John Whitlock, a captain in the Queen's American Rangers, who moved to Nova Scotia and then to Cavagnal after the American War of Independence, bought three lots roughly corresponding to what is now the Whitlock golf course - which became Whitlock farm. This was the farmhouse he built in 1812. His son, William Coley Whitlock (1787-1876) received the farm in 1817. He published a broadsheet entitled John Gripe, printed on a press in his cellar, urging the settlers to overthrow the colonial administration. After the Patriotes in the 1837-38 Rebellion were defeated at St. Eustache, he was arrested as a suspected rebel and spent several months in prison, before being released after the amnesty in May 1938.