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To attempt to introduce the Minutes of Mr. Hamburgh”s Journal is like attempting to introduce a stranger, for the Minutes are shrouded in obscurity. Who was Mr. Hamburgh? Where is the journal of his travels from Detroit to Chicago and the Mississippi River by way of Lakes Huron and Michigan and the Illinois River, in the year in which Pontiac directed the Indian uprising against the English? Who wrote these Minutes from his journal? These are questions to which neither contemporary nor later records seem to have an answer. A copy of the Minutes has been preserved for years in the Library of Congress, but there is no record of its acquisition.

Was the man in question a trader? and was his name Hambough instead of Hamburgh? Parkman, in his Conspiracy of Pontiac, quotes from a letter of June 19, 1763, by Richard Winston, a trader at Saint Joseph’s, to his fellow-traders at Detroit, which reads in part as follows: "I have only to inform you that by the blessings of God and the help of M. Louison Chevalie, I escaped being killed when the unfortunate garrison was massacred, Mr. Hambough and me being hid in the house of the said Chevalie for 4 days and nights. Mr. Hambough is brought by the Savages to the Illinois, likewise Mr. Chim. Unfortunate me remains here Captive with the Savages."

Source: Travels in the American Colonies
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