Andrew Henry

Andrew Henry (born 1775 in Fayette County , Pennsylvania , † January 10, 1832 ) was an American trapper and fur trader and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company . Several rivers in Idaho and Utah and a lake in Idaho are named after him.

Life

Andrew Henry was born in Fayette County Pennsylvania in 1775 to George and Margaret Henry. In 1799 he moved to Nashville , Tennessee . In April 1800 he moved to Sainte Genevieve in what was then French Louisiana , now Missouri . On December 16, 1805, he married Marie Villars. One of the groomsmen was his future trading partner William Henry Ashley . However, the marriage did not last long, as early as October 1807 they divorced. Henry is described as a cultured gentleman who loved literature and played the violin well and throughout his life .

In April 1807 he set out on an expedition along the Missouri River with Manuel Lisa , George Drouillard , John Potts, Peter Weiser and other participants . Near the mouth of the Platte River they met John Colter , who had separated from the returning Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806 and had since explored the region alone. Lisa won John Colter as a scout for the expedition. They moved over the Yellowstone River to the mouth of the Bighorn River . In November 1807 they established the Fort Raymond trading post, also known as Manuels Fort . It was the first trading post in what would later become Montana . After Lisa's return to St. Louis , Andrew Henry bought into Manuel Lisa's Missouri Fur Company and rose from employee to partner.

In the spring of 1809 they set out again on an expedition along the Missouri to what is now the states of Montana and Idaho . They set up the Fort Lisa trading post and bought beaver pelts from the area's Indians. They explored the Three Forks of the Missouri River, where violent clashes with the Blackfoot Indians broke out. On the flight south, Henry crossed the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains as the first white American since the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-06 and reached what is now Idaho. In the spring of 1811 he discovered Henrys Lake, named after him, and the Henrys Fork River near present-day St. Anthony (Idaho) . He also explored parts of the upper reaches of the Snake River and the Green River , the latter as the first white American. Andrew Henry returned to St. Louis in January 1812.

During the British-American War of 1812, he enlisted in the Missouri Militia and rose to the rank of major. In 1818 he married the considerably younger Mary Flemming. He had four children with her.

In 1822 he co-founded Ashley & Henry , later the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, with William Henry Ashley . Major Henry led an expedition of 150 men, 60 horses and a boat along the Missouri River to the mouth of the Yellowstone River. He founded the short-lived Fort Henry there . In 1823 he and some of his men took part in the campaign of the US Army and private Trapper troops against the Arikaree on the Missouri River. In 1824 he left the partnership with William H. Ashley and returned to St. Louis. He died on January 10, 1832.

In the film The Revenant, released in 2015, he is played by Domhnall Gleeson .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Don Berry: A Majority of Scoundrels. Harper & Brother, New York 1961, p. 70