Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville was granted the seignory of the region in 1694. By 1745 a mountain village had been formed with the first chapel being built in 1798 near the Richelieu River. Nearly twenty years later, in 1822, a ferry operating between Beloeil and Mont-Saint-Hilaire came into service. A bridge, enabling Beloeil and St. Hilaire to be connected by rail, was built in 1848 by the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway. The Campbell family, owners of the mountain after that of Rouville, sold the mountain to a British officer, Brigadier-General Andrew Gault, in whose ownership it remained for 45 years. Gault then bequeathed the mountain to McGill University before his death in 1958.