From a history written by Dorothy Campbell Poole (b. 1895) in 1964 - a history
assembled from family books letters and papers; from inscriptions on tombstones
in the Saxton plot in Mt Hermon Cemetery Quebec; from Court Records; and above
all from the invaluable family trees compiled by her cousin Myrtle Campbell
Fender through years of patient research.
Louisa Wurtele, born 1838, died Jan. 31, 1936 in
her 99th year.She was the
daughter of Jonathan Wurtele and Louisa Sophia Campbell (1800-1885). Married in
1861 James Rankine (1825-1908) representative in Montreal of J.& P. Coats,
the thread manufacturers of Paisley Scotland.They had 8 children.
Louisa, who married John Fair; James; Archibald;
John; Norman; Alan Coats; Arthur Glen Ernest; and Isobel.
Of these,
2/6. Alan Coates Rankin became a Colonel and Assistant Director of
Medical Services of the Canadian Army, residing in Ottawa.
2/7. Arthur Glen Ernest Rankin became a barrister and in 1941 had his
office at 276 St.James St. Montreal.
He and his brother Alan together inherited from
their mother Louisa on her death in 1936the Seigneurie of L'Islet du Portage at Pointe Seche previously owned by
her Uncle John Saxton Campbell who bought it in 1835.John and his wife Mary Vivian spent their Summers at Pointe
Seche from 1835 to 1841 but it seems that after that the house was seldom
occupied and left in charge of a caretaker who lived in the cottage. John died
at Penzance, Cornwall, April 2 1855, his widow living on till Nov.17, 1877.Having no children, he bequeathed
Pointe Seche after his widow's use, to all his nephews and nieces who included
Archibald Campbell; and he being a lawyer, administered the estate for his Aunt
Mary until her death.It was
during these years 1855/1877 thatWilliam Wallace Campbell and his brothers and sisters spent so many
childhood Summers at the Seigneurie of which they all held treasured memories.
On the widow's death, one of the nieces, Louisa Sophia's daughter Louise
Wurtele Rankine, bought out the shares of all the others and took over the
Seigneurie which she eventually bequeathed to her two youngest sons Capt. Alan
and Ernest Rankin, who came into their inheritance on her death in 1936.
Dorothy Campbell Poole writes:
"In 1835 John purchased from the estate of
Andrew Lachlan Fraser the ancient Seigneurie of L'Islet du Portage, Pointe
Seche, near St.Andre de Kamouraska on the lower St.Lawrence.Founded in 1672 the Seigneurie, after
many vicissitudes, passed out of French into Scottish hands in 1764, and in
1777 was bought by Capt. Malcolm Fraser in whose family it remained for three
generations.Extending 6 miles
along the St.Lawrence with a depth of 8 miles, it embraced 30,000 acres of
virgin forests and small farms.Set back on a bluff fringing the river stood the manor house, ruggedly
built of staunch timbers by ships' carpenters in the French Colonial manner,
while fringing the shore below were strung granaries, a mill, warehouses, a
school, wharves and a shipyard. Here the Frasers had built several schooners
and a square-rigged ship. The manor house itself dates from their last
years.Our family lore has it that
timbers from the Seigneurie were ferried across the St.Lawrence to the shipyard
of John Sexton Campbell for the construction of the "Royal William",
the first ship to cross the Atlantic solely under steam, in 1832.This dovetails with the historical fact
that the "Royal William" was built in the yards of Campbell &
Black, ship-builders of Quebec and identifies John Sexton Campbell or his
father Archibald, as the Campbell of that partnership. Another anecdote linking
John with ship-building comes from Lady Noble who recounts that "My Uncle
John had prodigious physical strength and it is told of him that when a
schooner being launched stuck on the ways, he put his shoulder to her and the
vessel moved off."
"In 1941, when my husband Chester and I were motoring in
Canada we found Pointe Seche after a diligent search, about 100 miles down
river from Quebec.Imagine our
delight, on struggling up the stony path, to be met by one of these now elderly
sons, Ernest, who happened to be there with yet another brother to make certain
readjustments necessitated by the Canadian Government's annulment of ancient
Seigneural rights effective that very week.He most kindly showed us all over the quaint,
weather-bleached and now almost empty house, regaling us with curious legends.
The echoing house stood high off the ground, an unusually wide veranda
encircling the main floor, to which a flight of broad wooden steps gave access.
From the main entrance in the last gable, an airy hallway ran straight through
to the West end where similar steps led down to the garden.Spacious living rooms opened into the
main salon reaching up two stories with a gallery along one side. The bedrooms
upstairs, divided by a central hall, were quite simple. One had been securely
boarded up "because of the ghost." In another an austere iron bed had
given repose to Lord Wolseley during the Red River Insurrection in 1870. A
decrepit grand piano still stood in one corner of the drawing room and a few
oil portraits on the denuded and weather-stained walls looked forlorn and
reproachful in the musty atmosphere of disuse.A gaunt old French retainer**, whose mother had been
housekeeper in my grandparents day, gallantly insisted in his broad patois that
I closely resembled one of those feminine ancestors whom he claimed to remember
clearly as a visitor to the Seigneurie during his childhood.He even recollected what an
exceptionally strong swimmer my grandfather had been.What has become of this old Seigneurie since then we have
never heard; but its dreamy atmosphere of timelessness lingers with one
nostalgically."
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