In 1923, Stanley Newton published, “The Story of Sault Ste. Marie and Chippewa County.” This is part four of a continuing series, that tells the history of Sault Ste. Marie and area in its early years. Enjoy! – Laurie Davis
Letter of Reprimand
Ramsay Crooks, a wonderful Scotchman who penetrated to the Pacific coast with one of Astor’s expeditions, was an agent for the American Fur Company at Sault Ste. Marie, or St Mary’s Falls, as he called it, for many years. He succeeded to the presidency of the Company after Astor’s retirement.
In the old records of the American Fur Company at the John Jacob Astor House on Mackinac Island, are many copies of letters written by Ramsay Crooks while he was an agent of the Company here. Crooks has been cited as an exemplar of the fine art of letter writing as practiced a century ago. One instance may be given here, illustrative of approved business form in bygone times by a master of the pen, and which is reminiscent of the eternal liquor question.
St. Mary’s Falls, 3rd August, 1819
Mr. Goodrich Warner,
Ance.
Sir – it is no ordinary surprise and pain to learn how very improperly you conducted yourself on the voyage from Mackinac to this place, and whilst here.
I had hoped your good sense would have told you to pursue a very different course, particularly as I had at Mackinac been reluctantly compelled to express to you in very plain terms my abhorrence of your propensity to drunkenness and my determination not to retain in the employ of the Company any person who lost to the true feelings of a gentleman, took every opportunity to degrade himself to the level of the brute creation. You have now attained too ripe an age for the follies and indiscretion of youth to be pleaded in extenuation of your shocking attachment to intemperance, and you must clearly understand that, added to the detestation I personally feel for such profligate practices, my duty to the Company as its agent will not permit me to continue in its service anyone whose habits disqualify him for executing with fidelity the trust reposed in him.
You have pledged the faith of an honest man to consult the interest of the Company at all times and under all circumstances and to devote your whole time and attention to the faithful discharge of the duties of your
station. How far or how well you have heretofore kept your engagements I will leave your conscience to answer. Your conduct puts it in my power to refuse paying you a single dollar for the last year’s services, yet I did not scruple to account for your salary as if you had been a good and upright servant.
Your behavior more than once authorized my denying you access to the Company’s table, for you were not fit to be seen with gentlemen, yet I palliated and overlooked your deviation from strict propriety. The veil is, however, at last, torn from my eyes, and you now stand before me in all the deformity of an ill-spent life. I request you to understand distinctly that unless you give unquestionable proofs of a total reformation, and furnish proper grounds to believe you have altogether abandoned every improper habit, I cannot and most assuredly will not consent ever to meet you again as a gentleman and an honest man.
In fact, you must convince me beyond the possibility of a doubt that you possess sufficient firmness to resist the allurements of vice in any shape, and will for the future be exemplary in the practice of virtue, else you may rest assured that however painful it may be, it will nevertheless become an imperative duty to hold you up as an example to other young men who might be disposed to follow your devious course, and by discharging you with every mark of ignominy from the Company’s service, leave you to the indulgence of your vicious propensities with the wicked and profligate, an outcast from society, a dishonor to your family, and a disgrace to human nature. But if you will listen to my warning voice, give up your pernicious habits, and become in reality a gentleman, I will forgive and forget your past sins, meet you in the spirit of cordiality, and treat you according to your merits as a man and your ability as a trader.
Mr. Halliday will in all cases instruct you in your duty to the Company and you will govern yourself accordingly. He will I am sure impart to you with pleasure a knowledge of your calling, provided you behave as becomes you, and it will depend wholly on your future industry whether I shall henceforward consider you a valuable acquisition to the Company, or regret that I ever had the misfortune to meet you. I am, sir,
Yours, &c,
Ramsay Crooks
Agent American Fur Co.
No history in the Sault discloses whether the convivial Mr. Warner heeded this ponderous and solemn warning. Let us hope he did.
We do these things much better nowadays. The modern captain of industry would put it thus, – by wire: “Cut out the booze, or off goes your head!”
In the early days of the fur industry muskrat skins were worth little or nothing. About the time of Mr. Crook’s letter, however, we find Robert Stuart, another officer of the Company, offering John Johnston and Charles Ermatinger at the Sault thirty-five cents each for muskrat skins. He mentions that he has offered this high figure “not for any hope of getting but little advance on them, but merely for the purpose of having control over the market.”
Charles Ermatinger was an independent trader in furs and other merchandise in the Canadian Sault at this time, occupying much the same position that John Johnston did on the American side. He was the son of a Swiss merchant who had settled originally in New England but had taken up his residence in Canada after Wolfe’s victory. Mr. Ermatinger built a substantial stone house on the north side of the river and accumulated a fortune in trade. He was the friend of Schoolcraft, who mentions him often, and was the father of two sons who located in the American Sault.
British Put Fort on Drummond
The government of Great Britain, having taken and lost Mackinac Island in the war of 1812, cast about for another vantage point in the vicinity whereon to erect a fort. The north shore of the rapids at the Sault was considered and was found to be rocky, low, swampy, and under the possible domination of American artillery. It was deemed likely that the Americans would claim St. Joseph’s Island, so in 1815 a British fort was established at the mouth of St. Mary’s River on an island called by the Indians Pontanagannippi, or Pontanagannissi. It was renamed Drummond’s Island by the British, in honor of General Sir Gordon Drummond, commander of the lake district, but the Indian name has been preserved in the adjacent and altogether lovely Potagannissing Bay. One meaning given to this name is “the place of beautiful islands.” The stolid Saulteur Chippewas were given, but little to the contemplation of the beautiful, but such is the loveliness of the region that even an Indian might be pardoned for growing ecstatic over it. The matter-of-fact British Army reports speak of the location as beautiful and picturesque, and Drummond Island has come to be known as “The Gem of the Huron.”
Here the British remained until the Island was adjudicated American territory. Although they had long since relinquished possession of the American Sault and the Michigan Upper Peninsula, their standard was still raised by the Indians loyal to them on the south side of the rapids.
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