Balfour Township 1880 -1920

Here's my understanding of Balfour Township in the time of its incorporation in 1891. There were six concessions and those concessions (rows, rangs ) had twelve divisions ( lots ) almost of equal proportions.

A lot ran from Concession 1 to Concession 6. Balfour Township was approximately 36 miles square or 6 by 6 miles. Each lot was half a mile.

Example - Concession 4 Lot 5 was half a mile wide and one mile long. A pioneer in those days would likely go to the factor at the post office and claim a piece of land if he was willing to build a home on that land. The pioneer however did not get all of Concession 4 Lot 5. He got a quarter of it. Double lots were given to pioneers who had sons coming of age. ( That is how I understand it ).

In the days before railroads the main road across the land ( the king's highway ) would generally follow the lakes and rivers and seaways. When the railroads came into being the main roads were built next to the railroads or the waterways.

Waterways are puddles and are generally in valleys so inroads from the waterways were called "montée` in French. Here`s a bit of an explanation on how that works from catbear who says -

The legend on that graph
 translates to -
 river or seaway
 king`s road
side road
concession road
 agricultural road ( usually
 the name of the person
who farms the land, etc.

There are also a few montées in Ontario, in French-populated rural areas such as east of Ottawa (Embrun/Casselman) and north of Sudbury (Chelmsford/Azilda). I'm not personally familiar with the ones near Ottawa other than the fact that they exist; I can attest that the ones in the Sudbury Valley are relatively flat but do monte in the sense of travelling perpendicular to the baseline from which the township was surveyed.

While the words don't have literal translations in English, there are analogous road types that serve roughly the same purpose. A rang might be a "concession road" in Ontario or a "range road" in the West -- remember that in other contexts it translates as row, rank or level; while those wouldn't normally be used as names of road types, they do in a very real sense describe the function the roads are actually serving. And a montée (the road which is "climbing" the levels) might be called a "sideroad", a "township road" or a "lot road". Either type of road -- although never both kinds in the same place -- might also be called a "line". 

 The graphic shown here was found on Wikimedia commons and helped me to understand how this system of surveying and land measurement worked.

The following map is a work in progress and shows the first 3 concessions of Balfour Township and the residents of that area from the pioneering days to about 1920.