of lands and many other public matters were to be managed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, the new colony was to have its own government as well. This was to consist of a Governor, an appointed Legislative Council, and—when conditions warranted—an elected House of Assembly. But it is significant to find that Lord Grey was willing to leave the selection of the governor to the Company,[viii] and that the Company in turn had chosen its candidate several months before the grant of the Island was actually made. The choice fell upon James Douglas, one of the three Chief Factors who composed the far-western Board of Management, with headquarters at Fort Vancouver. To do the Company justice, it seems clear that this appointment was not suggested by purely selfish motives. It realized that for a time at least the revenue of the colony would be extremely small and considered that it would be wise therefore to recommend as governor some one who had an adequate income from another source. It is apparent, moreover, that the Company expected the appointment to be neither popular nor permanent.
The correspondence bearing upon the matter is interesting. “We shall have the nomination of the Governor,” Pelly wrote to Simpson on September 8, 1848, “and I contemplate placing Douglas in that situation temporarily, but his allowce must be small—what should you think—[£]150 or 200 a year.”[ix] The same day the Governor and Committee dealt with the matter at greater length in a dispatch to the members of the Board of Management at Fort Vancouver, which then consisted of Peter Skene Ogden, John Work, and James Douglas. It will be observed that the appointment of Douglas, and his transfer to Vancouver Island, were to be associated with a partial transfer of the Company’s district administration from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria. The paragraph reads:
“We think it necessary that a Member of the Board of Management should in future reside permanently at Fort Victoria, and it appears to us that Mr. Douglas can be better spared from Fort Vancouver than Mr. Ogden. We shall forward to Mr. Douglas a Government Commission, to act as Governor of Vancouver’s Island pro tempore. We say pro tempore because it is not improbable that those persons, who may settle on the Island may not be content that a Gentleman, having so deep an interest in the Fur Trade, should hold the situation of Governor of a Colony, which is to be free and independent.[x]
On September 13, Pelly wrote to Grey and formally recommended Douglas for the governorship. Once again, he stressed the point that he did “not propose this as a permanent appointment, but merely as a temporary expedient, until the colony can afford to pay a Governor unconnected with the Hudson’s Bay Company.”[xi] In reply he was assured that Grey saw “no objection to the appointment of the chief factor of the Company as a temporary arrangement.“[xii] Pelly thereupon wrote once again to Simpson, on September 29:
“I have recommended Douglas as Governor pro tem: and I expect he will be appointed, you must therefore find means to spare him, whatever salary will be given him will be from the Colony, the Fur trade will not have to pay it.’[xiii]
The dispatch to Fort Vancouver reached its destination early in 1849. Douglas’s reaction to the news of his pending appointment was anything but favourable. The slight implied in the remark that he could be “better spared from Fort Vancouver” than Ogden evidently stung him to the quick, and in March he poured out his resentment in a private letter to Simpson:
“Pray what does the appointment of “Governor of Vancouver’s Island pro tempore” imply, does it mean that I am to be thrown aside like a cast off garment, when the heat and toil of the day is over? if so, I am not ambitious of such honours, nor do I think them a proper reward for thirty years of incessant toil, borne without a murmur, and with a devotion of body and mind deserving of a better fate.[xiv]
Precisely what happened thereafter is not clear, as a number of papers relating to the matter have not been found. Apparently, Simpson himself had written to Douglas on January 29, 1849, mentioning that a salary of £300 per annum would be attached to the post of governor,[xv] and a statement made some years later implies that Douglas was actually appointed Governor pro tem on May 12.[xvi] In any event, Peter Skene Ogden remarked, in a letter to Simpson written from Fort Vancouver in June, that “On 17th May the new Governor pro tem for Victoria took his departure.”[xvii] Travelling by easy stages and attending to various Company matters by the way, Douglas did not reach Vancouver Island until the first days of June.
Meanwhile opposition to the grant of Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company had increased sharply in England. It culminated in a speech delivered in the Commons on June 19, 1849, by the Earl of Lincoln (later Duke of Newcastle) which lasted four and a half hours. At the end of that time the House was counted out, but there was no denying that the attack had been both able and effective. In such a hostile atmosphere the Company realized that to appoint Douglas would simply be to add fuel to the flames, and it decided to look elsewhere for a governor.[xviii] Contrary to the general view, this decision was not a result of Lincoln’s speech, for the minutes of the Governor and Committee show that it was on June 13, six days before the debate, that it was “Resolved that Richard Blanshard Esq. be recommended to Earl Grey Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, to be appointed Govr of Vancouver Is land.”[xix] Moreover, the Colonial Secretary had already held his first interview with the prospective Governor, for Pelly, writing to Grey on June 15, makes reference to an interview held the previous Thursday at which he had introduced Blanshard, whom the Committee of the Company were going to recommend for the position of Governor of Vancouver Island.[xx] The recommendation was accepted, and Blanshard received his commission on July 16, 1849.
It is evident that the Company regretted the substitution of Blanshard for Douglas, but there is little to suggest that it was either angry or resentful. As we have seen, it was expected that a demand would arise for a governor unconnected with the fur trade. All that happened was that this demand appeared much sooner than was anticipated.
This view of the matter is borne out by the letters which passed between various officers of the Company at the time. In September 1849, for example, Pelly wrote in a private letter to Simpson as follows:
“With respect to the appointment of Mr. Blanshard to the Governorship of Vancouver’s Island, it was with my entire concurrence, indeed recommendation. It wrests from those adverse to the Company the charge of making the Colony subservient to their views alone and retaining in their hands the power of tyranizing over the settlers, which the ill disposed are too ready to charge them with.[xxi]
In December, Eden Colville, falling at that early date into the error of ascribing the change to Lincoln, had this to say:
“I suppose the effect of Lincoln’s motion was the appointment of Gov. Blanshard in the room of Mr. Douglas, which I am very sorry for, as I think that from his experience in the country, and the interest he took in the colony he would have conducted the affairs thereof fully as well as a perfect stranger. Be that as it may I suppose there was no alternative left to you but to appoint a person unconnected with the Company & we must try to make the best of it.[xxii]
Douglas was notified promptly of the change in plans by Archibald Barclay, Secretary to the Governor and Committee, to whom he replied with typical frankness:
“Having accepted the appointment of Governor of Vancouvers Island only in obedience to the wishes of the Governor and Committee, without any desire, on my part, to possess that responsible office, I shall in obedience to the same authority and with even greater alacrity, resign my office to Governor Blanshard on his arrival. In making these remarks I, of course, understand that the new appointment emanated entirely from the Crown, and that their Honours, have not withdrawn from me, any part of the confidence, with which I have been hitherto so much honored.[xxiii]
Any doubt he may have felt in this regard must have vanished when he received a second letter from Barclay informing him that he had been “appointed Agent to the Company for all matters relating to the territory of Vancouver’s Island…” For Barclay took pains to point out that the duties of the governor would be “confined to the administration of the civil government of the colony and to military affairs; “[xxiv] and it was obvious that the Company expected the office of Agent to be an influential one.
At this point two questions naturally come to mind: Who was Richard Blanshard, and why was he appointed Governor? Relatively little is known about his early life. Blanshard was born on October 19, 1817, the son of Thomas Henry Blanshard, a well-to-do London merchant.[xxv] He matriculated at Christ Church on October 22, 1835, received the degree of B.A. at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1840, and that of M.A. in 1844. Meanwhile, in 1839, he had been admitted as a student of Lincoln’s Inn, and he was called to the bar on November 22, 1844, at the age of 27.[xxvi]
Contrary to the usual story,[xxvii] there is no evidence that Blanshard had held any previous appointments under the Colonial Office. This belief appears to be based upon a misinterpretation of his replies to two questions put to him by J. A. Roebuck in 1857, in the course of the well-known parliamentary investigation into the affairs of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The official record reads as follows:
“What previous knowledge had you of colonisation or colonial government? — I had been in one or two of the West India islands; I had been in British Honduras, and I had been in India.
“And upon the ground of the experience which you there gained, you thought that you could make a good Governor of Vancouver’s Island?— I saw no reason to believe the contrary.[xxviii]
It will be noted that Blanshard claimed no more than that he had been in the colonies mentioned, and there is no indication that he visited them other than as an ordinary traveller. The records of the Colonial Office offer no clues whatever as to the reasons for his selection—no letter of application, no testimonials of any sort, are to be found. The entire absence of any material makes it impossible to accept the suggestion that he had had previous experience in the colonial service, for had such been the case it is reasonable to assume that some mention of it would have been made by the Colonial Office officials. Curiously enough the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company throw no further light on the reasons for the Company’s selection of him as Governor. In contemporary references he is referred to almost invariably simply as a barrister. When writing to Douglas, Archibald Barclay characterized him still more vaguely as “a gentleman of great intelligence and respectability “[xxix]
One change of importance was made with respect to the governorship between the time Douglas’s name was put forward and Blanshard was appointed. Pelly, writing to Simpson, had proposed a small allowance to the holder of the office and had suggested £150 or £200 a year.[xxx] It was understood that this would be paid out of the moneys received from the sale of lands. Later, however, it was decided that the Governor should receive no salary until such time as the expense could be met by taxation and royalities on coal. Basing his conclusions very largely upon this fact, the historian Bancroft explained Blanshard’s appointment in the following terms:
“If they [the officials of the Company] could not have Douglas, if some noodle was required for a figure-head—for they knew that no very able or sensible man would assume the office under the circumstances—they could easily, even under the cloak of courteous consideration, make it so uncomfortable for him that he would not long remain. So, when the name of Richard Blanshard was suggested by Earl Grey, never having heard ill of him, never having heard of him at all, Sir John Pelly offered no objection. The friends of his lordship’s friends knew him, and that was sufficient.[xxxi]
Bancroft’s account is amusing, and it is important because it is the accepted version. But it would appear to be contrary to the facts. To begin with, Pelly told Simpson quite definitely that Blanshard had been appointed upon his recommendation.[xxxii] To end with, Blanshard explained his acceptance of the office quite candidly to the Select Committee in 1857. He expected that funds to pay a salary would soon be available, that in the mean time he would receive a thousand acres of land, and that this first appointment, though a modest one, might lead on to a career in the Colonial service. The two questions and answers in the evidence which bear upon the matter read:
“Do you mean that you accepted the governorship of this colony, with the understanding that you were to get nothing whatever for your services in that respect?—Nothing at the first beginning. I was certainly led to believe that colonial settlers would flock out there; that all facilities would be given to them; and that of course as the colony increased a civil list would be formed; that the land sales and the royalties on the coal would produce a considerable colonial revenue.
“And those expectations, with the grant of 1,000 acres of land, to be selected by yourself, were your inducements for going to the colony?—Just so, and moreover I also hoped that my services would be considered by Her Majesty’s Government afterwards.[xxxiii]
So it came about that Richard Blanshard, a well educated and travelled young barrister of 31, became the first Governor of the Colony of. Vancouver Island.[xxxiv]
Blanshard was scheduled to leave England in September, 1849, in the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s regular West Indian mail steamer,[xxxv] presumably the Avon, which left South Hampton on the 17th, with seventy passengers and a full cargo.[xxxvi] The Admiralty had agreed to instruct Read-Admiral Hornby, Commander-in-Chief on the Pacific Station, to arrange if possible to have a ship at Panama to convey Blanshard to Vancouver Is land.[xxxvii] But means of communication were slow and uncertain, and there was no vessel there when Blanshard arrived on November 28. After waiting a month, Blanshard reported briefly to the Colonial Office and wrote to Rear-Admiral Hornby.[xxxviii] Eventually he was picked up by H.M.S. Driver, Captain Charles R. Johnson, a small steam sloop of 1,056 tons. By that time Blanshard must have been very weary indeed, for the Driver did not reach Victoria, Vancouver Island, until March 1850.
An extract copied many years ago from the Fort Victoria Journal records Blanshard’s arrival as follows:
“Saturday, March 9, 1850. At noon a boat having an English flag flying entered the harbor and anchored at Ogden point, which proved to be H.M.S. Sloop (steam) Driver Capt. Johnson. Governor Blanshard of this Island was on board and will take up residence here.[xxxix]
Blanshard himself states that he arrived on March 10; but both he and the fort journal agree that he landed and read his commission on Monday, March 11.[xl]
The ceremony was made as formal and impressive as the rudeness of the surroundings would permit. Blanshard landed under a salute of seventeen guns from the Driver, which was answered from the bastion of Fort Victoria. The officers and servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Captain Johnson, and all the British residents assembled, and in their presence Blanshard read his commission, thereby bringing into being the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island. The scene was a wintry one, for Blanshard recalled in later years that there was about a foot of snow on the ground.[xli]
Chief Factor James Douglas was, of course, amongst those present. The contrast between the Factor and the Governor must have been striking. In March 1850, Douglas was 46 years of age, and had spent more than thirty years in the fur trade. Only Peter Skene Ogden could rival him in prestige and experience in all the West. He had been nine months at Fort Victoria, and in his methodical way had made himself familiar with every detail of the affairs of Vancouver Island. Blanshard, by contrast, was only 32, and by comparison a babe in arms in the wilderness. Yet Douglas’s first impressions of the Governor were kindly and not unfavourable. On March 18 he wrote to his old friend A. C. Anderson.
“Mr. Blanshard has neither Secretary nor Troops, being accompanied by a single body servant. I have not had time to become acquainted, but I may say that his quiet gentlemanly, manner, is prepossessing. He has not yet entered upon his Executive duties, further than reading his commission to the assembled states of the Colony.[xlii]
Two days later Douglas penned a parallel impression in a private letter to Sir George Simpson:
“I am pleased with Mr. Blanshard the Governor, his quiet gentlemanly manner is prepossessing. We received him on landing with a salute of 17 Guns; he is rather startled by the wild aspect of the country; but will get used to it in time.[xliii]
Circumstances now brought Blanshard under the gaze of another interested observer. The Driver happened to arrive at a moment when Fort Victoria and the infant colony were badly in need of a shipment of cattle and sheep from Nisqually. Captain Johnson, in Douglas’s words, “tendered his services for our relief” in a “handsome manner . . . beyond all praise,” and undertook to transport the animals in the Driver.[xliv] Blanshard accompanied the ship. At this time Dr. William Fraser Tolmie was still in charge of the Nisqually farms, and on March 25 he included a lively thumb-nail sketch of Blanshard in a letter to Simpson:
“Mr. Blanshard the Governor of Vancouver’s Island came passage in the Driver and spent three days here. He is a tall, thin person, with a pale intellectual countenance—is a great smoker, a great sportsman, a protectionist in politics and a latitudinarian in religious matters. His manner is quiet, and rather abstracted, and tho’ free from hauteur, or pomposity, he does not converse much.[xlv]
On March 24, 1850, the Hudson’s Bay annual supply ship Norman Morison arrived at Esquimalt from England. Amongst those on board was a 25-year-old surgeon, John Sebastian Helmcken, who was expected to act as Blanshard’s secretary. In his reminiscences Helmcken recalls guiltily the somewhat cavalier fashion in which he first treated the Governor:
“One night while I was in bed and asleep, the Capt. woke me, and said Govr. Blanshard has come on board from HMS Driver to see you. Well I suppose I grumbled, and the governor sent word not to bother, as there would be plenty opportunities later. I did not see him. The fact is I should have got up with alacrity, but I supposed I was tired or lazy.[xlvi]
Later Helmcken, by this time much worried by his discourtesy, called on Blanshard in company with Dr. Benson, surgeon at Fort Victoria. The Governor bore no grudge, and years later Helmcken wrote this account of the visit:
“We found Governor Blanshard smoking a very thick pipe with a very long stem. He was a comparatively young man, of medium height, with aquiline, aristocratic features, set off by a large, military moustache. He had arrived only a few days previously and had been riding. He said, Benson, you told me all the trails led to the fort, but you did not tell me they all led away from it. Now, I got off the trail, to wander about, and I lost it; but I found another, and it led away from the fort. I should not have been here now had I not turned my horse’s head and tail—as it is, I have lost my dinner.” He was a very intelligent and affable man. We left him with his pipe-stem still in his mouth.[xlvii]
Not long after this visit Dr. Helmcken was ordered to Fort Rupert, at the northern end of Vancouver Island, where the Hudson’s Bay Company had established a post in 1849 and was seeking to develop the near-by coal deposits. Due to this transfer he never acted as the Governor’s secretary. The letters which passed between them are cordial in tone, and Blanshard always spoke well of Helmcken; but the latter remarks in his memoirs that “Blanshard and I never became friends—he evidently did not care for me.”
Willard E Ireland
Royal Canadian Air Force
[i] Minute on Pelly to Grey, September 7, 1846; original in Public Record Office, London (hereafter cited as P.R.O.).
[ii] Pelly to Grey, March 5, 1847, in Correspondence . . . relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, London, 1848, p. 9.
[iii] Pelly to Grey, March 4, 1848. Ibid., p. 11.
[iv] Hawes to Pelly, March 13, 1848. Ibid., p. 13.
[v] See John Haskell Kemble (ed.), “Coal from the Northwest Coast, 1848—1850,” British Columbia Historical Quarterly, II. (1938), pp. 123—130.
[vi] See the letters and documents relating to Fitzgerald’s proposals printed in the Report of the Provincial Archives Department . . . 1913, Victoria, 1914, pp. V 54—V 68.
[vii] Minute, June 29, 1848, on Pelly to Grey, March 4, 1848. C.O. 305/1; P.R.O.
[viii] “As the power of the Gov wd be restrained by an Assly represents the inhabitants I can see no danger in allowing the Company to select him . . .“ Minute by Grey, on Pelly to Grey, March 4, 1848, in C.O. 305/1; P.R.O.
[ix] Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (hereafter cited as H.B.C. Arch.), D5/22. This and all other quotations from documents in the Archives of the Company are printed by kind permission of the Governor and Committee.
[x] H.B.C. Arch., A 6/27.
[xi] Copies and Extracts of Despatches and other Papers relating to Vancouver’s Island, London, 1849, p. 18. A minute by Merivale on the original letter (C.O. 305/1 in P.R.O.) dated September 15, 1848, states that the governor’s commission was then already in draft
[xii] Hawes to Pelly, September 27, 1848. Ibid.
[xiii] H.B.C. Arch., D 5/22. 218
[xiv] Ibid., D 5/24.
[xv] See ibid., A 6/29; Archibald Barclay to Simpson, October 29, 1852.
[xvi] See ibid., A 6/30; Barclay to Douglas, February 3, 1854.
[xvii] Ibid., D 5/23; Ogden to Simpson, June 18, 1849.
[xviii] “It was proposed to appoint you Governor pro tempore, of the Is land, but you will see by the Public Press, from the jealousy of some parties, and the interested motives of others, how next to impossible it would have been to give you the situation.” Pelly to Douglas, August 4, 1849. (Original in Provincial Archives.)
[xix] H.B.C. Arch., A 1/66.
[xx] Pelly to Grey, June 15, 1849. Ibid., A 8/4.
[xxi] Pelly to Simpson, September 7, 1849 (private). Ibid., D 5/26.
[xxii] Eden Colville to Simpson, December 7, 1849. Ibid.
[xxiii] Douglas to Barclay, December 10, 1849. Ibid., A 11/51.
[xxiv] Barclay to Douglas, August 3, 1849. Provincial Archives.
[xxv] Lymington and South Hants Chronicle, June 14, 1894.
[xxvi] From notes in the Provincial Archives based upon Joseph Foster, Men-at-the-Bar; Alumni Oxonienses, the admission register of Lincoln’s Inn, and other sources.
[xxvii] For example, see E. 0. S. Scholefield, British Columbia, Vancouver, 1914, I., p. 512.
[xxviii] Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson’s Bay Company London, 1857, p. 289.
[xxix] Barclay to Douglas, August 3, 1849. Provincial Archives.
[xxx] H.B.C. Arch., D 5/22.
[xxxi] H. H. Bancroft, History of British Columbia, San Francisco, 1887, p. 265.
[xxxii] HB.C. Arch., D 5/26; Pelly to Simpson, September 7, 1849 (private).
[xxxiii] Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson’s Bay Company, p. 288.
[xxxiv] Copies of most of the important records relative to Blanshard’s appointment are in the Provincial Archives. The “Warrant to prepare Letters Patent under the Great Seal for appointing Richard Blanshard, Esq., to be Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Island of Vancouver and its Dependencies” is dated July 9, 1849. His Commission and Instructions are both dated July 16. The Letters Patent appointing him Vice Admiral are dated September 24, but the Warrant to use the Public Seal of the new colony was not issued until June 28, 1850.
[xxxv] W. A. B. Hamilton to B. Hawes, August 9, 1849; C.O. 305, v. 2, pp. 131—2; transcript in Provincial Archives.
[xxxvi] The Times, London, September 18, 1849.
[xxxvii] W. A. B. Hamilton to B. Hawes, August 9, 1849. C.O. 305, v. 2, pp. 131—2; transcript in Provincial Archives.
[xxxviii] Blanshard to Grey, December 26, 1849. Provincial Archives.
[xliii] H.B.C. Arch., D 5/27; Douglas to Simpson, March 20, 1850.
[xliv] Douglas to Tolmie, March 13, 1850; see also Douglas to Tolmie, March 17, 1850. Provincial Archives.
[xlv] H.B.C. Arch., D 5/27; Tolmie to Simpson, March 25, 1850 (private). The Driver arrived at Nisqually on the morning of March 19. Blanshard dined at the fort that evening, and on the 20th rode over to Steilacoom and visited the officers of the American garrison there. On the 21st he went on a shooting excursion. The Driver sailed for Victoria on the afternoon of the 22nd, carrying 85 cattle and about 800 sheep. See Victor J. Farrar (ed.), “The Nisqually Journal,” Washington Historical Quarterly, XI. (1920), pp. 146—7.
[xlvi] Helmcken’s Reminiscences, II., p. 89. MS., in Provincial Archives.
[xlvii] Victoria Colonist, Christmas number, 1887.