Nuances in the Settlement of Sutton Township

By Marc Clerk

Recent arrivals to Sutton might imagine that all townships or cantons of the Eastern Townships were settled in identical ways. There are however marked differences and nuances between them. It may be of interest to see what took place in Sutton Township.

The huge unpopulated area of southern Quebec, extending from Saint-Armand to the West of us and as far as the Beauce to the East, was divided by the British government into a vast checkerboard of ninety-five townships. Each was ten miles square and given a name inspired by small counties of England. Sutton was one of them. After much hesitation, shuffling and political intrigue, Americans were invited to come to Lower Canada, to settle in these uninhabited places. The land was free for the asking, albeit under certain conditions. Interested English-speaking Protestant individuals were to form a group, choose a leader, declare loyalty to the King, apply for a given township and promise to actually settle and farm their grant.

PLAN OF SUTTON TOWNSHIP IN 1802. Sutton Township was bounded on the SOUTH by the Vermont border, on the WEST by Dunham Township , on the EAST by Potton Township and on the NORTH by Brome Township . Sutton Township had a total area 10 miles by 10 miles. It was divided into 308 lots, each containing 200 acres. Horizontally there were 28 lots; vertically there were 11 lots as seen on the plan. Of these, 44 lots were set aside for the British government (K on the plan) and another 44 were set aside for the Protestant Church (C). (Eventually these 88 lots were sold to private individuals) In 1802 the whole township was granted to 181 former British soldiers who immediately sold their individual grants to farmers from the New England States.

The romanticized stories of the settlement of nearby townships have been naively told in local publications. They are based on myth, legend and, rarely, on valid research. What then are the facts?

The townships of Sutton, Bolton, Brome, Dunham, Potton, Farnham, Shefford, Compton and Stanstead, adjacent to the northern Vermont and New Hampshire borders, were claimed by all sorts of people – squatters, speculators, politicians, soldiers and mercenaries, members of government, farmers and loyalists.

The local definition of what a loyalist is or was depended on a number of factors. Many individuals took on or were attributed the title as a flattering social embellishment. For the purpose of this short study, United Empire Loyalists (UEL) were people who had sided with the British Crown and fought against American independence and who left the United States prior to 1783 to escape persecution.

For the period roughly from 1792 to 1845, a game was played by the above mix of people. Everyone wanted the free land whether or not they met the basic conditions of eligibility. The Governor, Robert Shore Milnes, became involved in the speculation by awarding himself forty-eight thousand acres. Thomas Dunn, a member of the government was awarded the township of Dunham. Jesse Pennoyer, a government surveyor, obtained the township of Compton. Samuel Gale, an Englishman and secretary to former Governor Prescott, obtained the township of Farnham. Pseudo-loyalist, self-designated, leaders from New Hampshire, Nicholas Austin and Asa Porter, fought for and each won a township to which they were not entitled. Porter, a wealthy man, remained in New Hampshire till his death, laid claim to many townships and was awarded that of Brome which he never visited, refused to sign the oath of allegiance and sold the unsettled grant many years later.

The New England farmers, the most deserving, didn’t try very hard but succeeded because they were needed to fill out the rosters of the rapacious leaders. The leaders got the glory and the money value, but the honest farmers settled and worked the land.

The Township of Sutton bears this story out. The British authorities had originally kept Sutton as a buffer against invasion by the rebellious Americans. Former British soldiers and German mercenaries kept pestering the government for compensation. By 1802, after fears of an American invasion had abated, the government granted Sutton to one hundred and eighty one of these soldiers who had by that time been settled for over twenty years around Missisquoi Bay. All immediately sold their unneeded grants of two-hundred-acre Sutton lots at low prices to ordinary American farmers from Vermont, New York and New Hampshire.

Sutton was therefore settled by honest-to-goodness farmers - not a loyalist, not a leader, not a speculator in sight – and the Eastern Townships are the better for it.