Alexis Bailly
Alexis Bailly | |
---|---|
Member of the Minnesota Territorial House of Representatives | |
In office September 3, 1849 – December 31, 1850 | |
Personal details | |
Born | December 14, 1798 Saint Joseph, Upper Canada |
Died | June 3, 1860 unknown |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | Lucy Faribault |
Children | Henry G. Bailly |
Occupation | Fur trader |
Alexis Bailly (December 14, 1798 – June 3, 1860) was an American politician and fur trader.
He was born in
From 1823 to 1835, with a brief hiatus in 1831, Bailly traded for the American Fur Company, working with Jean Joseph Rolette. In 1834, as founder John Jacob Astor prepared to retire, the company was reorganized as a partnership with Ramsay Crooks as president and senior partner. Bailly was known as an "energetic and competent trader, whose string of posts along the upper Mississippi and up the Minnesota Valley had grossed some $20,000"[2] in 1833. However, he had quarreled with Rolette and tried to set himself up as a competitor in 1831, causing Rolette and Crooks to mistrust him.[2] Furthermore, Bailly had an ongoing feud with Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro, which had culminated in a series of incidents involving confiscated whisky, lawsuits, and a threatened duel between the two men.[2]
In October 1834, Ramsay sent 23-year-old Henry Hastings Sibley to the AFC's Western Outfit headquarters in Prairie du Chien, with the intention of having Sibley replace Bailly. Bailly refused to give up his business until his contract expired the following summer, but agreed to take Sibley with him to the mouth of the Minnesota River and introduce him to "the people, the country, and the far-flung operations of the Dakota trade."[2] Sibley appreciated Bailly's guidance and later recalled that Bailly had warned him that American Fur Company squeezed its small traders dry, and had left him in financial ruin, despite the fact that he had cleared an estimated $200,000 for the company over ten years.[2]
Bailly served in the House of Representatives of the 1st Minnesota Territorial Legislature in 1849. His son Henry G. Bailly also served in the Minnesota Territorial Legislature and in the Minnesota Senate.[3]
Notes
- ^ a b Joseph Bailly, Trader of Lake Michigan; Chris Light; Fifth Annual George Rogers Clark Trans Appalachian Frontier History Conference; October 3, 1987, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana,
- ^ JSTOR 20187713– via JSTOR.
- ^ Alexis Bailly, Minnesota Legislators Past and Present