Hudson’s Bay Company officers at Fort Vancouver requested a school to educate their children. They got one in 1832.
Literate boys had potential employment with the company or in other occupations. Educated girls emerged more marriageable as “white gentlewomen.”
The school’s courses covered reading, writing, arithmetic and religious training. In addition, boys learned manual labor skills by tending crops, and girls acquired domestic skills. After John Ball left his teaching position at Fort Vancouver, several more schoolteachers followed, briefly including missionaries Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding.
The school seemed to run smoothly until the Rev. Herbert Beaver (1800-1858) and his wife, Jane, arrived in 1836. Beaver wrote in his first report to company headquarters in London that he found a school with “about 60 scholars, one-third being girls.” But as a Protestant, he found the Catholic instruction students received to be incredibly offensive.
Although Beaver lived within the fort’s walls, he repeatedly wrote letters to Chief Factor John McLoughlin, proposing to model the school after those in England and offer Anglican spiritual instruction. McLoughlin always responded, “No, I control the school.” The polite veneer of the letters barely hides their mutual disdain.
In later reports to London, Beaver complained of McLoughlin’s dictatorial nature and sought to get him fired. Ultimately, Beaver served two years of his five-year contract and returned to England in 1838. From there, he was posted to Africa.
Frequently, the reverend’s Anglican arrogance got the better of him. In his first report, he praised John Fisher Robinson, the current schoolmaster, saying he had “much pleasure in speaking favorably and recommending him to your notice” and suggested raising Robinson’s salary from 24 pounds a year to 50. He’d soon regret those words. Months later, he reported that the students unfortunately witnessed their schoolmaster “misconducting himself by repeated acts of drunkenness.” But drunkenness proved to be Robinson’s lesser crime.
Among the children attending the school were Jane and Sarah Work, daughters of John and Josette Legace Work. Like many of the students, they were Metis, a term used to denote people of mixed Eurasian and Native American descent. Their father wrote a friend mentioning how the “damned bickering” between the chief factor and the reverend affected his children’s education.
The Work family lived at Fort Vancouver until 1834, when the HBC sent John Work to Fort Simpson, Canada, and the family temporarily split. Josette Work remained at Fort Vancouver until 1836, when she and her youngest children traveled to Fort Simpson, living there until 1849. But Jane, 9, and Sarah, 7, remained at Fort Vancouver in order to attend school, receiving instruction from Beaver and Robinson.
In 1838, James Douglas, chief trader, learned Robinson had sexually abused some of the schoolgirls. Although it’s unclear whether the Work girls were among those molested, at the very least they were exposed to a predatory schoolmaster.
HBC officers prevented Robinson from leaving the fort. He was tried and found guilty. As punishment, he was bent over the cannon in front of the chief factor’s residence and flogged. Within a year, he retreated to England.
The scandal closed the school. Its students were moved to a Methodist mission school near Salem, Oregon Territory. Upon graduating in 1841, the Work girls rejoined their family at Fort Simpson.
Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
