This photo from the archives of Ethel Drummond, grandaughter of Roderick McRae, the brother of Simon's mother, Nancy (McRae) Fraser, is very interesting...but leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It is the earliest known photograph of Simon Fraser, the son of James and Nancy (McRae) Fraser of Toney River. Ethel Drummond noted below the photo that the subject of the photograph was "Simon Fraser, cousin of Aunt Margaret (Marge), Christine Fraser (McRae) Lawrence, (second cousin) Ethel (Lawrence) Drummond."

It is interesting to note that this photo of Simon Fraser is much different than that taken a few years later, when with another young man he stopped into a photograph studio and had their photograph taken. That tintype photograph is uploaded to this database. It is assumed that Simon was approximately 20 years old in that photograph. He had grown his signature moustache by that time and was parting his hair in the opposite direction from this photo. In this photo he looks much more like a school boy about the age of 16. In the other, he appears to be a laborer (he removed his shoes or boots for the photo.). 

The question is this photo isn't that it doesn't look like him (it does) but what he might have been doing at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin? As a young man (assumed to be between the age of sixteen and eighteen) he could only have traveled there to visit some relative. There were both McRae and Frasers families represented in the Chippewa County population around that time. It is unknown who he might have gone to visit in order to have this photograph taken there. But clearly Ethel Drummond knew who the youing man in the photo was and his relationship to her and I don't think it leaves any doubt that the photo is indeed Simon Fraser.