Russell Farnham Explorer Indian Trader

Russell Farnham

George Davenport partnered with Russell Farnham in 1824. He couldn’t have chosen a more qualified person for his growing enterprise. 

John Jacob Astor was the first to capitalize on the Lewis and Clark’s western explorations. He sent two expeditions to the Pacific coast in the summer of 1807. Captain Jonathan Thorn sailed around Cape Horn to the Pacific coast. Astor selected 23-year-old Russell Farnham to lead the cross-country expedition, following Lewis and Clark’s footsteps. Farnham handpicked a crew of seventy frontiersmen and started up the Missouri River to its headwaters. 

 

The expedition wintered at the mouth of the Milk River. When spring came, they pushed on to the Columbia River. By the time Farnham reached his objective in October 1808, just seven men remained of the seventy who started. 

 

Unfortunately, Farnham arrived at the designated meeting place just in time to see the ships sail away. He waited three weeks, hoping they would return for him, then set off on foot across the country to make the return journey. By the time he reached his previous wintering spot on the Milk River, Farnham was the only man left. 

Things went from bad to worse. 

 

He was taken prisoner by a band of warring Indians. They took him to Saskatchewan. Four years later, the tribe visited a Russian Fur Company post in southern Alaska. The trader there refused to ransom Farnham, but he sent a letter to Astor. 

 

Three years later, Astor arranged Farnham’s release. He returned to New York and resumed work for the American Fur Company. 

 

Farnham traveled to Prairie du Chien in 1817, hoping to trade along the Des Moines River with the Sac. He opened a store and trading house in Warsaw, Illinois, near Fort Edwards in the early 1820s. When the military abandoned the fort in 1824, he moved to Rock Island. 

 

In The Trader at Rock Island, Regena Trant Schantz said that Farnham and Davenport established a trading relationship as early as 1819. However, it wasn’t anything formal. Farnham supplied Davenport with trade goods at the beginning of the season. Davenport repaid him in furs when the season ended. She suggested it was a trial run before taking Davenport into the American Fur Company. 

 

Farnham and Davenport sold out to John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company in the fall of 1826. Under the new arrangement, Davenport managed “the company’s trade from the mouth of the Iowa River to the Turkey River.” Russell Farnham managed the area south of the Iowa River. He kept his principal place of business at Fort Edwards. Another old-time trader, Joseph Rolette, worked north of the Turkey River and operated out of Prairie du Chien.