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arrived 1818 · the canal era
Fort Wayne's business record opens with a fur trader: Francis Comparet came up the Maumee to Fort Wayne in 1818 and built one of the town's first permanent trading establishments — a brick residence with an adjoining store and trading house on Columbia Street, standing by 1830, and later a warehouse on the canal basin that put the house on the Wabash & Erie Canal trade. His son Alexander C. Comparet's Reminiscences of Old Fort Wayne (1906) names Comparet and the Ewings as "the most extensive fur traders in this country" in the post's last fur-trade years. The name outlasted the trade: the 1858–59 Williams' directory lists Comparet, Hubbell & Co., commission, forwarding and produce merchants, with D. F. Comparet as a partner. The fur trade itself faded with the Miami removal of 1846; the family's commission and produce business carried the name past the canal era. The People record mentions Comparet only among the citizens who backed the town's first newspaper venture — he has no profile there. The trading house's course is told in the Business section.
Sources:
- Businesses — "Francis Comparet's trading house" (the 1818 arrival, the Columbia Street house, the canal-basin warehouse, the 1858–59 directory listing).
- Alexander C. Comparet, Reminiscences of Old Fort Wayne (1906), as quoted in the Business entry — the "most extensive fur traders" judgement.