Gilbert Hyatt is recognized as the founder of the present-day City of Sherbrooke, Quebec, which has grown up around the place where the Saint-François and Magog Rivers meet. In Hyatt’s time, there was considerable traffic along the Magog River by the St. Francis First Nation. The area of today’s Sherbroooke was known as the “Big Forks” and farther south, along the Saint-François River, the area which became Lennoxville was known as “Little Forks”. Big Forks was the ideal place to build a mill. Gilbert Hyatt erected one there in 1802, so that for years Sherbooke was known as “Hyatt’s Mills”. Gilbert Hyatt saw great possibilities of an industry using some of the endless supply of trees as far as the eye could see.

In 1792, Gilbert Hyatt and Josiah Sawyer had opened a road, using their own money to finance it, through to Missisquoi Bay from where Ascot Township was being laid out. He had petitioned for the establishment of the Township of Ascot, April 29, 1795.1 With this in mind, he invested his own money, making surveys and building bridges, roads and mills.

For all his endeavors and hard work, Hyatt was only granted part of the Township of Ascot, along with thirty associates. In August 1799, Gilbert presented a statement of the expenses incurred while setting up the Township divisions. This was notarized by a sworn statement made before Calvin May and Jesse Pennoyer. But, in 1803 when the Townshp of Ascot officially came into being, Gilbert Hyatt learned the news that he had been made land agent, with thirty others as associates, but had been granted far too little land to defray the total amount of his expenses. Some of his holdings were later seized by creditors to pay the debts resulting from these expenses incurred during the previous years.

Gilbert Hyatt was born in Arlington, Vermont, the son of Abraham Hyatt, who had fought with Burgoyne in the Saratoga campaign in 1777. Gilbert joined the Loyal Americans under Major Jessup and served during the American Revolutionary War in this Loyalist regiment. He had several brothers: Joseph, Cornelius, Jacob and Abraham, who were also later listed as associates in Ascot Township. The family must have prospered in the end, as there are many descendants in the area with the Hyatt name. Gilbert declared, in his petition to the government in 1800, “he was the first to settle in the wild lands of the Crown in the County of Bedford”.

By Jean Darrah McCaw, U.E., C.M.H.
Branch Genealogist, Sir John Johnson Centennial Branch
The United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada

(1) Brome County Historical Society, Supplementary Inventory, 1993 (Ascot Township)