Harris, John (1726–30 July 1791), ferryman, Indian trader, and founder of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was born in Paxton, Pennsylvania, the son of John Harris, a trader and brewer, and Esther Say. Harris, often designated “the founder” to distinguish him from his father, apparently had little formal education, although he was literate. Harris’s father arrived in Philadelphia from England in the early eighteenth century with very little in the way of financial resources. He worked for a time as a laborer, but through a friendship with Philadelphia’s first mayor, ...
Article
Harris, John (1726-1791), ferryman, Indian trader, and founder of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
David Edward Michlovitz
Article
Lorimier, Louis (1748-1812), trader, Indian agent, and founder of Cape Girardeau, Missouri
John Sugden
Lorimier, Louis ( March 1748–26 June 1812), trader, Indian agent, and founder of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was born probably in Lachine, Canada, the son of Claude-Nicolas de la Rivière de Lorimier, a French colonial officer and commander of La Présentation (Ogdensburg, N.Y.), and Marie-Louise Lepailleur de Laferté. Louis came west with his father in 1769 and at the outbreak of the American Revolution was trading with the Miami Indians on the Wabash. Because of his influence with and knowledge of the Indians, he was employed by the British to rally the tribes to the king’s cause and to direct them against American settlements in Kentucky and elsewhere. At Christmas 1776 he moved to the Shawnee country in present-day Ohio and soon established a trading post on Lorimier’s Creek at the headwaters of the Great Miami River. He acquired a facility with the Shawnee language and established an unusual rapport with the tribesmen. In February 1778 Lorimier was one of two Frenchmen who accompanied ...
