His parents were well-to-do people of the middle class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator.

Their son, Alexander, received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old.

He was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule.

The hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the Amerindians than the settlers of French blood.

These white men had not been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
"The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most cordial goodwill.