By Robert Hicks, May 2026
In my trip to Valcartier in 2025, I tried to imagine what it was like over 200 years ago when the place was a wilderness. Now there are roads, cars, houses and people everywhere, but it was not always like that. It is hard to believe that in 1815 this was not prime real estate.
The settling of Valcartier by Europeans did not get going until after the Napoleonic wars in Europe and the war of 1812 in North America. Prior to this only the Hurons would have been in the area. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 France officially transferred many of its colonial possessions including those in North America to Britain. This changed everything as now Britain was obligated to defend and populate the area with people loyal to the Crown. The French population around Quebec were established, and immigration from France basically stopped. Britain was more concerned about the newly formed country to the south than from France and slowly started to set up a defense system to protect their interests. They also wanted to keep the French population happy as they wanted their support if an invasion occurred.
Prior to 1815, some tracts of land had been granted by the Jesuit Estates, but nobody was living there. John Neilson, Andrew Stuart and others applied for and received tracts of land from the Jesuit Estates to get the ball rolling. According to Richard Coughtrie who was interviewed by the Quebec House of Assembly Waist Land Committee in 1821 the settlement began in the month of August 1816 and at this time there were no roads passable for a cart or even a single horse. Coughtrie worked for John Neilson.
The earliest known map, dated March 1821, shows many names including Neilson and Stuart who had land grants but it seems most were land speculators and did not settle in Valcartier. They had different interests with most hoping to turn a profit in some way but with no intention of living there. The report by Coughtrie includes a list of people in Valcartier in 1820/21. The list might not be complete and does not list all people by name, but it is the best I could find. The 1824 census is useful as it logged the year settlers arrived. At the beginning all indications suggest the settlement had a difficult time but after the initial couple of years expanded rapidly.
Land in Valcartier was not an easy sell. This was true for several reasons. Valcartier was remote, land was uncleared, and not that suitable for farming and most importantly there were no roads. A large part was rocky and swampy. It seems that when lots were assigned and laid out it did not take this into account and this added to confusion. Settlers were sometimes assigned land that they were not happy with, and either would decide to abandon or choose land in the area that was suitable. So, where the original settlers were living is often a guess as land grants do not always match where they were actually living. Some land grants were given but no information remains as to what happened. On the positive side the land was cheap compared to land closer to civilization. Neilson and Stuart followed the way of the Jesuit Estates. They got the land for very little and rented it out for a few pennies. The other landholders worked their own deals.
As the British downsized their armies in the 1815/25 period, many of the soldiers were given land grants as payment for service. Some of the soldiers were discharged in the Quebec area and received land grants in Valcartier. The soldiers in the British army at the time would not have made good farmers. Most of them would have been in the army at a young age, some forced into the army and army life was all they knew. They were not used to settling down. Many it seems got land grants but did not come to Valcartier. I am speaking in general terms and there were exceptions.
To try and determine who the first settler was, involves a lot of guessing. Rather than do this, I have decided to try and talk about some of the people who were in the settlement early and contributed to the start-up. Testimonies given to the Roads Commission in 1829 by eight early settlers was useful. Clark McIntosh has completed a detailed study of this subject as well as Marion Paquet in her book. A lot of the information is on Pat Balkcom’s Valcartier Genealogy Website and I always take advantage of it.
There are some interesting records that speak to the character of the original settlers. John Neilson said that in the beginning he could not get anyone in the area to come to Valcartier and open it. He had to resort to advertising and got people from the Sherbrooke area and from Connecticut in the USA. I could not find any records to show that anyone came directly from Connecticut. Initially the people were hired to clear land and get it semi-ready for farming.
One was Elijah Haney (often spelled in various ways) who was hired by Neilson in 1817 to clear land and open farms in Valcartier. Haney said in an interview with the Road Commissioner in 1829 that he had opened 5 new farms in Valcartier and that he was nearing 60 years of age and was going to stop. I think by opening farms he would mean clearing land and building a rough shelter. He said he was the first to come into the settlement. It looks like Haney was a loyalist who came from Connecticut to an area near Sherbrooke and then years later was hired by Neilson to clear land in Valcartier. He left Valcartier in the 1840’s and died at 82 in Kingsey Township, Drummond County, Quebec. He had previous experience in clearing land. He is on Coughtrie’s list from 1820/21.
Haney was interesting and I do not think shy of hard work. He was an “indentured slave” who came to America with a loan to pay off to his master. It was not uncommon in the day that people in Europe who wanted to come to America, but had no money, to sign a contract whereby they were indebted to a master for a number of years. It was a loan that had to be paid off. He was open to punishment by his master and basically treated as a slave. The big difference was that after the loan was paid off, he was free. With Haney, after the indenture was paid, he said his master gave him $100.00 and he started buying land and clearing it. He would then sell for a profit and move on raising a family at the same time. He was married at least twice. By the time he got to Valcartier, he had cleared a lot of land in both Connecticut and the Sherbrooke area. He worked mostly on the Fourth Concession.
Abigail Paine Babbitt White was another who came to Valcartier in the early stages to clear land. She died in Valcartier in 1847 in her late eighties and is buried in the Anglican Church Cemetery. She was known as the “Maid of the Mountain” and lived on or near what was latter called Pinkney’s Mountain. As the story goes, she claimed she was married to Abel White. There is a “Wm. White” listed in Coughtrie’s statistical table of 1820/21 who most probably is him. He then disappears from all records and no notice of his death. There is another story that claims that she invented Abel White to keep her marriage to Pat O’Scalen a secret. George Fairchild wrote an article about the Maid of the Mountain and an encounter he had with her while he was setting up camp for the night when fishing the Jacques Cartier River. The article (a la Mark Twain) describes White in detail and speaks to her land clearing ability and knowledge of the area. In the story White dies with a partially finished letter to her husband Pat O’Scalen who just got out of jail after nine years. Pat is the one who finds her dead. Decide for yourself what to believe but records show she was in Valcartier for this time period and was known as Maid of the Mountain and good with an axe. She worked and lived in the same areas as Haney. You can read the complete story in My Quebec Scrapbook by George Fairchild. I wish I knew the truth and complete story on this mystery woman.
Ferdinand Murphy was born in Ireland about 1784 and came to Quebec with his sister, Mary in October 1821, having only twenty-one shillings when they arrived. They seemed to have worked very well as a team. From his testimony to the Roads Commissioners in 1829 he said he got a job clearing land in Valcartier about two weeks after he arrived. This was the winter of 1821, and this would have been working with others learning the job. His testimony goes on to describe a job in Valcartier that he took on by himself, three miles from the nearest settlement, quite in the bush. This would have been the winter of 1822. He succeeded in building a small log house big enough to stand up in and cleared enough to start growing the next summer. He had a respectable crop harvest the following fall which included twenty-three bushels of potatoes for everyone sown and apparently became known as a great potato farmer.
Ferdinand did get other jobs clearing land and hired men to help him. While he was busy with this, his sister Mary somehow connected or was taken in by the nuns in Quebec because they together got a lot of 262 acres in the Fief St. Ignace on the River in 1823 from the nuns of the Hotel Dieu. They ended up living together in Valcartier with their property described as “On the Rocks in the Fifth Concession”. Neither married. The 1851 census shows Pat Ryan age 13 and Mary Ryan age 11 living with them. In the 1861 census. Mary Ryan is still with them. Pat and Mary Ryan might well have been orphans. There is no record of how young they were when they came to live with the Murphys.
Ferdinand died March 24, 1861, and Mary on February 4, 1868. Records show that both are buried in the Catholic Church yard in Valcartier. In his burial records Ferdinand is described “as a respectable inhabitant of the place”. In her Will dated March 14, 1861, Mary left $32 to Mary Ann Gibson, the wife of Joseph Kack, and $20 to Mary Ryan and all her movable and unmovable property and other sums of money to the Roman Catholic Archiepiscopal Corporation of Quebec in trust for the Roman Catholic Church of Valcartier. The Will suggests that it was probably a “rags to riches” story for the time.
In 1819/20, a large group of immigrants moved to the 4th Concession and had lots adjoining each other. The Abraham, Bethel and Rourke families came from Ireland and were closely related. They settled on lots that had been cleared or partially cleared by Haney. Some of the arrivals brought other skills besides farming. Joseph Abraham was a farmer, mason, carpenter, tailor and shoemaker. William Bethel was a farmer and shoemaker, and James Rourke was a farmer, mason, wheelwright and carpenter. This area of the 4th Concession became sort of a village of its own. As of a couple of years ago, Allan Rourke was still living on what would have been some of the property. The traditional Valcartier roadblock gathering for many years was held at his gateway and I believe is still going on.
William Bethel Jr. was involved in several court cases. In December 1824, he accused Edward Sweeney and his sons of threatening to do bodily harm to him and was rewarded with what seems like a Peace Bond. In 1829, he sued Denis Cassin for 84 pounds stating that Cassin had agreed to pay this amount for rent on lots 2 and 3. It looks like Bethel received goods and cash as partial payment. In August, David Davidson accused Bethel and Thomas Delany of assault and battery. Seems like he was a feisty guy. So Valcartier was not without its feuds.
Edward Sweeney was born in Ireland around 1777 and came to Valcartier with his family which consisted of eight children and his wife. In the 1824 census, he is living next to John and James Sweeney, his sons. It appears they had lots north of Waller’s Point in the 5th Concession. In his Will, Edward left everything to his children, with conditions. He left only one shilling each to sons, Patrick and James, which seems unusual. Edward died July 12, 1841, at about 56 years. After his death most of the family moved to the USA.
Waller is one of the names on the 1821 map, which included Waller’s Point on the Fifth Concession. I do not believe Waller ever lived in Valcartier, but over the years Waller’s Point became McCartney’s Point and I remember going fishing with my father when I was a youngster. This would be in 1950s and 60s. We even tented one night, and I remember we caught a good number of trout. We called it McCartney’s Point in the Jacques Cartier River. If I remember correctly, we used to go in Willard Goodfellow’s driveway over to Colin Brown’s place and walk down to the River from there (We caught big, big fish as I remember).
There were many other people who have been identified for clearing land and made it available for farming in Valcartier. These included the O’Hara brothers (at least 3 of them). It seems the objective of these boys was to turn a profit by clearing land and getting it semi-ready for farming and then reselling. I do not believe any of them settled in Valcartier as they are not present in the 1824 census.
A.J. Wolff is listed on the 1821 map and had men on his property clearing land. It does not appear that he moved to Valcartier until 1824 when the 1/60th was converted to a British Corp and he was discharged from the army. When he moved to Valcartier, it is reported that his land was very rocky and swampy and he applied for another grant asking for 100 acres for each of his children on the Fifth Concession. I do not know if this was granted but the application was made on March 18, 1828, it appears. From what I know, I do not think AJ had any interest or experience with farming and was busy trying to set up a militia and scouting for land routes connecting Quebec with the Maritimes and Gaspe region, as well as acting as Justice of the Peace.
The testimonies of 1829 give a good idea of what life was like in the beginning stages in Valcartier. It seems there was good cooperation and families got by with help from their neighbours. Work Bees were held to help people build structures or clear land and get established. Neighbours would also work for neighbours and would be repaid with money or goods to help feed their family. Quebec City was too far away to go for work. It usually got better after a couple of years but for some families it did not and they would have to move. It seems that bartering played a big part in the community. Most talked about the lack of good roads and the effect.
The 1820/21s statistical table shows that most of the action at the beginning was around Lac Fere stretching to the North and East and surrounding the summer homes of Neilson and Stuart in the 3rd and 4th Concessions. Of the 72 houses in Valcartier at the time, 55 were in this area, and of the 28 oxen logged, all were here. There would have been a road connecting Valcartier and Quebec to get goods and take produce to market. In general people living in the other Concessions were more isolated and, in most cases, connected by path or rough roads (no paved highways).
In Coughtrie’s list of people in Valcartier in 1820/21 appear among others the names Brown, Campbell, Corrigan, Goodfellow, Ireland, Kerr, McCartney, Ward and Wolff. These were names that were still around in the 1950’s and 60’s when I was in Valcartier. To date descendants of some of these people are still in the area. They would have been among the first permanent settlers.
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