The history of the county of Huntingdon and of the seigniories of Chateaugay and Beauharnois, from their settlement to the year 1838

Front matter

f

The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library.

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Preface

The following work was undertaken with reluctance and solely from a sense of duty. Soon after coming to Huntingdon I perceived that the first-settlers were fast passing away and I considered it would be deeply deplored by future venerations that no narrative of when and how they redeemed the wilderness, no sketch of the kind of men and women they were, should have been preserved. Feeling thus I repeatedly suggested to different friends, qualified by education and longresidence in the district, that they ought to prepare a local history. Not one would listen to my representations. As time passed on I perceived that soon the preparation of such a work would be impossible, and if it was to be done at all I must needs do it myself. My occupation was a serious : hindrance to its prosecution. The publisher of a country newspaper so indifferently supported that its punctual appearance weekly depended as much on my labor as a printer as its editor, I could not leave my office to gather information except at rare intervals and for short periods, and this circumstance has materially affected the completeness of the work. As the value of a histoiy, however humble, depends upon its authenticity, the reader has a right to know the sources fi-om which I drew my information. (When I began to prepare for the work, I counted on finding much documentary material. My hopes were quenched in a very short time. Not a letter, diary, or memorandum could I obtain. Repeatedly have I gone with confidence to the families of clergymen and other educated men to ask to be permitted to examine the papers they bad left, only to be disappointed. Documents which, to me, would have been of the last consequence I could not obtain. Speaking from my experience, I would say the idea entertained by Mr Brymner, the keeper of the archives at- Ottawa, and others, that there is much documentary fiiaterial lying hid in families similar to that of the muniment-chests /of Great Britain, is a delusion. The destruction df the papers j of the seigniory-office was an irreparable los.s to me; which I would have been avoided had I assuined the task ten years I sooner. Mr Browniugdid his best to assist me, and liis kind- - ness I here acknowledge.

VI PREFACE.

Failing to secure documentary sources of information, I had to depend almost entirely upon what I could glean in conversations with early settlers, and if thece ever was a history written as taken from the lips of actors in or eye-witnesses of the scenes depicted, it is that now submitted. I visited every old settler I could learn of, and thus listened to w^hat over 300 had to say. There is such a difference among men and women in accuracy of observation and power of memory, that information of this nature has to be carefully dealt with, and the narratives I obtained I compared and sifted, and when I found serious discrepancies or had doubts as to the correctness of what had been told me, I paid more than one visit to the same person; in a few instances, as many as four or five. The work of interviewing was not only laborious, but too often disagreeable, for my reception was not ^ always gracious. That a sane man should neglect his business and spend his substance on horse-hire to collect old-world stories, and, above all, do so from disinterested motives, was beyond the comprehension of many, and curt answers, suspicious questions, and downright refusals were sometimes my reward for a cold and fatiguing drive over bad roads. In the majority of instances, however, I was kindly received and all the information desired readily conveyed to me. The defects of the book, (and despite all my efforts, I know they are numerous) arise largely from those unavoidable in verbal sources of information, such as inaccuracy in details and in the sequence of events, and the omission of important particulars. Those who note errors or the absence of facts which ought to find a phice in its pages, will oblige me by communicating them, so that, should a second edition be called for, the necessary changes may be made. I have scrupulously avoided genealogical details or anything approaching to family histories, seeking to supply a narrative of the settlement of the district and nothing else. To the general reader it will be too minute; to the inhabitants of the several concessions it will not be minute enough. To hit a medium that would satisfy both was impossible, and I have sought rather to meet the expectations of the residents, without including so many details as to make it tiresome to those who know of Huntingdon and her sister-counties only by name. On the lists of old settlers much labor has been spent, and yet I know they are defective. The man who cleared a lot seldom had the patent issued in his name, so that in the books of the crown lands department I found little information as to Huntingdon, and the destruction of the seigniory books left no other recourse

PREFACE. VU

as to the other two counties than the memories of old residents. The lists for Franklin and Havelock that I compiled were so incomplete that I could not print them. Of Hemingford I could obtain none. In speaking of that township, I would express my obligations to Mr Scriver, M. P., for the great trouble he took in obtaining for me all the information that lay in his power regarding it. No one, with the exception of my friend Mr Younie, did as much to assist me.

Touching the sources from which I have drawn my material for the chapters relating to the war of 1812 and the rebellion, I would state that I supplemented what oral information I obtained, by a conscientious examination of all the histories and documents I could obtain access to in Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec. Because my narrative of the campaign of Hampton and of the encounters at Odelltown differ widely from those previously printed, the reader is not to conclude I am in error. My investigations into the campaign on the Chateaugay gave as great a shock to my own preconceptions of it as the account in these pages can to any of its readers. My duty was to follow the best authorities I could find, and I could not reject the despatches and statements of those engaged on both sides in the campaign and accept the figments that have passed current in Canadian histories. In this, as in other parts of the work, I have reproduced to the best of my ability a true picture of what actually occurred, without considering who would be pleased or offended thereby. In the chapter on the rebellion I have drawn largely from the evidence given in the State Trials.

The book is a realization of only part of my design, for I had in view a history of the district to the close of the second Fenian raid. That would have brought in the transitionperiod in its history, the stage between that of bush-farming, and modern culture, the volunteer movement of 1838 and the establishment of the Huntingdon Troop; the introduction of the principle of self-government into scholastic and municipal affairs, a most important yet unwritten chapter in Canadian history; the forming of congregations, and over half came into being after 1838; the building of the Beauharnois canal, with its riots and the creation of Vallej'field ; the drift in political events, from Dunscomb's stormy return to the first election under Confederation ; the rebellion losses ; the social changes wrought in those years; in short, have completed my picture of what I consider to be the formative-period in the life of Canada. I was unable to do so, however, not from want of will or material, but of means, for in publishing the

Vlll PREFACE.

book as it stands, I had trenched so far upon my resources that I dared not go farther. Although disappointed in being prevented from carrying out my design, I have the satisfaction of knowing that the narrative is complete as an account of the settlement of the three counties.

I believe that the book will be of more than local value, and found my belief on these reasons :

1. That it is the first to give a full account, prepared from original sources, of the events of the war of 1812 in this province, for the operations in the first county of Huntingdon comprise all that happened in Quebec during these three eventful years, excepting Wilkinson's repulse at Lacolle mill.

2. That it is original in giving a minute yet comprehensive picture of how Canada was made : of how its pioneers subdued the wilderness and left the country what we find it. There are numberless narratives of life in the bush, there are many county histories ; but this is the first attempt to give the experience not of one or two settlers, but of scores, not colored to make a fascinating book, or told by persons of a romantic disposition, but th^.iunvarnished narratives of men and women whose hands were stiffened and backs bent by the toils and sufferings they relate, and not one of whom would have reduced their stories to writing. How Huntingdon and its sister counties were made is a sample of how Ontario and Canada were made, and the making of Canada must form at the base of all true histories of our country.

3. It gives an almost complete history of the rebellion of 1838, for the head and front of the rising of that year was in the district that falls within its scope, while it takes up a subject which other histories have ignored, the relations of the two races.

That the book will be of permanent value I am somewhat doubtful, and while engaged in its preparation I often asked myself. Is the play worth the candle? and considered whether I should not abandon it. After debating the matter the conclusion I always reached was, that though the present generation might possibly regard a record of the settlement of the district of Beauharnois as trite and commonplace and dismiss it with disdain, a time would come when some future Buckle •or Macaulay would turn to its pages for information on subjects preserved nowhere else, and the thought (possibly a foolish one) that I was working for future generations, en- -couraged me to persevere and complete my task, when I had naught else to cheer me.

To THE Youth of the District of Beauhaknois

I Dedicate This Book, in the Hope that the

Record it Preserves of the Sacrifices its First

Settlers Made, of the Privations they Endured

IN Redeeming It from the Wilderness, and in

Defending It against Invasion and Rebellion,

MAY Incite them to Emulate their Self-denying

Thrift and Persevering Industry, and Deepen

IN their Hearts the Sentiment of Loyalty to

The Mother Land and of Devotion to The

.Land of their Birth.

ROBT. Sellae.

HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF

THE DISTRICT OF BEAUHARNOIS.

Chapter I The Creation Of The Seigniories

At the beginning of the present century the hardy emigrant, as he toiled upon his weary way from l^-ke Champlain to the west, on looking down from one of those spurs of the Adirondacks which nearest approach Canada, could see a great plain, stretching northward until ended by a range of hills similar to that on which he stood, whose isolated peaks alone indicate their presence. In the centre of this vast plain, the gleam of the St Lawrence would catch his eye, and the thought could hardly fail to occur to him, that, at some distant period in the past, the forest-covered flat which stretched beneath him, must have been the bed of a^ great inland sea, with the Adirondacks on the south and the Laurentiaii range on the north as its shores, and that the mighty river before him is merely its residuum. With that portion of the plain that lies south of the St Lawrence, and is formed into a triangle by the international boundary-line, the base starting at Chateaugay Basin and the apex at St Regis, I have to deal, and my purpose is to tell how this section which, at the opening of the century, was a howling-wilderness, impenetrable save to the Indian as he sought the wild-beast in his lair, has become transformed into one of the most highly cultivated districts in the Dominion. And not alone the interest that must ever attach to narratives of early settlement belongs to the story I

4 THE INDIANS.

have to tell, foi- it will comprise the history of a community distinct from every other in the province of Quebec. With the Eastern Townships, with which they are often erroneously classed, the English-speaking settlements of the district of Beauharnois have no affinity. The first settlers of the Eastern Townships were Americans, and between the customs and habits of their descendants and those of the people who live to the south of them there is no material difference, but they who dwell by the Chateaugay and its tributaries ai"e of Old Country stock, and in character, ways of life, and speech present nearly as striking a contrast to the Americans, who are divided from them by an imaginary boundary-line, as they do to the French Canadians who are found among them and who hem them in to the north and east. "Thus it comes that my narrative deals not only with an isolated and peculiarly situated portion of the Dominion, but with a community distinct from the neighboring populations and possessing a marked individuality. My story is that of the chief settlement in Quebec of Old Country immigrants, of their struggles, their trials, and their triumphs in subduing an inhospitable tract of country, and of their relations with the French-Canadian people, amidst whom they exist like a sand bank in the sea, always threatened with overflow and extinction, yet unchanged and unmoved by the surrounding waters.

Of the history previous, to the year 1800 of that portion of Canada which lies between the mouths of the Chateaugay and of the St Regis little can be said, and it is a satisfaction to the enquiring mind to know, that this is not only because little has been preserved but that there was little to tell. The country was in a state of nature, and its chief inhabitants were wandering bands of Indians. There had, indeed, been a time when a race superior to Huron or Iroquois possessed the land, for the striking eminence on Nuns' island, and the smaller one on the mainland to the south of it, tell of the presence of that singular people, the Moiind Builders. The mound on the island is in admirable preservation and the largest in the Dominion. No attempt at excavation has yet

THE SEIGNIORY OF CHATEAUGAY. 5-

been made. Considering that the district was a favorite liunting-ground, the fewness of the Indian relics preserved is singular, and attributable, probably, to the heedlessness of the settlei-s, who cast aside the fragments the plow turned up. Along the river-banks, stone arrow-heads, tomahawks, and pottery have been frequently found. On the point on the north bank of the Chateaugay, where the English river unites with it, was a considerable clearing,, which the first settlers believed had been made by the Indians and v/hich they named Indian point. From the qua,ntity of stone weapons and implements which were unearthed, their surmise that the clearance had been the site of an Indian village was a reasonable one. They discovered no iron relic _of these times with the exception of a pronged spear, which must have required a handle two inches thick.

The tra,ces of the presence of the French during what may be termed the romantic period — the age of exploration and missionary joumeyings — are equally dim. While passing over lake St Francis, nightfall overtook Champlain off the mouth of the Laguerre, and drawing up his canoes on the shingly beach he kindled his camp fire. From a very early date there must have been a portage-trail along the bank from Hungry bay to Melocheville, for the south channel Avas used by the voyageurs.

Although the great river that bounded it was thus a highway, the French obtained no foothold in the district until long after their taking possession of the country. This arose from the insecurity caused by hostile Indians, and it was not until the subjugation of the tribes by Frontenac, after the massacre at Lachinc, that it became safe to attempt a foothold on the south bank. Isle Perrot and the north shore,, as far west as the Cascades, had been dotted with houses,, before a single clearance had been made on the other bank. During Frontenac's time a seigniory G miles broad and 9 deep, was carved out of the bush, and given to Charles L. Lemoinc, seignior of Longueuil. The deed bears date Sept. 29th, 1673, and; the title given to the seigniory was Chateaugay, a name probably derived from some place in

-6 THE SETTLEMENT AT THE BASIN.

France.* Thirteen years afterwards the seigniory was still & wilderness, but in 1687 it is believed that, in order to hold it, Mr Lemoine caused to be built on the western point of I'isle St Bernard (Nuns' island) the windmill which still stands thei-e, but now converted into an oratory, and the land bounded by the lake and river was surveyed. The lots were laid out long and narrow, so that the settlers could build their houses close together tor mutual defence. When the fii-st clearance was made is unascertainable, but from the fact that the Jesuits, who held the neighboring seigniory of Sault St Louis, and had opened a church at Caughnawaga half a century before, deemed it advisable to establish a mission at Chateaugay Basin in 1736, it may be concluded that there existed by that time a respectable settlement.f 'The log church they erected was used until the end of the -century. It stood about a quarter of a mile belov,r the bridge, -on the west bank, where its site is indicated by a row of •elms. In 1759 one hundred lots had been conceded, the habitants paying an easy rental of 1 sol (2 cents) for each of the ■ordinary ai-pents and a fat fowl for each front arpent. The following year, a band of Indians, belonging to General Amherst's army, traversed the infant settlement. The only

*Among the pioneers of Louisiana was a Chateaugay, who Afterwards became governor of the French colony of Cayenne. I have been somewhat perplexed as to the spelling of the word. Up to within half a century it was more commonly written without the final u than with it. DeSalaberry, who lielped to make the name famous and who was an admirable French scholar, wrote the word Chateaugay, at once preserving the correct pronunciation and keeping in unison with the rules that govern the spelling of modern French, for the "guay" is antique if not barbarous. In the consolidated statutes for U. & L. C. the name is given as Chateaugai.

f The Jesuits visited the settlement before 1736, however, which is the date when they built a church. The edicts and ordinances of 1722, by which so many parishes were established, says : "This fief having no parish adjoining it, and not being sufficiently settled for one to be erected therein, shall continue to be served as a mission by the missionary to the Iroquois Indians of Sault St Louis."

THE SEIGNIORY OF BEAUHARNOIS. /

incident of their incursion preserved, is that they scalped a man and woman while working in a corn-field, and that one of the two recovered. As it. was part of Amhei-st's policy to conciliate the habitants, the probability is that the settlement was left unharmed, and that the outrage mentioned was exceptional.

On the 25th August, 1764, Miss Marie Anne Robutel de Lanoue sold the seigniory to Madame Youville, foundress of the convent of Grey Nuns at Montreal, for $1322 and a pension of $900 a year. When the transfer took place, 1542 arpents had been conceded on the north side of the river and 2875 on the south, the settlement extending from the St Lawrence to the bridge. Except a small fringe of clearance on either bank of the river, no impression had been made on the forest, and the probability is that the settlers depended more upon hunting and fishing than on cultivating the soil. When the nuns took possession, they adopted Isle St Bernard for a country residence, there being then an old log-house upon it, 20 x 50 feet, and about 100 arpents under cultivation, but they never lived there in any numbers, and, save in summer, seldom more than three or four were to be found. Five years after becoming owners of the seigniory, the nuns built the first dam, a short distance above the bridge, and a grist-mill, which shows that the settlement had so increased that the old windmill was no longer sufiicient. In 1774 they built the present manor-house, and the ■ old Jesuit church was replaced by a spacious stone edifice, dedicated to St John.

While a sleepy little settlement was thus vegetating at the i mouth of the Chateaugay, no movement was to be marked either south or west of it. Over fifty years after the creation of the seigniory of Chateaugay, that of Beauharnois, or Villechauve, took place. It was made an exact square, 18 miles each way, and was ceded by the French king to Charles, Marquis de Beauharnois, who was then governor, so that the gift was like one to himself. His brother Claude, a former intendant, was made a partner in the gift. Neither of the brothers availed themselves of the estate, magnificent in

8 ALEXANDER ELLICE.

extent at least, though the deed states that it was conveyed to them because they had formed a design of bringing out a colony from France, and because they had given assurance that the land was to be "cleared immediately." The grant to the Beauhamois brothers bears date April 12, 1729. On June 14, 1750, the French king signed a new deed, ceding the seigniory to Lieutenant de Vaisseau, Marquis de Beauhamois, for the I'eason that he (the king) wished to favor the design, which the marquis had formed, of planting a large settlement upon it* Nothing was done, and, in 1763, his representative transferred his rights to the Marquis deLotbiniere for $8000. He, also, did nothing towards improving the property, leaving it in a state of nature, for, beyond a few habitants who had crossed over from Isle Perrot and squatted along the lake shore between the foot of the rapids and where Beauhamois now stands, there was not a sign of clearance in its 324 square miles. One of these was Joseph Hainault, grandfather of the late sheriff, who left Isle Perrot for the mainland about 1782. The number did not increase until towards the close of the century, when a steady influx from Isle Perrot and the north shore began. DeLotbiniere retained his unproductive purchase until the 30th July, 1795, when he sold it to Alexander Ellice, a member of a great commercial house in London, for 36,000 Spanish dollars. The deed states that Mr Ellice was present at its execution, and that, as he could not speak French nor the notary English, Mr Richardson acted as interpreter. One clause bound Mr Ellice to grant deeds to those who had squatted on the seig-niory, and whose number is given as about 60. The price seems excessive, and may be accounted for by supposing that the seigniory was either taken in payment of a bad debt, or that there was at the time a speculative demand for wild lands. In support of the latter supposition, it may be stated that Mr Ellice seems to have had a craze

*What the cause was for the second deed, which is simply a regrant, I have been unable to ascertain. There may have been some 'dispute between the heirs of the original grantees.

THE FIRST SURVEY. 9

for land, and through his agent in Montreal, Mr Richardson of the firm of Richardson, Forsythe & Co., hardware merchants, was a large buyer of the land scrip offered by militiamen and others. Francis Winter, an American, 'was engaged to act as local agent, and William Waller to make a g-eneral survey of the seigniory and lay out in lots a portion of the lands bordering the St Lawrence and the Chateaugay, and this task he seems to have fulfilled in the summer of 1800. In laying out the seigniory he divided it into sections, giving them the names they still bear — Catherinestown, Helenstown, Marystown, Annstown, North and South Georgetown, Ormstown, Jamestown, Williamstown, Edwardstown, and Russeltown, being the Christian names of Mr Ellice's children. The seigniory itself was named Annfield, after Mrs Ellice, and the chef lieu Annstown (now the town of Beauharnois), which, had been selected on account of its being the only bay between Chateaugay Basin and the foot of the rapids, and the only place having water-power, which, even at that date, was utilized, for there was a small sawmill at the mouth of the St Louis, which apparently as early as 1780 began changing the noble pine-trees that overhung its waters into boards, which were sold to the habitants on the north shore and rafted to the city. Beyond surveying it, Mr Ellice did nothing towards settling his great estate. He died in 1S04. From several old deeds I have examined, I am disposed to believe that he intended each of his chilcken should inherit the portions to which he gave their names.

Chapter II. The Forming Of The Townships

With the overthrow of French rale ceased, of course, the oreating of seigniories, so that, after the American revolution, when the southern boundary of Canada was established, there lay a vast tract of territory between the seigniories and the frontier, which was called "waste lands." As the seigniories of Chateaugay and Beauharnois occupied the greater part of the wedge-shaped piece of land west of Caughnawaga, there was only a ragged fringe of waste land between them and the United States. The necessity of providinof for the soldiers who had served in the American war apparently first suggested the pi-opriety of surveying this tract and dividing it into townships. This weis done by Mr Chewett, deputy-surveyor-general, in 1788-9, when he defined the boundaries of the non-fief land west of the Richelieu, and which constitutes the present county of Huntingdon, its singular shape arising from its being formed of the gores left after forming the seigniories. Before Mr Chewett sent in his report, the political status of the province underwent a change. Up to 1791 it had been under military rule, which suited the requirements of the country very well. The Canada act ended this, and substituted a modified constitutional system. The sole territorial division heretofore had been that of the seigniories, but now the English plan of counties, and, where they did not interfere with the seigniories, of townships, was introduced. In May 1792 a proclamation was issued dividing the province into 21 counties, all of them, with six exceptions, bearing such English names as Devon, Hertford, Kent, and York. Out of the district lying west of the Richelieu a large county was formed and named Huntingdon. The choice of name governed the subdivisions, and Mr Chewett, who did not file his report until

THE COUNTY OF HUNTINGDON. 17

1795, took from old Huntingdon the names Hemingford,* Godmanchester, Hinchingbrook for three of his townships. Each county was allotted the right to send two members to the legislative assembly then constituted. The election was held in June, the month following the issue of the proclamation, when Hypolite St George Dupre and C. C. Larimier were i-eturned for Huntingdon. The poll was opened at St Phillipe and probably the two members Avere from that neighborhood. The thus forcing constitutional government upon the habitants was a great absurditj'^, for they had no conception of it and were .unfitted for self-government. They took what was meant by the Imperial authorities to be a privilege as a deep-laid plot to tax them, and regarded the poll as a place to be tabooed, and whoever voted as an enemy of the country. So strong was this ignorant delusion, that twenty years after the electoral system was introduced, there were large parishes whose inhabitants boasted that a vote had never been given by them. The consequence was, that, outside the towns, for many years, the holding of elections was nominal, and the members returned went in by acclamation. These members were, with few exceptions, so ignorant that they could not read or write.

The intention of dividing the land surveyed by Mr Chewett amono- the veterans of the American war was carried out to

o

a limited extent only. A large portion of Godmanchester (which then included St Anicet) was so ceded and a small part of Hinchinbrook. The recipients sold their claims, which were bought up mainly for Mr Ellice at trifling cost, with the exception of a party of them who formed a settlement on the 2nd range of St Anicet, and which dotted the ridge from Ogilvie's hill to the Laguerre. When that settlement was formed, who belonged to it, and what its experience was, I have been unable to ascertain. This alone is known.

* The additional m seems to have crept in from an idea that the township was named after a person by the name of Hemming. The dropping of the g in Hinchinbrook followed its ordinary pronunciation.