Fort Vancouver Historic Structures Report

Furnishings

a. General remarks--bedrooms. In Chapter IX of this report, when discussing the furnishings of the Big House (pp. 136-38, vol. I), the simplicity--even austerity--that prevailed in the quarters of the junior officers and clerks throughout the Company's territories was made clear. For such employees to transport any considerable amount of household goods from one assigned post to another was almost entirely out of the question. Therefore the Company provided the basic essentials in the quarters set aside for its officers and clerks. From all available evidence, these furnishings were indeed minimal.

Robert M. Ballantyne has left a description of "Bachelors' Hall" at York Factory as he encountered it in 1843. That structure was one story in height and contained a "large hall"--by which he meant room--from which a number of doors led into the sleeping apartments of the clerks. The rest of the scene is best depicted in Ballantyne's own words:

The whole was built of wood; and few houses could be found wherein so little attention was paid to ornament or luxury. The walls were originally painted white, but this, from long exposure to the influence of a large stove, had changed to a dirty yellow. No carpet covered the floor. . . . A large oblong iron box, on four crooked legs, with a funnel running from it through the roof, stood exactly in the middle of the room; this was a stove. . . . The only furniture that graced the room consisted of two small unpainted deal tables without table-cloths, five whole wooden chairs, and a broken one. . . . Several guns and fishing-rods stood in the corners of the hall. The tables were covered with a miscellaneous collection of articles; and from a number of pipes reposing on little odoriferous heaps of cut tobacco, I inferred that my future companions were great smokers. Two or three books, a pair of broken foils, a battered mask, and several surgical instruments, over which a huge mortar and pestle presided, completed the catalogue.

The different sleeping apartments around were . . . extremely characteristic of the pursuits of their different tenants. The first I entered was very small--just large enough to contain a bed, a table and a chest, leaving little room for the occupant to move about in. . . . None of these bedrooms were carpeted; none of them boasted of a chair--the trunks and boxes of the person to whom they belonged answering instead; and none of the beds were graced with curtains. Notwithstanding this emptiness, however, they had a somewhat furnished appearance, from the number of great-coats, leather capots, fur caps, worsted sashes, guns, rifles, shot-belts, snow-shoes, and powder—horns with which the walls were profusely decorated. [113]

Twenty-four years later another young apprentice clerk, Isaac Cowie, landed at York Factory from England and was assigned to quarters. His later recollection of what greeted his eyes was as follows:

We were met . . . at the landing by Mr. James S. Ramsay, apprentice clerk of three years' service, who . . . convoyed us to the "Summer House," the quarters provided for visitors of our grade. There were bed steads but no bedding in the rooms given us, so Mr. Ramsay sent the steward for a bale of new blankets, which served as mattresses and covering till we got our own bedding.

The rooms were bare and the furniture plain and scanty, for the quarters were only temporary "camping ground" for wayfarers. They may have seemed still more uninviting than they really were from the contrast afforded by the blaze of barbaric decorations on the walls of the rooms of the clerks in "Bachelors' Hall." These consisted of Indian silk and bead and wool work of every hue, which adorned the attire of these "veterans" from head to foot, also their gun-coats, shot pouches, firebags and snowshoes, all of which were hung up round the room, alongside of coloured prints of prize fighters, race horses, hunting scenes, ships and yachts. . . . Each of the bachelors seemed to be a performer on a different musical instrument--one had a violin, another a flute, a third an accordion, and a fourth a concertina, and I think they could all play the Jews' harp. [114]

H. M. Robinson, who during the 1870s wrote a number of accounts of life at the Company's posts, made a graphic statement concerning the general lack of comfortable furnishings in the quarters of the officers and clerks. A part of this description has already been quoted on pages 137-38 in volume I of this report. He then continued with the following passage:

While it must be confessed that the main body of officers confine themselves in this regard to the practical and useful, yet it not infrequently happens that a gentleman of independent taste turns up who, animated by the desire of giving an artistic air to his chamber, graces the useful with more or less of the ornamental. These peculiarities of individual taste betray themselves most strikingly in the selection and disposal of bedroom furniture. Brightly burnished arms, powder-flasks, and shot-pouches, are arranged in fantastic figures upon the walls. Objects of aboriginal handiwork in birch-bark, porcupine quills, and beadwork, impart a certain barbaric splendor to the apartment; while in vivid contrast appear rude frames enclosing highly-colored lithographs of deeds of daring on the British turf, highways, and waters. . . .

Games, too, are in great demand, and every apartment possesses its well-thumbed pack of cards, its rude cribbage-board, and sets of wooden dominoes. . Parties not studiously inclined often pass the spare hours in exercising their skill upon one of the musical instruments. [115]

Several times throughout this report it has been shown that the families of officers and clerks were sometimes housed in the Bachelors' Range and that occasionally these families were large. Present-day readers may find it incredible that a couple and as many as nine or more children might live in a single room, particularly when the inventories demonstrate that there could not have been more than one or two beds in each apartment. The following quotation from a description of a typical French-Canadian voyageur's dwelling reveals how this miracle was accomplished:

Internally the house is one single apartment; occasionally, in the better class, though rarely, two apartments. The floor is of planks sawed or hewed by hand; the ceiling, if there is any, of the same material. In one corner is the only bed, a narrow couch, painted, generally, an ultra-marine blue, or a vivid sea-green. . . . A table, one or two chairs, a few wooden trunks or boxes--doing duty with this people everywhere as table, chair, clothes-press, and cupboard--and a dresser, constitute the furniture. About the walls somewhere, more especially over the bed, hang colored prints of the Virgin, the sacred heart, etc., together with a rosary. It may be that the daughter of the house--and there always is a daughter--has come under the influence of a convent for a season, and can read; perhaps write. In that event, there is a copy of the "Lives of the Saints" on a bracket; and, it may be, a few periodicals. For the rest, the apartment is cheerless and uninviting. It may be clean, but the chances are that it is not. . . .

In this apartment the family herd--a squaw mother often, and children so numerous and dirty as to be a wonder to behold. . . . on the approach of night, when the dusky brood are all housed, the question of where they are to sleep becomes startlingly prominent.

We remember well our first experience in the solution of this difficulty. Caught one stormy winter's evening, [we] . . . halted before the door of a small cabin, and asked permission to remain over-night. . . . the request was readily granted. After a meagre supper . . . we began to look about for a couch for the night. Nothing was visible save one narrow bed, in which our host and his swarthy consort soon retired. Now, in addition to ourselves and guide, there were thirteen of the family, composed of children, male and female, from infancy to mature age. . . . Finally . . . from trunks and boxes were produced blankets and robes, and a shake-down made on the floor, into which we were directed to crawl. Scarcely had we done so, when our bed began to widen, and in a few minutes extended from wall to wall. Soon we found ourselves the central figure in a closely packed bed of thirteen, filled promiscuously with males and females. [116]

That these general conditions were reflected in the living quarters at Fort Vancouver is amply demonstrated by the testimony of persons who were given shelter within the palisade. Charles Wilkes in 1841 recorded that inside the "unpretending" houses "bunks are built for bedsteads." [117] Another member of the U. S. Exploring Expedition stated that the "houses of the clerks" contained "no other furniture than a few stools or wooden bottomed chairs and a coarse pine table." [118] A French visitor during the same year wrote that the furniture in the clerks' dwellings consisted "of a little table, a chair or bench and a camp bed of boards, infested with insects, with two woolen covers." [119]

The construction of one of the oft-mentioned bunk beds at Fort Vancouver, and the bedding, were well described by Narcissa Whitman in 1836. Her words have already been reproduced on page 159, volume I of this report. Another missionary visitor in 1837 confirmed her testimony concerning the almost universal use of bunk beds at the post when he later recalled that while there he had slept in a "berth-like fixture, then the only beds of the country." [120]

This general picture of austerity given by visitors is supported by the inventories of Company-owned "articles in use" found in the dwelling houses. Two of these are reproduced below, but, as has al ready been explained, it is not known if they applied to the Bachelors' Hall proper and five other units in the Bachelors' Quarters building or to the entire Bachelors' Range plus five additional dwelling units elsewhere in the fort:

Inventory of Sundry Goods . . . remaining on hand at Fort Vancouver Depot.

Spring 1844

Articles in Use

Bachelors Hall & No 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Inventory of Sundry Goods . . . remaining on hand at Fort Vancouver Depot.

Spring 1845

Articles in Use

Bachelors Hall & No 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The fact that the inventory taken in the spring of 1848 contained revised subheadings under the category "Articles in Use" has already been mentioned. The subheading that included the Bachelors Quarters, titled "Dwelling Houses and Mess Room," was so broad that it seems of little help in throwing light upon what furnishings were in the clerks" lodgings.

Yet the list under that subheading is of much interest. It includes items such as bedroom candlesticks, snuffers, mirrors, and tumblers that do not appear in the earlier inventories but that almost certainly were present in the Bachelors' Quarters. As has been mentioned in previous chapters, it is not known why the 1848 inventory included so many more articles than those of 1844 and 1845. For what light it may shed upon the furnishings of the Bachelors' Range, the pertinent section of the 1848 inventory is reproduced below. It will also be recognized that this list, which was not seen by this writer until after the completion of volume I of this report, provides important additional information concerning the furnishings of the mess hall in the Big House:

[1848]
--Dwelling Houses and--
--Mess Room--

It will be noted that the 1848 inventory appears to reflect an increased sophistication--almost luxury when compared with the bare-bones earlier lists--in living arrangements at the fort. As has been pointed out previously, the reason for the larger number of items recorded in 1848 is not entirely evident, but probably such articles as the lamp, the clocks, the mirrors, etc., reflect the increased importation of general merchandise as the Company's business in Oregon shifted in emphasis from fur trading to the retail trade after about 1846.

The inventories reproduced above provoke several comments. First, it seems clear that lighting in the bedrooms was by candles. Probably each apartment had at least one tin candlestick well before 1848. Second, it appears that each room also contained an earthenware wash basin and water jug. Third, each main dwelling unit seems to have had a stove. These stoves would have been of the Canadian type, probably with protective metal shields on the floors beneath and on any nearby walls (see pp. 143-45, vol. I, for a discussion of stoves at Fort Vancouver). The stoves in the Bachelors' Quarters were installed each fall and removed each spring. [124]

Fourth, each bedroom seems to have contained a wooden bed (bunk), a couple of plain wooden chairs (evidently with cane seats by 1845), a table, and, generally, a baize tablecloth. Fifth, those dwelling units that had sitting rooms seem also to have had a wooden sofa and perhaps an extra table and several chairs.

No pictures of the interior of any dwelling unit at Fort Vancouver are known to exist. However, a sketch dated 1848 and titled "Interior of H.B.C. Post at Pembina" probably depicts the room of a clerk or even a commissioned officer and conveys an impression of the accommodations provided throughout the Company's territories. While not applicable to Fort Vancouver in all details, its representation of a general crudity of furnishings undoubtedly would have been equally true of the Columbia depot's Bachelors' Quarters. It is reproduced as Plate XLIII.

Another sketch (Plate XLIV), this one of the interior of a Red River settler's home during the early nineteenth century, also depicts items of furniture that might well have had their counter parts at Fort Vancouver.

Personal effects. In the comparative descriptions of clerks' quarters noted earlier in this section, a good deal is made of the fact that the plainness of the furnishings was somewhat relieved by the displayed possessions of the occupants and by such decorative features as the individual clerks and officers might fancy. It may not be amiss, therefore, to examine the question of what personal effects the typical clerk or junior officer might have owned and carried with him from post to post.

The most conspicuous object, perhaps, was the ubiquitous cassette or small wooden trunk used by clerks and officers for carrying personal effects on journeys by boat or horse. An apprentice clerk ordinarily would not have had more than one of these useful articles, but senior clerks and officers might have had two or three. [125] One Long-time Company employee expressed the importance attached to these devices when he wrote that this "dovetailed constructed trunk, made honestly," served as the container of the clerk's "personal wealth in clothes, relics or souvenirs of civilization, and when the lid was closed, as an extra seat." [126]

The best available description of a cassette appears to be that written by Malcolm McLeod, the son of a fur trader. Cassettes, he said, were:

Trunks made of best and well seasoned pine, and made as strong and light as dovetailing, grooving, iron binding, and good workmanship can make them. The stuff throughout, is three quarters of an inch thick. The dimensions are two feet four inches in length, and one foot four inches in width and depth, and beveled on top to the extent of nearly an inch, Leaving the sides about fifteen inches and a quarter deep, of this depth, the cover [made to fit closely to a lap in the body of the box] takes from four to three and a quarter inches. Of the "Cassettes" used in the country, this is the largest size, and the smallest does not vary more than an inch, in any way. They are well painted, and are proof against any accident but fire. [127]

A traveling case was another item possessed by nearly every "gentleman." Unfortunately an exact description of these compartmented boxes does not seem to be available. They were designed to carry everything a man might need on a long journey except the main stores and bedding. The compartments were lined with soft cloth, "good baize generally," the space for the liquor bottle being especially well padded. [128]

Another necessity was a traveling basket. These were made of "strong willow," also "with compartments, and suitable tin cases, for meats, sugar, and other groceries; those for meats being in variably finely perforated on the top." Placed on top of all the other contents was a frying pan possessing "a good strong hinge." [129]

Among the other items that might be found hanging on the walls, resting on tables, or standing in corners were guns of various types, powderhorns, shot bags, fishing gear, books, musical instruments, and articles of Indian manufacture or natural curiosities such as rock specimens. The custom of indulging in small private suppers in the Bachelors' Quarters has been mentioned, and for this purpose a certain number of cooking and eating utensils, dishes, and glasses were kept on hand. Pieces of a delicate wine glass and other glasses etched on the bottoms with the initial "L" or the name "A L Lewes"--obviously once the property of Adolphus Lee Lewes, a clerk who temporarily left the Company s service shortly before the start of Outfit 1845--were uncovered during excavations of trash pits or privies along the east stockade wall in 1966, demonstrating that touches of elegance were not lacking in these domestic arrangements (see Plates XLV and XLVI).

A reasonably good idea of the personal possessions of a typical clerk can be gained from a memorandum of "Sundries left in Trunk at Fort Vancouver" by Edward Ermatinger while he was away on a trip to York Factory during the late 1820s. Omitting the articles of clothing, the list was as follows:

1 parcel Music viz
   1 Duett [sic] for two Flutes--Tauberplatz [?]
   1 Duett [sic] for two Violin Viotte
   1 Duett [sic] Overture to Lodviska [?]
   1 Instruction for Violin--I. Loder
   2 Old Books Scotch Reels
      Sundry Sheets Psalms &c
      My ain Kind Dearie
1 Small Bugle no mouth piece
Goughs Arithmetic & Key--2 vols
Tates Arithmetic & Key-- 1 vols
Keith on the use of the Globes
French Exercis[es] "Perrin"
1 dressing case--less nail Brush
1 pr Boat Hooks
1 Violin Bow
1 Bridle dble reined [130]

Articles of clothing were also much in evidence. One fur trade clerk, though not in the Company's service, listed his "personal outfit" in 1800 as "a corderoy [sic] round-about, pants and vest, four striped cotton shirts, four pair of socks, and four 'two and a half point blankets' sewed up in canvas--with two pair of blankets to cover me." [131] A Company clerk of more than half a century later said that the "approved uniform" for clerks on a journey was "a greyish blue cloth 'Illinois capote with silverplate buttons, and a broad scarlet worsted sash, the regulation headgear being a fine navy blue cloth cap with leather peak." [132] This mention of "uniform" and "regulation" clothing seems to have been merely an indication of the prevailing custom, because this writer has been unable to find that the Company's formerly prescribed "sky-blue" uniform was still required as late as the 1840s.

Perhaps an even better idea of the clothing that would have been found in a typical clerk's room can be gained from the list of articles that Clerk Francis Ermatinger ordered from London in 1828:

A still more detailed list was provided by Francis Ermatinger's brother, Edward, in a "Memorandum of Articles belonging to me, 21st Sept 1826," evidently written at Fort Vancouver:

For exhibit purposes, various items of British naval uniforms of the period might be hung on the walls of one or two of the rooms to indicate occupation by visiting officers.

According to John Dunn, who was a postmaster in the Columbia District for many years, the native or part-native wives of clerks and officers generally dressed "after the English fashion," but they retained one feature from their Indian backgrounds--"the leggin or gaiter, which is made (now that the tanned deer-skin has been superseded) of the finest, and most gaily-coloured cloth, beautifully ornamented with beads." Evidently these leggins were worn mainly when riding, because in speaking of the wives of the ordinary servants, Dunn said that in dress they imitated the officers' wives but retained the moccasin in place of adopting the low-quartered shoe." [135]

The American naval officer, Charles Wilkes, in 1841 confirmed Dunn's observations, noting that the ladies of the country were dressed "after our own bygone fashions, with the exception of leggins, made of red and blue cloth, richly ornamented." He noted that the officers' wives exercised great taste in making tobacco and fire pouches, shaped "like a lady's reticule," which were "as essential a part of dress in a voyageur's wardrobe as in a lady's." The pouches were usually made of red or blue cloth, "prettily worked" with beads and usually further ornamented with several long tails that were "worked with silk of gaudy colours." [136]

The inventories reproduced in Chapters XI and XII in volume I of this report contain much information on the articles of clothing, both men's and women's, available at Fort Vancouver."

b. The "Bachelors' Hall" proper. Robert M. Ballantyne's general description of the Bachelors' Quarters at York Factory in 1843, already quoted, provides a reasonably good picture of the smoking room or "public sitting room" for officers and clerks known as "Bachelors' Hall." At another place in his narrative, however, he added the information that this room was illuminated "by means of a number of tallow candles, stuck in tin sconces round the walls." [137]

Another comparative description of the "common" room in the clerks' quarters at York Factory, this one dating from 1879, confirms Ballantyne's picture. "The furnishings were simple in the extreme," later wrote the employee-author, "a long table, a country-made settee, and half a dozen easy chairs, whose backs could be gauged to different angles, or let down altogether . . . [and] two large Caron stoves. . . . The only adornment on the walls was a large framed engraving of the Relief of Lucknow." [138]

Fortunately, there is a modest amount of specific information available concerning the furnishings of the Bachelors' Hall at Fort Vancouver. Thomas Jefferson Farnham recorded on November 15, 1839, that he enjoyed a comfortable seat "by the stove in 'Bachelor's Hall." [139] Evidently there was no fireplace in the smoking room.

John Dunn, who left the Columbia for England in 1838, later wrote:

The smoking room or "Bachelor's Hall," presents the appearance of an armoury and a museum. All sorts of weapons, and dresses, and curiosities of civilized and savage life, and of the various implements for the prosecution of the trade, may be seen there. [140]

c. Library. It has been stated that there were two formal libraries at Fort Vancouver, one belonging to the Company and the other a subscription affair known as the "Columbia Library." It is not known that either one was housed in the Bachelors' Quarters building, but for planning purposes it is being assumed that they were both kept in a single, separate room in that structure.

Probably most of the books were kept on open wooden shelves ranged around the walls. A typical example of such shelving in the library at a Company post is shown in Plate XLVII.

There is also a chance, however, that the Company-owned books were kept in a separate, and perhaps locked, bookcase. In 1879 former clerk George B. Roberts stated: "There is a relic at Victoria of Astoria--a large Book Case." [141] The furnishings from the former Astoria were moved to Fort Vancouver in 1825, from whence they were transferred to Victoria when the Company abandoned its old Columbia depot in 1860. It is quite possible that this bookcase held the books also sent from Fort George to Vancouver and that it continued to be used for that purpose as long as the latter post remained active. Perhaps this historic piece of furniture can still be located in British Columbia!

The contents of the Company-owned library are known quite precisely. As listed in the depot inventory made during the spring of 1844, the books were as follows:

It also appears that the Company annually imported bound volumes of several newspapers for circulation in the Columbia District. Included in the requisition for Outfit 1843 (to be shipped in 1841) was an order for complete files of the following newspapers for one year up to the ship's departure date: Old Times, Sunday Times, and Morning Chronicle. [143]

No lists of the books in the subscription-supported Columbia Library have yet come to light; but it probably would not be too difficult to produce the names of two or three hundred volumes that might well have been in such a collection during the period 1845-46. The libraries at York Factory and at Fort Simpson, or what remained of them in recent years, have been preserved in Hudson's Bay House in Winnipeg. A study of the titles would reveal what books available between about 1830 and 1845 had been considered suitable and desirable by a wide range of officers and clerks. [144] Also, the journals and correspondence of several Company employees contain numerous references to books and periodicals read during this period. [145]

From such sources one gathers that bound volumes of periodicals such as the Edinburgh Evening Post, Chambers's Journal, The Penny Magazine, and The Day, as well as the Quarterly Review and the Universal Magazine (for 1786!), might have been found in the Columbia Library. Among the books might have been titles such as Lockhart's Life of Scott, Rose's translation of Orlanda Furiosa, Percy's Relics of Ancient English Poetry, Washington Irving's Astoria, translations of The Odyssey, The Subaltern, Bracebridge Hall, Life of Garrick, translations of Euripides, Herodotus, and Livy, Alison's History of Europe during the French Revolutionary War (20 vols.), sets of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Corneille, Philosophy of Living, The Way to Enjoy Life and Its Comforts, Death-Bed Triumphs of Eminent Christians, History of Miranda's Attempt to Effect a Revolution in South America, Timothy Night's Theology Explained and Defended, and many more. [146]