The McLoughlin's youngest son, David, who had worked as a clerk at Fort Vancouver, studied medicine in Paris, and sought adventure in the gold fields of California, also sometimes stayed in the home.
John and Marguerite McLoughlin, ca. 1850s, daguerreotypes from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site museum collection.
NPS Photo
Dr. John McLoughlin met Marguerite Wadin in 1811 at Fort William. At the time, he was a clerk and physician for the North West Company and the father of an infant son whose mother had died in childbirth; Marguerite was a recently-widowed mother of three children. The pair entered into a "country marriage." These were informal marriages that were often also strategic alliances between Euro-Canadian fur traders and Indigenous or Métis women. These relationships did not involve the church or government, and could be easily dissolved. However, John and Marguerite remained together, by all accounts quite devoted to each other, until John's death in 1857.
Learn more about John McLoughlin's life here.
Learn more about Marguerite McLoughlin here.
Eloisa McLoughlin Rae Harvey and Daniel Harvey, ca. 1850s, photographs from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site museum collection.
NPS Photo
In 1846, shortly after they moved into the house, John and Marguerite were joined by their recently-widowed daughter, Eloisa, and her three young children. Eloisa had been born at Fort William in 1817, and had married William Glen Rae, a clerk at Fort Vancouver, in 1838. Rae had been assigned by his father-in-law with establishing a Hudson's Bay Company post at Yerba Buena (now San Francisco), California. There, under the weight of mounting debts, a declining business and indifferent Company, and tumultuous entanglements in local politics, Rae committed suicide in January, 1845. By the time the McLouglhins moved into the McLoughlin House in January, 1846, Eloisa and her three young children had traveled north from California to join them.
Eloisa's second husband, Daniel Harvey, was an Englishman who had worked as a miller at Fort Vancouver and moved to Oregon City after he retired from the Hudson's Bay Company. There, McLoughlin placed Daniel in charge of his Oregon City mills. In 1850, Daniel Harvey married Eloisa, and they went on to have three children together. They lived in the house until 1867, when they moved to Portland, Oregon.
Learn more about Eloisa McLoughlin here.
Margaret Glen Rae, Louisa Rae, and Angelique Harvey, ca. 1850s, ambrotype from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site museum collection.
NPS Photo
Over the years, the McLoughlin House served as a home for Eloisa's six children. This photo from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site museum collection shows her three daughters.
On the left sits Margaret Glen Rae, who was born in 1841 aboard the Hudson's Bay Company steamship Beaver in the midst of a journey from Fort Stikene, Alaska, to Fort Vancouver. In the middle sits Louisa Rae, who was born in 1843 in San Francisco, and was reportedly Dr. John McLoughlin's favorite grandchild. On the right is Eloisa's youngest daughter, Mary Angelique Harvey, born in Oregon City in 1854.
The house was also home to Eloisa's sons: John Rae, born in 1839 at Fort Vancouver, Daniel Harvey Jr., born in Oregon City in 1851, and James William McLoughlin Harvey, born in Oregon City in 1856.