“My father, Pierre Phillipe Sirois was born Catholic in Lyon, France in 1720. He came to Canada in 1739 and quickly became a very successful fur trapper. In 1744 he founded Duquesne Fur Company. Within five years DFC was the most successful venture of its kind in ‘New France.’

“By 1750 my father had dozens of trading posts, large and small, across Canada, New York, and Pennsylvania, all the way to the Ohio Valley. DFC had offices in Montreal, Quebec, New York, Boston, Norfolk, Paris, London, Lisbon, and Rotterdam. The company had a half dozen ships and more money than most of us can imagine.

“In 1756, when my father was thirty-six, in an Oneida Indian ceremony, he married my mother, Catherine, age nineteen, the daughter of a very powerful Oneida Bear Clan warrior and sachem with whom my father was doing a lot of business.

“That same year, France and Great Britain went to war and a British Army unit raided one of my father’s Oneida trading posts near the New York-Pennsylvania border where my mother and her father were visiting. My grandfather and sister, who was still a baby, were killed, and my mother was wounded.

“My father brought my mother back here, built this warehouse, and pledged then he would always despise the British. I was born here in 1758.

“My parents and I traveled frequently to Europe to promote my father’s fur business. In those travels both my parents learned the languages, spoken and written, of the countries we visited.

“We were in Lisbon when a Portuguese trader who had been to Japan, showed my father plans he brought home for a ‘bath,’ almost identical to the one in which we have been bathing.

“That’s how my parents learned about using half of a very large cask for a ‘tub,’ gravity-fed cisterns on the roof as a water source, and the benefits of regular bathing—all practically unheard of in Europe and this continent. You told me your father is an architect. If I can find the drawings for this one, I will take them with us so you can give them to your father, and he will forever be known as ‘Inventor of the Modern American bath room.’

“In 1766, the 10th anniversary of their ‘Oneida Wedding Ceremony’ my mother and father reaffirmed their wedding vows in a Christian ceremony performed by Presbyterian missionary Samuel Kirkland.6

“In the aftermath of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ending the ‘Seven Years War’ between Great Britain and France, business became much more challenging for all the French-owned companies in Canada, including Duquesne Fur Company.

“In 1773, my father signed an agreement with the Hudson Bay Company to do a five-year ‘buy out’ of Duquesne Fur Company to be concluded no later than January 1st, 1778. Part of the contract is this warehouse, which remains the property of Duquesne Fur Company so long as DFC keeps its commitment to sell furs only to HBC.