A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861Wrong, George McKinnon
History
A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861
Wrong, George McKinnon
La Malbaie (Québec); Nairne family; Nairne, John, -1802
The rent from the land granted to the habitants was scarcely worth
reckoning, as the people paid nothing until the land was productive, a
condition that could apparently be postponed indefinitely. Since under
the seigniorial tenure, the farmers must use the seigneur's grist mill,
Nairne had his mill in operation and Fraser was building one in 1798.
Nairne had also one or more mills for sawing timber. "I hope there are a
great many loggs brought and to be brought to your and my saw mills,"
Fraser wrote in 1797, but an income of only L20 a year from the mills
does not indicate any extortionate exercise of seigniorial rights.
Already some of the city people were beginning to find Murray Bay a
delightful place in which to spend the summer. In 1799 Nairne writes to
a friend, Richard Dobie, in Montreal, that it is the best place in the
world for the recovery of strength. "You shall drink the best of wheys
and breathe the purest sea air in the world and, although luxuries will
be wanting, our friendship and the best things the place can afford to
you, I know, will make ample amends:"--a simple standard of living that
subsequent generations would do well to remember. In 1801 the manor
house must have been the scene of some gaiety for there and at Malcolm
Fraser's were half a score of visitors. Christine, Nairne's second
daughter, who preferred Quebec to the paternal roof, had come home for a
visit and other visitors were the Hon. G. Taschereau and his son, Mr.
Usburn, Mr. Masson, Mrs. Langan and Mrs. Bleakley, Fraser's daughters,
described as "rich ladies from Montreal," the last with three children.
No doubt they drove and walked, rowed and fished, much as people from
New York and Baltimore and Boston and Toronto and Montreal do still on
the same scene, when they are not pursuing golf balls. The coming of
people with more luxurious habits made improvements necessary and also,
Nairne says, increased the expense of living--a complaint that
successive generations have continued with justice to make.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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