Alexander Kennedy

Alexander Kennedy went out to Hudson Bay and rose to become one of the ten Chief Factors who signed the deed poll to unite HBC with the North West Company. Governor Simpson gave a dinner for the men from both companies at which there was some friction between Alexander Kennedy and "Blind" McDonald of the NWC as they had fought a duel with swords in 1813. Alexander was said to be the cooler of the two.

His family had lived in Stroma, the now-uninhabited island in the Pentland Firth. Bodies in the family vault became mummified, possibly because of the salt-laden air, and Alexander’s great-grandfather, Murdoch, became notorious for displaying the bodies of his father and grandfather to his guests and playing the drum on his father’s belly.

Alexander Kennedy took a Cree Indian wife, Aggathas, with whom he had 10 children. His son William led one of the expeditions Lady Franklin sent to look for her husband; his granddaughter Elizabeth Setter married John Norquay and his grandson Alexander Kennedy Isbister had a very active career as an educationalist and representative of the Metis people (descendants of Canadian Indians and white settlers). His sons John and Roderick both became doctors: Roderick in Bath, Ontario and John in Columbia. John retired to Victoria, Vancouver Island and represented Nanaimo in the first Legislative Assembly.

Alexander was made a Counsellor of the Governors of the Territories of HBC in 1822 and travelled extensively over the Hudson Bay territories, even as far as British Columbia, where he chose the site of Fort Vancouver, now Vancouver, Washington.

He died in June 1832 while in London on business. In one account he died of typhus fever but in another he is said to have been sent back to his lodgings in a hansom cab after dining with friends and, being left on his doorstep in the rain, caught pneumonia.