Place:Huntingdon, Québec, Canada

Watchers
NameHuntingdon
TypeHistorical county
Located inQuébec, Canada     ( - 1982)
Also located inMontérégie, Québec, Canada     (1982 - )
Contained Places
Canton
Dundee ( 1845 - )
Elgin ( 1849 - )
Franklin ( 1857 - )
Godmanchester ( 1855 - )
Havelock ( 1863 - )
Hemmingford ( 1799 - 1982 )
Hinchinbrook ( 1799 - )
Historical county
Saint-Jean ( - 1854 )
Inhabited place
Huntingdon ( 1848 - )
Paroisse
Saint-Anicet ( 1855 - )
Sainte-Barbe ( 1882 - )
Unknown
La Guerre
Russelltown-Flats
Sainte-Agnès-de-Dundee
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


Huntingdon was an historical county in the province of Québec.

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Huntingdon County is an historical county in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is named after the town and county of the same name (Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire) in east central England. It is situated in the Montreal South Shore region of Montérégie, one of the roughly 12 regions of Quebec. The county was bounded entirely on its south by the Canada–US border (45° N for 88.75 km from 73°32′ W to 74°40′ W), along its northwestern flank by Lake St-Francis (Lac St-François) of the Saint Lawrence River to its most northern point on the river at 45°13′ N and 74°13′ W, to the east by Saint-Jean County, with its easternmost point at 45°5.5' N and 73°31′ W (this point forms the junction of the borders of Châteauguay County, Napierville County and Saint-Jean County) and to the north from east to west by Napierville County, Châteauguay County, and Beauharnois County. On the other side of the Saint Lawrence River is Soulanges County, Quebec, the Township of Lancaster and the Township of Charlottenburgh in Glengarry County, Ontario, and the Township of Cornwall in Stormont County, Ontario.

Huntingdon County is the only county in the St Lawrence Valley to be entirely and totally divided into townships, of which there are 7. All these townships run in a straight line and have the Canada–US border as a common southern border. From east to west they are the Township of Hemmingford, the Township of Havelock, the Franklin Township, the Township of Hinchinbrooke, the Township of Elgin, the Township of Godmanchester, and the Township of Dundee. The county seat, Huntingdon, located at 45°5′ N and 74°10′ W, straddles the border between Hinchinbrooke and Godmanchester. Except for Godmanchester, all the other townships have a community that takes the name of the township in which it is situated (Hemmingford, Havelock, Franklin, Hinchinbrooke, Elgin, Dundee).

A notable feature of Huntingdon County is the presence of the Saint Regis Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve at the westernmost point of the county in the Township of Dundee. That area of the Saint Lawrence, like many along its length, contains many small islands. The Reserve straddles the meeting point of the Quebec-Ontario-New York State borders at that point. The American side of the Reserve is Franklin County, New York.

On 1 January 1982, the county was officially dissolved. Most of the County became part of the MRC de Le Haut-Saint-Laurent except for a small section in the far east (The Township of Hemmingford and the Village of Hemmingford) which became part of MRC de Les Jardins-de-Napierville.

Contents

Lovell's Gazetteer (1895)

  • "HUNTINGDON, a county of Quebec, bounded on the south by the State of New York, on the north-west by the River St. Lawrence, and on the north and east by the counties of Beauharnois, Chateauguay and St. Johns. It is drained by the Chateauguay River and several other streams, and traversed by the G. T. R. (Province Line division) and New York Central & Hudson River Rys. Area 255,380 acres. Capital, Huntingdon. Pop. 14,385."

Research Tips

Maps and Gazetteers

Library and Archives Canada Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada (1895) for Huntingdon. This shows the electoral sub-districts in 1895 which are closely equivalent to the townships and parishes of the time. This map is a PDF. The north-point indicates that it has been rotated to fit the original page.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Huntingdon County, Quebec. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

French names for places

Because French is the one official language of Québec, WeRelate employs the French names for places within the province. Many placenames will be similar to their counterparts in English, with the addition of accents and hyphens between the words. The words "Saint" and "Sainte" should be spelled out in full. Placenames should be made up of four parts: the community (or parish, or township, or canton), the historic county, Québec, Canada. You may find placenames red-linked unless you follow these conventions.

Local government structure

The Province of Québec was made up of counties and territories. Counties in Québec were established gradually as the land was settled by Europeans. Each county included communities with some form of local governement (often church-based). Territories referred to the undeveloped sections under the control of the government in charge of the whole province at the time. The communities included townships and/or cantons, depending on the English/French makeup of the county concerned, and also included ecclesiastical parishes with somewhat different boundaries which could overlap with local townships or cantons. Ecclesiastical parish registers have been retained and are available to view (online through Ancestry). Since the 1980s many small townships and parishes are merging into larger "municipalities", often with the same name as one of their components.

Beginning in 1979 the historic counties of Québec were replaced by administrative regions and regional county municipalities (abbreviated as RCM in English and MRC in French). Regional county municipalities are a supra-local type of regional municipality, and act as the local municipality in unorganized territories within their borders. (An unorganized area or unorganized territory is any geographic region in Canada that does not form part of a municipality or Indian reserve. There is a list in Wikipedia.) There are also 18 equivalent territories (TEs) which are not considered to be RCMs. These are mostly large cities with their suburbs, but include 4 very large geographical areas where the population is sparse.

The administrative regions (above the RCMs in the hierarchy) are illustrated on a map in Wikipedia. The regions are used to organize the delivery of provincial government services and there are conferences of elected officers in each region. The regions existed before the change from historic counties to regional county municipalities.

The above description is based on various articles in Wikipedia including one titled Types of municipalities in Quebec

NOTE: WeRelate refers to Québec communities as being within their historic counties because this is the description which will be found in historical documents. FamilySearch and Quebec GenWeb follow the same procedure. However, it is always wise to know the current RCM as well in order to track these documents down in local repositories and also to describe events which have taken place since 1980.

Because the former or historic counties and the modern regional county municipalities can have the same names but may cover a slightly different geographical area, the placenames for Regional County Municipalities or "Territories Equivalent to regional county municipalities" are distinguished by including the abbreviation "RCM" or "TE" following the name.

Historic counties (which were taken out of use in about 1982) were made up of townships or cantons. The two words are equivalent in English and French. Eventually all the Québec cantons in WeRelate will be described as townships. Many townships disappeared before 1980 with the growth of urbanization.

If the word parish is used, this is the local ecclesiastical parish of the Roman Catholic Church. Parish boundaries and township or canton boundaries were not always the same.

The WeRelate standard form for expressing a place in Québec is township/canton/parish, historic county, Québec, Canada,
or local municipality, administrative region, Québec, Canada for places established after the changes of the 1980s.

Censuses

Censuses were taken throughout the 19th century in Quebec (or in Lower Canada or Canada West before 1867). Surprisingly most of them have been archived and have been placed online free of charge by the Government of Canada (both microfilmed images and transcriptions). All can be searched by name or browsed by electoral district. The contents vary. Those of 1825, 1831 and 1841 record only the householders by name, but remaining members of each household were counted by sex and by age range. From 1851 through 1921 each individual was named and described separately. The amount of information increased throughout the century, and in 1901 people were asked for their birthdate and the year of immigration to Canada. Unfortunately, enumerators were required only to record the birthplace province or country (if an immigrant). Specific birthplaces have to be discovered elsewhere.

The links below are to the introductory page for the specific census year. It is wise to read through this page first to see what will be provided on a specific census, and what will be lacking. Links to the records follow from these pages.

Other Sources

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Huntingdon County, Quebec. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.