Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

It is somewhat amusing that the road we, who live in Vale Perkins, have always called “the road to Mansonville» is now called “the road from Vale Perkins» by those who live in Mansonville.  At any rate, most know the road – to and fro. 

But did you know that this road is thought to have been built following the route of the Abenaki portage between Lake Memphremagog and the Missisquoi River – thence to Lake Champlain and territory to the south – what one might call the “autoroutes” of our earliest days.

In a survey of the Province Line in 1772, John Collins noted the following: “ There is a carrying place to the lake somewhere here, but where we don't exactly know but suppose it is between these two mountains. »  “ The two mountains seemed to be Hawk and Bear Mountains, where the south branch of the Missisquoi farthest east (near Mansonville), at the point where a small stream empties into the river after passing south of Hawk Mountain.  The nearest approach to the lake (…) would be between the two mountains to the shore south of Owl's Head (…), but there the terrain is hilly (and the elevations significant).  If one looked for the easiest and shortest route, one would conclude that the portage would be better made near Mansonville and Perkins Landing (…) a distance of some six miles. »^[1]

If we assume that even men used to toughing it would avoid carrying canoes and supplies over toilsome portages, and that the earliest road builders followed nature's easiest contours as much as possible, avoiding hills and rocks, then it would follow that the Chemin de Vale Perkins was originally built following the Abenaki trails to the Lake.  The terrain surrounding the Jones archaeological site, mentioned earlier in this book, does seem to present ideal terrain for encampments.  The Perkins family history does chronicle that Samuel Perkins sons followed the Abenaki portage route from Mansonville to the lake, in order to find Nicholas Austin's original cleared land, where they eventually settled. 

Much later however, on Chemin de Vale Perkins, at a distance of perhaps 1.5 km from Mansonville, a small cluster of homes stand to indicate the former presence of the Monticello Bobbin Company, which operated there from circa 1956 to 1976.  This mill employed nearly 20 people and shipped its products to Monticello, Georgia where the parent company was located.  Monticello Bobbin grew from the site of the Fred Perkins sawmill.  The main production buildings were demolished long ago.  The cluster of homes which remain were part of the operation, office and company housing, as it were.  Monticello closed down in 1976, but operated successfully for over 20 years. 

Hardwood bobbins were used predominately in the knitting mills and textile industry in Magog and in the New England states.  They were a commodity produced in Potton and East Bolton by several mills.  Randall, Hamelin, Labranche and Monticello are the names that come immediately to mind.  Automation and the use of metal bobbins by the knitting and textile mills to the south sounded the death knell for this once thriving niche market in Potton.