Montreal harbour in 1830, courtesy McCord Museum Archives
Matthew Elder
‘Places of Brome County’ is a continuing feature in Tempo, written in conjunction with Anne-Marie Charuest of the Lac-Brome Museum Archives, telling the stories behind historic locations in Brome County. Coincidently, the museum is presenting an exhibition until April 12, 2025, ‘From A to Z: The Path of Brome County’s Family Origins’, on the stories behind selected street and road names in the area.
Residents of the Eastern Townships occasionally travel to Montreal and although we complain about traffic as we near the city – not to mention the maze of orange-signed detours once we arrive – today’s challenges pale in comparison to what our forefathers dealt with two centuries ago. Not only did horse-drawn carriages and wagons have to travel many hours along rough and muddy roads, the journey’s final leg required a crossing by ferry over the turbulent St. Lawrence River.
It was one such trek in 1826 that claimed the life of Stephen Westover, son of the early settler Moses Westover and mill operator on the creek in Sutton Township that now bears the family name. Stephen was also one of the area’s first government land surveyors, as well as a justice of the peace and a captain in the militia.
Only a decade after his marriage to Dorinda Ball, with whom he had five children, Stephen’s life came to an end after he fell into the St. Lawrence River from the ferry on which he was travelling to Longueuil from Le Nouveau Marché (Place Jacques Cartier) was violently pitched around by the strong current. Also cast into the turbulent waters from a horse-drawn wagon was Henry Rosenberger and his wife Catherine Westover, Stephen’s niece. Rosenberger managed to reach the ferry’s side, while Catherine was rescued by a lifeboat, in all likelihood assisted in the water by Stephen himself struggling to stay afloat before drowning.
In a paper written in 1952, Brome County Historical Society archivist Harry Shufelt quoted from a news story in the Montreal Herald on Oct. 7, 1926: “As the William Annesley steamboat was crossing the sault, as a consequence of the rapidity of the current [the boat] was whirled round about and thrown so far upon one side that two men and a woman and a double wagon were precipitated into the water. [Stephen Westover] was observed to sink about 15 or 20 yards [downstream], at the moment the woman was pulled from the water.”
Research by the BCHS Archives (now also known as the Lac-Brome Museum Archives) confirmed the relationship between Stephen and the Rosenbergers, who lived in St. Armand, which is in the same district as Clarenceville, where Westover family members first arrived from Massachusetts in 1784. Catherine was the daughter of Stephen’s brother, Asa, who along with another brother, John, and their father Moses, as well as several Westover relatives, were granted land concessions in Sutton Township in 1802.
Ferry accidents were not uncommon between Montreal and the South Shore in the early 19th century. In 1819, 40 people drowned when a ferry bound for Laprairie partially capsized in the Lachine Rapids off Nun’s Island. There were only three survivors.
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