Arrival of the first colonists

According to municipal assessment documents, the first groups of settlers in Cambridge Township were mainly Scottish and Anglo-Saxon families. By the 1850s, French-Canadian families were arriving in the area.

As early as 1804, certain lots in and around St. Albert were assigned to at least a dozen United Empire Loyalists, American loyalists who had settled in British North America during or after the American Revolution. However, these owners never settled in St. Albert, preferring to remain further south along the shores of the St. Lawrence River.

Between 1840 and 1850, a larger group of immigrants came to St-Albert. Most were of Scottish origin, with surnames such as McRae, McKinnon, Ferguson, Campbell and Cameron. Around 100 settlers arrived here in 1842. The first six or seven French-Canadian families arrived in St. Albert in 1851, and were included in that year’s census. Figures from the 1851 decennial census indicate that there is already a group of six or seven French-Canadian families in the future parish of St-Albert. The general census of 1861 gives us the first exact figures on the number of settlers then established in the VIIᵉ, VIIIᵉ, IXᵉ and Xᵉ
concessions.

In 1861, there were 369 souls in these four concessions. French- Canadian families there included Génier, Labelle, Chartrand, Allaire, Carrière, Turpin, Lafrance, Lapensée, Bouchard, Payette, Clément, Papineau, Godard, Pilon, Gibault, Quesnel, Arbique and Potvin. The first settlers settled on the southern end of the Xth concession lots, and became accustomed to calling themselves “sur la dix” (meaning “on the tenth concession”). This name was soon given to the road later opened at the southern end of this concession. Pushing further inland, other settlers settled on the southern end of the IXth concession, and the road that passed their door was called “la neuf”. The inhabitants of the VIIIth concession, who settled to the south of it, occupied “la huit”, and so on. This is the name still in use today. Now, imitating the parish priest of Embrun, Mr. Adrien Gauthier – parish priest of St-Albert from 1885 to 1898 – proposed a name for each of the concession or route. But, unlike the people of Embrun, the parishioners of St-Albert did not adopt this convenient appellation. Permission is granted to resurrect these names and use them in this work. We don’t know if Mr. Gauthier gave a name to the border road between Cambridge and Finch townships. The road between the IXth and Xth concessions was named Rang St-Albert: St-Albert-est and St-Albert-ouest, depending on whether it was the section east or west of the Nation River. The road between the VIlle and IXe concessions was called Rang St-Adrien, east and west; and the road between the

VIle and VIlle concessions west of the Nation was named Rang St-Théophile by the parish priest of Embrun. The western end of this concession is in fact in the parish of Embrun, and the parish priest of St-Albert simply adopted the name already chosen by the parish priest of the neighboring parish. The Rang St-Albert-est road and the road from the village to Crysler would have been opened between 1870 and 1875; the Rang St-Adrien-est road
and the road from it to the village of St-Albert would have been opened around 1878. The Rang St-Adrien-ouest road, which covered a distance of around one mile, would have been opened around 1888. It would also have been around the same time that the first road crossing the IXth concession west of the Nation was opened. The section of Rang St-Albert ouest between the above-mentioned road and the second road to the west was delayed due to the marshy nature of the soil. It was only after the construction of the first wooden bridge over the Nation in 1881 that this road was fully opened, at the urging of parish priest Philion, by Joseph Pagé, then town councillor. The first means of connection between the two banks was a ferry installed around 1875. It was in operation until the construction of the first bridge, some five or six years later. The arrival of the first parish priest, who was to give a tremendous boost to St. Albert’s development, meant the disappearance of the ferry and the idyllic scenes.

In 1873, other family names were noted: Blondin, Legault dit Deslauriers, Laflèche, Dupuit, Benoît, Sanche, Renaud, Rainville, Meilleur, Lamoureux, Pagé, Clément, Beauchamp, Brunet and Lebrun. Most of these Franco-Canadian settlers came from Embrun, in Canada West (now Ontario), and from St-Jacques-de-l’Achigan, St-Augustin, St-Jérôme, St-Hermas, Laprairie and Ste-Scholastique in Canada East (now Quebec).