Carleton Island

Carleton Island is located in the St Lawrence River in upstate New York. It is part of the Town of Cape Vincent, in Jefferson County.

History

Originally held by the Iroquois, the first European to take notice of the island was Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, in 1720. He called it Isle aux Chevreuils, the Island of Roe Bucks, and wrote in 1721 that its bays could be useful. In 1778 British General Frederick Haldimand ordered a fort built on the island to protect Kingston, Ontario in Canada and as a forward base.

The island was renamed Carleton Island after Major General Sir Guy Carleton, who had preceded Haldimand as Governor of the Province of Quebec, as part of the transition to the province of Upper Canada in 1792. John Graves Simcoe named the largest of the Thousand Islands Wolfe island, in a memorial to General James Wolfe, victor of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The surrounding islands bear the names of Wolfe's adjutants in that battle: Howe, Carleton, Amherst and Gage (now Simcoe). The fort on Carleton Island was named after Haldimand.