Alexander Hunter Murray

Alexander Hunter Murray (1818 or 1819 – 20 April 1874)[1] was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trader and artist.

Life

According to the Parish Registers at the General Register Office in Edinburgh four brothers were registered at Crawfordjohn, Lanarkshire:

  • Thomas Hunter Murray on October 25, 1813
  • Alexander William Hunter Murray on October 22, 1815
  • William Murray on April 13, 1817
  • Ebenezer Murray on May 21, 1819

Alexander, William and Ebenezer were all in Canada by 1841, but found steady work very difficult to find. Alex joined the American Fur Company in 1842 and Hudson's Bay Company in 1846.

Work

In 1847, he established the trading post at Fort Yukon at the juncture of the Yukon and Porcupine rivers in the land of the Gwichʼin people. Originally part of Russian Alaska, the Hudson's Bay Company continued to trade there until expelled by the US government in 1869 following the Alaska Purchase.

He drew numerous sketches of fur trade posts and of people and wrote Journal of the Yukon, 1847–48, which give valuable insight into the culture of local First Nation people at the time.

On 4 April 1975 Canada Post issued 'Dance of the Kutcha-Kutchin' in the Indians of Canada, Indians of the Subarctic series. The stamp was designed by Georges Beaupré based on a drawing by Alexander Hunter Murray (1851) in Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The 8¢ stamps are perforated 13.5 and were printed by Canadian Bank Note Company, Limited.[2]

gollark: Alternatively, there just aren't that many people with the relevant skillsets who aren't doing other things, and none of them care about it/have gotten around to it.
gollark: Cheaper/easier personalization presumably.
gollark: I think people working on it are concerned about the potential for scams and such and are less willing to release models etc.
gollark: This makes me 40% more ethical than you probably.
gollark: People are *more* willing to sacrifice the Mona Lisa than their life savings for 5 people?

References
  1. "Artist/Maker Name "Murray, Alexander Hunter"". Canadian Heritage Information Network. Government of Canada. Retrieved 22 September 2015.
  2. "Canada Post stamp". Archived from the original on 2016-01-08. Retrieved 2019-05-13.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.