2 - Sarah Ballenden

Sources

Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many tender ties : women in fur-trade society in western Canada, 1670-1870 (1980).

Van Kirk, Sylvia. “Destined to Raise Her Caste”: Sarah Ballenden and the Foss-Pelly Scandal”, MHS Transactions, Series 3, Number 31, 1974-75 Season.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. “The Reputation of a Lady”: Sarah Ballenden and the Foss-Pelly Scandal” Manitoba History, (1986).

Van Kirk, Sylvia. “John Ballenden”, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Teillet, Jean. The North-West Is Our Mother (2019).

Barclay, Krista. “‘Far asunder there are those to whom my name is music’: Nineteenth-Century Hudson’s Bay Company Families in the British Imperial World.” University of Manitoba Master’s Thesis. 2019.

Fitzgerald, Sharron A. “Women’s agency in the development of hybrid social spaces: The
trials of Sarah Ballenden and Maria Thomas in Canada’s Red River colony, 1850 and 1863 (Manitoba)”. Wilfrid Laurier University Thesis. 2004.

Hall, Norma Jean. “A Perfect Freedom: Red River As A Settler Society, 1810-1870”. University of Manitoba Thesis. 2003.

Hargrave, Letitia. The Letters of Letitia Hargrave. (1947).

Millions, Erin. “By Education and Conduct’: Educating Trans-Imperial Indigenous Fur-Trade Children in the Hudson’s Bay Company Territories and the British Empire, 1820s to 1870s.” Univeristy of Manitoba Master’s Thesis. 2017.

Dr. Ross Mitchell, “Andrew Graham Ballenden Bannatyne: The First Citizen of Winnipeg” (1956).

Resistence Mothers: Metis Geneology

The summer of 1850 saw the Red River Colony embroiled in scandal. Captain Christopher Foss was sueing several residents of Upper Fort Garry for defamation after they’d accused Sarah Ballenden (the Metis wife of the Chief Factor, and functionally the first lady of the fort) of having an affair. Social lines were drawn within the colony, highlighting the divides that been steadily growing over the past decade.

Listen to the full episode :

Support the show on Patreon!

For $5 a month you also get access to our bonus episodes, including post 150 episode discussions on sources and what we had to leave out.

Thanks to the Winnipeg Free Press and the Manitoba Historical Society for their support! You can check out a brief write up of the episode in the Winnipeg Free Press.