W.G. & G.W. Ewing Company (the House of Ewing)

1827 – 1854

Founded: The Indiana State Library's finding aid for the George W. Ewing letters states plainly that G.W. Ewing "founded the firm W.G. and G.W. Ewing with his brother William in 1827." Castaldi's sequence agrees: after Alexander Ewing's death (1826 in his telling), the sons sold most of the Ewington land to raise capital for their fur-trading ventures and the two younger brothers formed the W.G. & G.W. Ewing Company. The brothers' own trading at Fort Wayne predates the firm — Lasselle's trader list has William G. and George W. Ewing trading at Fort Wayne from 1822 — so 1827 is the firm's founding, not the brothers' arrival in the trade. Robert A. Trennert Jr.'s scholarly monograph on the house is titled for the same span: Indian Traders on the Middle Border: The House of Ewing, 1827–54 (University of Nebraska Press, 1981).

Founders: William G. Ewing (1801–1854) and George Washington Ewing (1804–1866), younger sons of Alexander Ewing (entry 3).

What it did: Fur and Indian trade from a Fort Wayne base — furs bought in, and trade goods (tools, blankets, cloth) supplied out — plus general merchandise, land speculation on a large scale, treaty/claims work, and, in the 1840s, government Indian-removal contracting, including a large role in the Potawatomi removal remembered as the Trail of Death (History Center; stated plainly, as the record states it).

Course: The house grew to rival John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company east of the Mississippi; Castaldi puts a few months' catch in the Ewings' Fort Wayne store alone at $40,000 in 1840, and the brothers prosecuted a self-described "war of extermination" against the American Fur Company's trade from 1838 — a war the Astor company ultimately lost in the Midwest (by 1843, Castaldi). Hugh McCulloch, their contemporary (and entry-to-come at the State Bank branch), rated them rarely equalled "in business capacity or general intelligence." The firm's papers survive in bulk at the Indiana State Library: correspondence, letterbooks and accounts for the W.G. and G.W. Ewing Company covering the 1820s–1850s, including its New York agents Suydam, Sage and Company (c.1825–c.1850) and its competition and agreements with the American Fur Company and Pierre Chouteau and Company. Trade reached the Miami and Potawatomi of Indiana, then west — Sac and Fox, Menominee, Winnebago, and peoples in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas.

Fate: Closed / wound up, 1854–1865. William G. Ewing died in 1854; George, then living in St. Louis, returned to Fort Wayne to wind up the partnership. The settlement of William's estate was finalised in October 1865 and confirmed at the March Term 1866 of the Common Pleas Court; George W. Ewing died a few months later, 29 May 1866 (Indiana State Library / OCLC finding aid for the George W. Ewing letters, 1849–1865). Trennert's 1827–54 span marks 1854 as the house's effective end as a trading firm.

Sources:

1. Indiana State Library finding aid (via OCLC ResearchWorks), "George W. Ewing letters, 1849–1865" (firm founded 1827; wind-up; both brothers' death dates) — https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/archiveComponent/1245233601
2. Indiana State Library, Ewing family business papers, 1818–1887 (ArchivesSpace scope note) — https://archives.isl.lib.in.us/repositories/2/archival_objects/5443
3. History Center Notes & Queries, Castaldi, "The Ewings and the Indian Trade" — http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-ewings-and-indian-trade-on.html
4. Trennert, Indian Traders on the Middle Border: The House of Ewing, 1827–54 (1981), WorldCat record — http://www.worldcat.org/title/indian-traders-on-the-middle-border-the-house-of-ewing-1827-54/oclc/6891401?lang=de
5. Lasselle, "The Old Indian Traders of Indiana" (brothers trading at Fort Wayne from 1822) — https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/download/5550/4823/17002