Theme no. 1 of the exhibit “The Irish Presence in Rawdon, Yesterday and Today,” held at the Centre d’interprétation multiethnique de Rawdon, Saturdays and Sundays, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., from March 2 to 30, 2025 (except March 22).
Rawdon township was named in honour of Lord Francis Rawdon, Marquis of Hastings and Earl of Moira, an Irish Protestant, lieutenant in the British army. The township was officially created on July 13, 1799, by the colonial government of Lower Canada.
Lord Francis Rawdon, Marquis of Hastings and Earl of Moira, was born in Dublin on December 7, 1754. An Irish Protestant, Lord Rawdon was made a lieutenant in the British army and fought against the Americans during the American War of Independence (1775-1783). He returned to Great Britain in 1781, without setting foot in Lower Canada. However, his feats of arms earned him a great honour in 1799: the new township of Rawdon was named after him.
Conditions of ownership
To become a landowner in Rawdon township, a settler first had to obtain a Ticket of Location, clear a four-acre portion of their lot and build a house on it.
In 1763, the cession of New France to England changed the way land was granted: the seigneurial system was replaced by the British township system. After the Constitutional Act of 1791, Crown lands were granted as private property. Any settler who first obtained a Ticket of Location was required to clear a four-acre parcel per lot and build a house. Once these conditions had been met, the new occupant could consider becoming the owner of the land, through the issuance of letters patent by the government.
Settling the area
Settlers, mainly Irish Protestants and Catholics, began establishing themselves in Rawdon township in 1820.
Rawdon township was officially created on July 13, 1799, by the colonial government of Lower Canada. It was the ninth township in Lower Canada, but only the third north of the St. Lawrence River, after Stoneham (1792) and Huddersfield (1793).
In Quebec, the history of Irish immigrants is often linked to that of the Great Potato Famine (1845-1852). This tragedy forced over a million Irish into exile, several hundred thousand of whom passed through the quarantine station at Grosse-Île, and on to Québec City, Montréal and Ottawa.
Ranges 1 and 2 were the first to be inhabited. Tickets of Location were granted mainly to Irish Protestants and Catholics. These pioneer families arrived in Rawdon in the hope of building a better future for themselves. In practice, Rawdon was founded by the Irish, who cleared the land through perseverance, sweat and hard work.
The settlement of Rawdon by Irish Protestants and Catholics sheds new light on Irish immigration to Quebec. It shows a different but equally important facet: that of voluntary immigration, which preceded that of the Great Irish Famine.
Other people also obtained lots in the township. Loyalists and British military families were in fact the first to receive land in Rawdon as early as 1799, but they did not settle there. Also noteworthy was the singular case of Philemon Dugas, of Acadian origin but an American-born Protestant, who built a sawmill in Range 1 of the township before 1820.
The newly opened lands were also cleared by Indigenous people, who were also part of the migratory movement in the early 19th century. While the region had been travelled for centuries by the nomadic Algonquin nations, to whom we owe the well-known names of Matawinie, Lacquarreau (now Ouareau) or Achigan, a few Maliseet families from New Brunswick immigrated to the township, alongside the Irish. The story of Michel Nicolas's Maliseet family, who settled in Rawdon as early as the 1830s, bears witness to this.