Québec Non-French Settlement - International Institute

Follow the Water
You can not settle on land you can not get to. Long before the British appeared on the scene, the French established Roman Catholic parishes and granted seigneuries on both sides of the St. Lawrence and then south along the Chaudière, Yamaska and Richelieu Rivers, on the latter, all the way to Lake Champlain.

The Seigneuries
The seigneuries varied greatly in size, but most ran inland, perpendicular to the river fronts. In due course, three judicial districts were established, named for and administered from: Québec City, Trois-Rivières/Three Rivers, and Montréal. Their borders also ran more or less perpendicular to the St. Lawrence. With European settlement came horses and wheels, and these require roads. During the French regime two principal highways from Québec City to Montréal were built in stages (though never fully completed) on either side of, and parallel to, the Saint Lawrence, the chief area of settlement. Others ran along the Chaudière, St. Francis and Richelieu Rivers, and several joined the Richelieu River valley to the St. Lawrence at Montréal. Superhighways they were not; overland travel was slow, difficult and uncomfortable.

The St. Lawrence River, the main highway, was navigable to ocean going vessels for at least half the year as far as Montréal Island. At the westend of the island of Montréal, the Lachine rapids prevented early explorers from sailing further west and fulfilling their dream of reaching China (La Chine). Lachine therefore became the place where travellers or fur traders took smaller vessels or canoes for travel west. Made nervous by the War of 1812, and with lots of unemployed men at the end of the Napoleonic wars, British Army engineers turned to canal building. The Lachine Canal, started in 1818, opened in 1824, was enlarged in the 1840s and again in the 1880s. The Soulanges Canal superceded a number of shallow canals, some built during the French regime. Eventually the system allowed more immigrants to move by water both into the Great Lakes and up the Ottawa river, and more wheat and timber to move down to Québec.

The Eastern Townships
The Saint Francis river flows into the St. Lawrence at Lake St. Peter from the heart of the hilly country that became The Eastern Townships. L’Office de la langue français tried to change the name to l’Estrie, but Québec tourist brochures now refer to Les Cantons de l’est. The Townships (as we shall call them) lie south and east of the river plains of the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers. Fingers of the Green Mountains and White Mountains reach north from Vermont and New Hampshire. Between the rows of hills, small rivers and lakes run north-south across the border with the United States.

In 1791 authorization was finally given for a survey of the lands beyond the back limits of the seigneuries and in “The Constitutional Act of 1791: A challenge for surveyors”, Gilles Langelier describes how “Lord Dorchester dispatched an ‘army’ of surveyors to the four corners of Québec”, not only to establish accurately the border between Upper and Lower Canada, but to verify all titles of ownership of seigneuries, and to create townships and properly survey them. One illustration in his article is a portion of Gale and Duberger’s 1795-1796 “Plan of Part of the Province of Lower Canada,” showing the region north of the United States border and east of Montréal (NMC-57718). It is printed as endpapers in de Volpi and Scowan’s Eastern Townships , and is a map you should know about.

A more modern map of the Eastern Townships is available on the internet.

And a good map showing which townships were in each county in 1871 can be found on the Eastern Townships Research.

Townships, generally about ten miles square, march in regular rows, three deep along the border, then were adjusted to fit around the backs of the seigneuries. Townships were also surveyed west of the Richelieu and east of the Chaudière Rivers, along the Ottawa River beyond the few seigneuries clustered around Lake of Two Mountains (Deux-montagnes) and in the Gaspé Peninsula.

Routes Across the Border
Look at a good relief map of the north-eastern part of the continent and you will see the water routes used by invading armies, refugee Loyalists, and New England settlers:


 * The routes of entry from the United States were first, the Champlain-Richelieu Route, which was the early route of travel in both war and peace and the natural connection between the Hudson and St. Lawrence valleys. It afforded the only unbroken waterway for boats above canoe size between the two countries.


 * Secondly, from the headwaters of the Connecticut river, a little farther eastward, several routes into the Eastern Townships converged on the St. Francis river at Sherbrooke. One of these by way of Lake Memphremagog led to the St. Francis valley through the Magog river and also by portage to the Yamaska river. From it, settlers reached both Brome, Shefford, and the western parts of Stanstead Counties. …


 * The third main route of entry was by way of Lake Megantic and the Chaudière river, which were reached from the State of Maine by the Kennebec river and its tributaries with a portage of a few miles across the height of land.

In 1775, Benedict Arnold led his expedition against Québec using the Kennebec route, which took the army to Lake Megantic and down the Chaudiere River to Point Levis opposite Québec. These water routes all run north-south, and


 * ... For a generation following the American Revolution, which terminated in 1783, the international boundary line was only vaguely known, and some considerable settlements were made by people who may have thought they were still in the United States. When the boundary became better defined, these people accepted the new nationality...

Roads Across the Townships
In the 1830s east-west travel was overland and far more difficult.


 * The main, and indeed the only roads leading from the heart of these townships to the older settlements, are Craig’s Road, which, from its intersection of the St. Francis at Shipton, is open to the settlements of St. Giles; the East and West River Roads of the St. Francis, leading from Sherbrooke to the Baie St. Antoine, on Lake St. Peter; and the road through Hatley, Stanstead, Potton, Sutton, St. Armand, Dunham and Stanbridge to the Settlements of the Richelieu River. By this latter road are opened several avenues into the State of Vermont, with which a constant intercourse is kept up. Some parts of Craig’s Road are almost impassable, owing to swamps and windfalls, and particularly so between the settlements of Leeds and those of Shipton.

What a Difference a Railroad Made
The demography of rural Québec changed radically and rapidly with the coming of the Railroads. A new era had begun. The Townships were no longer isolated, but on a direct route from Montréal to the sea.

On Thursday, 21 July 1836, the first railway train in Canada pulled two coaches from La Prairie, on the St. Lawrence, to St. Johns on the Richelieu River. The average speed on that first round trip was 14.5 m.p.h. but it provided a direct link of the water-route to New York. The St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad was incorporated in 1845, to join Montréal and Portland Maine. It reached Richmond in 1851, Sherbrooke the following year, and was completed by 1853. By 1867 the Stanstead, Shefford and Chambly R.R. connected St. Johns/Iberville to Waterloo and Frost Village.

The Montréal and Vermont Junction railroad ran south to the east of Missisquoi Bay, and the Grand Trunk Railway not only joined Montréal to Portland, but also branched north from Richmond and ran through Arthabaska and Megantic counties to Québec City. Branch lines proliferated. By the turn of the century you could get from almost anywhere to anywhere on a train, often several times a day and back.

As soon as the road past the farm led to the village Railway Station, the older children could catch the train to the Model School in the County town, or the Academy in Sherbrooke. Railroads are what moved most people around Québec from the mid 19th century until the 1950s. J. Derek Booth’s two volume Railways of Southern Québec provides a detailed history of the lines with many maps and photographs. For the rest of the province, consult Lines of Country.

Twentieth Century Changes
In the 20th century, the importance of the railways declined as the truck and automobile took over. Railway passenger service became unprofitable after World War II and now only the main freight lines cross the Townships. Concession roads became highways, widened and paved, with corners rounded and hills smoothed. A few still wander off over the hills looking much as they did a hundred years ago, but these backroads now lead not to overgrown farms with old houses showing only traces of past prosperity, but to beautifully restored stone or wooden “heritage homes” set in well-tended gardens. “The Townships” are now prime vacation country for week-enders from the cities; another influx of “settlers” is underway. They drive out on the autoroutes.

From “the Beginning”
Remember the words of Senator Forsey who told us where to find the “English”:


 * In Canada East, …people of English, Scotch and Irish origin made up well over 20 percent of the population in 1867. Montréal was more than half “English,” Québec City about 45 percent, the Eastern Townships were overwhelmingly “English,” and there was a substantial “English” minority in Gaspé and several other counties [Ottawa River valley].

Among the early non-French arrivals in the French colony of Canada were Irish and Scottish mercenaries in the French Army. Those who married local women were absorbed into French society and their children grew up part of it. You may have trouble recognizing the surnames; Riley became Riel, O’Brien became Aubry and O’Connor produced even more creative phonetic spelling


 * AUBRY dit Thècle, Thècle-Cornelius ([son of] Connehour and Honorée Iconnehour) de St-Patrice de Diasonyden, Ireland, … m. 10-09-1670 Québec CHARTIER, Jeanne … RIEL, dit Lirlande, Jean-Baptiste (Jean-Baptiste and Louise Lafontaine) de St-Pierre, v, et. év. Limerick, Irlande: cité 02-10-1700 Hôtel Dieu, Québec, 30 ans, naturalisé mai 1719, soldat de la compagnie de Lavaltrie

Those excerpts of entries are from René Jetté’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec  Dr. Jetté, among the best and most knowledgeable of Québec’s genealogists and demographers, has become a byword: “Have you looked in Jetté?” His Dictionnaire covers all the families who settled in the colony from the beginning to c. 1730, listed by surname, with all known facts. This widely available single volume is based on the early volumes of the computerized database of the P.R.D.H.

New England Captives
During the French and Indian Wars, the French and their Indian allies raided New England settlements, and we have tales of some of them, often children, captured by Indians and carried off to Québec, baptized into the Roman Catholic faith, and integrated into Francophone society. There are many books both by and about New England captives, including Emma Lewis Coleman, New England captives carried to Canada between 1677 and 1760, during the French and Indian wars, 2 volumes (Portland: The Southworth Press, 1925). Try searches under the subject heading: Indians of North America - Captivities. These non-French ancestors, once they reached Québec, can be researched as you would any Francophone Roman Catholic, which is what most of them became.

After the Plains of Abraham


 * September 13, 1759: British army under General Wolfe capture Québec City.
 * September 8, 1760: Capitulation of Montréal. Canada surrendered to British.
 * February 10, 1763: Treaty of Paris ends Seven Years War, France cedes Canada and remaining colonies in Acadia to Great Britain.

Between the taking of Québec and the Treaty of Paris, General Amherst directed a sort of mopping up operation, using some regiments of British regulars and quite a number of Colonial Militia regiments from the New England colonies. Both groups of soldiers had a chance to look over this newly acquired territory, check out its possibilities, and doubtless meet some of the women. Some stayed.

Changes in Land Tenure—Limited Settlement

 * 1763, 7 October, the Royal Proclamation established British institutions and laws in Québec. General James Murray, Governor, planned to survey vacant land into Townships and grant land in English tenure.


 * 1774, on advice of Governor Sir Guy Carleton, the British Parliament passed the Québec Act. French Civil Law and the seigneurial system were restored, as was the tithe to the Roman Catholic church. As well, the oath of allegiance, required for anyone holding any government office, was modified to accommodate Roman Catholics.


 * 1791, 26 December, a third change came after the Loyalist refugees arrived. The Canada or Constitutional Act (passed 10 June) came into force, splitting the Province of Québec into Lower Canada and Upper Canada. In Lower Canada, things were not much different than they were under the Québec Act, except that land tenure in the new Townships was to be English, i.e. free and common soccage, and there would be a democratically-elected Assembly.

Since English-speaking settlers did not pour into Lower Canada, the Assembly was destined to be dominated by French-speaking leaders and politicians, which, in turn, provided another reason for English settlers to avoid Québec.

The Beginnings of English Settlement
The English began to arrive after 1760 and trickled into Québec for almost 200 years but in the early years, the English population in Québec grew very gradually:


 * Very few English-speaking immigrants came to Québec, preferring to settle in the more fertile Ohio Valley rather than in the colder region to the north (amidst an alien French-speaking population).

By the mid-1760s there were not more than 500 English-speaking residents of Canada.


 * 1760—With the British Army, came commissary merchants and other suppliers. The army’s forts and garrisons were built where they would defend the border and waterways. Records may have been kept by regimental chaplains. The Montréal Garrison Church records date from 1760 to 1869 [ANQ microfilm].


 * 1763—Next came British officials and bureaucrats and more service personnel, who established themselves at Québec City, Montréal, and smaller cities. Some Protestant churches were built, but immigration was limited.


 * 1783—The American Revolution brought Loyalist refugees to the St. Lawrence cities and along the Richelieu. Later most moved west to what became Upper Canada, some settled in the Townships, and a few in Gaspé.


 * 1791—saw the beginning of the survey of townships and in the following decade, land was granted and settlement began along the river and lake routes from the new American states. These “Yankis” spoke English and were, for the most part, Protestant.


 * 1815—The end of the Napoleonic wars saw emigrants from the British Isles arrive in greater numbers at the ports of Québec and Montréal. Some were Protestant, others Catholic; most wanted land. Newcomers might search out land at once, or spend a generation in a Francophone parish where children would pick up French and get to know the other culture, before moving south to the Townships or west up the Ottawa.

By 1867, “English” immigration into rural Québec had pretty well ended. Communities were stable, but sons were being educated to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors; if no son wanted the farm, usually it was a French-Canadian who bought it. The population changed gradually but inexorably, as more and more “English” moved to Montréal, or to Ontario, or to the “States”; at first, a few came back, but most did not.

Between 1880 and 1930, the population of the Montréal metropolitan area rose from 140,000 to a million. The completion of Canada’s first transcontinental railway brought a spurt of growth in 1885-1887. Another period of rapid growth came at the turn of the century, a consequence of the rapid colonization of Western Canada, and a third period, from 1922 to 1930, ended with the Depression of the 1930s.

The last large influx of new immigrants from Britain and western Europe came at the end of World War II, a few Swiss and Dutch settled in the Townships and farmed. Those from the British Isles who found jobs in Montréal, established themselves in the West Island communities and tried to ignore the “French fact” of the island. Like their predecessors a century or so earlier, they imagined they were coming to an English-speaking country with British laws. Duplessi’s Québec was an unpleasant surprise to many.

A smaller group who came from Eastern Europe after anti-Communist uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia fitted into Montréal’s cosmopolitan society and greatly enriched it.

The growth of the 1950s and 1960s ended and many moved on. Statistics are difficult to determine, but at least half a million “English” Québecers have departed since 1967. As their collateral ancestors did, they have spread all across the continent.

On the Move
Even in 1867 a prosperous farm could not support three or four sons and their families. Railroads meant that by the last quarter of the century, a son or daughter could work quite far from home, and commute by train, daily or on weekends. Some sons got an education, became professionals and moved to the city.

Others sought their fortune outside Québec, and even the sons who stayed on the family farm had a tendency to look for better land, or better schools for their children, in the next township or the next county.

Such mobility meant that they met and married people from another township or county, perhaps settled down in a growing town, or even Montréal and, when their parents retired from the farm, the parents moved to that same place and are buried there, not near their farm.

If members of a family moved to town, or to the city, or changed farms, and you have no idea where they went, consult the series published by the Genealogical Record Library in Toronto.

They produced, among other Regional indexes, a three-volume set, The French Canadians 1600-1900. This should have been entitled “The People of Québec” because it includes both language groups. While it has indexed a few early sources, the bulk are mid-to-late 19th century, and may well indicate where a family relocated.

Demographic Changes
Before the coming of the railroads, few French Canadians had settled in the Eastern Townships. Some came to work on the early railroads but in spite of increasing population pressure in the seigneuries, they avoided the region as long as there were no Catholic parishes. There were no Catholic parishes because Priests were allowed to tithe only those who held lands under seigneurial tenure. The Clergy Reserves were for the support of the Protestant Clergy. This changed with an ordinance in 1839, “confirmed by an act of the Canadian Legislature in 1849”, and once it could establish Parishes, the Catholic Church encouraged new settlements in Québec rather than see their young parishioners emigrate to find work in New England factories.

French families gradually moved into “English” settlements, buying up a farm here or a house there as an English family moved away. Francophone professionals and merchants then came to serve them and the Church supplied the schools and other social services. The Roman Catholic “Holy Name Society” became very active in English regions, adding a Saint’s name, usually that of the Parish, to that of the English founder of a town, so your map will show St-Paul d’Abbotsford, St-Felix de Kingsey, and St-Ignace de Stanbridge. Katevale became Ste-Catherine de Hatley. The French Canadians 1600-1900 has a very helpful index of place names with cross referencing to deal with these changes.

Myth—information
As you check various internet sources of Québec information, try to evaluate it, especially the historic commentary. I have encountered more than a little “Myth-information”, and the Myths are politically charged on both sides of the language divide. Always keep in mind the deep religious divide in 19th century Québec, where, as in Upper Canada (Ontario), the power struggle was essentially between Protestants and Roman Catholics (who included Irish and Highland Scots), rather than language groups.

Reading the newspapers will show that in the 1850s there was little antagonism to the French, but letters from Bartholomew Conrad Augustus Gugy (1796-1876), published in the Québec Gazette, railed against the unequal division of power between Roman Catholics and Protestants (Others). You might also encounter Robert Sellar, editor of the Huntingdon Canadian Gleaner; in a region subject to the same demographic forces. Sellar’s conspiracy theory, blames a Papal plot aided and abetted by the Roman Catholic clergy for the changing population of the “English” counties. The past is a foreign country and Québecers in 1870 did not necessarily think the same way they did in 1970.

Northern Québec
Rouyn, Noranda, Val-d’Or, and Amos, the mining and pulp towns in the north of Québec opened up with the building of the National Transcontinental Railway (now CNR), which ran from Québec City to Winnipeg in a great arc, north of most settled areas, across the Laurentian shield. Look at Plate 16 in Vol. III of the Historical Atlas of Canada. This is not “English” Québec. Managers and engineers might speak English, but railroad labourers, miners and workmen were recruited from pockets of unemployment in North America, the UK, and across Europe. Do not expect people to stay put, follow the rail lines.

There is a branch of the ANQ in Noranda, and you can expect to find regional records there. Note that the United Churches in Temiscaming, Noranda and Val d’Or are part of the Ontario Manitou Conference, though they would have had to supply copies of their registers to the Québec Prothonotary Court. This will apply to all denominations, but their archives for this region may, like those of the United Church, be located in a different province.

Map 9: Detail from Québec City, 1815

Detail from Québec City, 1815 by Joseph Bouchette, author’s collection.



Urban Centres
Québec City, Three Rivers and Montréal are all on navigable water and English-speaking immigrants, soldiers and sailors all arrived at the three locations by ship. During the 19th century, many arrivals wanted land to farm. Others were skilled tradesmen, well-connected merchants, “officers and gentlemen”, but some were too poor and unskilled to have any hopes for acquiring land so settled for manual labour and a “daily wage” paid when there was work to be done. All of these social classes tended to stay in the growing towns and cities along the Saint Lawrence.

Québec City and Montréal began as walkable, walled cities, like those in medieval Europe. Housing was densely built, though richer men who could afford horses and carriages, might choose to live in an estate outside the walls. Three Rivers was a fairly large town as was Sorel, this last, a creation of British Army engineers.

When the Judicial District of St. Francis was formed, Sherbrooke became the main urban centre for the eastern portion of the Eastern Townships. St. Johns, on the Richelieu, was a military centre that also became an urban business centre, serving the western parts of the Eastern Townships as well as the townships to the west of the Richelieu. County seats and railroad centres grew into towns.

Remember what Senator Forsey said: “…in 1867 Montréal was more than half ‘English,’ Québec City about 45 percent”. The Montréal percentages may even have grown as immigrants from both the British Isles and Europe poured into the St. Lawrence ports between Confederation and the First World War. Québec City, Sorel and Three Rivers, however, slowly lost their “English” to the financial, industrial and transportation capital of Canada—Montréal.

Québec City
As the capital of the colony, Québec City is where you would find British military and government officials, and those supplying and serving the government. The microfiche index to non-Catholic Baptisms, Marriages and Burials from the Québec City area, c. 1790-1875, available at branches of the ANQ, is probably the best place to begin a search. The Archives in Ottawa has a card index to theQuébec Gazette, 1764-1823, available on twenty-four microfilms (C-7071/ C-7095). In addition, the Québec Family History Society has published two indexes compiled by Ernest J. Smith, Québec City gazette marriage notices, 1846-1855 and Death Notices, 1846-1855, from the Québec gazette . “The first city directory in Canada was published in 1790: Directory of the City and Suburbs of Québec. A second edition came out in 1791, but nothing further until 1822, and even after that publication was sporadic so the runs appear incomplete”. Though closed in the winter months, for half the year Québec City was the first port of arrival, and so a distribution and shipping center. A major export was the timber that was rafted down the rivers throughout the 19th century. Québec City, however, was not a railroad centre, though the Government of Canada did it’s best by building the National Transcontinental Line which ran from Winnipeg to Québec City, largely through unsettled and undeveloped wilderness.

Québec City still has a small “English” community, but as journalist George Boulanger pointed out in the Globe and Mail, Québec City’s English-speaking Jewish and Irish ethnic communities:


 * … had followed business up-river to Montréal many decades ago and no new Jewish or Irish immigrants ever came to strengthen the dwindling communities of those who stayed behind. Now, most new immigrants to Canada settle in either Vancouver, Toronto or Montréal. Those who do venture to the old walled city come from Chile, San Salvador, Haiti and Lebanon, not the British Isles or Eastern Europe.

This is even more true of the other smaller urban centres in Québec. The Francophone population has grown, but as the English leave they are not replaced, their institutions decline and may eventually disappear. The “English” population is also ageing, so the volunteers who run the historical society museums, the libraries, the churches and who maintain the graveyards, may be slow to respond to your enquiries.

Urban Research
Special urban research tools include the indexes, then city directories used in conjunction with census returns, cemetery and burial records, and newspapers. Even if your family was Protestant, have a look at local marriage indexes—they might include a cousin who married a Catholic or they might include the Protestant churches.

To check whether members of a family are still living in a city, try Canada 411 on the Internet. If you are sure a family once lived in a city, check the historic telephone directories, which exist on microfiche.

Amalgamation
In the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Provincial Government has forced small communities to amalgamate into larger municipalities. Lac Brome, in Brome County was among the first. In western Quebec, Hull and its surrounding suburbs have become Gatineau, and the entire Island of Montréal is now one city.