Nouvelle
THE MILLS OF ^ANGLETERRE by Alex Caisse

NEWSLETTER
STAFF

Mail Address
P.O. Box 241
Pomfret Ctr.,
  Ct., 06259

What made our ancestors" pick up bag and baggage and move their families to a new and different land? Adventure? Promise of riches? Escape from tyranny?
Each person might give you a different answer. Change was the common factor, but change for the sake of change without promise was not the motivation.
Earlier in the 18th century, adventure and the promise of riches spurred many of the "Caisse boys" to accept engagements to the western lands.  The Hudson Bay Company, the Northwest Company and the Montreal, McTavish and McGillivray Company were instrumental in hiring "voyageurs" to go west to establish trading posts, obtain furs and seek out new avenues of transportation. Some of these early  "voyageurs" left their families and never returned home.  Notes in the Jette Dictionary of Quebec Genealogy record "killed by savages". Later adventurers left, then returned to only accept multiple engagements to the western lands.
Below are six    translations

of notorial contracts. These were researched by Annie Caisse Boivin and can be found in her book on the Caisse family.

Engagment of Pierre Case of Lanoray by way of traveller (in front of boat) to the traders of Montreal McTavish, McGillivrays &
Co. and John Ogilvy and Thomas Thain to go at the

Fort William on December 30, 1811 front notary J.G. Beek.

(Continued on page #3)