Ancestry in Context

Whiskey Run FAN Club: Frank and Alex Poirier

The Port Orford Post named “Frank Purrier” as an 1853 companion of Joe and Peter Groslouis.1 Reinhart also named “Frank and Allix Purier” as companions of the Groslouis brothers in May 1854. Could Frank and Allix be members of the Whiskey Run FAN Club?2

Who were “Frank and Allix”?

Catholic Church records reveal that “Frank Purrier” is Francois/Francis Poirier (1825-1873), and “Allix” is brother, Alexandre (Alexander/“Alex”) (1835-c. 1910). Their father, Basile, came to Fort George (Astoria, Oregon) in 1821, to work for the North West Fur Trading Company.3 Their indigenous mother, Celiast “Helen” Clatsop, married Basile at Fort George.4

The family moved to Fort Vancouver in 1826. Basile and Helen divorced in 1833, and each spouse remarried. The brothers lived with their father and stepmother at Fort Vancouver.5 First baptized by Rev. Herbert Beaver of the Church of England,6 they were baptized again after the arrival of Catholic priests at the fort.7

I’ve found no other accounts of the brothers before 1853-54.

Poirier Brothers in Southern Oregon

Reinhart recounted that the Poirier brothers mined gold at Whiskey Run alongside the Groslouis brothers. He wrote that each pair of brothers left a brother to tend to their mining claims while they went to French Prairie to invest their gold yields. The two brothers left in charge of the beach claims gambled away their mining proceeds and, eventually, they were “swindled” out of their claims. When “the three others” (a combination of Poirier and Groslouis brothers) returned to Whiskey Run, they were not extended credit.“ Discouraged and disgusted to be mistreated” by the other miners, the brothers left Whiskey Run in the summer of 1853.

Reinhart met the brothers in May 1854:

My nearest neighbors north was nearly three miles at the foot of the Humboldt Mountains. They were one Frenchman named Francis Richards, and his five partners were half-breed Indians. They spoke French, English and Jargon or Chinook. They had taken up a stock ranch, cultivated a small piece of land for a garden and kept Public House8 and hunted and killed bear, elk and deer, otter, beaver and all kinds of small game, and sold the meat and furs at Port Orford, nine miles from them and twelve miles from me. The half-breeds’ names were Allix and Frank Purier, John and Peter Groslouis, and Antoine Murain.9

The French Canadians maintained a positive relationship with local tribes. Two years after meeting Reinhart, they were warned of an impending uprising.10 They abandoned their Public House claim before the killing of other settlers and the burning of buildings on February 22, 1856.11

I don’t know how long the brothers stayed together after leaving Curry County. However, historical records reveal their whereabouts two decades later.

Frank and Alex: Their Final Years

After leaving Southern Oregon, Frank mined gold in British Columbia, Canada, where he was known as “Frank Perrier” or “Frank Perry”.12 Along with Dan Kennedy and Little Sullivan, he discovered gold dust at Perry Creek in 1867.13 He “dropped dead while at work in his [mine] shaft” on 22 Oct 1873.

Red locator shows Perry Creek, B. C., Canada. Source: Google maps

Alex married a widow, Susanne Finlay, in 1873. The Indian Census Rolls show that by 1887 the couple was living on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana (shown in lower right quadrant of above map).14 They lived there until their deaths: Susan in 1908, and Alex after 1910.15

Discussion

Having grown up in the French Canadian fur trade community at Fort Vancouver, the Poirier brothers would have known the Groslouis brothers. Frank is explicitly identified as being with Joe and Peter Groslouis as the party traveled north to Whiskey Run. Although Alex was not named as a member of the discovery party, Reinhart’s story suggests that if Alex wasn’t present at the time of discovery, he’d joined his brother soon thereafter to mine the beach gold.

To answer the question posed above: Yes, Frank and Alex Poirier qualify as members of the Whiskey Run FAN Club.

If you have further information about the Poirier brothers, please contact me or leave a comment below.

End Notes

  1. The Port Orford Post (Port Orford, Oregon). 1880, December 30. “Mines and Mining,” p. 2, col. 4, Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon, Knight Library. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/2024240276/1880-12-30/ed-1/seq-2/ ↩︎
  2. As explained earlier, I’ve created the Whiskey Run FAN Club to learn about individuals present at the camp-town named Randolph (also known as Randolph-the-First). ↩︎
  3. [Basile’s and his brother, Toussaint, came together from Montreal, Canada, to Fort George. Basile worked as a baker. Watson, Bruce McIntyre. 2010. Lives Lived West of the Divide: A Biographical Dictionary of Fur Traders Working West of the Rockies, 1793-1858, 785-786. University of British Columbia, Okanagan. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~goudied/genealogy/PDF/Goudie/Lives_Lived_Entire-Bruce-McIntyre-Watson.pdf. Suggestion: The URL is unreliable; type the book title into your search engine to access the book.] ↩︎
  4. The couple had a third son, Xavier “Etienne” (1823-?). Little is known about “Etienne.” French Canadian scholars believe he died of leprosy. I’ve found no record of his death. ↩︎
  5. Church records for December 29, 1838, include the boys ages in the register of their father’s marriage to his third wife. Basile’s “children by another woman”: “Xavier, aged 15 years, Francois, aged 13 years, Alexander, aged 7 years.” Nichols, Marie Leona Hobbs. 1941. The Mantle of Elias; the Story of Fathers Blanchet and Demers in Early Oregon, p. 263. Binfords & Mort. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005922254 [Image 267]. ↩︎
  6. The three brothers were baptized January 22, 1837, at Fort Vancouver. Source: Genealogy Collection, Royal BC Museum. https://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy . Note: The church register names their mother as “Catherine Unknown”; however, Catherine Clatsop was their aunt (Toussaint’s wife). Because Basile and Celiast were divorced when the boys were baptized, perhaps Catherine attended their baptism in place of their mother. ↩︎
  7. –“B 52 François Poirier” “This 18 July, 1841, we priest undersigned have baptized François, aged about 15 years, born of the legitimate marriage of Basile Poirier and of a Tlatsop woman [Hélène, Celiast]. Godfather François Fagnant, godmother Felicite Sasseté who have not known how to sign. Mod. Demers, priest.
    –“B 64 Alexandre Poirier” “This 15 January, 1843, we priest undersigned have baptized under condition Alexandre, aged 8 years, born of the legitimate marriage of Basile Poirier and of Louise Tchinouk [Hélène, Celiast]. Godfather Jean Fenley, godmother Nancy widow Leblanc. F. N. Blanchet, priest.
    –Source for above baptisms: Munnick, Harriet Duncan. 1972. Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, Volumes I and II, and Stellamaris Mission. Internet Archive. St. Paul, Ore.: French Prairie Press. Images 20 and 28, http://archive.org/details/catholicchurchre0000unse_d5s3
    –“B 57 Etienne Poirier, September 4, 1842. Etienne Poirier, aged about 15 years. Legitimate son of Basile Poirier, baker of Fort Vancouver and a Tchinouk woman. F. N. B.”
    –Source: The Mantle of Elias; the Story of Fathers Blanchet and Demers in Early Oregon, p. 263. Binfords & Mort. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005922254 [Image 267]. ↩︎
  8. Reinhart described it as “a large log house.” Reinhart, Herman Francis, Doyce B. Nunis, and Nora B. Cunningham. 1962. The Golden Frontier: The Recollections of Herman Francis Reinhart, 1851-1869, pp. 80-81. First paperback printing, University of Texas Press. ↩︎
  9. Reinhart, 1962, 80-81; copied verbatim. I will discuss Richards and Murain in an upcoming post. ↩︎
  10. Reinhart, away from Curry County at the time the uprising, returned to find his Pacific Ranch house burned. ↩︎
  11. Rodney Glisan’s military journal notes that his detachment stayed at “Half Breed’s House” on February 1, 1856. The detachment returned to the house on March 14, 1856, and found it vacant. The military then occupied the house. Glisan, Rodney. Journal of Army Life. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company. 1874, 272 and 293. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/journalofarmylif00glis/journalofarmylif00glis.pdf ↩︎
  12. Burgunder, Ben, and J. Orin Oliphant. “The Recollections of Ben Burgunder.” The Washington Historical Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1926): 190–210. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40475586 [Image 7] ↩︎
  13. Bancroft, Hubert Howe. The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Volume XXXII. History of British Columbia, 1792-1887,” 526-529. Education. University of British Columbia Library Open Collections: BC Historical Books, 1887.https://open.library.ubc.ca/viewer/bcbooks/1.0222112#p564z-4r0f:%22Perry%20Creek%22 . ↩︎
  14. The 1887 Dawes Allotment Act divided communal tribal land into individual allotments. ↩︎
  15. Short biography for Alexander Poirier published by Munnick, 1972, Image 95 (cited above, note 7); no date/year of death provided. Alex’s date of death is unknown, but it would have been after the U. S. Federal Census was recorded in May 1910. 1910 United States Federal Census; Flathead Reservation, Missoula County, Montana; Roll T624_834; Page: 40b; Enumeration District: 0073; line 31; “Paurier, Alexander.” FHL microfilm 1374847. Ancestry.com [Image 45], accessed November 11, 2025. ↩︎

Posted

in

by

Mary

Tags:

,