Author: Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Searching for JMC’s roots: Lake Memphremagog

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I’m still reading and transcribing the various “Returns of Persons names who have taken the Oaths” that I’ve found (so far) among the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. The list-making has been slow going, and nothing is quite ready for posting.

So while you’re waiting for the next installment of our “Searching for JMC’s roots” investigation, I thought you might enjoy this autumnal, hand-colored lithograph of Lake Memphremagog, looking westward across the lake from the shoreline of the northwest part of Stanstead Township—or possibly southwest Hatley Township— toward the mountain known as the Owl’s Head in Potton Township.

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Searching for JMC’s roots: land grants – the official process, 1792

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Recently, we examined two competing petitions seeking a grant of land for what would become the township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. The first petition was successful, the second, not. We also suspect that many, if not most, of the signers of those petitions—including more that a dozen with Clark surnames—were probably not seriously interested in obtaining Crown lands and then pioneering in the wilderness of the 1790s Eastern Townships. As we continue our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s parents or other kin in 1790s and 1800s Lower Canada and adjacent Vermont and New Hampshire, how can we identify which Clarks might be related to JMC and which are not? What were the next steps for serious prospective Lower Canada immigrants and landowners?

In reviewing the secondary literature (part 1 and part 2) I learned, in a general way, what the next steps were for bona fide immigrants to Lower Canada, people that actually intended to settle in the townships and that desired a land grant. But some of the details were a bit vague. So I went and found the government’s official proclamation outlining the new land grant policy:

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Nope, not our Clark family…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

UPDATED, Oct. 31, 2023. Rearranged a few paragraphs to highlight the information about a son and grandson of Isaac “Old Rifle” Clark, Satterlee Clark, senior and junior.

As we proceed in our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s kin in the area where southern Québec meets northern Vermont and New Hampshire, I thought it would be useful to begin a list of various Clark-surnamed people that show up in our search, but we know (with reasonable certainty) are not JMC’s parents or other relatives.

I’m not going into great detail for each subject, but I’ll try and give enough info to make clear whom we are talking about, and why they are on the “Nope, not our Clark family…” list. Here is today’s installment.

Sir Alured Clarke, (c. 1745-1832)

Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, he helped implement the Constitutional Act of 1791—and its provisions for making grants of the Crown’s “Waste Lands” in the province—and his name appears on many of the early Lower Canada land petitions, including those for Stanstead and Hatley. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a fine, lengthy entry (illustrated with an engraved portrait) which concludes that Clarke was “a professional soldier whose modest talents and courteous manner had enabled him to discharge the civil duties of a colonial administrator without either distinguishing or disgracing himself.”

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Searching for JMC’s roots: another (!) Stanstead Associates petition, 1792

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Our previous post, Searching for JMC’s roots: Stanstead’s original Associates petition, 1792, went into some detail about the creation of the original petition to the Crown for the township that would become Stanstead, Lower Canada. In order to avoid repetition—and keep today’s post to a manageable length—I’m going to recommend that you read that post before reading this one. Because today we have another, competing petition, by a (mostly?) different set of Leaders and Associates, also signed in Rutland, Vermont, not quite two weeks after the previous petition.

I’m not going to examine all the aspects of this second petition today, but there are some features that we should note as we search for Jonathan M. Clark’s kin along the New England and Lower Canada border regions in the 1790s and early 1800s.

John Prentiss…and Associates

Library and Archives Canada, Petition of John Prentiss, detail showing government notations. See below for full citation.

The organizing meeting for this second group of would-be Stanstead (and Hatley) associates appears to have been held in Rutland, Vermont, on April 16th, 1792. As you’ll see (below), the ink and handwriting of the first signer, John Prentiss, appear identical with that of the petition statement itself (and many of the other signatures at the head of the petition!).

According to the Land Committee clerk’s handwritten notes (above), the petition was presented by and endorsed with the signatures of [presumed Leader] John Prentiss, [presumed Associates] Asahel Blanchard, Andw. [Andrew] Mills, Festus Hill and 325 others in Rutland, April 16th, 1792. It was received by the Lieutenant Governor’s office on May 28th and referred to the Land Committee the next day.

The petition, front side

Below is the front side to the original, complete, Associates petition for the two proposed townships, as found among the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841, RG 1 L3L, Vol. 160, archival page number 78473. As with the previous (Josiah Sawyer) petition, it appears that the microfilm camera operator needed two exposures to capture the full contents of the front side of this oversized page. I have used software to stitch the overlapping images back together, so that you can view the page as it looked in 1792:

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Stanstead’s original Associates petition, 1792

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

UPDATED: 25, 27 and 28 Oct. 2023. See note 8 for details.

Under the unique Leaders and Associates land grant system of early Lower Canada, one of the first and essential steps in obtaining a grant of land from the Crown was to assemble at least 40 (purported) would-be immigrants—often from northern New York and the New England states—and have them sign an official petition requesting a grant of such land. The leaders might be directly involved in the signature gathering process, or they might delegate their tasks to an “agent.”

In 1791, when the Constitutional Act creating Upper and Lower Canada was passed by the British Parliament, Stanstead’s original leaders Eleazar Fitch and Issac Ogden were living and doing business in St. John’s and Montréal, respectively. It’s probable that neither man ever got close to the future Stanstead Township, or northern New York and the New England states1. As we suggested at the end of an earlier post, Fitch and Ogden appear to have delegated the petition process to a farmer (and would-be “Leader” of yet another Eastern Township or two) named Josiah Sawyer.2

Library and Archives Canada, search results for today’s petition. See below for full citation.

Josiah Sawyer, agent

From what I can surmise, one of the main functions of an Agent in the Lower Canada land grant process was to begin the new township project by obtaining the signatures of the required minimum number of Associates on a petition to the government for that land. As we learned earlier, this would usually include a payment from the Leaders to each petition-signing Associate, and—for those Associates that did not intend to actually settle in the new township—the collection of the necessary signed forms deeding the Associates’ hoped-for 200 acre allotments back to the Leaders, for them to hold or re-sell as they deemed most profitable.

The organizing meeting for Stanstead’s associates appears to have been held in Rutland3, Vermont, on April 3rd, 1792. The ink and handwriting of the first signer, Josiah Sawyer, appear identical with that of the petition statement itself, suggesting that Josiah Sawyer was, indeed, the man that organized the signing of this document.

The original petition, front side

Here is the front side to the original, complete Associates’ petition for the proposed Township of Stanstead, as found in the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841, RG 1 L3L, Vol. 175, archival page number 84887. Originally, the microfilm camera operator needed two exposures to capture the full contents of each side of this oversized page.4 I have used software to stitch the overlapping images back together, so that you can view (and try to read!) the document as it looked in 1792.

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Monday: Map Day! Vermont, 1796

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

As we continue our search for JMC’s roots I thought a Monday: Map Day! post might be useful, helping us get a sense of the geography and history of settlement of early northern Vermont, especially the parts adjacent to Stanstead and the other newly-surveyed Eastern Townships of Lower Canada.1

Vermont has a long and complicated history, and I won’t try to summarize it here. Among other fun facts, you should note that Vermont was not one of the original 13 American colonies and was, for a number of years prior to statehood in 1791, an independent republic. For an introduction to Vermont’s fascinating past, a fine place to start are the Wikipedia articles on Vermont: history and the Vermont Republic.

Today’s map was published in 1796, five years after Vermont’s admission to the Union, and four years after one Josiah Sawyer organized the gathering of would-be land purchasing “associates” in Rutland, Vermont, on April 3rd, 1792, at which time the initial petition for the prayed-for township of Stanstead was signed. Many, perhaps most, of the petition signers were Vermonters. Let’s look at our map and see what we can discover about Vermont—and its relationship to Lower Canada settlement—in those early years.

As always, click each image to open a larger, higher-resolution copy of the image in a new window.

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Finding JMC’s roots: Vintage first names puzzle

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

No new research today. I’m celebrating a big event with family, and taking a few days off from emails and major blog posts while I do.

“They just don’t name ’em like they used to…”

I’m loath to leave loyal blog readers without some Clark House History to while away the time until our next big CHH post, so I made another word search puzzle.

Your assignment today is to find the vintage Stanstead-area settler first names, all of which are documented from Clark-era sources in and around Stanstead, Lower Canada, circa 1790-1840, and many of which will feature in future posts as we search for JMC’s roots.

As in our previous post, just click the image to open and print your own copies of this version of the puzzle. Or, if you’d like to play online, just click this link: https://thewordsearch.com/puzzle/6173938/stanstead-first-names-c-1790-1840/

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Finding JMC’s roots: Word Search

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I’m currently (happily) distracted as I get ready for a special family event, and blogging may be sparse for the next several days. But I’m still chipping away on our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots, looking for possibly-related Clark names in the early Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. Which is kind of like doing a Word Search puzzle, only with faded documents and sometimes-illegible 18th-century handwriting.

Beginner Level

Would you like to join in the search and Help the Historian? Here’s a “Searching for JMC’s Roots”-themed word search puzzle I made, just to get you warmed up:

Click the image to open and print your own copies of this version of the puzzle. Or, if you’d like to play online, just click this link: https://thewordsearch.com/puzzle/6172120/clark-house-word-search/

Look for the Clark House related words in all directions: horizontally, vertically or diagonally, both forwards and backwards. You can solve the online puzzle as many times as you like, and each time you play again, the layout of the puzzle changes. (If you play online, ignore the big orange rectangular button at the bottom of the screen that says “Next→”. It’s just a link to a page of unrelated ads.)

Each time you play you can also change the level of difficulty. Once you’ve developed your word-finding skills with our online puzzle, it’s time to Level Up!

Expert Edition

Here’s one of my current “puzzles,” the original 1792 Leaders & Associates’ petition to the Crown for a grant of land that would eventually become the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. Continue reading (below) to view the front side of the petition page. How many “Clark” signatures can you find? And can you transcribe all their first names accurately?

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Navigating the “Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

We believe that Jonathan M. Clark was born or raised, or both, in or near the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada, in 1811 or 1812. Who his parents were, where they came from, and what happened to them, are important questions that we want to answer. I’ve been searching the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841, and I have located what I believe are the earliest founding documents for Stanstead. Before we begin our examination of these documents, looking for signs of early settlers named Clark or Clarke (and their relatives and neighbors), I thought I should share a few notes about what we are looking for, and how we can find it again, in case anyone would like to check or build on the work we’re doing here.

Finding the documents

How do you find records of your early Eastern Townships pioneer? Begin by clicking over to the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database called Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. The (old but still operating1) home page for that database looks like this:

Read the information on this page. It’s not long, but it’s very helpful. One of the essential points to note is the description of what is—and is not—indexed in this database:

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Searching for JMC’s roots in Eastern Township sources: books (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

UPDATED Nov. 9, 2023 to correct Mrs. Day’s first name. It’s Catherine (not Caroline) Matilda Day.

Continuing our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s supposed ancestry in Stanstead, Eastern Townships, Lower Canada—and before the deluge of original, mostly handwritten, documents from the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841 begins—we have another interesting and useful book to add to the first installment of our book list.

Day. 1863. Pioneers of the Eastern Townships1
Day, Mrs. C. M. [Catherine Matilda], Pioneers of the Eastern townships : a work containing official and reliable information respecting the formation of settlements, with incidents in their early history, and details of adventures, perils and deliverances, Montreal, 1863. Online via Canadiana, accessed September 24, 2023.

This early collection of Eastern Township history is not to be confused with the same author’s longer and more comprehensive History of the Eastern Townships Province of Quebec of 1869. Today’s 1863 book, only about 170 pages, is not intended to be a broad survey of early Eastern Township history like its 1869 successor, and it does not have any Stanstead- or Clark-specific information. But researchers seeking information on early Lower Canada history, land patent process, and settlement will find Pioneers of the Eastern townships to be very helpful and illuminating in two distinct ways.

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