Business directory of Magog Bottin d'entreprises de Magog The first person to successfully swim the length of Lake Memphremagog Born in a log cabin under the shadow of old Mt.Orford near the village of Magog Québec Genealogy, News & Events, Business Listings, Lodging, Personal Sites, Magog Marinas, and much more Vermont Northeast Kingdon Guide (Our friends to the south) |
Hardships, poverty, loneliness and Indians; these were the beginnings of Magog. The natural beauty of the district, coupled with the fact that the land was heavily wooded and conveniently situated at The Outlet of Lake Memphremagog, was a strong attraction to the group of British Empire Loyalists who first settled there in 1793. The story of the development of this one-time stop over place for the Indians into its present status as a thriving industrial community, one of the greatest in Quebec's Eastern Townships, is surprisingly fascinating. It is primarily the story of one man's faith in the community--and his remarkable talent for getting things done. Alvin Head Moore was his name, teacher, trader, dreamer, builder, business man, and politician. His efforts and errors put Magog on the map and kept it there. Yet history treats him lightly - he is seldom mentioned. One biographer states:" He died of a broken heart." But the Magog of today is built on the foundation he laid. The first men in Magog were red men, Abenakis. There is little to show they ever settled the region, but then, settlements were not for them. They stopped over on the banks of Lake Memphremagog at the outlet of the Lake, as a break from searching the hills and fields of the Townships on hunting expeditions. They passed through Magog, their faces hideously painted, as they paddied southward to make war on their enemies, the Iroquois. In them they met men of the fierceness and cruelty to rival their own. Up and down the great waterway of the St. Francis River and Lake Memphremagog, through centuries of warfare Abenakis and Iroquois, English and French, canoe parties passed through Magog. It was a resting place before facing either the 30 mile paddle south ward up the Lake, or the turbulent passage northward down the rapids and around the falls of the Magog River. It is impossible to say who was the first white man to set foot in Magog. Possibly it was Francois Hertel in the days of Frontenac. Hertel led an expedition of Abenakis and French soldiers that passed through Magog en route to New England in 1690. French missionaries surely had stopped at times, for they travelled deep into Indian territory in search of converts to Christianity , Or the first white settlers may have been John Stark and Amos Eastman, who was captured by the Abenakis and forced to run the gauntlet on the shores of Lake Memphremagog. Perhaps some of Rogers Rangers camped furtively there in 1758 on their retreat from the bloodier massacre of the Indian village of St. Francis, though the raiding party split up on its return trip through the Townships, and just a handful of them travelled as far west as the Magog district. White men had seen Magog, but none stayed. Settlement was still afar off. When settlement did come it was from the south. From the Thirteen Colonies appeared settlers who would have no part in the Revolution. Others came later, even men had fought with the American forces but who found the new nation not of their liking. They trekked northward, some with grants of land waiting for them, others lured by their desire for elbow-room and opportunity in an untouched wilderness. They settled throughout the Eastern Townships, many of them up and down both sides of Lake Memphremagog, for it was still as valuable a transport system as it had been to the Indians. Some of the settlers built their cabins near the Lake at its northernmost point, where Magog stands today. These people were sturdy, nourished on hardships. They came, some of them, on foot, men and boys with foodstuffs, axes, and arms, trudging nortward. Women with babies sometimes were lucky enough to make a hundred mile trip by horseback. Slow-trudging carts and sleds, drawn by oxen, lumbered along. The settlement phase might have been launched earlier had it not been for the unusual objections of Governor Haldimand. The region remained British after the Revolutionary War, but before the treaty was signed, United Empire Loyalists had signified their desire to settle in the Eastern Townships. Governor Haldimand blocked them, holding that thick forests were the best of all protections, against our too enterprising neighbors to the south. However, the influx of settlers could not be denied for long. Up from the south they came -- sturdy, independent, self-reliant stalwarts, raised on hardship and hard work, wise to wilderness hazard, and inured to the privations and loneliness of frontier life. By the final decade of the Eighteenth century many axes were ringing in the woods around the outlet of Lake Memphremagog. There was water and wood and good farm lands along the low green banks of the lakes, and though it would be a long time before there would be either the opportunity or time for much community life, it was then that Magog was born. |
There were also a great number of Americans that had fought as Patriots against the Crown. They came looking for a new start, coming from a war weary nation that was tired and broke after a prolonged war with Britian. One of the founding families for Magog and Hatley was REXFORD. I know someone that has service records for at least 3 of them that fought for the American position against the crown. After there time in service, they walked up the Ct. River from Wallingford Ct. and settled in the area (1795). Some arriving with Hovey. These men were NOT Loyalists. They were U.S. Patriots that came north for free land and a new start. I believe it likely that many people share this lineage |
Chapter I The Outlet |
Chapter II Merry of Magog |
It is surely prophetic of Magog's industrial future that before there was any sign of a community, the first attempt at industrialization and utilization of water power should have sucessfully taken place. Nicholas Austin, a Loyalist settler who lived at Gibraltar Point across the lake from Georgeville, or Copp's Ferry as it was then known, set up a grist mill at The Outlet. He had already been milling for some time at Gibraltar Point, starting his operations here with a simple coffee mill he had purchased in Quebec and carried through the forest on his back. At The Outlet he built a rough dam -- a breastwork of field stones dumped without cribbing into the Magog River. Crude as it was, it diverted the flow into two narrow channels, both of which were eventually put to work. A water wheel in fast-running channel operated his grist mill. Later the flow was harnessed to run a saw mill, then two carpentry shops, and next Magog's first textile plant -- a forecast of things to come. It was a frontier wool-carding mill. But those developments, though they grew out of Austin's crude power dam, are not traced to him, but to Ralph Merry, the first real settler of Magog. |
Merry arrived from Massachusetts in 1798, three years after Austin built his dam. He was well supplied with cash and influence and at once disclosed his intentions -- he was on the ground to stay. It is quite certain that Merry considered the site naturally adapted to the foundation of a large and thriving settlement. He bought Austin's grist mill and saw mill, and seems to have paid something for the dam. He also acquired 13,000 acres of land -- all the presentday town -- plus full water rights. The years were prosperous for Squire Merry, as he came to be know. He worked and gave good service to the settlers of the region. His work and initiative were rewarded. In 1814 he built a house which stands in Magog today, and was, till recently, occupied by his descendants. His enterprise served "The Outlet". In 1818 the community erected its first school. The Squire's son, Ralph Merry Jr., was its first teacher. A general store or trading post was opened in 1820 by John Weatherbee, though it is generally supposed that it was financed by Merry. |
The store eventually became Magog's first post office, and the building, still standing today, is occupied by the Magog branch of the Bank of Montreal. In 1834 young Ralph Merry started a match factory in The Outlet -- the first one in Canada and though the project eventually failed, it was another step in the community's industrial history. At the turn of the century more and more settlers were arriving. Circuit riders were coming through regularly, visiting isolated cabins, preaching, praying and advising, and of great importance, bringing the news of the day from outside. The pioneer families of Chamberlain, Merrill, Baird, Peasley, Geer, Brown, Turner, Lloyd, Ives, Donigan and Wallace were already located along the east bank of Lake Memphremagog. This thickening of population, though settlers were miles from a neighbor, had such an effect on The Outlet that the worst of the settlement's birth pangs began to diminish. |
Is was this early that the history of the future Magog's textile industry can be said to date. Sheep raising was developing and Merry added a wool carding mill to his primitive water power establishment, where settlers could bring their wool to be processed for home-weaving. No one of that date could possibly have foreseen the great textile plants of today, yet the little carding mill must mark a significant, if short step in Magog's industrial progress. |
Chapter III A.H. Moore, Pioneer of Industry |
It might seem at this point that Merry was the one-man story of Magog's growth. He was its founder, true, and his enterprise was responible for its early growth. But to A.H. Moore, a younger man with even wider vision and greater ambitions, fell the opportunity of setting Magog on the real road to progress. Many a town had grown like the Outlet. The Townships were spotted with them; but most of them today are but little larger than they were then. Some even have vanished. Moore saw to it that Magog did not. There is no record of the exact year when this dynamic, youthful personality, with the great faith, courageous forsight and tireless enterprise arrived in the Outlet. It is known that he came from Hatley in Stanstead County, an even younger settlement situated about ten or twelve miles to the east. It is known that he was well educated, and intelligent, and that he came to The Outlet to teach school. It is know, too, that a career in the schoolhouse held his interest for more than a year. |
He married shortly after his arrival, and "married well" -- Julia Ann, the eldest daughter of Squire Merry, It was not long before Schoolmaster Moore appeared in a new capacity in The Outlet, as proprietor of the general store. Whether he obtained the store as a result of marrying Merry's daughter, or acquired the daughter as the result of taking over the store, available records do not make clear. Whatever the sequence, Moore know what to do once he had the store. It was not wasted on him. He had the success touch, a gift that stayed with him for more than a half-century, to Magog's tremendous and permanent advantage. |
The Outlet was growing at this time, but growing slowly, Formation of the British American Land Company in Sherbrooke in 1833, had secured for that company all Crown lands between Magog and Sherbrooke. While the timber removed from this area was all floated down-steam to Sherbrooke, the company had at least laid out a road through its territory connecting The Outlet with Sherbrooke. And Sherbrooke was linked to Montreal by rail. While Moore was establishing himself in the business life of the community, the district transportation facilities improved. A stage coach service was inaugurated between Sherbrooke and Magog, and between Stanstead and Magog. At Magog these two lines were doubled up with another single line running from Magog and Waterloo, connecting with the Central Vermont Railroad to Montreal. |
The developing trade appealed to Mr. Moore. He sought the business of the district and sought it with an agressiveness the town had never before witnessed. From settlers of the district he bought farm produce and the timber they felled. In return he sold them goods from his store. There was little money in the town in those days but that did not stop him. He bartered hoopskirts, bustles and hog-feed for crops, raw wool and cattle. Then he shipped what he received to Montreal. There the produce could be turned into cash and more supplies. Sometimes his shipments went by Sherbrooke, sometimes by Waterloo, which was also connected to Montreal by railway. Lumbering oxcarts, wheeled out of The Outlet carrying farm products eastward to Sherbrooke or westward to Waterloo, eventually reached Montreal. |
This part of Moore's business lay east and west. But the year 1851 brought something new of the Townships: good north and south transportation. A tiny steamship, "Jenny Lind" was launched and put into service on Lake Memphremagog. That her imported engine was too heavy and made her run stern high, was unimportant. That her name, borrowed from the famous Swedish nightingale of that time, was later changed to "Mountain Maid", made no difference. She chugged up and down the 30 mile length of Memphremagog from The Outlet to Newport in the United States, and she called at every dock or wharf strong enough to hold her cables. |
To Moore she represented new fields for his business. Farmers twenty miles down the Lake did not have to wait for week-ends to haul their saleable materials into town. They could ship them by boat, and goods bartered from Moore's store came back the same way. Settlements down the length of the Lake were sought out as new customers. The tme soon came when Moore and clerks were out taking orders-the countryside's first commercial travellers. And as fast as the roads improved Moore had delivery wagons, long before they were known in much older and larger settlements. |
The advent of the "Mountain Maid" also added considerably to the social life of The Outlet. An account in the Sherbrooke Gazette of July 16, 1853, headed "A Trip on Lake Memphremagog", told of a July 4th outing of that year, and incidentally revealed something of a local oldsters, impatience with the youngsters and "modern American habits". It read: |
"Next day, the 4th of July, all Yankeedom was astir to enjoy their national festival, and the tight little Maid made no less than three trips between the head and the Mountin House, bringing at each voyage full cargoes of holiday folks. The lads and lassies tripped "the light fantastic toed" on the streamer's deck, to the music of a clarionet and fiddle, the latter oddly enough, played by a woman, and that not badly. It was a pity by the way to see our young girls disfiguring themselves by "chewing gum". It was something marvellous to behold so many jaws wagging in the nasty process, with an earnestness and an assiduity, worthy of a better occupation. Paugh! |
Magog, originally called "The Outlet" of Lake Memphremagog |
Merry House - Magog |
Business directory of Magog Bottin d'entreprises de Magog The first person to successfully swim the length of Lake Memphremagog Born in a log cabin under the shadow of old Mt.Orford near the village of Magog Québec Genealogy, News & Events, Business Listings, Lodging, Personal Sites, Magog Marinas, and much more Vermont Northeast Kingdon Guide (Our friends to the south) |
This site was constructed and is maintained by Aven A Comeau Magog & Lake Memphremagog c 2000 - 2003 All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés |
