Later, in Rupert’s Land, George would find a people not much different from these country folk, and provide them with a way of life that included a great deal of freedom.
George Sr. must have been nonplussed when he discovered he had fathered a child. Gentlemen often took such children into their protection and provided them with a good education, while a suitable husband was found for the woman in her own class. But marriage between a gentleman and a country woman rarely occurred. However, in this case, George senior defied the rule — he married the mother.
Marriage, of course, exists in many forms. Sometimes it is sanctioned by a church, sometimes by a civil authority. Sometimes it is an exchange of vows between the partners before witnesses. Sometimes it is by cohabitation and repute — that is, if the parties are seen to be living together as man and wife, then they are man and wife. In Scotland, if a child is conceived out of wedlock, and later the man and woman marry, the child is legitimate.
Alexander Simpson claimed that George was an illegitimate child, and this has been believed and repeated by many people. But Alexander is giving us hearsay evidence, not eyewitness evidence. In any case, his testimony is wrong, because we have an eyewitness that claims otherwise. In 1851, a man named Hugh Munro wrote to Sir George:
Death has made sad havoc amongst my friends and relations since I had the pleasure of addressing you last…. I really feel as if I were left alone, different days, to when I passed a fortnight with your respected father and mother in Dingwall.
Taken at face value, Munro is giving us clear evidence that George Sr. and the mother were married by cohabitation and repute. And there is good reason to believe that the marriage may have been contracted in a church: it is difficult to imagine that George Simpson, a devoutly Christian man, would have left his son unbaptized — or, for that matter, with the stigma of illegitimacy hanging over him. If George had turned for help within the church, he could look no further than to his half-brother William, missionary minister to the Strathconon, just two miles south of Dingwall. William could have performed the marriage ceremony for his brother, but his registers have not survived. We can’t be sure what happened then, but marriage by cohabitation and repute seems likely. Marriage with church sacraments also remains a distinct possibility.
What became of the mother, we don’t know. George Sr. retired from the British Fisheries Society in 1829 and moved to the village of Redcastle, where he lived out his days. In 1841 he speaks of his blindness and other ailments that kept him bedridden. He appears in the Scotland 1841 census, his age rounded to eighty. A few months later George Sr. would have celebrated his eighty-second birthday. No burial record exists to confirm his date of death.
Rivulet Cottage, Redcastle by Beauly, Scotland, the last home of George Simpson Sr.
Courtesy of the author.
At some point, perhaps at about the age of six (1798), young George moved to Dingwall. We know that George Sr. was in Dingwall in 1805. We know that George Jr. attended school in Dingwall. And we know that Mrs. Simpson was in Dingwall, because Munro saw her there. In the early 1800s, in all likelihood, George would have lived in Dingwall with his mother and father.
In 1791 the town of Dingwall held only 745 souls, but the sparse population belied its importance to the North Country. Of the three boroughs in Ross-shire, “Dingwall is accordingly by much the most flourishing.” Six lawyers made the Dingwall Sheriff Court the busiest in the county. Seven merchants, sixty mechanics, and twenty apprentices gave the impression of great industry for a town consisting principally of one long street.
For young George Dingwall it would have presented quite a different life from that in the quiet countryside. The language of the streets, the homes, the school, and the kirk was English. So George had to master the language — one so very different from the one he had been speaking that he never quite lost his Gaelic speech patterns.
The village of Avoch. The spire of the church where Sir George Simpson’s grandfather was the minister can be seen on the hill in the distance.
Courtesy of the author.
The school held between sixty and eighty students — the children of local mechanics, farmers, and townspeople. The playground would have provided Simpson with a broad cross-section of social classes to associate with. Their names can be learned from the parish records of baptism — surnames such as Baine, Fraser, MacKay, McDonald, McLeod, Munro, Stewart, and Tomlie. All would have been known to George, some would have been his friends; some swam with him, some trekked the hills with him. But only Aemilius Simpson, the son of schoolmaster Alexander Simpson, is mentioned by George by name — the only reference that definitely places George in Dingwall.
In town, young George would have come under the influence of his grandmother, Isobel Mackenzie, the widow of the Reverend Thomas Simpson. She lived in Dingwall from 1787 until her death in 1821, aged ninety. She was there from the time of George Simpson’s birth until the time he left for Rupert’s Land.
She was a vigorous woman in her sixties and seventies when young George lived there, and she was no ordinary minister’s wife. At her death she was described as
uniformly conscientious in the discharge of all of her social and relative duties; at the same time a peculiar suavity of manners and prepossessing address, secured her the love and esteem of all who knew her. She was a sincere and devout Christian, humble, modest, and unassuming. The influence of religion on her mind was discernible, from the sweetness of her temper, and the benevolence of her heart. To her own family she was endeared by the most affectionate ties; she was beloved in life.
From the description, Isobel was a formidable woman who could only have had a profound influence on her grandson. George was the first grandchild to come into her life. He would have filled a special place in her sense of generations. She held the family lore and would have related it to young George. So he likely spent his Dingwall days imbued with a sense of Mackenzie power and authority distilled through his grandmother. There was a long line of greatness in her descent, and she probably let people know it.
The ancient schoolhouse that George Simpson attended still stands in Dingwall, on the High Street. The schoolmaster in George’s time was Alexander Simpson, no relation, except that he courted George’s Aunt Mary from 1793 to 1807, when they finally married. During the courtship, Alexander must often have been in Isobel’s home, paying his attentions to Mary. Alexander had one son, Aemilius, born in 1792 by his first wife, and two more by Mary — Thomas in 1808 and Alexander in 1811. George was to bring all three into the fur trade, and all played important roles in the life of the governor.
Alexander the schoolmaster was much more to the Simpson household, and especially to young George, than merely the schoolmaster. And he was more to the life of the town. He served as baillie of the burgh, commissioner of the Kirk Sessions, and leader of the men in hunts and excursions. George was an excellent horseman and shot with both rifle and pistol, skills fostered while in Dingwall.
Just what subjects were taught in the Dingwall school are not entirely clear. The usual subjects were English, writing, and arithmetic. Beyond those the teacher was given wide scope. Teachers in nearby parishes taught French language, geography, geometry, bookkeeping, different branches of practical mathematics, music, and so on. The optional subjects could vary considerably. What subjects beyond the usual George studied is unknown.
Cousin Alexander tells us that when George went to London in 1808 he was “clever, active, plausible, and full of animal spirits.” As the seeds of the man are in the boy, these qualities must have been in the young George — likeable, friendly, active, intelligent … and tough. It’s unlikely that any boy who challenged Simpson to a schoolyard fight came away unscathed.