Alexander Henry The Elder - Early Life

Early Life

Alexander Henry was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey to an educated merchant family related to Matthew Henry. He was the eldest son of John Henry (d.1766), a merchant whose father, Alexander Henry (d.1744), had emigrated to British North America from the West of England to seek his fortune. He received a good education and afterwards took an apprenticeship in business. From the age of twenty, Henry was working as a merchant out of Albany, New York and was making a lucrative but hazardous living supplying the British army during the French and Indian War. In 1760, following Wolfes victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, Henry was placed in charge of three loaded supply bateaux which were following Lord Amhersts advance along Lake Ontario to Montreal.

In early 1761, at Les Cèdres, Henry met former fur trader Jean-Baptiste Leduc, who acquainted him with the rich possibilities of trading at Michilimackinac and around Lake Superior. That spring at Montreal, he secured a fur-trade pass from Major-General Thomas Gage - the second Englishman (by only a few days) to do so. Henry wrote, "proposing to avail myself of the new market, which was thus thrown open to British adventure, I... procured a quantity of goods" and set out on the Ottawa River to Fort Michilimackinac. As he was "altogether a stranger to the commerce in which (he) was engaging," he stopped while still in Canada to hire a guide, Etienne-Charles Campion, an experienced voyageur.