London

Notions of the ‘country’ and the ‘town’ have always roused strong feelings and evoked powerful images. They have also created fundamental opposites. The ‘country’ was seen either as a natural way of life, of peace, innocence and simple virtue or as a place of ignorance, backwardness and obstruction. Round the ‘town’ clustered either the idea of it as a centre of achievement, of learning and communication or as a place of worldliness, noise, ambition and corruption. Like all stereotypes these polarities contain some truth.[1]

Towns and cities were a characteristic feature of British society in this period. By 1851, Britain was overwhelmingly an urban society and that trend continued and accelerated through to 1914. The nineteenth century saw the transformation of British society from one where one in four people lived in towns or cities to one in which over two out of three people lived in built-up areas. This urbanisation was not without its cost in human misery and deprivation, in appalling housing and polluted conditions and in ‘sweated’ workshops. But towns were also places of elegance, of conspicuous spending and wealth, resplendent with their civil buildings and parks and their sense of ‘civic pride’ and were seen by many as symbols of ‘progress’. Towns and cities were places of intense contrasts. This was not new since they had always been places of contrast. Many of the problems such as housing and sanitation existed in the medieval and early modern town.[2] What was new, however, was the scale and expansion of towns and cities and this exacerbated their problems.  The economic changes that originated in the eighteenth century led to the rapid expansion of urban centres. Towns, especially those in the forefront of manufacturing innovation, attracted rural labour, which hoped for better wages and a sense of freedom. The notion that ‘town air is free air’ was nothing new; it has its origins in medieval Germany. But labourers saw towns as places free from the paternalism and dependency of the rural environment and flocked there in their thousands.[3] For some migration brought wealth and security. For the majority life in towns was little different, and in environmental terms probably worse, from life in the country. They had exchanged rural slums for urban ones and exploitation by the landowner for exploitation by the factory master. Poverty was universal and few, whether rural or urban could escape from it.[4]

London

Between a sixth and a fifth of the total population of England lived in London. Its functions were plural. It was the largest city in the world containing the country‘s biggest concentration of industry chiefly clothing, footwear and furniture.

According to the 1851 census, 86% of London‘s employers employed fewer than ten men but some large establishments could be found such as the Woolwich Arsenal with 12,000 people in 1900 and the main railway works of the Great Eastern Railway at Stratford employing around 7,000 a decade later. The port of London was the country‘s largest and, as the epicentre of railways and roads, London was undoubtedly the chief emporium of Britain and its empire. London was the functional and ceremonial seat of politics and diplomacy, the first place of finance and the professions and the most important stage for the world of art, literature and entertainment. It was the centre and magnet for all things from luxurious living and High Society.

 

Defining London is not easy for the historian. To the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County Council, established in 1855 and 1888-1889 respectively, it was an administrative province. To the City Corporation it was the jealously guarded enclave of about one square mile and almost immeasurable wealth. To the Registrar-General in charge of censuses London was an over-spilling, almost indeterminate, urban area. Some statistical definition was given to the concept of Greater London in 1875 when it was made to correspond to the Metropolitan Police District with a radius of fifteen miles from Charing Cross. Overall, from 1861 to 1911, the population of the administrative county grew by 61%, the Greater London conurbation 125% compared to 80% in England as a whole.[5]

The newspaper editor R.D. Blumenfeld wrote in his diary on 15 October 1900

Everybody wants to come to London; and little wonder, since the rural districts are all more or less dead, with no prospect of revival.[6]

One of the major causes of the expansion of London was migration. More women than men were migrants. Domestic service and the prospect of marriage were prevailing forces. In addition, women’s opportunities of fieldwork were reduced in the late nineteenth century and a more scientific milk trade was eliminating the ordinary milkmaid. The number of women returned in censuses as agricultural workers fell from 229,000 in 1851 to 67,000 by 1901. The majority of in-migrants were aged between 15 and 30, a situation that made the over-supply of unskilled, casual labour in the capital worse. The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (1905-1909) showed than in London people aged over 60 made up 67 per 1,000 population compared to 102 per 1,000 in mainly rural areas. The greater the city the wider its magnetic attraction and in the case of London, this extended overseas.

Wentworth Street, Whitechapel, c.1880

East European pogroms brought an additional 100,000 to 150,000 Jewish immigrants to England between 1881 and 1914.[7] Leeds, Manchester and, to a lesser extent, Liverpool were also destinations but the heaviest concentration was in East London. Whitechapel’s population in 1901 was 31.8% alien. The proportion of foreign-born in the total population of London increased from 1.57% in 1881 to 2.98% in 1901.[8] The number of Irish-born immigrants, especially in the old East End, was highest before 1860 but fell in the late nineteenth century. Most migrants from the English countryside reached London from a short distance and the proportion of migrants was proportional to the distance of their homes from the capital. Railways certainly increased the volume of migration but did not substantially alter its character. Most people moved short distance in a series of stages.

The proportion of migrants in London‘s population was falling in the nineteenth century. In the period 1851-1891, 84% of London’s increase in population came from the surplus of births, only 16% from net immigration. This feature radically distinguished London from major European cities. Two causes were outstanding. First, the superior sanitary provision of England resulted in a falling death rate. Secondly, there was an outflow of population to suburbs. This was particularly obvious in London. The square mile of the City had a resident population that peaked around 1850 at 130,000 but had dropped to 27,000 by 1901: this should be contrasted with the increase in its daytime or working population that rose from 170,000 in 1865 to 437,000 by 1921. The decline of the working-class population of the City resulted in them being jammed into the adjacent East End. Suburban railways and the underground, as well as enhanced omnibus services meant that the middle-class could move to the outer ring of Greater London; East and West Ham, Leyton, Tottenham, Hornsey, Willesden, Walthamstow and Croydon.[9]

What in an average English town was the work of one or two sanitary and housing departments was in London split between many bodies.[10] The options available to the LCC and before 1889 the Metropolitan Board of Works were unattractive and freedom of manoeuvre small. Each of the 28 Metropolitan Borough Councils (and before them, the vestries[11]) had concurrent powers with the LCC. Each was also a sanitary authority and it was their duty to overcome overcrowding and its associated problems. There was considerable difficulty in co-ordinating local government. The LCC could build but it was the responsibility of other local authorities to provide tenants with other services. Even when the LCC did build council properties the tenants were not generally displaced slum dwellers. The high price of land in London restrained the whole of the LCC‘s activity as it had to pay on average 35% higher prices per acre than provincial local authorities.

Slum clearance without providing cheap alternative accommodation made the housing situation worse. Low cost travel from homes built on cheaper suburban land was a possible solution. There was, however, a substantial time lag before needs and abilities with respect of transport, work, wages and rents approached anything like a match. For this period most of the London‘s inner-city poor were cramped in overcrowded, high-rent housing in order to remain in walking distance of work. As C.F.G. Masterman wrote in 1903

Place a disused sentry-box upon any piece of ground in South or East London and in a few hours it will be occupied by a man and his wife and family, inundated by applications from would-be lodgers.[12]

There was some improvement in overcrowding but in 1911, 27.6% of people in the inner London area were living more than two per room. This situation was not helped by the higher rents of ordinary working-class homes: in 1908, they were 70% higher than in Birmingham.

London slum

The pressure was greatest in the East End. The housing problems of London serve to illustrate several points of general importance with regard to urban development in this period. London was a living laboratory for experiment in the housing question, for individual and company philanthropy, for private enterprise and for collective public action. From 1883, the exposures of Andrew Mearns’ The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and stimulated a debate that led to the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working-classes (1884-1885). [13] There was little new in The Bitter Cry but its popularity can be explained by the sensationalist publicity it received in the Pall Mall Magazine and the climate of working-class discontent and middle- and upper-class insecurity existing in London in the 1880s. Mearns’ choice of a memorable title helped boost sales of the work and his decision to focus on the homes of the poor not merely street life was a radical departure from earlier studies. The pamphlet also hinted at horrors too ghastly to be included and this further stimulated people’s shocked emotions. [14] It also gave stimulus to investigative social work in the Settlement Movement[15], later investigative studies [16] and especially Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London.

Unregulated individualism was put on trial and, as rents rose and accommodation shortages spiralled out of control. The conclusion was emerged from this experience was that national government could not permanently stand aside since at the heart of the problem was an uneven distribution of wealth and resources. [17] Graduated direct taxation and state subsidies to local council housing were the courses that were eventually adopted. There was, and arguably still is, in the words of Joseph Chamberlain in 1883 on the Torrens and Cross housing legislation

...an incurable timidity with which Parliament...is accustomed to deal with the sacred rights of property.[18]

There were many Londons. Contemporaries noted the difference of East and West End, and the character of north and south of the river and the enclaves of Westminster and the City. It was, however, the East End that dominated contemporary comment. Writers like Walter Besant[19] and George Gissing[20] focused attention on the enormity of its problems.[21]

The East End consisted of the parishes east of Bishopsgate Street, stretching north of the Thames to the River Lea. By 1900, however, new industrial developments, the opening of the Royal Albert Dock and the Great Eastern Railway’s provision of workmen’s train services meant that East London also now included the working-class dormitories east of the Lea and south of Epping Forest. By 1900, this swollen East London contained nearly two millions people. It was virtually a one-class community with few amenities.[22] However, the work of East London displayed extraordinary variety but was mostly carried out in small workshops rather than large factories.

Frying Pan Alley, London, c.1890

The East End spanned the working-class spectrum from the sweated trades, the casual and under-employed workers who predominated in the western part and along the waterfront, to the regularly employed and quietly respectable artisans in the Poplar, Bow and Bromley districts. Each parish had its own character: some metal work but mainly cheap clothing, cigar and food preparation dominated Whitechapel; furniture, silk and toys predominated in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch; boots and shoes in Mile End; and, weaving in Spitalfields.[23] East London contained many technical inventions but also a darker side with sub-contracting, sweating, irregularity of demand and low wages. Craftsmanship survived but rarely in its totality; for example, watch makers often made only one part of a watch and used mass-produced parts for the remainder

Charles Booth‘s study of East London is an important source for the social composition of East London and provides a valuable corrective to the gloom of contemporary novelists such as Gissing. [24] He divided society into eight classes from A to H: A to F spanned the lower classes and classes G and H were the lower middle and upper middle-classes. Booth found that higher artisans (class F) made up about 13.5% of the population. B to D made up 30%, those with small regular earnings and intermittent earnings. Class E was varied but brought together most artisans and regular wage-earners and was the largest category at 42%; the lowest class A was about 1.25% of the population comprising ‘some occasional labourers, street-sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals’. This study is important in several respects. It rendered insupportable generalisations about a tidal wave of wretchedness and viciousness gaining on society and about to engulf it. Booth rejected the view that misery was all pervasive and irremediable.

Petticoat Lane, 1903

He did, however, suggest that the state of East London had been worse in the past than in the 1890s. Certainly by 1860, there was a crisis in London’s inner industrial areas as civic improvements elsewhere in the metropolis shunted thousands into adjacent working-class parishes and resulted in a cruel spiral of rising rents and increased overcrowding.[25] Workers found themselves under increasing pressure because there was insufficient cheap, plentiful or well-timed transport to, from and within the suburbs resulting in many working people being trapped in East London. The casual labour of the old East End was trapped within an economy of declining trades and conditions of employment deteriorated. By the early 1870s, London‘s shipbuilding had slumped beyond the point of recovery and by the 1880s most heavy engineering, iron founding and metal work had gone the same way. Competition from provincial furniture, clothing and footwear factories could only be met by reducing labour costs and led to the mounting importance of sweated trades.[26] London‘s industries found themselves increasingly under pressure and this had two consequences. First, the disadvantages of the least skilled were cruelly exposed. Secondly, the ‘respectable’ working-class found themselves pushed down into competing for the same work and accommodation as the casuals: this marked a dilution of labour status.[27]

The conventional middle-class perception of East London was of a foggy, malarial urban landscape, a place where revolutionary tempers might grow to overthrow society. London was an image of their fear of the streets, aversion from crowds and anxiety about impersonality. London was a place of anonymity. Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, said in a talk on ‘the London we live in’ in 1864

He looked out of the bedroom windows of the little inn in which he was staying at the surging crowd which passed and re-passed beneath him; and he could have screamed for someone who knew him or knew somebody who knew.... This feeling of isolation in the midst of a vast crowd was absolutely painful.[28]

The rapidity of growth startled the middle- and upper-classes. London was too extensive to be grasped, too impersonal to be understood. Many reacted to London as the poet Rudyard Kipling did to Chicago: ‘Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again.’[29]

The influence of London, throughout the southeast and further, was increasingly immeasurable. The capital city had grown and spread to the point of virtual amorphousness, unorganised and unorganisable. The persistent feature of London in this period was the warning it gave about cities generally: their overwhelming power to defeat those who tried to control their overall movement and development.

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[1] The issue of town and country is discussed in Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City, (Chatto), 1973 and some of its implications for an industrialising society in Weiner, M., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1950, (Cambridge University Press), 1982.   The agenda for urban historians was set in 1968 in Dyos, H.J., (ed.), The Study of Urban History, (Edward Arnold), 1973 and the extent to which developments occurred in the following decade in Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, A.J., (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History, (Edward Arnold), 1983. Waller, P.J., Town, city and nation: England 1850-1914, (Oxford University Press), 1983 is a succinct study. Ibid, Clark, Peter, (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 2: 1540-1840 and ibid, Daunton, Martin J., (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 3: 1840-1950 are essential.

[2] On small towns, see, Clark, Peter, ‘Small towns 1700-1840’, in ibid, Clark, Peter (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 2: 1540-1840, pp. 733-774 and Royle, Stephen A., ‘The development of small towns in Britain’, in ibid, Daunton, Martin J., (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 3: 1840-1950, pp. 151-184

[3] On this issue, see, Feldman, David, ‘Migration’, in ibid, Daunton, Martin J., (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 3: 1840-1950, pp. 185-206.

[4] The development of town and city can be approached through Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities, (Penguin), 1968, Dennis, R., Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century, (Cambridge University Press), 1984, Dyos, H.J. and Wolff, M., (eds.), The Victorian City: Images and Realities, two Vols. (Routledge), 1973 and ibid, Waller, P.J., Town, City and Nation, England 1850-1914.  There are several useful studies of specific cities: Olson, D.J., The Growth of Victorian London, (Batsford), 1976, Fraser, D., (ed.), A History of Modern Leeds, (Manchester University Press), 1980, Hopkins, E., The Rise of the Manufacturing Town: Birmingham and the industrial revolution, (Sutton), 1998, Daunton, M., Coal metropolis, Cardiff 1870-1914, (Leicester University Press), 1977. See also, Williamson, J.G., Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution, (Cambridge University Press), 1990 that adopt a statistical approach to the issues of urban growth; and, Koditschek, T., Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford 1750-1850, (Cambridge University Press), 1990, that considers in depth the social and economic development of a ‘boom’ town. Morris, R.J. and Rodger, R., (eds.), The Victorian City: A Reader in British Urban History 1820-1914, (Longman), 1994 collects together important papers and has an excellent introduction that puts urban growth in its context.

[5] Schwarz, Leonard D, ‘London 1700-1840’, in ibid, Clark, Peter, (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 2: 1540-1840, pp. 641-672 and Dennis, Richard, ‘Modern London’, in ibid, Daunton, Martin J., (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 3: 1840-1950, pp. 95-131 provide an excellent overview.

[6] Blumenfeld, R.D., In the Days of Bicycles and Bustles, (Brewer and Warren), 1930, (Read Books), 2007, pp. 94-95.

[7] On Jewish migration in the second half of the nineteenth century and the role of Jewish labour in London see Feldman, David, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture 1840-1914, (Yale University Press), 1994 and Endelman, Todd M. The Jews in Britain 1656 to 2000, (University of California Press), 2000, pp. 79-182. See also, Stallard, Joshua Harrison, London pauperism amongst Jews and Christians: An inquiry into the principles and practice of out-door relief in the metropolis, and the result upon the moral and physical condition of the pauper class, (Saunders, Otley, and Co), 1867, Wechsler, R.S., The Jewish garment trade in East London 1875-1914: a study of conditions and responses, (Columbia University Press), 1979 and Berrol, Selma Cantor, East Side/East End: Eastern European Jews in London and New York, 1870-1920, (Praegar), 1994.

[8] Ibid, Lees, L. Hollen, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London and ibid, Jackson, J.A., ‘The Irish in East London’, East London Papers, Vol. 6, (1963), pp. 105-119

[9] On the development and impact of the underground, see Wolmar, Christian, The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How it Changed the City Forever, (Atlantic Books), 2004. Jackson, Alan A., ‘The London Railway Suburb 1850-1914’, in ibid, Evans, A.K.B. and Gough, John, (eds.), The impact of the railway on society in Britain: essays in honour of Jack Simmons, pp. 169-180.

[10] See, for example, Hardy, A., ‘Parish pump to private pipes: London’s water supply in the 19^th century’, in Bynum, W.F. and Porter, R., (eds.), Living and dying in London, (Wellcome Institute), 1991, pp. 76-93.

[11] The vestry had its origins in medieval England having been established as early as the fourteenth century to manage church affairs. However, in the early modern period it became a general administrative body. In large industrialising parishes or in places where the leading inhabitants formed executive committees, known as ‘select vestries’, most of the population were excluded. Inevitably the vestry began to involve itself in every aspect of local administration because it had the right to set parish rates to finance the work of its officials. Its influence only declined after 1834 when it lost its responsibilities for the poor law to the Poor Law Unions with their Boards of Guardians. In 1894, it was finally replaced by parish councils.

[12] Masterman, C.F.G., From the Abyss: Of Its Inhabitants, (R.B. Johnson), 1903, reprinted (Garland Press), 1980, p. 12.

[13] Mearns, Andrew, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor, (James Clarke & Co), 1883, reprinted edited by A.S. Wohl, (Leicester University Press) 1970 and extracts in Keating, P., (ed.), Into Unknown England 1866-1913, (Fontana), 1976, pp. 91-111. There is some debate as to whether Andrew Mearns or William Preston was the author. The pamphlet was certainly either written or heavily revised by Rev. William C. Preston with Rev. James Munro helping with the research and composition of the work as well.

[14] Under William T. Stead, the Pall Mall Magazine devoted a great deal of space to promoting the pamphlet and between mid-October and early November 1883, published at least one article a day on ‘Outcast London’. Supported by the Daily News, and with a combination of sensationism and moral righteousness, Stead was able to keep the public’s atention focused on the London poor for the next two months.

[15] Hamilton, Richard, ‘A hidden heritage: The social settlement house movement 1884-1910’, Journal of Community Work and Development, Vol. 2, (2), (2001), pp. 9-22 and Meacham, Standish, Toynbee Hall and social reform, 1880-1914: the search for community, (Yale University Press), 1987.

[16] See, Sims, G.R., How the Poor Live: And, Horrible London, (Chatto & Windus), 1898 and Wilson, Keith, ‘Surveying Victorian and Edwardian Londoners: George R. Sims’ Living London’, in Phillips, Lawrence, (ed.), A mighty mass of brick and smoke: Victorian and Edwardian representations of London, (Rodopi), 2007, pp. 131-149.

[17] On the revival of the ‘condition of England question’, see, Haggard, Robert, F., The Persistence of Victorian Liberalism: the politics of social reform in Britain, 1870-1900, (Greenwood Publishing), 2001, pp. 27-52

[18] Chamberlain, Joseph, Fortnightly Review, Vol. 40, (1883), p. 767.

[19] Besant wrote several books on London including East London, (Century Co.), 1901 and South London, (Chatto & Windus), 1899. In both he was highly critical and was capable of dismissing as of no account the greater part of London that was not the City or West End. The Lumpenproletariat East London and artisan and petty-bourgeois South London were each for him a travesty of urban civilisation.

[20] George Gissing was the most gifted novelist to employ late-nineteenth century London as a backcloth to his fiction. Whether writing of working-class Clerkenwell and Hoxton, as in The Nether World, (Smith, Elder and Co), 1889 and Demos: A Story of English Socialism, (Harper & Brothers), 1886 or artisan and petty-bourgeois Camberwell, in In the Year of the Jubilee, (Lawrence and Bullen), 1894, the picture of the streets was of drab squalor. Gissing’s London was the London of defeat, a nightmare region; in The Nether World, p. 205 ‘beyond the outmost limits of dread’ and p. 167, ‘a city of the damned’. His urban world was barren, barbaric and beyond redemption.

[21] Domville, E.W., ‘“Gloomy City, or, the deeps of Hell”: the presentation of the East End in fiction between 1880 and 1914’, East London Papers, Vol. 8, (1965), pp. 98-109.

[22] See Steffel, R.V., ‘The evolution of a slum control policy in the East End, 1889-1907’, East London Papers, Vol. 13 (1970), pp. 23-35.

[23] Leech, Kenneth, ‘The decay of Spitalfields’, East London Papers, Vol. 7, (1964), pp. 57-62. See also, Kerchen, Anne J., Strangers, aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields, 1660-2000, (Routledge), 2005.

[24] Booth, Charles, Life and Labour of the People in London: Vol. 4, The trades of East London, (Macmillan), 1893.

[25] On conditions in London in the 1860s the standard work is Jones, Gareth Steadman, Outcast London: a study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society, (Oxford University Press), 1971 where the ‘arithmetic of woe’ can be seen graphically illustrated. See also the contemporary prints by the French artist Gustave Doré.

[26] See, Hall, P.G., ‘The East London footwear industry: an industrial quarter in decline’, East London Papers, Vol. 5, (1962), pp. 3-21 and Oliver, J.L., ‘The East London furniture industry’, East London Papers, Vol. 4, (1961), pp. 88-101.

[27] Brodie, Marc, The politics of the poor: the East End of London 1885-1914, (Oxford University Press), 2004.

[28] Cit, ibid, Waller, P.J., Town, City and Nation, England 1850-1914, p. 49.

[29] Kipling, Rudyard, From sea to sea: letters of travel, (Doubleday, Page and Co.), 1900, p. 276.

Rouville

The comté de Rouville, named after Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville (1668-1722), was created in 1829. Before that date, Rouville was part of the comté de Bedford. Situated in the Vallée-du-Richelieu, the comté de Rouville extended from to the American border at Lake Champlain north to Saint-Hilaire. To the west it is bordered by the Richelieu River and in the east by the comtés de Saint-Hyacinthe, Shefford and Missisquoi. The comté consisted of a great plain cleared along the Richelieu and three mountains, Saint-Hilaire, Rougemont and St-Grégoire and three important rivers, the Richelieu, the Rivière des Hurons and the Rivière du Sud. It was part of the district of Montreal and contained seven seigneuries: Rouville, Monnoir, Chambly-Est, Bleury, Sabrevois, Noyan and Foucault.[1] The six principal parishes of the comté, situated for the most part along the river, were Saint-Hilaire, Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Mathias, Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir, Saint-Athanase and Saint-Georges. [2] The comté was divided into two main areas. Its northern section lay in the Bas-Richelieu and was rural, agricultural, Catholic and solidly French Canadian, one of the principal Patriote strongholds during the rebellions. The southern part of the comté was in the Haut-Richelieu and its communities were largely Anglo-American, Protestant and loyal to the British Crown. [3] In 1831, the comté had a population of 18,115 habitants. [4]

Rouville was one of the most important farming areas in Quebec largely because of its fertile soil. Wheat, flour and cereals were its three main agricultural products. From 1810, commercial apple growing developed in Saint-Hilaire. Like other parts of Lower Canada, Rouville was badly affected by the agrarian crisis of the 1830s. According to Ouellet, the fall in agricultural prices and a series of bad harvest caused by rust and insects led to famine in the region. [5] There was some diversification in the region’s rural economy. The timber industry developed using the important forests in the comté. The textile industry, especially in Saint-Mathias boomed in 1837 following the Patriotes’ decision to boycott British imports and wear home-spun woollen cloth. By 1837, Saint-Matthias, with three well-stocked quays, was regarded as the commercial crossroads of the region and river trade led to some prosperity in the comté.

In 1830, Jean-Baptiste René Hertel de Rouville, seigneur of the comté de Rouville was deputy for the region in the Legislative Assembly and also sat on the Legislative Council.[6] De Rouville was hostile to the reform movement and was regarded by the Parti Patriote as a traitor.[7] The 1834 elections saw an increasing polarisation of votes between Patriotes and Loyalists. Thomas Lemay, a dissident in the Parti Patriote, and B. Holmes faced Pierre Carreau[8] and Dr Antoine-Eusèbe Bardy[9] and the Patriotes won both seats. There was now no member of the Legislative Council in the region. After the elections in 1834, many assemblies were held in the comté de Rouville by both Loyalists and Patriotes. The first loyalist assembly, chaired by Conrad Derck was held at Clarenceville (Saint-Georges) on 12 March 1834 to protest about the Ninety-Two Resolutions. Albert Chapman and Reuben Taylor were the principal speakers at this meeting. Three years later, on 13 October 1837, a further loyalist assembly was held at Clarenceville to protest against attempts by the Patriotes to weaken or break the colony’s links with Britain and even to suspend the Legislative Assembly.[10] Then on 8 November, the citizens of Clarenceville organised a further assembly in order to organise a loyalist petition that 353 people signed. Then, on 30 November 1837, a meeting was held outside the church of Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir.

For their part, the Patriotes also held several meetings at Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir. On 9 February 1833, the electors of M. Rainville addressed the other electors in the region asking them to vote for Ludger Duvernay. On 8 March 1834, Doctor François-Joseph Davignon[11] held a meeting at his house, chaired by Étienne Poulin[12], to promote the Ninety-Two Resolutions. Two days later, Antoine-Eusèbe Bardy chaired a meeting at the hôtel Henderson at Saint-Athanase where those present signed a petition in favour of the Ninety-Two Resolutions. Several days later, the resolutions agreed at Saint-Athanase were publicised in churches throughout the comté. On 30 April 1834, Patrick Murray, a farmer from Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir held a meeting for the Irish habitants from the south-west of the region. On 22 July 1835, there was a meeting at the house of Édouard Vancelette that formed a branch of the Montreal Constitutional Association for the comté de Rouville. The most important meeting in the region, organised by F-J Davignon, took place at Saint-Athanase on 5 November 1837 that sought some conciliation between Patriotes and Constitutionalists.[13] It was called by

...des personnes d’opinion différente dans la politique de cette Province aux fins d’aviser aux moyens de conciliation entre les parties Patriotes et Constitutionnels.[14]

The key figures involved in this assembly were: Timothée Franchère[15] (president), Eustache Soupras[16] and Gabriel Marchand (vice-presidents), F-J Davignon and Ls. M. Decoigne[17] (secretaries). Its twenty-four reformist resolutions concerned the composition of the Legislative Council, control of the Civil List and also the abolition of the seigneurial regime.

On 28 February 1838, 600-700 rebels came from the United States and met at the Caldwell manor in the seigneurie de Noyan (comté de Rouville). Robert Nelson, who chaired this gathering presented the Déclaration d’indépendance de la République du Bas-Canada. It proclaimed the independence of Lower Canada from Great Britain, introduced a republican form of government with universal suffrage and the abolition of seigneurial tenure.[18] Nelson also called on the people of Canada to rise up in rebellion. After proclaiming independence, the rebels were forced to retreat back across the border when faced with the threat from loyalist militias.

During the rebellions of 1837-1838, the comté de Rouville was an important theatre of military action, though on a smaller scale than in the Richelieu. Between 1834 and 1838, Patriote and loyalist activity in the region was very similar in terms of meetings and levels of support though the Patriotes managed to organise slightly more events than the loyalists. During October and November 1837, there were dozens of charivaris in the Richelieu including one at St-Athanase.[19] During the rebellion of 1837, part of the Patriote militia was based at Saint-Mathias in the comté de Rouville. The main rebel leaders were: Dr François-Joseph Davignon (Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir), merchants Louis Marchand and Eustache Soupras from Saint-Mathias and Édouard-Élisée Malhiot. [20] On 10 November 1837, thirty rebels from Saint-Athanase, led by Pierre-Paul Demaray[21] (St-Jean), Davignon and Patrick McKeenan[22] (Saint-Athanase) attacked some loyalists who were moving towards St-Jean. On 28 November, there was a brief skirmish at Saint-Mathias between British troops led by Wetherall and a group of rebels led by Malhiot.

During 1838, several Frères Chasseurs lodges were established in the comté de Rouville, including ones at Sainte-Marie-de-Monnoir and Saint-Athanase. On 3 and 4 November, rebels gathered at Saint-Mathias in preparation for an attack on the garrison at Chambly. At the same time, 300 Patriotes from Saint-Athanase took possession of the village of Christieville (Iberville).[23] On 7 November, some houses in Saint-Athanase were looted and burned down: the merchant Charles Mongeau, landlord François Macé and the butcher Jean-Baptiste Arcand were the three main victims of these acts of vandalism. Following the rebellion in 1838, Timothée Franchère, a tradesman of Saint-Mathias, was imprisoned for his participation and François Nicolas[24], a teacher and farmer from Saint-Athanase, was among the twelve rebels who are hung. [25]

Between 1840 and 1850, the comté de Rouville faced falling population caused largely by rural migration. The wheat trade was in decline because of the closure of external markets and the growth in wheat production in Upper Canada and the Mid-West of the United States. The trade in hay and fodder increased significantly as trade with New England developed. However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the development of railways and the river trade that the economy of the region fully recovered.

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[1] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, pp. 207-209.

[2] Cardinal, Armand, Histoire de Saint-Hilaire: The Seigneurs de Rouville, (Editions Du Jour), 1980; ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 226-236.

[3] Filion, Mario et collaborateurs, Itinéraire toponymique de la Vallée-du-Richelieu, Études et recherches toponymiques, 10, (Gouvernement du Québec), 1984, p. 2

[4] Ibid, Girod, Amury, Notes sur le Bas-Canada, p. 14.

[5] Ibid, Ouellet, Fernand, Histoire économique et sociale du Québec 1760-1850: structures et conjonctures, pp. 333-336.

[6] DPQ, p. 366.

[7] Cardinal, Armand, ‘Saint-Hilaire et l’insurrection de 1837’, Les cahiers d’histoire de la Société d'histoire de Beloeil-Mont-Saint-Hilaire, no. 22, (1987), p. 25.

[8] DPQ, pp. 128-129.

[9] DPQ, p. 29; Messier, pp. 22-23.

[10] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 223-225.

[11] Messier, p. 133.

[12] Messier, p. 393.

[13] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 286-290.

[14] Archives nationales du Québec, E-99-100

[15] Messier, pp. 194-195.

[16] Messier, pp. 445-446.

[17] Messier, p. 135.

[18] Ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 301.

[19] Ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 219.

[20] ‘Edouard-Elisée Malhiot’, DCB, Vol. 10, pp. 491-492; Messier, pp. 315-316.

[21] Messier, p. 137.

[22] Messier, p. 330.

[23] Ibid, Fortin, Réal, La guerre des Patriotes: le long du Richelieu, p. 66.

[24] Messier, p. 353.

[25] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Les Rébellions de 1837-1838: Les patriotes du Bas-Canada dans la mémoire collective et chez les historiens, p. 132.

Richelieu

The region of Richelieu is divided into two distinct parts that corresponded to their position in relation to the Richelieu River. The Bas-Richelieu is located between where the Richelieu joins the St Lawrence as far as the comté de Rouville and Beloeil and forms the comté de Richelieu. [1] It is bordered in the west by the Richelieu River, the principal communication route, to the north by the St Lawrence and to the east by the Yamaska River and the comté de Saint-Hyacinthe. In contained six parishes in 1837: Sorel, Saint-Ours, Saint-Denis, Saint-Charles, Saint-Jude and Saint-Barnabé.[2] The parishes along the Richelieu and St Lawrence were the most developed: Sorel, Saint-Ours, Saint-Denis and Saint-Charles. Saint-Jude and Saint-Barnabé were then regarded as missions. The population of the comté in 1835 was 16,149 and was overwhelmingly French Canadian.[3] The only exception was Sorel, the village of William Henry where forty% of its 1,063 habitants were anglophones.[4]

The comté was discovered by Samuel de Champlain and named after Cardinal de Richelieu who had ordered the colonisation of New France. Its temperate climate, fertile soil and access to the resources of the forests accelerated the granting of seigneuries in the seventeenth century. It was the Richelieu River that proved the major contributor to the development of the region. Its communication links placed the comté in a particularly advantageous position with other areas of Lower Canada. In 1829, the colonial government developed plans, which took twenty years to implement, to improve communication on the Richelieu by building a lock at Saint-Ours to increase regional trade upstream from the village.[5] The comté was one of the most important centres for agriculture and animal rearing in Lower Canada but there was also cultivation of flax and hemp.[6] Habitants also grew peas and beans, oats and corn for domestic use. Like other parts of Lower Canada, the Richelieu was affected by the downturn in the economy in the early 1830s and potatoes replaced wheat as the major crop.

The economy of the Richelieu diversified during the first half of the nineteenth century with the development of small-scale rural industries. This process was helped by the appearance of steamboats on the Richelieu stimulating the development of industries that now had easy and cheaper access to markets. In 1831, the pottery industry in Saint-Denis employed 31 people and there was also an important manufacturer of coaches in the same parish.[7] Saint-Charles, Saint-Denis and especially Saint-Ours became distribution centres for manufactured goods. Road and water links gave easy access to the markets of Montreal and Quebec. The area had mills for pressing linseed oil, a brewery, distillery and brickyard. [8] During the 1830s, Saint-Charles had industries that were less common: a foundry, a tannery and also, from 1833 to 1836, its own newspaper, L’Écho du pays. Although not well situated for farming, Sorel’s strategic position at the mouth of the Richelieu proved important. The development of commercial maritime trade from 1809 resulted in shipbuilding and particularly ship maintenance industries being developed and from 1837 to 1866 the village had an important military garrison.

The comté de Richelieu generally elected deputies from the Parti Patriote.[9] François-Roch de Saint-Ours[10] and Pierre-Dominique Debartzch[11], both seigneurs, were regarded as Patriotes until the mid-1830s when they found their moderate reformist position increasing sidelined by more radical Patriotes. Clément-Charles Sabrevois de Bleury broke with Papineau and was dismissed as deputy for Richelieu in 1836. [12] Because Sabrevois de Bleury was considered too moderate, the Patriotes met at Saint-Ours and demanded his resignation replacing him with Wolfred Nelson[13], a committed radical. On Saint-Jean-Baptiste in 1836, Nelson had defied the instructions of Mrg Lartigue and erected a monument to the memory of Louis Marcoux, killed on 8 November in a brawl with loyalists during the 1834 elections. Deputy Jacques Dorion[14] and Simeon Marchesseau[15] joined him in inflammatory speeches on the ‘immortal Ninety-Two Resolution’.[16]

On 7 March 1837, the popular assembly at Saint-Ours, chaired by Côme-Séraphin Cherrier[17], was attended by 1,200 people and denounced Russell’s Ten Resolutions. [18] During the autumn of 1837, the Patriotes in the comté de Richelieu adopted a more aggressive approach, taking part in charivari and in September in Saint-Denis burning Lord Gosford, Sabrevois de Bleury, Debartzch and Saint-Ours in effigy.[19] On 23 and 24 October, the assembly of the Six-Comtés was held at Saint-Charles attended by between 1,000 and 4,000 people from the comtés of Saint-Hyacinthe, Rouville, Chambly, Verchères and Richelieu. It protested against political injustice but also established a regional federation ‘to celebrate the unity and determination of the people’.[20] It also marked the point when political rhetoric began to turn into military action.[21]

During November 1837, comté de Richelieu saw several bloody encounters between Patriote rebels and British forces.[22] the On 18 November, Thomas Storrow Brown[23], general of the Fils de la Liberté occupied the manor of seigneur Debartzch at Saint-Charles and established an armed Patriote camp. [24] Wolfred Nelson established a camp at Saint-Denis at the same time. [25] On 23 November, there was an unsuccessful attack by British regulars under Lieutenant-Colonel Gore on Saint-Denis that left twelve dead on both sides.[26] Two days later, troops led by Wetherall successfully attacked the Patriotes at Saint-Charles leaving three soldiers dead and between 32 and 152 Patriotes. [27] On 2 December 1837 Gore returned to Saint-Denis and burned several buildings but the following day soldiers discovered the body of Lieutenant George Weir and destroyed the distillery of Wolfred Nelson.[28]

Towards the end of 1838, Malhiot[29] took command of the Frères Chasseurs of Saint-Charles, Saint-Denis and Saint-Ours, a force of nearly 2,000 men.[30] In the grandiose plans developed by Robert Nelson for the second rebellion, Malhiot’s role was to attack the garrison at Sorel to obtain its arms and munitions. During the night of 9-10 November, Malhiot and three hundred men left Saint-Ours in the direction of Sorel but turned back when they learned of the defeat of Nelson’s troops further south at Odelltown. Calm in the region was restored when regular troops moved south of the St Lawrence.[31] The 2,000 rebels at St-Charles, St-Denis and St-Ours dispersed. A patrol sent into the hills round Boucherville found that the Patriotes under Malhiot had disbanded without a fight and the camp which, between 6 and 10 November contained 1,000 men, empty. The area, particularly Saint-Charles and Saint-Denis, was ravaged by the rebellions and its economy took a long time to recover.

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[1] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, pp. 200-230

[2] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, pp. 206-230

[3] Girod, Amury, Notes sur le Bas-Canada, (Village Debartzch, imprimerie de J.P. Boucher-Belleville), 1835, p. 94

[4] Ibid, Courville, Serge, Entre ville et campagne: L’essor du village dans les seigneuries du Bas-Canada, p. 284

[5] Filion, Mario, Chambly, (Éditions passé présent), 1988, p. 32

[6] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, p. 225

[7] Courville, Serge, Entre ville et campagne: L’essor du village dans les seigneuries du Bas-Canada, p. 154

[8] Greer, Allan, Habitants, marchands et seigneurs: La société rurale du Bas Richelieu, 1740-1840, (Septentrion), 1999, p. 259

[9] Ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 175-194.

[10] DPQ, p. 679.

[11] DPQ, pp. 207-208; ‘Pierre-Dominique Debartzch’, DCB, Vol. 7, 1836-1850, pp. 235-237.

[12] Rumilly, Robert, Papineau et son temps, 2 Vols. (Fides), 1977, Vol. I, p. 403; DPQ, pp. 673-674.

[13] DPQ, p. 554; ‘Wolfred Nelson’, DCB, Vol. 9, 1861-1870, pp. 593-597.

[14] DPQ, pp. 231-231.

[15] Messier, pp. 320-321.

[16] Ibid, Rumilly, Robert, Papineau et son temps, Vol. I, p. 408.

[17] ‘Côme-Séraphin Cherrier’, DCB, Vol. 9, pp. 187-189; Messier, pp. 109-110.

[18] Lacoursière, Jacques, (ed.), Histoire populaire du Québec 1841-1846, Vol. 3, (Septentrion), 1996, p. 314; ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 23-28.

[19] Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, (VLB), 1997, p. 51.

[20] Ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 205

[21] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 259-285.

[22] See, Fortin, Réal, La guerre des Patriotes: le long du Richelieu, (Editions Mille Roches), 1988 and Lambert, Pierre, Les Patriotes de Beloeil: le mouvement patriote, les insurrections de 1837-1838 et les paroissiens de Beloeil, (Septentrion), 1994.

[23] ‘Thomas Storrow Brown’, DCB, Vol. 11, pp. 116-117 is a convenient summary; see also, Messier, p. 86.

[24] Meunie, Pierre, L’insurrection à Saint-Charles et le Seigneur Debartzch, (Fides), 1986 is the most detailed account. Bellemare, Georges, Saint-Charles 1837 et la survie d’un peuple menacé, (Guérin), 2005, is a good account of the battle and is especially interesting on the number of Patriote dead.

[25] Séguin, Robert-Lionel, La victoire de Saint-Denis, (Parti pris), 1964, Boissonault, C.-M., ‘Les patriotes a Saint-Denis’, Revue de l’Université Laval, Vol. 5, (1951), pp. 777-790, and Richard, J. B., Les événements de 1837 à Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, (Societe d’histoire regionale de Saint-Hyacinthe), 1938, are useful, studies of the battle.

[26] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 126.

[27] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 141.

[28] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 153.

[29] ‘Edouard-Elisée Malhiot’, DCB, Vol. 10, pp. 491-492.

[30] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 266.

[31] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 266.

Lachenaie

Originally the comté de Leinster, the comté de Lachenaie was established in the electoral reform of 1829. It was situated to the north-east of Montreal, about 35 kilometres from the town centre, at the junction of the rivière des Milles-Iles and the rivière des Prairies. The comté was partly located in the Basses-Terres of the St Lawrence, a region with very fertile soil and on the more rocky soil of the Canadian Shield. The area has good water supplies to irrigate fields. Though there were problems with navigation on the rivers because of their low flow of water, the rivers Assomption, Achigan and petite-Mascouche were used to transport timber and according to Bouchette in 1815 several flour and saw mills were located on them. The main timber produced in the area was maple, birch, beech and conifers such as pine. [1] The comté de Lachenaie was almost entirely divided into seigneuries though it contained several cantons such as Rawdon, Kilkenny and Kildare.[2] In 1815, Bouchette identified the main seigneuries as Saint-Sulpice, Lachenaie, Repentigny and Assomption.[3]

Since the first elections in 1792, the comté de Leinster had only elected one deputy with an English name: George McBeath.[4] All the others were French-speaking and belonged to the Parti Canadien. For example, Joseph and Denis-Benjamin Viger[5] were elected for the comté de Leinster and Ludger Duvernay for the comté de Lachenaie. When the comté de Lachenaie disappeared in 1841 following Union in favour of the comté de Leinster, Jacob DeWitt[6] and Louis-Michel Viger[7] were elected deputies.[8] The main concentration of Patriote activity was in the north of the seigneurie de l’Assomption, between the seigneuries de Lachenaie and Saint-Sulpice, in the village of Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan where several poorly documented assemblies took place between 1834 and 1837.[9]

Although the habitants of Lachenaie were open to the reformist ideas of the Patriotes, few seem inclined to join the armed movement. In fact, only four individuals were implicated in the rebellions of 1837-1838[10] including Charles Courteau, a deputy.[11] However, 84 individuals appear to have taken part in four Patriote activities. It appears that the intervention of the seigneur de Lachenaie, John Pangman and of the militia captain Étienne Mathieu was sufficient to prevent further problems. [12] Equally, there was no loyalist activity in the comté. After the union of the two provinces in 1841 and until Confederation in 1867, electors in the comté de Lachenaie tended to vote for reformers.

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[1] Martel, Claude, Lachenaie 300 ans d’histoire à découvrir 1683-1983, (La Corporation du Tricentenaire de Lachenaie), 1983, pp. 22-24.

[2] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, pp. 244-246.

[3] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, pp. 226-231.

[4] DPQ, p. 483.

[5] DPQ, p. 770 on Joseph and pp. 768-769 on Denis-Benjamin

[6] DPQ, p. 227.

[7] DPQ, p. 770.

[8] Ibid, Martel, Claude, Lachenaie 300 ans d’histoire à découvrir 1683-1983, pp. 328-329.

[9] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 161-166 for the Patriote assembly on 29 July 1837 at l’Assomption.

[10] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Rebellions de 1837-1838: Les Patriotes dans La Memoire Collective et Chez Les Historiens, pp. 309-310.

[11] Ibid, Martel, Claude, Lachenaie 300 ans d’histoire à découvrir 1683-1983, p. 329

[12] Ibid, Martel, Claude, Lachenaie 300 ans d’histoire à découvrir 1683-1983, pp. 27-28.

The Eastern Townships

The Eastern Townships covers an area of historical English settlement encompassing the old Quebec comtés of Arthabaska, Brome, Compton, Drummond, Frontenac, Mégantic, Missisquoi, Richmond, Shefford, Sherbrooke, Stanstead and Wolfe.[1] During the French regime, the Eastern Townships remained unsurveyed, as French settlers preferred to be as close to the St. Lawrence River as possible. Except for part of Missisquoi County, the area remained outside the seigneurial system. After the American Revolution, the British government preferred to maintain the region as a buffer zone between the new American Republic and Quebec. In 1792, the British decided to open the unsurveyed parts of Lower Canada to settlement. The system of freehold land tenure in Britain and the United States was employed in these areas distinguishing the Eastern Townships from the rest of Lower Canada where seigneurial tenure applied.

Instead of dividing the land into seigneuries, the British divided it into townships (10 miles by 10 miles) granted to ‘leaders’. The leader would agree to have his township surveyed into lots of 200 acres that he would then grant to settlers known as ‘associates’. The system was intended to make good land available at no cost to the government and at little cost to settlers. In theory, a leader would be granted a township only after he had demonstrated that he had enlisted a good number of associates. In practice, those in government and their friends awarded themselves many townships without having any associates to settle the land. Former Lieutenant-Governor Robert Shore Milnes was one of the largest landowners. In 1810, he was rewarded for his services with grants of 21,406 acres in Stanstead Township, 13,546 in Barnston, and 13,110 in Compton. By 1838, as few as 105 landowners held 1,500,000 acres in the Eastern Townships, only six of whom actually resided there. Corruption and speculation hindered the early development of the region and also encouraged squatting.[2]

From 1790 to 1830, the first settlers in the Eastern Townships were Americans initially British Loyalists from New England fleeing the American Revolution. American settlement was initially encouraged by the British, as it did not seem as though any other group wished to settle the region and because they desperately wanted an English presence in Lower Canada. In 1797, its population was only about 2,000 but by 1830, it had risen to approximately 20,000 people. During the period of American settlement, the Eastern Townships were closely linked to the United States and all its economic, social and religious ties were directed towards the new republic. This was evident in its transportation routes, agricultural practices and architectural styles. Settling in places that resembled the homes they fled, the Americans established farms on upland surfaces where the soil was the most fertile, light, and well drained, in areas like Stanstead, Brome, south of Shefford and along the St. Francis River Valley. Based on sheep, cattle, wheat, and potatoes, the Americans in the Eastern Townships maintained an isolated, self-sufficient group of settlers. The movement of Americans into the region started to slow down in 1825, when the Erie Canal was opened and they were able to settle in Western Canada that offered much more fertile land. Five years later, the continuous settling of Americans in the area had come to a halt.

There were three major problems with the early settlement of the Eastern Townships.[3] First, the river system of the Eastern Townships was one of the major points positively addressed in settlement literature: the implication was that they were navigable and convenient. However, the St. Francis River and its tributaries were almost impossible to travel on due to the presence of rapids, narrows, shallow areas, rocks, drops and turbulence. The complex river network of the region ensured that early populations were kept small and to the more accessible areas of the area. Secondly, the early roads in the region were so poorly built. Many early settlers sent petitions to the British Crown for financial support to construct and maintain of a decent road system, but these were ignored for the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. The colonial government believed that better roads would make the region more attractive to American settlers when it was British subjects they wanted in the area. It was not until the British population was greater than that of the Americans in the region that funding was finally granted to improve the Eastern Townships’ roads. Improved roads, funded from land taxes, removed settlers from isolation and they were able to export agricultural goods as a means of supporting themselves. This initially resulted in a rise in population in the area but the increase of taxes on land that benefited from the new roads eventually acted as a constraint on settlement. It was not until the waterways were made navigable and reliable road systems established that fuller settlement in the Eastern Townships was possible.

Finally, absentee landlords who had been granted land but had never settled it proved a major hindrance to the social and economic development of the region especially after the improvements in communications. Their significant amount of land made less of the area accessible for purchase and pushed up prices for the available land. Land sold to settlers by absentees was extremely expensive and included burdensome conditions for the purchaser. These included that the land would be taken away if the owner or his heirs no longer lived on the property or that once the new owner passed away, the land would not be passed down to his heirs. These made it very unattractive to settlers and since they owned so much of the land in the Eastern Townships prevented a growth in population.

From 1820 to 1850, British settlers came to the Eastern Townships in significant number. The British American Land Company (BALC) played a significant role in attracting British citizens to the region. In the early 1830s, the BALC purchased 250,000 acres of crown reserves from the government in the townships of Shefford, Sherbrooke and Stanstead, as well as 600,000 acres of unsurveyed St. Francis territory in order to promote British settlement in the area. They did this because they wanted to ensure that the area would be English and loyal to Britain, instead of French Canadian or American. To accomplish this, the BALC published information in 1835 that was almost entirely bogus leading potential settlers to believe that the climate of the region and the condition of the soil were favourable. It also falsely stated that the area was easily accessible from Quebec City, Trois Rivières and Montreal especially as the roads leading to these major cities from the townships were extremely difficult to travel.

One of the most significant efforts made to lure British settlers into the region was the construction of Craig Road in 1809 connecting the Eastern Townships at Richmond to Quebec City, the main port for British immigrants. The settlers chose vacant lands in Shefford, Richmond, Brome, and Stanstead that did not offer the best soil since Americans had already taken the most fertile land. Another point of attraction to the area was that many Irish and Scottish settlers received 100 acres of land as well as food implements for free during their first year in the Eastern Townships. Due to the efforts of the British Crown and BALC, the Irish were the largest group of British immigrants that came to the area during this time, beginning with a population of 3,000. They were also the first Catholic group to settle the region, but this was balanced by the settlement of the Presbyterian Scots to maintain the Protestant majority in the Eastern Townships. Towards the end of the British settlement phase, the majority of the population and those who held economic and political power was British. However, British efforts to remain the dominant power in the region eventually failed because they did not want work as unskilled labourers and the younger generations were leaving in search of better employment opportunities. The French Canadian invasion of the area beginning in the late 1840s signalled the demise of British dominance in the Eastern Townships.

Initially producing potash, potato whiskey, maple sugar, wheat, rye, barley, and various fruits and vegetables, allowed settlers were able to provide for themselves and their communities. They also were able to raise cattle, pigs and sheep while participating in bartering, hunting and trapping. Once settlers were able to make use of waterpower, the construction of grist and sawmills began. [4] The first major economic activity in the Eastern Townships was the production of potash from the ashes of cleared trees. The ashes would be leached with water in order to produce strong potassium lye, which would then be boiled down in a large cast iron pot to produce a dark residue, referred to as lye salt. The salt was then refined to burn away any organic impurities, making potash, which would be transported to Montreal for export to Britain for use in the textile, soap and glass industries. As the first main crop in the Eastern Townships, most of the potash was produced in Stanstead, where many of the first settlers were established. The difficult process involved in producing potash and selling it reflects the nature of the early economy of the Eastern Townships. The land was not as good for farming as other Quebec land, and it was only when transportation routes were significantly improved and water power harnessed that industry in the region began to take off.[5] By 1844, the typical Eastern Townships village has grist and saw mills, an iron foundry, a tannery, a potash works and a whiskey distillery, as the area became increasingly diverse with the help of the railway.

Before the 1840s, there was practically no French presence in the Eastern Townships.[6] The same obstacles to British immigration also hindered French Canadians from settling in the Townships. Yet, by then, the lands along the St Lawrence River were overpopulated and the younger generation was in need of employment. As American factories in New England offered good jobs, thousands of French Canadians emigrated to the United States.[7] In the eyes of the Roman Catholic clergy, however, this emigration was equated with losing the faith, and strong efforts were made to keep French Canadians in Canada. The open lands of the Eastern Townships became the target of much political manoeuvring. Nonetheless, more and more French Canadians settled in the area, adding more cultural diversity to the region. Due to overcrowded seigneurial lands in the rest of Quebec, many French Canadians migrated south to the northern Eastern Townships of Drummond, Arthabaska, and Mégantic first as summer farm labourers and later as colonists. The French chose these specific areas because American and British settlers had already taken most of the uplands and also because the heavy clay soils of the valleys were similar to those they were accustomed to in the St. Lawrence lowlands. Once settled in the townships, the French would colonise the land, work as labourers or purchase a farm from an British family that was moving out of the region.

The difficult economic situation in 1848 had led to large-scale emigration into the United States and both political and religious leaders were looking for solutions. The settlement of the French in the Eastern Townships was made possible by the establishment of the Association des Townships, by Father Bernard O’Reilley in 1848.[8] O’Reilly, Catholic missionary at Sherbrooke, exposed the sad condition of the Eastern Townships colonists in newspaper articles and speeches and called for some sort of association to organise the settlement of the Townships as an alternative to emigration. His plea was taken up by the Institut Canadien de Montréal, an avant-garde group of young men, and the Association des Établissements Canadiens des Townships was launched in April 1848 at a huge meeting of 8,000 sympathisers.[9] The influence of both the Catholic Church and the Association helped raise the population of French Canadians in the Eastern Townships to a majority by 1860, due to high levels of immigration as well as the high natural increase rate of the French. The arrival of the railway in 1853 also encouraged French Canadians to migrate to the Eastern Townships because the entire area became more accessible. The lure of factory work also brought many French Canadians into the area, as they were more than willing to work as unskilled labourers at low wages, which differentiated them from the British. The French Canadian outlook on life was centred around the Catholic Church, which formed their disposition, ambition, and views on education. The British saw education as a tool for economic success while French Canadians believed that hard work was just as successful. This helps explain why so many British left the area and so many French Canadians stayed, making them the cultural majority in the Eastern Townships.[10]

By 1861, more English-speaking people lived in the Eastern Townships than in any other region of Quebec including Montreal. By then, this population of 89,748 had succeeded in building a network of industries, schools, churches, hospitals, banks and a university. At 59% of the total provincial population, their numbers were sufficient to ensure that, after Confederation, federal and provincial cabinet posts and a senatorship were held by representatives from this region. But the linguistic and cultural character of the region was changing. During the 1860s, the population of English-speaking settlers dropped to 46% of the total population. For the first time the English-speaking community had become the linguistic minority.

Missisquoi

Situated to the south-east of Montreal, the comté de Missisquoi is delimited to the south by the American border, to the east by the comté de Stanstead, to the north by Shefford and to the west by the comté de Rouville; and also in the south-west by Missisquoi Bay.[11] The name of the comté is also written as Missiskoui, a word of Amerindan origins meaning ‘the place where there are water birds’.[12] The comté is made up of the seigneurie de Saint-Armand[13] and the cantons of Stanbridge, Dunham and Sutton.[14] In 1831, the population of Missisquoi was 10,736 habitants almost entirely of British origin. [15] French Canadians made up only a tenth of the population of the Cantons de l’Est in 1840. [16] The area was favourable to agriculture, in particular corn, oats, rye and buckwheat, but livestock breeding was also very widespread in the region.[17] Mills for flour, carding, sawing and fulling were numerous, 83 were listed in 1844, and the area also had various industries such as potash factories, distilleries and saw-mills. [18] In the Cantons de l’Est generally, the road network was poor and led to many petitions from habitants calling for improvements.[19] However, the comté de Missisquoi was better placed with access to roads in the Upper Richelieu, Missisquoi Bay and with Lake Champlain leading to the focus of its economic activity being more directed to the east.[20]

The settlement of the comté was relatively recent. The seigneurie de Saint-Armand had been granted to Nicolas Levasseur in 1748 but it was not until 1787 that it was opened to settlement when it was acquired by Thomas Dunn.[21] Dunham was the first canton to be established in Lower Canada in 1796 and Stanbridge and Sutton followed in 1801 and 1802 respectively. [22] Certain sites were occupied before the official granting of land and some pioneers were evicted by new owners. [23] Colonisation was initially by loyalists (1775-1815) and the British settlers (1815-1840). [24]

The comté de Missisquoi elected its first two deputies in by-elections in 1829, previously it had formed part of the comté de Bedford that only had the right to one deputy. In 1829, Richard Freligh[25] and Ralph Taylor[26], both loyalists, were elected; Freligh was replaced by Stevens Baker[27] in the elections the following year and Taylor was re-elected. Between 1834 and 1838, Missisquoi elected a reformer, Ephraïm Knight[28] and William Baker[29], a loyalist.[30] The comté saw an important mobilisation of opinion, loyalist rather than Patriote, during the 1830s. Between 1834 and 1837, 18% of loyalist assemblies and 7% of Patriote meetings held in the district of Montreal were held in Missisquoi and it was the most active loyalist comté.[31] The cantons of Dunham and Stanbridge were sympathetic to the reformers while Sutton and Saint-Armand and especially the villages of Philipsburgh and Frelighsburgh were loyalist bastions.[32] During this period, the 83 active militant Patriotes organised 26-35 events while the 192 active loyalists organised 36 events. However, there was a crumbling of support for the reform movement at the end of 1836 and beginning of 1837.[33]

The major reasons for loyalist and Patriote behaviour lay in a series of events that crystallised opinion: the Ninety-Two Resolutions of early 1834, the general elections in the autumn of the same year, the establishment of comités de correspondance and constitutional associations from the autumn of 1834 to the following spring, the Gosford Commission and Russell’s Ten Resolutions in early 1837. The rejection of the Ninety-Two Resolutions led to one of the largest gatherings of the comté. Organised on 4 July at Stanbridge, American Independence Day, it attracted many Americans. Nearly 1,000 Patriote sympathisers voted for a series of resolutions calling for closer links with the United States and for boycotting British goods.[34] Among the issues that dominated debate in Missisquoi were: Crown Lands, seigneurial tenure and immigration; the election of the Legislative Council; patronage, sinecures and the salary of agents from Lower Canada in London; and especially the question of subsidies. Most important, however, were the emotional ethnic tensions between British settlers and French Canadians that were fanned by the extremism of James Moir Ferres[35], editor of the conservative Missiskoui Standard and in his inflammatory pamphlets.[36] There were two other newspapers in Missisquoi, both reformist in outlook: the Missiskoui Post and Canada Record and the Township Reformer.[37]

The most celebrated event in the comté de Missisquoi during the rebellions was the battle of Moore’s Corner, near Saint-Armand on 6 December 1837. On the evening of 6 December, a group of around 80 rebels crossed the border from the United States and moved north into loyalist territory and at Moore’s Corner they were defeated by 300 volunteers. The skirmish lasted fifteen minutes and led to the Patriote retreat across the border leaving behind their wounded who were taken prisoner. This event showed the ability of the Missisquoi Volunteers to deal with the Patriote threat without assistance from British regulars. Calm was restored to the comté by the end of 1837. The revival of Patriote fortunes in 1838 resulted in the mobilisation of the Volunteers on several occasions especially in February 1838 and in November with the tentative rising of the Frères Chasseurs. The events in 1837 and 1838 in the comté resulted in the collapse of the Patriote cause. The political life of the comté was placed in the hands of conservative deputies favourable to Union. At the same time, a new period of colonisation opened in the Cantons de l’Est that saw the influx of French Canadians, a process helped by the arrival of the railway in the region.

Shefford

The comté de Shefford is situated to the north-east of Missisquoi and to the north-west of Stanstead.[38] Bordered in the west by the comté de Saint-Hyacinthe and comté de Rouville, it is surrounded to the north and east by the comtés de Drummond and Sherbrooke. There are eight townships in the comté: Milton, Roxton and Ely to the north, Granby, Shefford and Stukely in the centre, Farnham and Brome to the south.[39]

Loyalist and Patriote activities between 1834 and 1837 demonstrated the escalation of tension in the area. From 1834, loyalist assemblies were held in Shefford. On 3 May 1834, a loyalist assembly at Waterloo denounced the Ninety-Two Resolutions. [40] Between 3 and 14 November 1834, three Tory candidates stood for election to the Assembly during the general election: Alphonso Wells[41] and Samuel Wood[42] were elected. The choice of candidate reflected the type of people who lived in the comté where the majority were British. In March 1835, a new loyalist assembly was held that was far from successful. Delegates from the Quebec Constitutional Association visit the comté de Shefford to obtain signatures on the loyalist petition of Quebec. [43] However, tensions between reformers and loyalists led to the idea of a public assembly being abandoned. On 12 March 1836, an assembly was held at Granby and habitants from the cantons of Milton, Farnham and Granby and from the region of Abbotsford attended. The 300 people present voted to establish a branch of the Montreal Constitutional Association and elected two people from each township as members of an executive committee.[44] Other loyalist assemblies were held in Shefford. This was notably the case on 6 August 1837 when they were joined by loyalists from Yamaska.[45] A further assembly at Granby was held on 23 November 1837.[46]

During the winter of 1836-1837, the Patriotes lost ground in Shefford and they only managed to elect two deputies in the three comtés of Shefford, Missisquoi and Stanstead. It was the loyalists in Shefford who controlled the political agenda and who were better able to mobilise their forces.[47] During the rebellions, a militia was stationed in Shefford and after the Patriote defeat at Saint-Charles, loyalist militias were organised. The Shefford militia gathered at Granby, armed with weapons previously sent by Colborne to counter the Patriote threat. Loyalists organised the comté de Shefford very effectively and they were determined to obtain what they wanted: peace and the right to remain loyal to the British Crown.

Sherbrooke

The comté de Sherbrooke was established as a result of the electoral reform of 1829.[48] It is situated to the south of the comtés de Drummond and Mégantic, to the east of Shefford and north-east Stanstead. The population consisted largely of British and American immigrants. Sherbrooke contained 30 townships: Hereford, Compton, Clifton, Auckland, Emberton Croydon, Orford, Ascot, Eaton, Newport, Ditton, Chesham, Stanhope, Clinton, Brompton, Stoke, Westbury, Bury, Hampden, Marston, Melbourne, Windsor, Dudswell, Lingwick, Adstock, Whitton, Shipton, Weedon, Stratford and Garthby. The economic centre in Sherbrooke was at the confluence of the Magog et Saint-François rivers were land and settlement was developed by the British American Land Company.

The political landscape was dominated by Tories though some of those elected to the Assembly initially showed some sympathy for the Patriote position before returning to the loyalist side. The deputies from 1829 to 1838 were Samuel Brooks (1829-1831)[49], Benjamin Tremain (1829-1830)[50], Charles Frederick Goodhue (1830-1834)[51], Bartholomew Gugy (1831-1838)[52] and John Moore (1834-1838)[53]. Goodhue and Gugy voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1834. The British American Land Company profited them and their supporters. Three armed companies were organised in Sherbrooke and led by Colonel Herriot of Drummondville: Sherbrooke Dragoons, the Sherbrooke Rifles and the Queen’s Mounted Rangers.[54] They were largely financed by merchants in Sherbrooke, but had little military impact since no fighting took place in the region though their presence may have acted as a deterrent to possible rebels. There was a loyalist assembly at Sherbrooke on 20 November 1837.[55] Nineteen people were arrested and imprisoned in the prison at Sherbrooke in the autumn of 1838.

Stanstead

The comté de Stanstead, in the Cantons de l’Est (Eastern Townships) was bordered in the west by the comté de Potton, to the east by that of Barnston and to the north by the comté de Hatley.[56] South of the comté de Stanstead was the American frontier and the state of Vermont.[57] The comté was established in 1827 though the region had been colonised since 1800 when the Crown granted land to individuals such as Judge Isaac Ogden and R.S. Milnes, the governor.[58] Bouchette commented on the excellence of its lands and also the quality of its forests. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the comté produced wheat of a superior quality that was sent throughout the province. The comté is well irrigated by water: the lakes Memphrémagog and Massawippi and the Coaticook and Magog rivers. As for its roads, Bouchette stated that they formed the main connection between Quebec and the United States and that for this reason there was a continual impulse of settlers from the United States into the area. In 1831, the population of the comté was 10,306 persons: 84 in Barford, 2,221 in Barnston, 1,170 in Bolton, 1,600 in Hatley, 1,005 in Potton and 4,226 in Stanstead.[59]

The comté de Stanstead elected its first deputies in 1829: Marcus Child and Ebenezer Peck.[60] Unusually for the Cantons-de-l’Est, both were reformers favourably disposed to Papineau. It appears that the comté was a centre for American democratic traditions largely because of the predominantly American settlement of the area and this explains the different political attitudes of settlers compared to other areas in the Eastern Townships. [61] In 1834, during the intense debate over the Ninety-Two Resolutions, the reformers in Stanstead polled 449 votes compared to 166 for the Tories. Between 1834 and 1837, there were numerous Patriote and loyalist assemblies. In April 1834 the British Colonist and the Saint-Francis Gazette announced that a Patriote assembly would be held at Stanstead Plain that Tories sought, unsuccessfully, to prevent. [62] The assembly stated its loyalty to the British Crown but applauded the independent role of the Patriotes in the Legislative Assembly.[63] A month later, another assembly at Holland’s Mills reaffirmed its support for Papineau and his reformers. During the meeting, a Tory ex-deputy tried to convince the habitants that Papineau’s party sought nothing less than revolution. [64] The loyalists, for their part, established links with both the Montreal and Quebec Constitutional Associations.

As the struggle between Patriotes and loyalists entered its final stage, reformist enthusiasm declined while loyalists became more and more determined to create paramilitary groups to assist the regular army.[65] However, in 1838 when the government sent commissioners to administer an oath of allegiance to the Queen, they were surprised that several citizens in the comté de Stanstead refused even when threatened with arrest.

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[1] Day, Mrs. C.M., Pioneers of the Eastern Townships, (J. Lovell), 1863 and History of the Eastern Townships, Province of Quebec, Dominion of Canada, Civil and Descriptive, (J. Lovell), 1869; Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’Est, (Les Presses de l’Université Laval), 1998. See also Little, J.I., Ethno-Cultural Transition and Regional Identity in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Ottawa 1989 and Epps, Bernard, The Eastern Townships Adventure, (Pigwidgeon Press), 1992.

[2] The most important studies on the Eastern Townships in English are by J.I. Little: Nationalism, Capitalism, and Colonization in Nineteenth-Century Quebec: the Upper St Francis District, (McGill-Queen’s University Press), 1989, Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy, and Culture in a Quebec Township, 1848-1881, (McGill-Queen’s University Press), 1991, State and Society in Transition: the Politics of Institutional Reform in the Eastern Townships, 1838-1852, (McGill-Queen’s University Press), 1997, Borderland Religion: The Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792-1852, (Toronto University Press), 2004, The Other Quebec: Microhistorical Essays on Nineteenth-Century Religion and Society, (Toronto University Press), 2006 and Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812-1840, (Toronto University Press), 2008.

[3] See also, Premier et second rapports du comité spécial, nommé pour s’enquérir des causes qui retardent la colonisation des townships de l’Est du Bas-Canada, (Louis Perrault), 1851

[4] Booth, J. Derek, ‘Timber Utilization on the Agricultural Frontier in Southern Quebec’, Journal of Eastern Townships Studies / Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est, n° 4, (1994), pp. 14-30.

[5] See, Manore, Jeanne L., ‘The Technology of Rivers and Community Transformation: An Alternative History of the St. Francis’, Journal of Eastern Townships Studies / Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est, n° 23, (2003), pp. 27-40.

[6] Rajotte Labrèque, Marie-Paule, ‘Les canadiens et les Cantons de l’Est, 1820-30’, Journal of Eastern Townships Studies / Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est, n° 2, (1993), pp. 3-14.

[7] The French-Canadian exodus that began in the 1840s was largely directed to the mid-West and and the rural communities of New England. Only when Irish immigration declined did the French Canadians move in large numbers to the factory towns of southern New England, but there were still only 266 French Canadians in Lowell in 1860.

[8] LaBrèque, Marie-Paule Rajotte, ‘Un 150e anniversaire; L’Association des Établissements Canadiens des Townships (1848)’, Journal of Eastern Townships Studies / Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est, n °7, (1998), pp. 75-81. See also, Little, John I., ‘The Catholic Church and the French-Canadian Colonization of the Eastern Townships, 1821-1851’, Revue de l’université d’Ottawa, Vol. 52, (1982), pp. 142-165.

[9] Bishop Bourget of Montreal and Louis-Joseph Papineau were chosen as president and vice-president, respectively. Partisan politics and public disaffection soon led to the movement’s disintegration, but Bishop Bourget had time to start a colony at Roxton Falls in Shefford County. Other similar associations undertook various projects and colonisation missionaries remained active for almost a century.

[10] Magnan, Marie-Odile, ‘Pourquoi les Anglo-Québécois quittent-ils la province? Revue des travaux’, Journal of Eastern Townships Studies / Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est, n° 26, (2005), pp. 9-30.

[11] Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, Mémoire de M.A (histoire), Université du Québec à Montréal, 1990, pp. xi, 19.

[12] ‘L’étymologie du mot Missisquoi’, Bulletin des recherches historiques, Vol. XI, (1905), pp. 270-277; Vol. XII, (1906), pp. 33-37; Drouin, François, Alphonse Barbeau and Prémont Jacques, Rapport de la Commission permanente de la réforme des districts électoraux, (Québec, Assemblée, nationale), 1972, p. 174.

[13] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, p. 189.

[14] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 27; ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 344-355.

[15] Belden, H., Illustrated Atlas of the Eastern Townships and South Western Quebec, (Cumming Publishers), 1972, p. 6.

[16] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, Les p. 108.

[17] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 137, 140-142.

[18] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 148-151; ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 166-167.

[19] Caron, I., La Colonisation de la Province de Québec: Les Cantons de l’Est, 1791-1815, (Q. L’Action Sociale), 1927, pp. 185, 224.

[20] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 104, 161-162.

[21] Ibid, Belden, H., Illustrated Atlas of the Eastern Townships and South Western Quebec, p. 11.

[22] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 89, 94.

[23] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 98-99.

[24] Fournier, Rodolphe, Lieux et monuments historiques des Cantons de l’Est et des Bois-Francs, (Éditions Paulines), 1978, pp. 8-9.

[25] DPQ, p. 295.

[26] DPQ, p. 727. Until 1832, Taylor generally sided with the Parti Patriote but changed his allegiance to the loyalists especially after he was briefly imprisoned for publishing a defamatory letter against Papineau in the Quebec Mercury; voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions and defeated in the 1834 election.

[27] DPQ, p. 27. Voted for both Patriote and loyalist issues in the first two sessions of the 1830 parliament but in 1833 and 1834 supported the executive; did not stand in 1834.

[28] DPQ, p. 400; took part in the Patriote assembly at Stanbridge in July 1837; arrested in December 1837 on charge of high treason and imprisoned in Montreal until 11 January 1838.

[29] DPQ, p. 27; Steven Baker’s brother.

[30] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 52-53, 58.

[31] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 2; see also his ‘Orientations politiques des mouvements d’alliance et d’opposition aux Patriotes dans les comtés de Missisquoi et de Stanstead, 1834-1837’, Bulletin d’histoire politique, Vol. 7, (1998), pp. 12-18 

[32] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 21, 24, 41, 58, 81, 166, 190-191

[33] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, p. 213; ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 107, 176.

[34] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 100-102. Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 126-132.

[35] ‘James Moir Ferres’, DCB, Vol. 9, pp. 257-258.

[36] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 157-163. See also Millman, T.R., ‘The Missiskoui Standard: Frelighsburg’s first and only newspaper’, Missisquoi County Historical Society, no 8, (1965), pp. 17-21

[37] Ibid, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Southam, Peter and Saint-Pierre, Diane, (eds.), Histoire des Cantons de l’est, pp. 210-211.

[38] Thomas, Cyrus, The History of Shefford, Civil, Ecclesiastical, Biographical and StatisticHindenlangal, (Lovell Printing and Publishing Co), 1877 and Noyes, John P., Sketches of Some Early Shefford Pioneers, (Montreal Gazette), 1905 provide some background; see also, ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 361-363.

[39] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 26.

[40] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 48.

[41] DPQ, p. 778; DCB, Vol. 9, p. 276.

[42] DPQ, p. 780

[43] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 71.

[44] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, pp. 90-91.

[45] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, p. 174.

[46] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 299-300.

[47] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 107.

[48] See, Kesteman, Jean-Pierre, Histoire de Sherbrooke Tome I: De l’âge de l’eau à l’ère de la vapeur (1802-1866), (Productions, GGC), 2000; Demers, Louis-Philippe, Sherbrooke Découvertes, Légendes, Documents, (Gauvin et Frères), 1969; ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 363-370.

[49] DPQ, p. 111.

[50] DPQ, p. 744.

[51] DPQ, p. 333; initially supported the Parti Patriote but by 1832 was voting for the executive; voted against Ninety-Two Resolutions.

[52] DPQ, p. 347; voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions and supported the executive after 1834.

[53] DPQ, p. 539.

[54] Montreal Gazette, 15 February 1838, 15-17 November 1838.

[55] Ibid, Bernard, Jean-Paul, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838, pp. 294-298.

[56] Ibid, Bouchette, Joseph, Description topographique du Canada 1815, p. 263

[57] Hubbard, Benjamin F., Forests and Clearings: The History of Stanstead County, Province of Quebec, with Sketches of More Than Five Hundred Families, (John Lawrence), 1874, republished, (Heritage Books), 1988, especially pp. 1-40, 62-103. See also, ibid, Laporte, Gilles, Patriotes et Loyaux, pp. 355-361.

[58] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 25.

[59] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 28.

[60] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 52; see also DPQ, pp. 163-164 on Child and pp. 586-587 on Peck

[61] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 57.

[62] Stanstead Plain was founded in 1796 by Johnson Taplin, who came from New England in search of good farming land. The town blossomed in the nineteenth century, due to the influx of United Empire Loyalists and the development of the granite industry. In 1855, the village was incorporated by the Quebec legislature. The town was the main centre of commerce in the region until losing pre-eminence to Sherbrooke.

[63] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 46.

[64] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 49.

[65] Ibid, Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Les mouvements patriote et loyal dans les comtés de Missisquoi, Shefford et Stanstead, 1834-1837, p. 107.