Janet Hale's "Bloodlines"; McLoughlin and fort demographics

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Here is a page of links to more info about Janet Hale and her books.
The first two links lead to brief bios, which also include
photographs of her.  http://www.ipl.org/cgi/ref/native/browse.pl/A36
As to how many generations away from McLoughlin she would be, Ms.
Hale relates being told she was the great-great granddaughter of
McLoughlin, and she is in the right age bracket for that number of
"great's."

I see my county library has two copies out in branches of
"Bloodlines," so it might be available in most local libraries.

I was surprised to see she described McLoughlin as Irish (and
consequently herself as part-Irish), as I had always thought him to
be a Scot (though born in Canada).  I found an article in the [online
version of the 1908] Catholic Encyclopedia which describes his
background. There I discovered he was Irish on his father's side and
Scottish on his mother's.  The impression of him as a Scot is
probably reinforced by the facts that John was raised by his maternal
grandfather (his father died young), and he was sent for a to study a
while in Scotland.  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09504b.htm

On the topic of the predominant religion in the Fort, I was
interested to also see there that McLoughlin himself was Anglican but
converted to Catholicism in 1842.  I would imagine the fort
population and HBC employees were mostly Catholic due to the
preponderance of French Canadians among them.

(Per the CIA Fact Book online, Canada is today divided about 42%/40%
Protestant/Catholic, as compared to 56%/28% in the U.S. I can't work
an equation, but using my trusty percent-key calculator to factor out
the one-quarter of Canada's population who are French-speaking seems
to account within a couple percent for the difference.
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html .)

Regards,

Jeff

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001 10:36:06 -0700, "David Lewis"
<coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> wrote:

>For more info on McLaughlin's family see the book "Bloodlines" by Hale.
>She professes to be the GGgranddaughter(not sure how many greats) of
>McLaughlin.
>DL