Russel Farnham was born in Massachusetts in 1784 and left home to join one of two expeditions organized by John Jacob Astor to establish the Pacific Fur Company at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Farnham, hired as a clerk, was part of the Tonquin party under Captain Jonathan Thorn who were to travel by sea around Cape Horn arriving on the Pacific coast.

According to Washington Irving, Farnham was ordered by Clark[clarification needed] to execute a local Native American who had been caught stealing a silver cup from one of the hunting and trapping camps.

He hung the Native American from a sapling on June 1, 1813; this incident caused a great deal of hostility between Farnham's party and the local tribes.

In the spring of 1814, he was entrusted with £40,000 in sterling bills as well as papers relating the sale of the Astoria trading post to the British North-West Company and ordered by Wilson P. Hunt, commander of the second expedition, to deliver them to John Jacob Astor via St. Petersburg.

[1][2] Employed by Astor to oversee the business interests of American Fur Company in the Great Lakes region, he was arrested by the British as a spy during the War of 1812.

He made one of the first trips into the Midwest United States on behalf of the American Fur Company in 1817, and later formed a partnership with George Davenport trading with the Sauk and Fox in the Missouri Valley.