Person:Henry West (16)

Daniel KILCUP, Harry WEST and George REHBERGER

These three men were the products of the Fraser River Gold Rush, and afterward were associated in various occupation around New Westminster and Ft. Langley. Previously, George Rehberger had been with the boundary survey. All three married halfbreed sisters who were of the old Feledow family that settled at Ft. Langley about 1845, and were servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Harry West and George Rehberger came over to Whatcom about 1862 to work for the Bellingham Bay Coal Company, West as a millwright, and Rehberger as a carpenter.

From the website: Donald E. Langley Story Illustrated : An Early History of the Municipality of Langley

   Henry West arrived in Langley with a steam saw mill in the early 1870s. Born in Bremen, Germany, in 1835, he had stowed away three times by the time he was 15, in an effort to get out of the militaristic country. Each time he was caught and returned home. Giving up temporarily, he joined the German Navy and worked on deep sea freighters as a mechanic. About 1866, at a time when Germany was at war with France, West found himself aboard the German battleship Hindenberg, which (67) was making a tour of the American West Coast. By this time West was a midshipman engineer. It was while this ship was docked at Bremerton, Washington, that West saw the opportunity to leave his native land once and for all. Here he jumped ship and immediately began working his way north toward British Columbia. He first found work in the Bellingham coal mines as a chief engineer. Shortly afterwards be became connected with a man by the name of Pickford and in partnership with him bought a steam saw mill at Seattle which they used in their West-Pickford Mill. This operation was located at the mouth of the Little Sumas River on Sumas Prairie. Their first big contract was supplying 1,000,000 board feet of timber for the first Matsqui Dyke. When Pickford mysteriously disappeared from the mill, West decided to pull up stakes and move to Langley. By this time he was married to Louisa Fallardeau, daughter of a former steward with the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Langley.
    West chose a mill location on the Fraser River about a mile upriver from the fort. He had the boilers for his steam saw mill floated from Sumas to the new location. The remaining mill parts were moved by oxen. At Langley, West did a thriving business. He built a saloon just west of the fort, of split cedar without any sawn lumber. This hotel was later sold to James Taylor.

1. ↑ British Columbia, Canada. British Columbia Archives -- BMD Index. (British Columbia, Canada: British Columbia Archives).
2. ↑ Database of the Langley Centennial Museum
3. ↑ i871 census says b. Switzerland.