A View of Eastern Ontario and Northern New York following the American-British War of 1775-1783

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1784 Map - showing Upper Canada & northern New York State

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Geographically, the area shown in this map is well-known to most people in this area of Ontario. However, at the time when the decision was made to expand the boundaries of the populated and settled areas of Canada, this area was a vast, uninhabited territory.

The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which officially closed the Revolutionary War between the American States and Great Britain, and recognized the new United States as an independent nation, made a division of the territory previously claimed by the British government.

The treaty defined the boundary between the two territories, as follows. From the mouth of the St. Croix River (now between New Brunswick and Maine) the international line proceeded to its source, then north to the “highlands” forming the watershed between the Atlantic Ocean and the St. Lawrence River. Thence, it proceeded along these “highlands” to the Connecticut River, down that river to the 45th parallel, and thence due west to the St. Lawrence River. Following up this river, the line passed down the middle of the lakes and rivers which form the Great Lakes system, to the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods. From this point, it was to extend “due west to the Mississippi.”

The vagueness of some of these descriptions to actual terrain was later to prove impossible to agree upon, and required further treaties such as the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842). Consider the fact that the Mississippi River did not start as far north as the line drawn from the Lake of the Woods. This had to be settled by agreement in 1818. It was, however, easy to distinguish Canada from the U.S. in our area of the St. Lawrence River.

The American population had been split into factions of “Loyalists” and “Rebels.” These Loyalists were also known as “Tories” to their enemies. They were made very unwelcome and were displaced from their homes by the fortunes of war, then forced to flee northward. The emigre settlers traveled from the “Loyalist” refugee camps east of Montreal in the spring of 1784 to the newly surveyed townships on the north side of the St. Lawrence. These families formed the new settlements then known as Cataraqui (Kingston), New Oswegatchie (Augusta), and New Johnstown (Cornwall), and embarked on the strenuous work of re-establishing themselves in a new and virgin land.

On the south side of the St. Lawrence, the lands of New York State were not fully developed for many years. In 1784, some of the places that the Loyalist immigrants had left behind were, in many cases, hardly more than frontier settlements themselves. A look at this map shows the American towns that were located along the Mohawk River, Hudson River and the Lake George and Lake Champlain waterways. Overland travel in northern New York State must have been primitive and difficult, to say the least.

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