This article is meant to give a very short history of the establishment of the Rawdon History. Further articles give a detailed look at the development of this 3rd settlement by the British regime in Lower Canada.
The official proclamation describing the limits of Rawdon Township in Lower Canada was issued July 13, 1799. Officially Rawdon is over 200 years old, but its story begins yet a few years earlier. The natives of the Algonquin Tribe visited the area regularly establishing hunting and fishing camps from time untold. They camped along the rivers and hunted in the forests where game abounded. The name Oureau given to one of the rivers in Rawdon is said to be the Algonquin word for ‘far & deep.’
European settlement at Rawdon began with grants to Loyalists in 1792 when a new township was created from the wastelands of the crown. In 1798, it was officially named Rawdon by the Governor General, Sir Robert Prescott to honour Sir Francis Rawdon, Lord Hastings who distinguished himself at Bunker Hill and other battles of the American Revolution.
He was confined by the American Army in Ticonderoga where he escaped to St. Helen’s Island in very poor physical condition. Once he had regained his health he was transferred to India where he was appointed governor of the British holdings.
He never visited the areas in the Canadas, that were to bear his name none of which he ever visited.
It was a common practice at the time to name places for war heroes or others of note.
Petitions were received for grants of land at Rawdon as early as 1793 and an order to survey the first two ranges into 200 acre lots was made in 1798. It is unclear if the first four individuals who received grants of land in this new township in 1799 ever visited or settled there. They were not residents when the first census took place in 1825.
Ephraim Sandford and James Sawyers, a veteran of Wolf’s army, were both Loyalists from the great refugee camp at William Henry (Sorel). Sawyers married Margaret Tucker, widow of John Tucker of the 53rd regiment who also received grants for her late husband’s loss of life in defence of the crown. George McBeath, of l’Assomption, a native of Scotland, also was given a grant of land. He served as deputy for Leinster (Lower Canada) from 1792-96 and was a founder of the North West Company. In total, these four received 1900 acres in the First and Second Ranges.
The next two names were definitely in the class of investors or speculators. In 1805, grants totalling 3000 acres on the First and Second Ranges were issued to Ralph Henry Bruyère and George Selby. Bruyère, a British military man, was married to Jessie Dunbars. There must undoubtedly be a connection to Captain William Dunbars, a Loyalist, 1st Battalion, 84th Regiment, who was recipient of 3000 acres north of St-Sulpice Seigneury in 1789 which lay just south of Rawdon.
Extract From the December 20th 1824
Joseph Bouchette’s Report to the Surveyor General’s Office
I then immediately proceeded to the visit and inspection of Rawdon, Kildare, and Kilkenny, upon which subject I had the honour to report from Montreal, accompanying the same with a communication dated 24th August last, together with numerous documents touching the inquiries personally conducted by me then, and reported upon severally. I would therefore beg leave to refer thereto so far as they extend, and embody in this General Report such further observations, respecting the state of those Townships, and their relative situation with the adjacent Seigneuries, as appear to me necessary, commencing with Rawdon.
This Township is bordered on the front by the rear lines of the Seigneuries of L’Assomption and La Chenaye, from which there are roads leading into the Township. It is singular to remark, that, notwithstanding the limits between these Seigneuries and this Township have been established and marked in the field by actual survey, the Seignior of L’Assomption has considerably encroached upon the first range of Rawdon, where he has placed Censitaires under Seignorial Titles. The encroachments in question extending as well to the Crown and Clergy Reservations in that range as to the tract granted under Letters Patent to the Bruyeres, I have in consequence subjoined, for the information of His Majesty’s Government, a plan, and other documents, illustrative of the state of the case, under the letter B.
The Township of Rawdon is of the usual dimensions of a regular inland Township, that is, 10 miles square; it has been subdivided into 11 ranges, and each range into 28 lots of 200 acres. The usual initial grant was 1/2 lot.
The new system of laying out the Crown and Clergy Reserves in Blocks has been extended thereto, except in the first and a part of the second ranges, already granted under Letters Patent, in which the Reserves were appropriated.
The face of the country in this Township is uneven, and in many parts mountainous, from the 4th range northward. The soil therein, generally, is fit for cultivation of every species of grain peculiar to this country, and, in various sections, susceptible of the growth of hemp and flax. It contains several small lakes, and is well watered by the River Oureau and numerous other streams, by which it is traversed and on which are found many mill sites. In fact, this Township, as well as those adjoining and lying in that direction, offer many temptations as a fine “pasturing and grazing country,” to use the language of its inhabitants, and possesses, at the same time, the no inconsiderable advantage of the proximity of a large and populous market town.
This Township is bordered on the front by the rear lines of the Seigeuries of L’Assomption and La Chenaye, from which there are roads leading into the Township. It is singular to remark , that, notwithstanding the limits between these Seignories and this Township have been established and marked in the field by actual survey, the Seignior of L’Assomption has considerably encroached upon the first range of Rawdon, where he has placed Censitaires under Seignorial Titles.
The encroachments in question extending as well to the Crown and Clergy Reservations in that range as to the tract granted under Letters Patent to the Bruyeres, I have in consequence subjoined, for the information of His Majesty’s Government, a plan, and other documents, illustrative of the state of the case, under the letter B.
The Township of Rawdon is of the usual dimensions of a regular inland Township, that is, 10 miles square; it has been subdivided into 11 ranges, and each range into 28 lots of 200 acres. The new system of laying out the Crown and Clergy Reserves in Blocks has been extended thereto, except in the first and a part of the second ranges, already granted under Letters Patent, in which the Reserves were appropriated.
Local lore has it that there were Irish Catholic settlers who settled in the area without permission from the crown before 1820. In his report, August 24 1824, Surveyor General Joseph Bouchette speaks of this matter. He says: “little or no progress has been made in respect of Settlements except by a few Irish emigrants who have without authority and contrary to the agents instructions set themselves down promiscuously in various parts of the Township and in some instances when the lands already located to the officers and privates of the late Embodied Militia.” Bouchette says nothing of their religion: who were these the mysterious Irish Catholics?
Who were “the officers and privates of the late Embodied Militia”? Were they the forty or so settlers who were given certificates by Order in Council for the Township of Rawdon 1820 – 1823 who were mainly Irish Protestants?
Any squatters who did not obtain a ticket of location to their clearings would have to abandon them as they outside the law.
The question arises were these Irish really squatters? At Kilkenny Township, just west of Rawdon, a legally placed Irish Protestant settler, Richard Foster and others, had to appeal to the governor when the agent, Captain Guy Colclough, granted their lots to officers of the Canadian Militia. Foster wrote that Bouchette read them a letter written by Colclough “representing the whole of us as Rebellious and Troublesome people”.
The influx of settlers was at times so rapid that bureaucracy could not cope with the volume. Squatting was not unusual and they could be accommodated if they were not on land already issued to another settler. If this were the case, they would have to move on.
In fact, the agents filed lists of those who had gone on to Lots without Permits of Occupation or Location Tickets.
Surveyor’s reports described settlers and the state of lots that were being cleared.
There is a list of early tickets of location which were granted from 1820-21. These are the earliest known families to receive tickets to settle and include Americans returning to British rule and Irish Protestants mainly from the County of UlsterUlster.