Background:
Sherbrooke is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. Sherbrooke is situated at the confluence of the Saint-François (St. Francis) and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region.
The First Nations were the first inhabitants, having originally settled the region between 8,000 and 3,000 years ago. Traces of seasonal camps, characterized by arrowheads, scrapers, and other similar tools have been found. Ceramic objects dating from the Woodland period (3000 to 500 BP) were also found, indicating that the region continued to be occupied by nomadic people during this period.
Upon the arrival of Samuel de Champlain in Quebec in 1608, this region was under the control of the Mohawks. France created an alliance through its missionaries with the Abenaki, located in Maine and Vermont. The French were driven to the valley of the St. Lawrence River near Trois-Rivières after a Mohawk victory in the war of 1660.The area around present-day Sherbrooke then became a battlefield between the two peoples who had to travel to the region, both of whom sought to obtain control of the territory. For the Abenaki, the confluence of Pskasewantekw (Magog) and Alsigôntekw (the Saint-François), present day Sherbrooke, which they named Shacewanteku (where one smokes), was an important resting point during the seasonal passages.
During the Seven Years War between France and Britain, the Abenaki, still allied with the French, travelled along the rivers of the Eastern Townships, frequently near present-day Sherbrooke, during raids against British forts.
The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War and recognizing the Independence of the United States. During this time, the Eastern Townships were under Abekani control for a few years, having practised hunting and fishing for centuries. However, the American Revolution attracted British loyalists from America to the region, who began to covet the land and obtain government grants.
The first European settler to reside in the Sherbrooke region was a French Canadian named Jean-Baptiste Nolain, of whom few details are known, except that he arrived in 1779 to engage in agriculture.
The first attempts at colonization occurred in 1792 on the banks of the St. Francis River. This settlement was known as Cowan\'s Clearance. In 1793, loyalist Gilbert Hyatt, a farmer from Schenectady, New York, established his farm not far from the confluence of the Massawippi River and Coaticook River, before the governor of Lower Canada officially awarded the land. Over the next two years, 18 families came to live on the site. The Crown acknowledged Hyatt\'s ownership of the land in 1801. Hyatt built the first dam on the Magog River, in collaboration with another loyalist named Jonathan Ball, who had bought land on the north bank of the river. Hyatt then built a gristmill in 1802 on the south bank of the river, while Ball built a sawmill on the north shore. By constructing the mill, Hyatt effectively founded the small village that became known as Hyatts Mills. The village was named Hyatt\'s Mills until 1818, when the village was renamed after Governor General Sir John Sherbrooke at the time of his retirement and return to Britain.
In 1832, the village attracted most of the activities of the British American Land Company (BALC) and benefited from the injection of British capital into the region. Manufacturing activities were established that harnessed the Magog River\'s hydropower. From 1835 Sherbrooke began to seek government support to establish a railway line, but this only became a reality in 1852 through the line connecting the cities of Montreal and Portland.
From 1867 to 1892, the manufacturing system was based on hydraulic power. The Gorge of the Magog River is considered one of the best industrial sites in Quebec, since the waters never freeze there, allowing year-long production of energy. At that time, BALC invested significant sums in the reconstruction of several dams in the gorge upstream to Magog Lake, in order to regulate the flow of the river, and thus improve its efficiency, to attract new factories.
The founding of several important factories near the Gorges helped to attract more and more Francophone workers, coming mainly from the Beauce and elsewhere in Quebec. Paradoxically, it was mainly the Anglo-Protestant capital that was able to invest in these new factories, supported by the Eastern Townships Bank. The arrival of Francophones also attracted a small French Catholic bourgeoisie, but it remained modest in number and wealth.
The many new industrial investments caused the building sites on the shores of the Gorge to be quickly occupied, which limited the expansion and complicated the advent of new companies wanting to benefit from hydraulic power. In addition, the railway network, linking the city to Montreal, Portland, Lévis and several Ontario cities, was located far from the river. This caused problems for industrialists wishing to ship or receive their goods.
As early as 1871, the Massawippi Valley Railway (to be controlled by Boston & Maine in 1887), the Canadian subsidiary of the Connecticut & Passumpsic Rivers Railroad, which connects Boston to the Canadian border, ended in Sherbrooke. Subsequently, other railway projects became reality by the beginning of the 1890s, thanks to new connections to Boston, New York and Halifax.
During this time, several phenomena began to affect the hydraulic regime of the Magog. In 1895, the water level was abnormally low, which forced several companies to temporarily shut down due to lack of energy. However, thanks to technical advances in electricity, which were previously used for lighting purposes only, it could at this time be used as a driving force.
Due to its flourishing economy, Sherbrooke had 9,746 inhabitants in 1896; this growth rate is much higher compared to other industrtialized centers in Quebec.
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of academic institutions which transformed Sherbrooke into a college town.

The Eastern Townships is a tourist region and a former administrative region in southeastern Quebec, Canada, situated between the former seigneuries south of the Saint Lawrence River and the United States border. Its northern boundary roughly followed Logans Line (or Logan\'s Fault)—the geologic boundary between the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Appalachian Mountains.
The region comprises counties that were originally divided into townships after the traditional method of land grants of the original New England and New York settlers. Earlier French settlement along the Saint Lawrence River had divided the landscape into parishes and Seigneuries. The tourist region now covers most of the region. The administrative region, officially called Estrie, is slightly smaller. The principal cities are Sherbrooke, Granby, Magog, and Cowansville.
The towns of Drummondville, Victoriaville, and Thetford Mines are part of the historical region. The region has summer colonies used by vacationing Montrealers and several ski resorts, including Mount Orford, Ski Bromont, Mount Sutton, and Owl\'s Head.
The first inhabitants of the region were the Abenaki First Nations. The names of many towns, lakes and rivers of the area are of Abenaki origin.
The Abenakis allied themselves with the French during the Seven Years War to fight the British.
The region was part of New France until the 1763 Treaty of Paris which granted the region to the British. Shortly after the American Revolution, a few United Empire Loyalists, who fled the revolution in order to stay loyal to the British Crown, settled in the Eastern Townships. The land there was controlled by three English seigneurs: Colonel Henry Caldwell had purchased what had been the Foucault Seigneurie, which ran along the Richelieu River and a little over the present day frontier; Colonel Gabriel Christie was seigneur of Noyan; and Thomas Dunn was seigneur of Saint-Armand. The early loyalists settled in and around Missisquoi Bay. A popular misconception is that there was a huge influx of Loyalists to the Eastern Townships. In fact most of the immigration from New England happened in the early nineteenth century, thirty or so years after the Revolution. Most were farmers seeking new lands, something the townships had to offer.
Some Loyalists moved to the area during the Revolutionary War. After it ended Sir Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, expected them to move westward with the rest of the Loyalists. He cut off the rations the government had been providing. However, they resisted efforts to be moved by force and were finally permitted to stay by Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton after Haldimand\'s return to England.
The status of the Eastern Townships Loyalists was resolved when the seigneurs agreed to permit them to stay on their land for a nominal fee. The exact number cannot be ascertained, but a petition they sent to the governor included 378 names. Allowing for a family of five, this could suggest a population of about 1600 or so. The land they settled on, the present-day area of Noyan, Clarenceville and St. Armand, was not part of the Eastern Townships (which were not opened to settlement until 1791), but have since been regarded as part of the Townships.
Under the terms of the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Eastern Townships were open to settlement and a land rush followed. Most of the 3,000 or so settlers came from the United States. A few were Loyalist, at least in spirit, but most simply wanted land and had no strong feeling about nationality. Many more immigrated from the British Isles, including Gaelic-speaking Scots.

Bartlett, William H. 1809 - 1854
Was a British artist, best known for his numerous drawings rendered into steel engravings.
Bartlett was born in Kentish Town, London in 1809. He was apprenticed to John Britton (1771–1857), and became one of the foremost illustrators of topography of his generation. He travelled throughout Britain, and in the mid and late 1840s he travelled extensively in the Balkans and the Middle East. He made four visits to North America between 1836 and 1852.
In 1835, Bartlett first visited the United States to draw the buildings, towns and scenery of the north-eastern states. The finely detailed steel engravings Bartlett produced were published uncolored with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as American Scenery; or Land, Lake, and River: Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature. American Scenery was published by George Virtue in London in 30 monthly installments from 1837 to 1839. Bound editions of the work were published from 1840 onward.
In 1838 Bartlett was in Canada producing sketches for Willis Canadian Scenery Illustrated, published in 1842.
Bartlett made sepia wash drawings the exact size to be engraved. His engraved views were widely copied by artists, but no signed oil painting by his hand is known. Engravings based on Bartletts views were later used in his posthumous History of the United States of North America, continued by Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward and published around 1856.
William Henry Bartlett died of fever on board of a French ship off the coast of Malta returning from his last trip to the Near East, in 1854.
Bartletts primary concern was to render lively impressions of actual sights, as he wrote in the preface to The Nile Boat (London, 1849). Many views contain some ruin or element of the past including many scenes of churches, abbeys, cathedrals and castles, and Nathaniel Parker Willis described Bartletts talent thus: Bartlett could select his point of view so as to bring prominently into his sketch the castle or the cathedral, which history or antiquity had allowed.

Please note all items auctioned are genuine, we do not sell reproductions. A Certificate of Authenticity (COA) can be issued on request.