Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk
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Thomas Douglas (June 20, 1771 - April 8, 1820) was the 5th Earl of Selkirk, born at Saint Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. He was noteworthy as a Scottish philanthropist who sponsored immigrant settlements in Canada.
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[edit] Early background
Thomas Douglas was the seventh son of Dunbar Douglas, 4th Earl of Selkirk, and Helen Hamilton. As he had not expected to inherit the family estate, he went to the University of Edinburgh to study to become a lawyer. While there, he noticed poor Scottish farmers who were being displaced by their landlords. Seeing their plight, he investigated ways he could help them find new land in the then British colonies. After his father's death in 1799, Douglas, the last surviving son (two brothers died in infancy, two died of tuberculosis and two died of yellow fever), became the 5th Earl of Selkirk.
[edit] Involvement in Canada
When he unexpectedly inherited the estate, he used his money and political connections to purchase land and settle poor Scottish farmers in Belfast, Prince Edward Island in 1803 and Upper Canada in 1804.
Douglas asked the British government for a land grant in the Red River Valley, a part of Rupert's Land. The government refused, as the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) had been granted a fur trading monopoly on that land. However Douglas was very determined, and he and Sir Alexander Mackenzie bought enough shares in HBC to let them gain control of the land. This position of power, along with his marriage connections (his wife Jean, was the sister of Andrew Wedderburn, a member of the HBC governing committee) allowed him to acquire a land grant called Assiniboia to serve as an agricultural settlement for the company. Between 1811 and 1815, Douglas recruited over 300 Scots and Irish immigrants [1], later referred to as the Selkirk Settlers, to make the arduous trip across the Atlantic to the Hudson Bay outpost of York Factory, then south through the lakes and waterways of Manitoba to the Red River Colony [2].
He traveled extensively in North America, and his approach and work gained him some fame; in 1807 he was named Lord-Lieutenant of Kirkcudbright District in Scotland, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
As part owner, Douglas wanted to stop the North West Company from competing with HBC for furs in the region, and he spent much of his later life defending his actions in court.
[edit] Legacy
Douglas' colonizing ambitions have been memorialized in the names of the City of Selkirk and the Village of East Selkirk, as well as the Winnipeg neighborhood of Point Douglas (where Fort Douglas once stood) and Winnipeg's Selkirk Avenue.
The City of Selkirk is served by the Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School, which is administered by the Lord Selkirk School Division.
[edit] References
- Phyllis A. Arnold Canada Revisited 8, Arnold Publishing Ltd.
[edit] External links
- Detailed biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists, available freely at Project Gutenberg, by George Bryce 1909
- Peerage of Thomas Douglas
| Peerage of Scotland | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Dunbar Douglas |
Earl of Selkirk 1799–1820 |
Succeeded by: Dunbar James Douglas |
