page_title: United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque to the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Canadian Highlanders, Bernières, Calvados, Normandy, FranceFrançais&#160;: Plaque en hommage aux Highlanders canadiens, Bernières, Calvados.
context_page_description: The United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry is an upper-tier municipality in the Canadian province of Ontario that comprises three historical counties and excludes the City of Cornwall and the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne. However, both Cornwall and Akwesasne form part of a larger census division named for the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. The municipality's administrative office is located within Cornwall.
  The United Counties of SDG borders Quebec to the east and New York in the United States to the south. The sovereign Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne straddles both borders, thus including territory partly within the United Counties, Quebec and New York.
context_section_description: The area along the Saint Lawrence River had been settled by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.  About 2,000 years ago, the Point Peninsula Complex people built earthen mounds, such as those at Serpent Mounds Park and Cameron's Point.  They were gradually replaced about 1000–1300 CE by the Owasco people, who had migrated northward.  They practiced a more settled form of agriculture.
  These people are believed to have developed into the Iroquoian-speaking people, of which the St. Lawrence Iroquoians are identified as having settled along the river valley of the same name.  They spoke Laurentian, practiced agriculture, and built fortified villages, such as those visited and described by explorer Jacques Cartier.  They were a group distinct from the Iroquois Five Nations based in present-day New York.  Historians believe the Mohawk Iroquois pushed out or destroyed the St. Lawrence Iroquoians by 1600 and used the uninhabited territory as a hunting and trapping ground.  In the 17th and early 18th century, some settled at Kahnawake, south of Montreal.
  In the late 1750s, some 30 Mohawk families who had converted to Christianity, who had previously lived at Kahnawake, founded Akwesasne further West (upriver) in what would become Ontario. As of 2019, Akwesasne was the largest Mohawk territory in Canada, with a population of about 12,000 people.
  Though accounts suggest Europeans filtered into the area and had lived in poorly documented, unofficial and widely scattered settlements for some time, the first formally documented European settlement was established in 1784 by United Empire Loyalists, primarily from the former British colony of New York.  After the war for American independence, former colonial soldiers loyal to the Crown and other disbanded soldiers and their families began to settle at the site of Cornwall, then called New Johnstown. Many of the new arrivals were of German origin, with the town being named for Johnstown, New York where many came from.
  The main group were led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Johnson and were soldiers from the First Battalion King's Royal Regiment of New York and a contingent of the 84th Royal Highland Emigrants.  Following the success of rebellious colonists in the American Revolution, many of those afraid for their lives or uncomfortable in the newly independent United States would become "United Empire Loyalists", as they were later called, and migrated to Canada.  The British government helped them settle throughout the Canadas as a reward for their loyalty and to compensate them for their losses in the United States. One of the chief settlement regions was the St Lawrence River valley, from Kingston to Cornwall, which would later be known as "loyalist country".
  They founded a settlement on the site formerly called Pointe Maligne by French colonists and renamed it "Royal Settlement #2", and, later, "New Johnstown".  It was later renamed Cornwall by the British for the Duke of Cornwall by proclamation of Prince George, and in 1834 the town became one of the first incorporated municipalities in the British colony of Upper Canada.  The construction of the Cornwall Canal between 1834 and 1842 accelerated the community's development into a regional and industrial economic "capital" for a growing hinterland of towns and villages.
  The united counties comprises six of the original eight Royal Townships of Upper Canada: Lancaster, Charlottenburgh, Cornwall, Osnabruck, Williamsburgh and Matilda. These six townships were divided into 12 a few years after their creation. Each set of four townships became one of three separate counties: Lancaster, Charlottenburgh, Kenyon and Lochiel became Glengarry County, Cornwall, Osnabruck, Finch and Roxborough became Stormont County, and Williamsburgh, Matilda, Winchester and Mountain became Dundas County. The three counties were later amalgamated to form the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry.
  In 1846, the population of Cornwall was about 1,600 and there were many brick and stone houses as well as a stone courthouse and jail, but the surr
caption: Plaque to the SDG Highlanders heroes at ‘‘Juno Beach, Calvados, Normandy, France.
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