Blythfield Township lies in eastern Renfrew County and was originally surveyed and opened in 1843 under the classic Ontario concession-and-lot system. Early Crown surveyors laid out its grid of rectangular lots—typically 640-acre squares—with road allowances forming an orthogonal network that remains visible today in field surveys and legal plans.

By the 1850s and 1860s, as settlers and pioneer homesteaders arrived, detailed patent maps and subscription wall maps recorded individual land grants and lot ownership. These early cadastral maps, now digitized at McGill’s County Atlas and provincial archives, still serve as essential references when tracing boundaries or verifying titles.

Blythfield was among the townships amalgamated in 2001 to form Greater Madawaska, alongside Bagot, Brougham, Griffith, and Matawatchan—an administrative evolution that left cadastral boundaries largely intact despite municipal realignments.

From a surveyor’s perspective, Blythfield offers a textbook case in concession-era cadastral planning:

• Original survey plats set out consistent lot and concession geometry, with sideroad allowances and lot numbers still forming the backbone of current parcel layouts.

• Historical tax rolls, patent records, and agricultural schedules (e.g., 1861 census) provide lineage and boundary context that often persist in property abstracts.