Kilmarnock Manor

1379A rue Negabamat, Sillery, Quebec

Built in 1815, for John MacNider (1760-1829), the entrepreneurial Seigneur de Metis, and his second wife, Angelica Stuart (1764-1829). The Georgian manor house off the Chemin de Saint-Louis stills stands today, though lost amidst the urban sprawl of modern-day Sillery. It is thought to be the oldest surviving private house in Sillery and apart from a few obvious extensions made in the 1970s, it remains almost unchanged. It is perhaps most recently remembered for being the childhood home of the mother of The Hon. Félix-Gabriel Marchand (1832-1900), Prime Minister of Quebec....

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This house is best associated with...

John MacNider

Merchant and Seigneur of Métis, Quebec

1760-1829

Angelica (Stuart) MacNider

Mrs Angelica (Stuart) Ross, MacNider

1764-1829

Charles William Ross

Charles William Ross, Merchant, of Quebec

b.1792

Angelica (Ross) Graddon

Mrs Angelica Jane (Ross) Graddon

1790-1868

William Graddon

William Graddon, of Kilmarnock Manor, Sillery, Quebec

1829-1904

Kilmarnock was built on one of the several Seigneuries originally granted to Louis d'Ailleboust de Coulonge (1612-1660), the 4th Governor of New France who built Kent House in Quebec City. In 1770, Murdoch Stuart (1737-1821) purchased the most part of the fief of Monceaux - known as "Le Domaine de Monceaux" - from The Hon. Jean-Antoine Panet (1751-1815), 1st Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. Stuart gifted this property to his daughter, Angelica, on which her second husband built Kilmarnock.

The Original View Captured by Canada's First Novelist

Mrs Angela (Stuart) MacNider was the god-daughter of Frances Brooke (1724-1789), the already well-known English authoress who in 1769 wrote the first novel to be written in British Canada, The History of Emily Montague. In the book, Frances poetically describes the view from her home (an old French manor built in 1639) that stood on the land that would later be part of the Kilmarnock estate:

I am at present at an extremely pretty farm on the banks of the River St. Lawrence, the house stands at the foot of a steep mountain covered with a variety of trees forming a verdant sloping wall, which rises in a kind of regular confusion, shade above shade a woody theatre, and has in front this noble river, on which ships continually passing present to the delighted eye the most charming picture imaginable. I never saw a place so formed to inspire that pleasing lassitude, that divine inclination to saunter, which may not improperly be called the luxurious indolence of the country. I intend to build a temple here to the charming goddess of laziness.

Angelica first husband was David Ross, brother of Colonel Walter Ross (1760-1831) of Nigg, Ross-shire, whose family also owned a cotton plantation in Dutch Guyana. After his death, in 1811 she remarried John MacNider, best remembered as the enterprising and visionary Seigneur of Metis, but whose family - among the first to arrive from Scotland after the Conquest - was equally well-known for their shipping and trading business. The MacNiders sold Canadian timber and supplies to the Royal Navy and traded in wine and spices from Europe and the British West Indies to sell in Quebec and Britain.

MacNider's "New Kilmarnock"

The property that Mrs MacNider inherited at Sillery was conveniently situated close to MacNider's shipyards, where his vessels were constructed and his cargoes dispatched. On the hill, MacNider chose to build his country seat, a substantial home of 3-storys (including the dormer roof) over a basement. It is constructed of local fieldstone and the bricks were fired from the red earth found at Cap-Rouge. He named it "New Kilmarnock" after the place of his birth in Scotland. From here, on his private schooner, he could travel almost door-to-door between Kilmarnock and his second Seigneurial Manor at Metis.

The Graddons of Graddon Hill

The MacNiders died within five months of one another at Kilmarnock. He left his estate at Sillery to his stepson, Charles William Ross (b.1792). When Charles died, it passed to his sister, Angelica Jane Ross (1790-1868), the widow of John Graddon (1783-1830). From then, the hill on which the house stood became known as "Graddon's Hill". It retained that name up until 1924 when it was changed to "La Côte à Gignac".

Mrs Graddon sold off 12-acres of the property around 1850 on which the Bignell house was built. By 1879, Kilmarnock was the home of her son, William Graddon (1829-1904), when it was described as "a mossy old hall" and it remained in the Graddon family up until the early 1900s. In 1977, the grounds were sold off in building lots and 17 new houses sprung up on the old estate, crowding around the old house that is today accessed by a private path. It remains a private home, and its privacy is to be respected.