From Nicholas Austin to Dom Bellot: A History of Bolton Township and the Municipality of Austin

Adaptation of a presentation by Prof. Jean-Pierre Kesteman, Ph.D., Université de Sherbrooke, at St.Augustine Church in Austin, October 8, 2000.

Austin Cultural Committee, June 2001. Financial Support: MRC Memphremagog Typesetting: Infographie CL Printing: Imprimerie CRM

The Beginning The Topography The opening of a steamship line linking At this time, the government refused to give Newport to Magog in the 1850s solidified concessions to individuals, preferring to The history of Austin, which began officially It is interesting to note that in this context, the Georgeville - Knowlton’s Landing route grant most of the land in each township to in the late 1930s, can best be understood as where mountain ranges made the movement as the crossing point for the stagecoach. established groups with a leader who would part of the history of Bolton Township. of people and goods difficult, the part of However, in 1854, Bolton was attached to assume the responsibility of the various Before, it was part of the Municipality of East Bolton Township today occupied by the Brome County, which meant it was grouped costs. Nicholas Austin therefore sought Bolton, itself the result of an earlier Municipality of Austin found itself in a with Brome, Potton, Sutton and Farnham. letters patent on behalf of his 54 associates territorial division. In the beginning, Bolton fortunate position because of its proximity When the railway arrived, Bolton Centre and for the lots in Bolton Township. In February was the only municipality in the Township to the lake. (Think of the difficulties of South Bolton were linked to Mansonville and 1792, Governor Clarke authorized the of Bolton, created in the 1840s within the getting from Bolton to the Montreal Newport to the south, and to Eastman in the cession of properties in the new townships. cadastral limits of the township, granted in lowlands in the early days.Travel through the north. Around 1930, the arrival of the Once the townships were surveyed,Austin 1797. Because the Sutton Mountain chain Sutton Mountains by way of the Bolton Pass automobile signalled the end of the realized that he had been clearing land made it difficult to manage the municipality, only became possible in the 1830s.) As for steamships. Now the lake was seen as an outside of the Bolton line, in Potton it was divided in 1876 into two separate the north-central part of the township, it is obstacle since a driver would have to take a Township.This explains why some authors municipalities, East Bolton and West Bolton. made up of wetlands, mountains and lakes, long detour to get from one side to the contend that Austin first cleared a spot in the The three stages in the division of the including Orford and Trousers, and as a result other. But with the creation of the MRC forest near Vale Perkins.Whether or not this original territory were: the granting of the link between Bolton Centre and Eastman Memphremagog in 1980, the lake once is the case, he chose to settle in Bolton Bolton in 1797, the creation of East Bolton was not completed until around 1860. again assumed its role as a centre of interest Township and it was the hilly sides of in 1876 and of Austin in the late 1930s. for nature, tourism and the environment, Gibraltar Point on which he had set his The inevitable conclusion is that Bolton was and Austin found itself once again heart. The history of Bolton Township is closely probably destined to be rendered asunder, psychologically oriented towards the lake. tied to its geography. Lake Memphremagog because the obstacles posed by mountains In the winter of 1793, Nicholas Austin forms one boundary.Two ridges, part of the and wetlands did not encourage the Nicholas Austin returned to New Hampshire to bring back Sutton-Orford mountains, cross the inhabitants to forgather. his wife and children, along with furniture township’s north-south axis, and between Austin was named for Nicholas Austin, the and provisions on three sleighs pulled by them lies the glacial valley of the North The Lake first settler to make his home on the shores oxen.Thus in 1794, 1795 and 1796 he and Missisquoi from Silver Lake to Mansonville. of Lake Memphremagog. Born in New England in the members of his family, along with other Most of the region is unsuitable for Austin enjoyed the benefits of its proximity 1736, he was a member of the Society of American colonists, became the first settlers agriculture, but it is rich in forestry and to Lake Memphremagog. Both obstacle and Friends (or Quakers, as they were called). He in the township. mineral resources. means of communication in earlier days, the was a Loyalist who left his home in New lake has always been the region’s centre of Hampshire during the American Revolution gravity. Until 1854, its two shorelines united to come to Canada.According to some the townships of Bolton and Hatley (or sources, he headed north through Methodist church Stanstead) in a single county, represented by uninhabited Vermont on foot in 1783 (some a single elected member of the legislature. say 1791), to finally reach the future site of Monument dedicated to the memory of Nicholas Austin The county took in the municipalities of Newport.There he bought a canoe from the Magog, Hatley and Georgeville, the Indians to continue his explorations. Lured administrative centre and site of the first by the western shoreline of the lake, he land registry office, which benefited from a began to systematically explore the area. crossing point. From the beginning of He was particularly struck by the beauty and settlement, the two lakesides were served by potential of a promontory of land today a horse-drawn ferry (Copp’s Ferry) which called Gibraltar Point. He asked the plied the waters between Georgeville and authorities for some land, built a cabin near a Knowlton’s Landing.At that time, the portage site used by the Indians and began stagecoach that provided the link between to clear the land. Stanstead and Montreal used the ferry; in winter, it made the crossing by sleigh over the frozen lake. Villages and Hamlets Demography

There is no doubt that the present territory In 1803, when the first official census of the of Austin corresponds to the earliest Eastern Townships was taken, the entire settlement of the Township of Bolton by population of Bolton Township was 373 American pioneers. It included several small habitants. Nine years later, it had risen to concentrations of human settlers, which 800 persons (as a result of the increasing would lead eventually to the creation of, if numbers of American colonists who were not villages, small hamlets. arriving).Around 1850, the population reached 2,000 and, at the time of the The village of Austin itself is situated on a division of West Bolton and East Bolton in property cleared in 1794 by Mark Randall, 1876, it had reached 3,000, largely as a who came from Rye, New Hampshire. result of the development of the mining and It was occupied by Moses Peasley a year or forestry industries.When the territory two later, which explains why the existing was divided, East Bolton itself had intersection was known as Peasley’s Corner. 2,306 inhabitants. In the following century, (It would later take the name of the post this population, divided between East office, East Bolton, then finally Austin.) Bolton,Austin, St-Étienne, St-Benoît-du-Lac and Eastman, experienced demographic Jeremiah Page settled near the lake around stagnation, even decline, as the 1981 census 1795. In 1798, Simon Wading from Hanover, set the population at 2,300. New Hampshire also settled on the lake- front. He operated the ferry that linked the There are a number of reasons to explain west shore of the lake with the eastern the slow pace of development in Bolton shore in Georgeville. Township. One was related to the ownership of property.After receiving a land grant from In 1865, two churches were built at the the government, most of Nicholas Austin’s present intersection of the village: an associates were reluctant to meet their Anglican church, which was sold to the obligations. On their own, they divided the Roman Catholics around 1914, and a lots held in common into 54 small lots, Methodist church, which was relocated on without surveying them, and there erected a private property on the shores of the lake buildings and fences. Many of them never around 1970. even set foot in the township and eventually sold their lots to speculators, claiming in bad Coming down the main road, which used to faith that they owned them.The confusion be much more winding, we come to a stemming from these transactions prevented stream that flows from the chain of lakes and farmers of good faith from settling for a long ponds extending all along North Road into time.The lack of clarity in land titles lasted the bay. From 1820 on, flour mills were built until the government brought in a law in along this stream; later, a wool carding mill 1857 to repurchase the rights from and a fulling mill, a sawmill (in 1828), and a speculators and set up a commission to general store run by John Austin (in 1841) check the deeds of residents. were also constructed.This second hamlet, called Head of the Bay, had a larger Other natural obstacles divided the population and a more important role than township.The entire north-east part of the Peasley’s Corner. Alexander Sargent township, from Mount Orford, is made up of continued his business there in the 1850s, foothills, lakes and wetlands; in fact, it is a giving his name to Sargent’s Bay. region ill-suited to land-clearing and settle- In 1852, the East Bolton post office was ment. In the area of Bolton, there were established there. extensive forests and copper mines. During the first geological studies in the Eastern During this same period, two Loyalists, Townships, British geologist Logan was the Fredrick and Christopher Bryant, built a East Bolton Post Office 1901-1911 Divisions first to locate the copper veins that ran along wharf on Lake Memphremagog for the the Missisquoi River between Bolton Centre Mountain Maid, the first steamboat to ply In its earliest days, Bolton Township was one and Eastman. In the 1860s, three mines were the waters of the lake, between Newport of the largest in the Eastern Townships, opened (the orange remnants of which are and Magog. From there, a stagecoach served having been extended by the surveyors still to be seen from Route 245 near Bolton Centre (formerly called Kimbolton), beyond the 13th range, or concession road, Eastman): the Ives Copper Mine, Bolton Brill, Frost Village and Waterloo. Later the towards the outlet of Lake Memphremagog. Copper Mine, and the main mine, boats began to call more frequently at At that time, the entire part of what is now Huntingdon Copper Mine north of Trousers Knowlton’s Landing, which was served by Magog north of the Magog River was Lake. Stimulated by the increase in the price the stagecoach that went through the Bolton attached to Bolton, while the part south of of copper during the American War of Pass and on to Montreal.The little hamlet the river belonged to Hatley Township.This Independence, the operation of these mines called Head of the Bay became less and less explains how it came about that Nicholas brought the railway to Bolton Township, active and the activity turned towards the Austin might have occupied the site of which had remained somewhat village of Peasley’s Corners, bringing with it Remains of Thompson’s Mill present-day Magog, where he would have set marginalized. the post office that eventually gave its name up the first mill on a part of the stone dam to the municipality. built by the Abenaki Indians to catch fish. The Railroads

In 1794, a couple of kilometres north of the The history of Bolton is marked by the In 1860, the Stanstead, Shefford and Chambly present intersection in Austin, another cutting up and amputation of its territory. In Railway line, from St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, associate of Nicholas Austin,Alexander 1849, the north-east part of the Township ended at Waterloo.The member of parlia- Thompson, a Scot who had immigrated to (formerly lots 14 to 20), those nearest to the ment from Shefford, L. S. Huntingdon, who Vermont, established himself. In 1796, he present site of Magog, and the west part of had an interest in the mines, had the rail constructed the first watermill in the Hatley Township were detached from their line extended to the mines at Dillonton. Township of Bolton, comprising a sawmill respective townships to make the new The line was not, properly speaking, a and a flour mill – traces of which remain township of Magog.This was Bolton’s first railway line, but rather a private track for the visible to this day – situated on a waterfall on amputation, and it was not to be the last. mine because Huntingdon, for reasons of Powell Brook.To reach it, the early settlers economy, did not purchase locomotives. had to follow a small path cut through the In 1876, the four ranges at the extreme The cars to carry the ore were pulled by woods, carrying the wheat to be ground into western edge of the township became the horses to Waterloo, where they were sent on flour on their backs. municipality of West Bolton. In 1888, the to the United States. At this time, ten tons of In 1864, another Taylor, Ernest, gave his first territory of Eastman was removed from ore were produced every day, and the local In 1825, the Thompson family built the first sermon in the little Methodist church at the Bolton and became a municipality.The mines and sawmills employed more than church in Bolton, and the following year, the age of 16. He went on to preach there for remainder of the territory of East Bolton, 300 persons. first school was built right next to this more than 50 years. (He was also the author criss-crossed by natural obstacles, would Methodist church.This marked the birth of a of a book titled History of Brome County, eventually be cut up into several parts: It was The Honorable A.B. Foster of Waterloo small hamlet of craftsmen, first called which is to this day a treasury of information and the merchants of Magog who, in Thompson’s Hill, then Millington, and then for historians.) The church, which eventually – the valley of the north tributary of the association with shareholders of the East Bolton (the name of the post office fell into disuse, was finally demolished in the Missisquoi River which runs north-south Vermont Central Railway, built a real railroad established there during the 1870s). In 1842, 1930s. A cairn bears witness to its passing. around the villages of Bolton Centre and in 1878, the Waterloo & Magog Railway, David Taylor opened the first store in South Bolton; which brought Bolton Township out of its Millington. He settled on a nearby piece of To the north of the present territory of – the western shore of Lake Memphre- geographically-induced isolation and land that would stay in his family for more Austin, near Orford Lake, long cut-off from magog, from Bryant’s Landing to Austin and enhanced the value of its mineral and forest than a century and a half. His father, Daniel the southern part of the municipality, a small to Knowlton’s Landing; and wealth. In 1885, this line was extended to Taylor (son of Daniel Taylor, Sr., who was one settlement emerged, which became the – the northern sector around Eastman, reach Sherbrooke. It was also Senator Foster of the first associates of Nicholas Austin) hamlet known as Bolton Forest (post office, Bolton Forest and a settlement called who had another line built between 1878 died at the age of 83. His body rests in a little 1865).The pioneer families in this area were Dillonton, which only started to develop and 1912, the Orford Mountain Railway, cemetery situated just before the hamlet, and the Perdues, Phyfields and Shonyos. after 1872, when copper mining began. this time running north-south from Windsor on his tombstone is written,“He read the These various territorial divisions explain to Newport,Vermont. Both these lines Bible 43 times”. the slowness and difficulty with which were eventually bought by the Canadian Bolton developed. Pacific Railway. The Turning Point St-Benoît-du-Lac Yesterday and Today

When the Depression occurred in 1929, The Municipality of Austin surrounds the We can only understand the history of Austin agricultural and forestry activity in the tiny municipality of St-Benoît-du-Lac, a case by looking at the first territorial division into region was severely hit, and the Township unique in Quebec.The abbey with its lands townships, and the subsequent subdivisions. of Bolton, which had already experienced a constitutes an independent municipality, of The forces of separation were considerable. demographic exodus during the preceding which the leader of the order is also the Both geography and the rugged terrain half-century, suffered a series of blows. mayor.The origins of the abbey date from played their part, as did, perhaps, the feeling Statistics show that between 1881 and 1931, 1912, when the Benedictine monks were of “separateness” felt by both French and the municipalities of West Bolton and East chased out of France by laws hostile to English communities in the 1930s.Today, Bolton lost nearly a quarter of their religious congregations. Initially, the priory there are a record number of municipalities population. In 1936, the Orford Mountain of St-Benoît was nothing more than a farm. in the historical territory of Bolton Railway, the only railway serving the The few religious émigrés from France Township, as it was in 1797, including township was taken out of service, and the formed a very small religious community, Magog, the Canton de Magog, Austin, tracks were taken up between Eastman and which was weakened in 1914 when their St-Benoît-du-Lac, East Bolton, Eastman, Highwater. At this time the municipality of prior drowned in Lake Memphremagog. St-Etienne-de-Bolton and West Bolton. East Bolton which had both English-speaking Nevertheless, the community held on and in and French-speaking citizens was also cut in the 1930s was strengthened by the arrival of The Municipality of Austin continues to be three: the parish of St-Étienne in the north- Dom Bellot, a Benedictine from France who oriented to the lake.As its first settler west; Austin, which was the part nearest to made his name as one of the great architects Nicholas Austin surely imagined,Austin today Lake Memphremagog; and East Bolton, the of sacred art. He was responsible for the has an enviable location on the shores of central part of the township corresponding creation of a new, more modern and more Lake Memphremagog and Sargent’s Bay, to the Missisquoi Valley.The municipalities of sober architectural style, using a variety of which it shares with its neighbours. Austin and East Bolton were basically materials and colours.The Abbaye St-Benoît- The town and surrounding area are being sundered along the axis created by the 9th du-Lac is truly his Canadian masterpiece, rediscovered by a new type of pioneer: and 10th ranges. serving as inspiration to many Quebec the seasonal-residential visitors. But that is architects for the construction of religious another story – one for future historians buildings. to interpret…

Austin Cultural Committee, June 2001. Financial Support: MRC Memphremagog Typesetting: Infographie CL Printing: Imprimerie CRM

Methodist church Monument dedicated to the memory of Nicholas Austin