Ramsay Crooks (2 January 1787 – 6 June 1859) was an American fur trader who immigrated to Canada from

Greenock Greenock (; ; , ) is a town in Inverclyde, Scotland, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. The town is the administrative centre of Inverclyde Council. It is a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, and forms ...

, Scotland. He was the father of American Civil War Colonel William Crooks who served in the 6th Minnesota Regiment. In 1803, Ramsay worked in a

trading post A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory in European and colonial contexts, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded. Typically a trading post allows people from one geogr ...

on the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

. He helped W. Price Hunt to organize and lead an overland trip to Astoria in the

Oregon Country Oregon Country was a large region of the Pacific Northwest of North America that was subject to a long Oregon boundary dispute, dispute between the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 19th century. The area, which had been demarcat ...

for

John Jacob Astor John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-born American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor. Astor made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by exporting History of opiu ...

in 1809 through 1813, as a partner in the

Pacific Fur Company The Pacific Fur Company (PFC) was an American fur trade venture wholly owned and funded by John Jacob Astor that functioned from 1810 to 1813. It was based in the Pacific Northwest, an area contested over the decades among the United Kingdom of G ...

. He became general manager of the

American Fur Company The American Fur Company (AFC) was a prominent American company that sold furs, skins, and buffalo robes. It was founded in 1808 by John Jacob Astor, a German Americans, German immigrant to the United States. During its heyday in the early 19th c ...

in 1817 and was president of the company from 1834 to 1839. While traveling for the fur trade company he dealt with many Native American tribes. He married Abanokue, the daughter of an Ojibwa Chieftain. They had a daughter together, Hester Crooks. Abanokue died around 1825. Crooks then married Emilie Pratte and had nine children. He spent his final days in New York.

Early life and career

In 1803, when Crooks was 16 years old he arrived in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Quebec, with his family. He stayed in Montreal while his mother and the rest of the family went on to Newark. It has been reported that he was a clerk with Maitland, Garden and Auldjo, a Montreal mercantile firm that supplied dry goods and hardware to the Indians. Later it was said that he was in Niagara with fur traders and then was a clerk for fur trader Robert Dickson at

Michilimackinac Michilimackinac ( ) is derived from an Ottawa Ojibwe name for present-day Mackinac Island and the region around the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.. Early settlers of North America applied the term to the entire region ...

Lake Huron Lake Huron ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is shared on the north and east by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south and west by the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the lake is derived from early French ex ...

. Today it is known as Mackinaw Island or Mackinac in Michigan. Ramsay was with George Gillespie (employed by Dickson) in 1805 and was in

St Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

, for him from 1805 to 1807 learning the fur trade. By 1807, Crooks had enough funds, supplemented by the fur trading Choteau Family, to form a partnership with Robert McClellan with the aim of trading with the Indians on the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

. McClellan was described as “a man of many perilous exploits and hairbreadth escapes, a sure shot, and one of the most romantic characters in the annals of the Western fur trade”. They formed an expedition of 40 men and went as far as

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

on the Missouri, but were forced back to

Council Bluffs, Iowa Council Bluffs is a city in and the county seat of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, United States. The population was 62,799 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the state's List of cities in Iowa, te ...

, by about 600

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

. They erected a trading post at Council Bluffs. Crooks and McClellan believed the Sioux were spurred on by

Manuel Lisa Manuel Lisa, also known as Manuel de Lisa (September 8, 1772, in New Orleans Louisiana (New Spain) – August 12, 1820, in St. Louis, Missouri), was a Spanish citizen and later American citizen who, while living on the western frontier, became a ...

, a Spanish trader of the

Missouri Fur Company The Missouri Fur Company (also known as the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company or the Manuel Lisa Trading Company) was one of the earliest fur trading companies in St. Louis, Missouri. Dissolved and reorganized several times, it operated under variou ...

, and McClellan swore if he ever met Lisa he would kill him. Later, with the Astor Expedition, he met Lisa on the Missouri, but, with difficulty, he was restrained from carrying out his threat. In 1809 Crooks and McClellan dissolved their partnership, and Crooks went to Mackinac to work for the

Northwest Company The North West Company was a Canadian fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in the regions that later became Western Canada and Northwestern Ont ...

(fur traders) where William Price Hunt, the organizer of the Astor expedition, signed him as a partner in the Astor group to take part in the expedition.

References

Ramsay Crooks Biography

Ramsay Crooks Obituary in Minnesota Daily Pioneer and Democrat June 23, 1859

External links

Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramsay, William 1787 births 1859 deaths Canadian fur traders Scottish emigrants to pre-Confederation Ontario Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada) Immigrants to Upper Canada American Fur Company people People from Greenock American fur traders