Saint Croix Courier, St. Stephen, NB
October 5, 1893
GLIMPSES OF THE PAST
Contributions to the History of Charlotte County and the Border Towns.
LXXXV – MORRISTOWN.
While the St. Andrews Loyalists were waiting for their grants, another company of Loyalists and disbanded soldiers arrived and encamped in the wilderness on the banks of the Schoodic.
There was much dissatisfaction at Shelburne, it will be remembered,1 in the spring of 1784. At Port Matoon, near Shelburne, the same feeling prevailed; and a ‘camp election’ was held, at which a number of those who hoped to better their condition voted to come to Quoddy with Capt. Marks.
On the 26th of May, 1784, their vessel arrived and cast anchor opposite where the town of St. Stephen now stands. They landed, put up the British flag, and called the place Morristown.
Capt. Nehemiah Marks, the leader of this colony, was born at Derby, Conn. Soon after the war commenced, he joined the British at New York. He was commissioned by Sir Guy Carleton in 1782, as captain of a company in the corps of Armed Boatmen. He afterwards held a commission as lieutenant in the King’s Own Maryland Loyalists. He was a grantee of St. Andrews as well as of St. Stephen, and one of the first justices of the peace for Charlotte. He was also a member of the first vestry, or church corporation; and was present (and sworn in, according to the custom of the times,) at its second meeting in St. Andrews, in August, 1786. He died at Saint Stephen, on the 12th of July, 1799, at the age of fifty two.
When Capt. Marks and his colonists arrived, they found several persons2 settled on the spot, without any other claim to their lands than that of occupation. Generally in such cases the ‘old inhabitants’ were dispossessed, the Loyalist grantees paying the appraised value of their improvements; but the pioneers of Schoodic were more liberally dealt with, and such as were willing to take the oath of allegiance were allowed to remain and received grants of land.
The Loyalists landed near the house of Robinson Crocker, which stood where Miss Atherton’s house now stands, and encamped along the river bank. St. Stephens bank building now occupies a portion of the site of this first encampment that was then a small field in which Eben Libby had sown peas. He very naturally objected to their proceedings, especially to the destruction of his field of peas; but Capt. Marks told him ‘the king was a gentleman and would pay all damages,’ so the new comers were hospitably treated.
They had not long to wait for their grants.
The ‘garden lots,’ lying along both sides of what we now call King street, from the public landing to the present northern boundary of the town, were granted to ‘John Dunbar and associates,’ 103 in number, on the 16th of September following; together with a separate tract to Capt. Marks, of 100 acres lying west of the garden lots, through which runs the Marks street of to-day. By a further grant they received farm lots north of the town; and many of the farms along the Old Ridge road are still held by their descendants.
In a separate grant to ‘Nehemiah Marks and associates’ was included all the rest of the land within the present town limits from Dennis stream to the cove.
The first deed on record at St. Andrews conveys one of the farm lots above mentioned, and reads as follows:-
This Indenture made this thirteenth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-four. Between John McGrier of the County of Sunbury and province of New Brunswick of the one part and James Reyen of the county and province aforesaid of the other part. Witnesseth that the said John McGrier in Consideration of the sum of Five pounds Halifax Currency to him well and truly in hand paid by him the said James Rayen Have granted bargained sold and aliened and confirmed unto the said James Rayen his Heirs and Assigns All that Messuage or Tenement situate on Schudock River in the port Matoon Association, containing by Estimate of Survey Fifty Acres and Nob’d No. 4 and lettered Letter A, with all Houses, Buildings Gardens, Orchards, Woods, Ways, Waters, Easements and Advantages to the said Messuage or Tenement with all and every Appurtenances thereunto belonging unto the said James Ryan his Heirs and Assigns for ever to hold without Lett hindrance Trouble or Molestation by me me or any person or deriveing under me. Given under my hand and Seal the day and year first above written.
JOH McGEAR.
Signed and sealed and delivered
in the Presence of
JOHN COLVILL
ANDREW MARTIN
A deed given by ‘Noah Brown, Inhabitant of St. Stephens,’ in January, 1788, to ‘Nehemiah Marks, Esqr., Inhabitant of St. Stephen,’3 conveys ‘my Town Lot in Moriston, Number fifty three on the Left, Drawn by me as a Loyalist, together with a Log house there on;’ and one in the following year, (with many curious misspellings,) transfers from Alexander Gordon to ‘Nimiah Marks, Esqr.’, ‘all my Right, Title and Interest in and Claim to that moiety of Land Known by No. 36 on the Left in the Town of Morris Town.’
Soon after this the name of Morristown appears to have been dropped.
1Article lxv.
2See article lii.
3The original is now in possession of his grandson,
the present Nehemiah Marks, Esq., to whom the writer is indebted
for most of the information contained in this article. (It
is well here to make the further acknowledgement, that, although
it is only by the willing help of the many co-laborers whose
names have been or are yet to be mentioned that this series of
contributions to our local history has reached its present
limits, it was in great measure owing to the kind assistance and
encouragement of Mr. Marks when the collection of material was
begun, some years ago, that the work was undertaken.)