Retrieving historical Hudson’s Bay Company records can be an important part of gathering evidence for First Nations Rights and Title claims or litigation. Did you know that many of these useful Hudson’s Bay Company records can be downloaded for free? Although other archival institutions hold Hudson’s Bay Company records, the most comprehensive collection is held by the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, a part of the Provincial Archives of Manitoba. This archive holds many digitized records (journals, inspection reports, biographical sheets, etc.) relating to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company. You can search for these records in Keystone Archives Descriptive Database or via other HBCA resources.
How to Search the Keystone Archives Descriptive Database
Instructions on how to search the database are available here. The suggestions we have included below are the best practices that we found for finding HBC records, but we encourage you to explore the database or reach out to an archivist at the Archives for guidance to support your research needs.
To find HBC records about a specific fort, you can search the name of the fort by name in the keyword search bar. Sometimes the names of Forts changed over time and you may need to look up more than one name to find all information about a single fort. Searching the location is a useful approach to begin with (i.e., “Kamloops”, or “Edmonton”). You can check the box to filter to “Digital Copies” only if you wish, or leave it unchecked if you want to include physical copies of records. If you leave this box unchecked, your results will likely look something like this:
At Kwusen we generally review the Archival Records results, as they are the most inclusive and provide an overview of the HBC collections. The date ranges associated with each archival record are listed on the right side of the screen. Once you select an Archival Record, you will find additional information, including whether the record has been digitized (example below).
One important note is that if you wish to come back to this page later, you should copy the url from the green “Share Link” button. This is the stable url that should always bring you to the correct webpage. The links will expire if you take them from the URL bar on your browser, so if you are tracking your searches or results using links, be mindful to save the correct one. Below you can see an example of a search result showing the date, scope and content, availability, and description of the resource.
Where resources are available for download, the link to the pdf is available at the bottom of the search result page through the “Click here for pdf file” link.
Additional HBCA Resources
Other useful information about the HBCA can be found here and here. In addition, the Hudson's Bay Company Archives Resources webpage contains links to many helpful resources. The most relevant of these include:
· Fur trade post maps, which provide the file location and mapped location of each post in what is now Canada
· Biographical sheets, which are compilations of information on many of the individuals employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and/or the North West Company. These sheets are organized by name, and can provide personal/biographical information, as well as employment history such as appointments and year(s) of service, positions, posts, districts, and references to relevant records. This can help identify where and when the individual was living over the course of their fur trade employment.
· Name indexes, which are indexes of various records (such as HBC/North West Company servants’ contracts, engagement registers, account books, and other sources) that can be searched via name, and are useful for obtaining information about specific individuals employed by the HBC/North West Company. These indexes also include the location codes for the relevant records, which can be searched for in the Keystone Archives Descriptive Database.
