Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

Cyrus Thomas describes our little town as an “ extremely pleasant location » and “ though small, owing to the number of stores and shops, is characterized by quite an air of bustling activity. »  Those words were written around 1866 – and remain quite true even today!  The name of the principal village of the Township may be attributed to Robert Manson for a number of reasons having to do with development of the place; however, the question was just when did the familiar name become common?

A publication of the Brome County Historical Society, in 1965, entitled Along the Old Roads shows that this attribution was not immediate.  The article gives interesting history of Mansonville, extracts of which read as follows: “And on Joseph Bouchette's manuscript map of 1805 (…) a road is shown leading (…) south through Potton, along the west side of the Missisquoi River, to the extreme south-west corner of (…) Potton at the Border.  No name is shown at the Mansonville site on this or any other of Bouchette's maps, not even on his map of 1846, which does show the names of most settlements in the region.”  On Gore's map “surveyed in (…) 1839 (…) is found the earliest name we know of for Mansonville, viz. 'Manson's Bridge'; on Corey's “Plan of (…) Jan. 7^th, 1843, the site of the village is given the name of 'Potton Corner' or 'Mansonville' ”^[1].  In 1837, it was referred to as Manson's mills - “A route is also established from Frelighsburg (…) across Sutton Mountain to South Potton, to Mr. Elkins', thence by Mr. Coit's to Mr. Manson's mills.”

No matter when it received its present name, Mansonville is situated 6 km west of Lake Memphremagog and from Owl's Head Mountain, 5 km from the Canada-US border, and is the only “village” in the Municipality of the Township of Potton. 

“The lot on which the greater part of the village of Mansonville stands (…) was granted on May 27, 1803 to Abraham Ruiter, (…) son of Col. Henry Ruiter.”^[2]

Cyrus Thomas' history tells us that “Joseph Chandler and John Lewis were the first who settled on the lot where Mansonville now stands” and that these men “'reared' a cabin on nearly the same spot as occupied (in 1866) by the house of Robert Manson”^[3].  Chandler and Lewis bought their land from Hendrick Ruiter.  There was good water-power at this place on the Missisquoi River and “Chandler commenced building a saw-mill here in 1803, the year before his family came to Potton”.

“Chandler had cleared a space of about twenty acres, or partially cleared it, - logs and log heaps still being scattered over a portion of it, - when he sold out to Mr. Robert Manson.” 

Thomas further tells us that “Robert Manson purchased the mill and the land of Chandler in the summer of 1811 and, in September, he commenced building a grist-mill which was completed the same fall.”

“The War of 1812 stopped progress for several years, and many of the inhabitants of the township returned to the States.  Progress again took up her march here, about 1824.  At this time several settlers came in, buildings went up and a store was opened (by William Manson, Robert's brother, and his son Albert).  In 1829, James Manson, Robert's son, built a cloth-dressing and a carding mill and in 1834, built and opened a store. ”^[4] 

From those earliest beginnings, the industry and influence of the family from whom Mansonville derives its name has been much in evidence.  The legacy of the early Mansons remain to this day in some of our oldest heritage buildings and the unique town square which graces our village.

For the curious, the following is a short description of carding and cloth-dressing: before wool can be spun into yarn for knitting or weaving into cloth, it must first be brushed, or “carded” into longer fibres to be spun, a tedious task.  Carding mills removed this time consuming step and allowed domestic production of cloth.  Cloth-dressing is the term given to removing the straw from the retted fibres of flax, which is a plant with a fibrous stem that may be processed to make linen.

Retting is the processes of rotting away the inner stalk, leaving outer fibres intact.  At this point, straw or coarse fibres remain.  The flax is then “dressed”, which consists of three steps: “breaking”, which “breaks” or softens the fibres, “scutching”, in which some of the straw is scraped from the fibres.  The fibres are then pulled through “hackles” which act like combs and pulls some of the straw out of the fibre.  This process is roughly akin to carding in the treatment of wool, in which hanks of long useable fibres are obtained.  At the end of the “dressing” process, the flax fibre must be spun into useable threads in order to be woven into “homespun” cloth.  

In the case of using wool fibres in weaving, the weave is somewhat loose and open.  A process called “fulling” subjects the cloth to moisture and heat, agitation or friction of some kind, such as rubbing or beating.  The fibers move freely and work themselves loose from the spun thread and become entangled with one another, thus filling in the spaces between the warp and the weft, creating a fuzzy pile-like layer on the surface of the weave.  The above description was found courtesy of Wikipedia.