A great Ojibwa chief ’s granddaughter lived in Mansonville and Georgeville in the mid 1800s
Agranddaughter of a famous Ojibwa chief from Minnesota was married to James H. Mcvey, who was the first Customs Collector in Potton. The couple lived in Mansonville from 1844 to 1858, after which Mr. Mcvey was assigned to Georgeville, across Lake Memphremagog in Stanstead County.
According to the Public Accounts of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, James Mcvey’s salary as Collector in Georgeville for the year 1859 was $500, increased to $600 by 1862.
Mrs. Mcvey’s maiden name was Frances Ermatinger. She was the daughter of Charlotte Mono-nonco Katawabeday (1785-1850) and Charles Oakes Ermatinger, of Montreal and Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.
Charlotte, whose maiden name was alternatively spelled Cattoonaluté, Kalawabide or Kadowaubeda, was herself a daughter of tribal leaders Kahdewahbeday “Broken Tooth” Kautahwaubets Racine, born in 1753 in
Sandy Lake, Minnesota, and Angelica Racine (née Mangosid), born in 1748 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Chief Ka-ta-wa-be-da (Broken Tooth) was known in the late 1700s as the “Emperor of Sandy Lake”. His accompanying rough portrait is from Google Images.
Mrs. Mcvey’s father Charles Ermatinger, whose own father came to Montreal from Schaffhausen, Switzerland, around 1761, was even more celebrated than Broken Tooth. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
Charles Ermatinger was a fur trader, merchant, militia officer, and Justice of the Peace, born in Montreal in 1776 in Montreal, and died there in 1833. By 1810, he was established as an independent trader and merchant at Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, on the north, or British, side of the St Mary’s River.
About 1800 Ermatinger married, according to the custom of the country, a 15-year-old Ojibwa girl of the Saulteaux tribe, Charlotte Cattoonaluté, with whom he had eight children by 1815; one boy was sent in 1817 to be educated in Trois-rivières, and another was sent the following year to Montreal. (One of the children was Frances, who married James Mcvey.)
By 1812, it is recorded that 15 European families called Sault home, along with much larger numbers of of Saulteaux and Métis.
He built the first stone house in the area at the enormous cost of £2,000. The fur trader John Siveright remarked in May 1823 that “Mr. Ermatinger’s New Elegant Mansion is quite an asset when all others are buildings indifferent in appearance . . . besides he has begun two stone towers on each side of the house, one for a Mill & the other as inn house, all being on a grand scale, & do much credit to his good taste.”
Charles Ermatinger died a wealthy man in Montreal in 1833; it is likely that his daughter Frances Mcvey received an inheritance.
A final note: Phil Fontaine, former National Chief, Assembly of First
Nations, is a member of the Saulteaux First Nation, as was Charlotte Ermatinger.
Submitted by Peter White, president, Brome County Historical Society