Peter Pond (c1739-1807)

Fur trader.

Always adventurous, Pond was from a Connecticut family whose members were, by his own account, “all waryers Ither by Sea or Land.” After military service in the Seven Years War, he entered the fur trade around Detroit in 1765 and began to move west from Michilimackinac in 1773. By 1775 he had joined Alexander Henry at the mouth of the Winnipeg River and wintered at Dauphin Lake. From there he moved into the Athabasca watershed, which he helped open to fur trading. Accused of murdering a trading rival over the winter of 1786-87, Pond left the West in 1788 and never returned. He spent most of his later years in Connecticut. Not a Loyalist, he was always suspect in Canada for his American background.

More information:

Peter Pond, Fur Trader and Explorer by H. R. Wagner (1955).

Peter Pond, Dictionary of Canadian Biography V, 681-86.

Source:

Profile revised: 20 April 2008

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