Settlement from France began in the 17th and 18th centuries, when colonists settled along the St. Lawrence River and edged north from Trois-Rivières and Montreal. Some, who settled on the Seigneuries of St-Sulpice, St-Ours, Lachenaie and d’Ailleboust, were close to where Rawdon Township would be established.
On July 13, 1799, the British Government established the Township of Rawdon, the first township north of Montréal. It was bounded to the southeast by Seigneuries de Saint-Sulpice (Saint-Jacques), St-Ours and Lachenaie, to the northeast by the Township of Kildare, to the southwest by Kilkenny (St-Calixte) and to the northwest by an area that would become the Township of Chertsey and the Township of Wexford. At that time, Rawdon Township was to authorities the “waste lands of the Crown” an untamed territory, where Algonquins and trappers hunted.
Settlement had not begun in 1815, when Joseph Bouchette, the Surveyor General of Lower Canada, wrote this in its important report entitled “A Topographical Description of the Province of Lower Canada”.
"Rawdon…is a full township, of which very little has yet been granted or even surveyed. The surface of it is uneven, in many places rocky, but in others having extents of good land upon which grain might be raised with profit, and on some few hemp and flax. On the uplands the greater part of timber is maple, beech, and birch; cedar and spruce fir abound on the lower ones. It is watered by several small streams." Joseph Bouchette, A Topographical Description of the Province of Lower Canada, London, 1815, page 246 |