At the base of Hog’s Back Mountain, an old logging road runs the length of the mountain from Ch. Coolidge to Ch. des Falcon-Pelerines parallel to Ch. du Lac. About a third of the way south from Ch. Coolidge is a clearing where logs were piled near an old gravel pit. On the eastern side of the road there is a sunken shape of an old stone foundation and nearby a pile of rocks reminiscent of a grave. Family lore has it that the house belonged to squatters on the land during the period of time that the land was out of Knowlton hands, possibly when Charles Ethier had settled on the northern edge of lot 28 tenth range Potton township.

Squatters were not uncommon during the early settlement of the Eastern Townships. Nicholas Austin famously settled in Potton before being informed that his crown land grant was actually in Bolton Township further north along Lake Memphremagog. Settlers trickled into the Townships and began cultivating the land before the issues of property ownership were settled. Such was the case of Samuel Perkins who settled on lot 18 in the tenth range in the Township of Potton prior to 1842 with a ‘quit claim’ by occupier as the listed tenure. His death in 1845 established the cemetery on the lot. However, that land was a part of the crown reserve and later granted to Gardner B. Jones on May 2, 1868. Others traded land without legal documentation as was the case of the land exchanges between Richard Holland and Abraham Channell. Others simply may not have had any means to go anywhere else and may have resided in the homes or on the property of relatives, such as may have been the case for  John ‘Silent’ Dimond.

In Wiilliam Bryant Bullock’s ‘Beautiful Waters: Devoted to the Memphremagog Region in History, Legend, Anecdote, Folklore, Poetry, Drama’, he describes John Dimond as

An expert fisherman of the 50's who lived in a hut was Silent Dimond and his haunt was on the west shore, opposite Georgeville. "Silent" was about as social as an Indian — monosyllables were usually the extent of a conversation. One could crack through Silent's stoicism, however, by asking if his cabin was comfortable in the zero winter nights; his expressive answer would be: "Keep h of a fire — roast on one side, freeze on t'other, bigosh!” Mr. Dimond seemed to have an uncanny instinct in locating the longe and catching them when it was impossible for others to do so.

Knowlton is located across the lake from Georgeville and may have been where John Dimond’s hut was located. The passage then goes on to describe John Dimond’s death in the waters of Lake Memphremagog; the swells became so rough they threatened to capsize the row boats of both John and fellow fisherman Moses Achilles, who had both been anchored off Black Point, one mile south of Lord’s Island. While Moses Achilles managed to make it to shore, he turned to see John Dimond’s boat empty. John was buried at the Knowlton Landing cemetery being the nephew of Levi Knowlton. The notification of death posted in the Stanstead Journal states that “John Dimond, a noted fisherman on Lake Memphremagog, recently came to his death by drowning, while in a state of temporary insanity, by jumping into the Lake from his canoe. He is said to have been a very singular person, although liked by those who were acquainted with him, and had penetrated beneath his outside coat of eccentricities.”

Another accounting of the event many years later adds more details:

‘Silent’ lived in a cabin on the western shore opposite Georgeville and came by his name by hardly saying a word to a living soul from one end of the year to another. If you said ‘Good morning,’ he couldn’t think of an answer. If you said, ‘Have a drink on me,’ he’d only grunt and nod.

He was fishing for lake trout along with Moses Achilles one day when the weather turned quickly nasty as if often does in summer. The swells got up and their anchors dragged and Moses packed up and headed his skiff for shelter. The wind howled and the lightning flashed and the rain came pelting down and Moses had a hard time making it safe but he’d looked back and had seen ‘Silent’ John rowing like mad behind him in a lightning flash. He paid little attention after that for he had all he could do to keep his own boat from swamping and, if anyone knew the weathers, it was ‘Silent’ John Dimond. 

But when Moses reached shore and had time to breathe, he looked out and saw only ‘Silent’s empty skiff bobbing in the chop. They grappled for several days before they came up with the body. He was buried in Potton.

John Fitz Tuck, owner of the inn at the Landing, recounted an occurrence when he and John Dimond rescued a man who had fallen through the ice:

As I looked out on the lake one cold morning I saw a man coming on the ice where it had been open the night before. I turned my head to speak to my neighbor, Mr. Diamond, telling him a man was trying to cross the ice, then turned again to look, but by this time he had broken through. This was about one ice from the shore.

We got our boats and hand-sled as quickly as possible and went to his aid; Mr. Diamond was a first class boatman. He got into the bow and I used the oars; he made a grab for the man and caught him, then we got him into the boat. We had to break the ice a number of times before we got a hold for the boat, which we put on the sled and came to shore with the man who was nearly gone.”

 John F. Tuck who later be among the men to search and retrieve John Dimond’s body from the lake following his drowning:

On hearing that Mr. John Dimond had fallen from his canoe into the lake and had been drowned near Black Point, Mr. Guilford Magoon, and I went down with others to grapple for the body. On the second day when all had given up the work, Mr. Guildford said to me: “John, let us take one more round.’ We started from the anchor where he had been fishing, following the course we thought he might take in going to the shore. We had gone some distance when Mr. Guilford called: “John, go easy; I’ve caught hold of something.” It was the body of the unfortunate man, John Dimond who was buried at Knowlton Landing in Potton.”

John ‘Silent’ Diamond was the son of John Dimond (1783-1831) and Susan Stone (1787-1877), the sister of Levi Knowlton’s second wife Philena Stone. John Dimond Sr. had come to the Eastern Townships with his father Reuben Dimond, one of Asa Porter’s original associates.

Originally settling in Brome at Dunkin Place once owned by Ezekiel Knowlton,  John Dimond Sr bought lot 28 in the tenth range Bolton Township (also known as Channel Place) July 4, 1818, from Abraham Channel. On a subsequent deed in 1821 for property in Brome, John Dimond of Bolton is noted as an inn holder. However, John Dimond’s stay in Bolton was short. By 1825, he sold Channel Place (then called Dimond Place) back to Abraham Channel and purchased land in Stanstead township. Abraham Channel then sold the lake side property to Levi Knowlton, John’s brother-in-law, three months later and it was subsequently sold to Elliot Coolidge (noted as farmer of Bolton) in 1826.

John Dimond Sr. drowned in Lake Memphremagog during a winter crossing in 1831. He left behind a wife and ten children. One of their young children, Eliza Dimond, was adopted by Polly Knowlton and Elliot Coolidge where she learned all the skills to run a household and taught at the Tibbitt’s Hill school prior to marriage.37 At least one daughter, Caroline, moved to Stanbridge with Susan. Six years after the death of her husband, Susan Stone remarried to Nathan Palmer of Stanbridge, a widower with several small children of his own. Susan Stone and Nathan Palmer would die months apart in 1860. In 1848, Eliza married Orrin Rexford and their son Dr. Elson Irving Rexford, became an educator of note serving as president of the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers. She spent most of her life caring for one sick relative or another, including her adoptive mother Polly Knowlton and brother George Dimond. In the last decade of her life, she was being freed from such burdens. At one point the six Dimond sisters (Lucinda, Philena, Caroline, Jane, Susan, and Eliza) gathered at Knowlton.

When John Dimond Jr. drowned in Lake Memphremagog as his father had 30 years earlier, he was survived by his sisters and brothers, most of whom had all married and moved away from Knowlton Landing to establish their own lives. His family at the landing included his brother George Dimond, who owned the property later known as Denman’s point, and his cousin Miles Knowlton who ran the Knowlton Landing farm. John Dimond Jr. was buried in the Knowlton Landing cemetery in the coffin originally built for James Baker Hoyt, an associate of Miles Knowlton in the Mountain House building who was presumed drowned but who had in fact escaped from debts by moving to Minnesota.