Qui es va casar amb George Simpson?

Sir George Simpson (c. 1792 – 7 September 1860) was a Scottish explorer businessman. He was the colonial governor of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) during the period of its greatest power. From 1820 to 1860, he was in practice, if not in law, the British viceroy for the whole of Rupert's Land, an enormous territory of 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) corresponding to nearly forty per cent of modern-day Canada.

His efficient administration of the west was a precondition for the confederation of western and eastern Canada, which later created the Dominion of Canada. He was noted for his grasp of administrative detail and his physical stamina in traveling through the wilderness. Excepting voyageurs and their Siberian equivalents, few men have spent as much time travelling in the wilderness.

Simpson was also the first person known to have "circumnavigated" the world by land, and became the most powerful man of the North American fur trade during his lifetime.

Born out of wedlock to a solicitor in Dingwall, Scotland, Simpson was raised primarily by an aunt, and received a basic education at the local parish school. As a teenager, he was sent to apprentice as a clerk at an uncle's sugar brokerage in London, where he learned the intricacies of international trade, and demonstrated his clerical and managerial proficiency. He first came to the attention of the Hudson's Bay Company's management when his uncle's firm merged with that of Andrew Colvile-Wedderburn, a member of the Hudson Bay Company's board of directors.

In 1820, despite his lack of experience in the North American fur trade, Simpson was appointed as the company's North American governor-in-chief locum tenens. He was chosen as an outsider to replace the existing North American governor, William Williams, should he be arrested by the North West Company (NWC), with whom the HBC was in conflict. Simpson emigrated to North America that year, where he was placed in charge of the Athabasca Department. In 1821, upon the amalgamation of the HBC and NWC, he was appointed as the governor of the newly established Northern Department of the HBC, whose territory extended from Fort Albany to the Pacific coast. In 1826 he assumed authority over the Southern Department, making him the sole governor of the entirety of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory in North America.

His governorship was defined by the reorganization of the fur trade, a new focus on the Pacific coast, and his frequent cross-continental trips during which he would visit the forts within his domain. He made two trips to the Columbia River, in 1824 and 1827, and in 1841 made an overland journey around the world. He held the role of governor until his death in 1860.

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Frances Ramsay Simpson (28 March 1812 – 21 March 1853) was an English diarist.

The daughter of Geddes Mackenzie Simpson, a London merchant, and Frances Hume Hawkins, she was born in London.

She married her cousin George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company in February 1830. In March of the same year, the couple set sail for North America, so he could resume his responsibilities in the administration of the North American fur trade. She travelled to York Factory and recorded the details of that voyage in her diary. The fur trading post on Rainy Lake was renamed Fort Frances in her honour. After her arrival in Rupert's Land, First Nations women married to Hudson's Bay Company officials were excluded from respectable society. Her health deteriorated during her first pregnancy in 1831 and her son died the following year. She returned to London in 1833 to recover but her health continued to decline during three subsequent pregnancies.

She visited Lachine, just upstream of Montreal, with her husband in 1838 and, in 1845, moved there permanently. There she lived with her sister Isobel and Isobel's husband Duncan Finlayson, governor of Assiniboia. Simpson had another son in June 1850 and died in Lachine three years later.

Her account of her journey from Lachine to York Factory appeared in The Beaver in 1953 and 1954.

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