1791 Constitutional Act

    The Constitutional Act of 1791 was what officially divided Upper and Lower Canada and was implemented by William Grenville, Secretary of State for the colonies. This ensured that British Loyalists would be subject to British laws and customs, while French settlers could choose between their traditional law and seigneurial system or the British Township system. Grenville also decided to override Haldimand's earlier decision to keep the land bordering the United States for French settlers only. He did this in order to balance the population of French and British colonists in southern Lower Canada, the Eastern Townships, and with the establishment of this land under English Custom, both clergy and crown reserves were developed at the same time. Crown reserves were seen as a source of revenue outside the control of the legislative assembly and clergy were hoped to establish a balance between the Catholic Church, which controlled twenty-six percent of seigneurial land, and the Anglican Church, which was only beginning to gain a foothold in the colony. The provided passage of the 1791 Constitutional Act included here, indicates the allowance of Free and Common Soccage for the Eastern Townships in Lower Canada.

Post American Revolution

    The American Revolution altered the demographics of the British Colony of Canada tremendously. By 1778, eight hundred and fifty-five loyalists had entered Quebec via Lake Champlain and this increased to over five thousand by 1783. In order to prevent an unclear border between the colony and the United States, Governor Haldimand thought it wise to reserve the land that bordered the rebellious country, later to become the Eastern Townships, for French settlers. Because they spoke a different language and practiced a different religion, it was believed that there would be little communication across the border. Loyalists were allowed to settle in areas already heavily populated by Francophones, but most chose to move slightly west, where they began to demand the implementation of English Civil Law and freehold land tenure over the French Common Law and seigneurial system that was currently in place. In order to accommodate both the British Loyalists and the French Canadiens, the territory was divided into two distinct regions; Upper and Lower Canada.

Counties

    A total of nine counties, Mississquoi, Brome, Stanstead, Shefford, Sherbrooke, Compton, Megantic, Drummond-Arthabaska and Richmond-Wolfe, covered the Eastern Townships by 1853. With the separation of Drummond and Arthabaska and Richmond and Wolfe counties by 1890, the total amount increased to eleven, and later to twelve with the incorporation of Frontenac county in 1912 (see Provincial Counties Map, 1912).

    Continued evolution between Federal and Provincial counties in the Eastern Townships led to the following boundary changes in 1988 and 1989, as seen with the Map of Federal Counties 1988 and the Map of Provincial Counties 1989. Federal and provincial elections were the major cause of boundary change in the Eastern Townships. The federal election in 1968 combined Stanstead with Compton and half of Drummond-Arthabaska was united with Lotbiniere and by the 1973 provincial election Wolfe and Stanstead had disappeared from the electoral map and three new counties, St. Francis, Orford and Johnson, had emerged. There was much confusion over county name changes during this period as can be seen with the issue of the town of Lake Megantic being located in Frontenac County instead of Megantic County. This was corrected when Megantic County was renamed Frontenac County and the old Frontenac County was renamed Megantic-Compton-Stanstead County federally, and Megantic-Compton County provincially. In addition to this, a portion of the old Compton County became St. Francois County and Stanstead County became Orford County.

Township Survey System

    With the passage of the 1791 Constitutional Act into law, settlement officially began on the land that was to become the Eastern Townships. The English system of Free and Common Soccage was used to establish land grants in the area, contrary to the traditional French seigneurial long lot system.

    It was under the direction of Surveyor-General Joseph Bouchette in 1791 that the area was plotted out using the Township System. Townships located on navigable rivers were nine miles wide and twelve miles deep, while  townships in the interior were squared off in ten mile by ten mile allotments. Throughout the entire area, 1/7 of land was reserved for the crown and another 1/7 was set aside for the Anglican Church, leaving 5/7's of the total number of lots in each township for settlement. Each riverside township had a total of three hundred and thirty-six lots, 1/3 of a mile wide and one mile deep, and of this, the crown and Protestant Church each had forty-eight lots reserved, while interior townships had a total of three hundred and eight lots, nineteen hundred feet wide and forty-seven hundred feet deep, where the crown and clergy reserved forty-four lots each. See diagrams detailing Plan A and Plan B (riverside and interior, respectively).

    In order to have townships granted for colonization, potential settlers would group together to form a "company of associates". Forty associates were required for a township measuring ten miles by ten miles although the size of each company varied depending on the size of the tract of land that was being sought. An agent was then elected from the company to act between the people and the government, bearing all expenses for the survey of the township. The agent was also expected to construct roads and mills in the settlement area and obtain the signatures of all those who planned to settle on the land grant, and in return, he received additional lots of land from the associates for his efforts. A Warrant of Survey was then issued by the government, and the Surveyor-General was required to survey the land within a six month period. Delays were frequent, but once completed, a document was issued attesting to the fact that the tract of land was petitioned for, surveyed, and was "created, erected, and constituted a township, to be called, known and distinguished by the name of ___________". The company then had to settle the land within one year, and within seven years they had not planted and cultivated seven acres of land, the grant was nullified and all land was given back to the crown.

    A map of the Eastern Townships divided into individual townships and listing their names and official dates of registration is included.

Internal Changes

    As settlement in the Eastern Townships progressed after 1791, more and more townships were legally designated. The majority of the area was originally only under one county, Buckinghamshire, with a few of the townships on the western fringe of the area falling under Bedford and Richelieu counties.

    Feeling the need for more representation in government affairs, settlers began to campaign for the subdivision of Buckinghamshire into several electoral districts and in 1829, it was officially divided by six, into Mississquoi, Stanstead, Shefford, Drummond, Megantic and Sherbrooke counties, each with two representatives and it was from the land of these six counties that all others would be formed. The Holland Map indicates the division of Lower Canada into the three administrative districts of Montreal, Quebec and Trois Rivieres, as well as the county of Buckinghamshire containing all of the townships. This map also shows that some townships fell under the jurisdiction of two separate districts, like Oxford being divided by the District of Montreal and the District of Trois Rivieres.

British American Land Company

    The British American Land Company (BALC), was established in 1833 and opened an office in Lennoxville in order to sell land to British immigrants. In only one transaction, the company bought up all crown reserves in Sherbrooke, Shefford and Stanstead counties, (250,000 acres), and all the land in the St. Francis District, outlined in red on the 1833 Map of the Plan of the Counties, totaling 600,000 acres. However, by 1840, the BALC had gone bankrupt and was forced to sell back 500,000 acres to make up for some of their losses.

External Changes

    With the treaty of Paris in 1763 came a political boundary between Canada and the United States running along the forty fifth parallel. However, in 1771, a surveying crew establishing the border in the south eastern corner of the Eastern Townships accidentally traced the line a few thousand meters north of the forty fifth, only to be corrected seventy-one years later with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. As seen in the map, the townships of Hereford (44), Auckland (6), Emberton, (32), Chesham (17), Woburn (93), Louise (53), Ditchfield (24), Spalding (73), Risborough (65), and Marlow (56) had to cede land to the United States as a result of the Treaty. Knowing that these counties had square or rectangular forms, helps visualize the amount of land affected by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. 

    The final change to the external boundaries of the Eastern Townships was the removal of counties in the northern region of the area. This was due to the northern areas linking their economies with growing cities like Montreal, Quebec City and Trois Rivieres instead of the rest of the Eastern Townships. The accompanying map shows the large number of counties, and the large area they comprised, that were lost to other regional municipalities between 1867 and 1912. Within this period, thirty counties were either transferred completely, or had a portion of their territory annexed. These areas became part of the Monteregie, Centre-du-Quebec, and Chaudiere-Appalaches municipal regions (see map) although many of the inhabitants of these former areas of the Eastern Townships have maintained strong emotional ties to their previous region. This strong sense of place demonstrates the attachment people have with their physical and human surroundings rather than on political boundaries. 

MRC's and Region 05

    Known as the Eastern Townships since 1860, the area officially became "L'Estrie" by 1950, and was divided into zones of economic influence, Municipal Regional Counties (MRC's), in 1966. The building of the Autoroute between Sherbrooke and Montreal, along with the Trans Quebec Highway fractured the old geographical area of the Eastern Townships into smaller units. The improved transportation routes allowed areas like the Thetford Mines to become more closely aligned with Quebec City, as Drummondville and Sherbrooke did with Montreal. The creation of MRC's divided the Eastern Townships into fourteen economic zones, (see map), seven of which were given to the three newly created regions of Quebec: the Monteregie, the Maurice-Bois-Francs, and the Chaudiere-Appalaches.

    Seven MRC's were retained from the present geographic area of L'Estrie. Memphremagog, Coaticook, Sherbrooke, Haut St. Francois, Granit, Asbestos and Val St. Francois now represent only a small fraction of the original land mass of the old Eastern Townships, referred to as Administrative Region 05 (see map), one of the many Administrative Regions that make up the Province of Quebec.