Sir John Johnson's Mills
Text from the plaque
Son of the celebrated Indian superintendent, Sir William Johnson, Sir John was born in 1742 in New York's Mohawk Valley. During the American Revolution his Loyalist sympathies brought him to Canada where he organized the King's Royal Regiment of New York. After the Revolution he received extensive Crown-land grants in Glengarry County and elsewhere. He built a grist-mill and sawmill here on the Au Raisin River about 1790 and, on the bank opposite, a manor-house. Appointed to the Legislative Council of Lower Canada in 1796, he died near Montreal in 1830.
Transcribed from the marker, not summarised.
Find the place
The United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry
The Township of South Glengarry
In Williamstown, on the bank of the Raisin River
at the second bend in Road 17 east of Road 19
N 45 08.689 W 74 34.638
Recorded June 2005. Check current access before visiting.
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Visitors' notes
December 4, 2010
Don'tcha just love how this plaque is specific about where Johnson came from (in now another country), but vague in the utmost about where in *this* country he arrived. Not only is the British colony/US state of New York identified, we're told what *valley* he's from there! Yet he emigrated "to Canada", full stop. Where, pray tell, in this vast dominion did he come to? If I didn't know better, I would think a US author unfamiliar with our geography penned this irksome line. At the very least we should identify the province, if not the region, where Johnson arrived and organized the Regiment. Back then, it wasn't "Canada", or even Upper Canada. During the Revolution, he entered the province of Quebec which, from 1774 to 1791, included all of today's southern Ontario. But with Quebec stretching from the Mississippi River to Labrador, even using the provincial name is too vague. In any case, "Canada" as a geographic description should be avoided on plaques and elsewhere, unless we mean the entire country from sea to sea to sea. -Wayne