Early Life
Pettygrove was born in Calais, Maine. Educated in Maine schools, he worked as a merchant's clerk in New York City before a company there sent him by ship in 1842 to Oregon City to open a store. Oregon City was then part of what was known as the Oregon Country, part of the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife, their child, as well as Pettygrove's sister, her husband, and their four children, traveling on the Fama, reached their destination in 1843. Stopping first in Vancouver, Pettygrove arranged with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) for a schooner to take his store goods up the Willamette River to Oregon City. There Pettygrove established the agreed-upon store in partnership with George Abernethy. After building a warehouse in Oregon City, Pettygrove began trading in fur and wheat.
Read more about this topic: Francis Pettygrove
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)