Glimpses of the Past: History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784

Another store was built and Benjamin Atherton took charge of it. In addition to trade with the Indians he did business with the white settlers under the name and title of Atherton & Co. Furs and produce were frequently transported to St. John from the post at St. Anns in summer in gondolas and in the winter on ice by means of horses and sleds.

The volume of business in the aggregate was quite large for those days. In addition to the exportation of furs and peltry to the value of $40,000, the company sent to New England and the West Indies large quantities of pollock, mackerel and codfish taken in the Bay. The gasperaux fishery at St. John was also an important factor in their trade; in the seven years previous to the Revolutionary war Simonds & White shipped to Boston 4,000 barrels of gasperaux valued at about $12,000. They also shipped quantities of bass, shad, salmon and sturgeon. Perhaps their profits would have been even greater had not many of the men who were at other times in their employ engaged in fishing on their own account. The community was not an ideal one for Mr. Simonds writes: “In the spring we must go into the Weirs every tide to keep our men from selling bait to the fishermen for rum, which is not only attended with the loss of the fish so sold, but of the men’s time who would drink so to excess as not to be able to do anything.”

In the Champlain’s map of St. John harbor and its surroundings a lake or pond is shown at the spot where the Union depot and freight sheds stand today. At the outlet of this pond a dam and tide mill were built by Simonds and White in the year 1766. The mill was put in operation the next season and from that day to this lumber has been one of St. John’s staple articles of export. Primitive as was this saw-mill some difficulty was experienced in procuring proper hands to run it. James Simonds in his letter of June 20, 1767, to Hazen & Jarvis writes:

“The sloop Bachelor did not return from up the River before this morning. We have but few fish; the men that undertook the weirs were very slow and unfaithful, and not only neglected the fisheries but the Mill also, for which reason we have not a full load for the Sloop. The Mill we have not nor shall be able to keep at work without more and better hands; have four less than we ought to have for different branches of work, if all of them was good boys, and with those that are bad must make a bad figure. We have promised 30 to 40 hogsheads Lime to Mr. Best of Halifax and hourly expect a vessel for it, and have encouragement of a contract for the King’s works there; expect nothing but to disappoint him as that rascal negro West cannot be flattered or drove to do one fourth of a man’s work; shall give him a strong dose on Monday morning which will make him better or worse, no dependence can be put on him. * * We want three men, one that understands tending a mill and two teamsters, which we beg you will send in next vessel.”

The correspondence of the partners shows that the manufacture of lime continued to engage their attention. The first kiln was built in rear of the store and dwellings at Portland Point near the base of Fort Howe hill. When James Simonds visited Halifax in September, 1764, he wrote a very interesting letter to Samuel Blodget in which he says: “I have been with the King’s chief Mason; have shewn him a sample of our lime; he likes it well and gives me encouragement that he will take all of me that he wants either for public or private use (he is the only dealer in town) at a rate that will net at St. John’s three dollars or more pr. hogshead.”

Several coopers were sent from Newburyport by Hazen & Jarvis to manufacture hogsheads for the lime business, one hogshead being considered about as much as a man could make in a day. With the view of securing a more desirable class of employees the company began at this time to take into their service married men with families for whose accommodation they built comfortable log houses. Yet even here there were disappointments, as we learn from another of Mr. Simonds’ letters in which he says: “Our help mostly failed us last fall, and the hay season was the wettest that was ever known, which prevented our having a sufficient quantity of lime-stone dug and wood cut to employ the teams to good advantage. * * Old Abbot (the cooper) did not do one day’s work for sixty days after his wife arrived; no dependence can be placed on him, and as Stevens goes a fishing in the Spring on his own account we shall want another cooper and three labourers. It will make a material difference if these men are of a tractable disposition.”

The lime manufactured was shipped to Halifax, Boston and the West Indies, and on one occasion a cargo was sent to Newfoundland.

LIST OF COMPANY EFFECTS AT ST. JOHN.

There is also an inventory of the goods in the company’s store at this time, which were valued at £613. The goods were such as were needed by the white settlers up the river as well as for the Indian trade. There was quite a varied assortment, yet the many deficiencies indicate the simplicity of living then in vogue.

The list of household goods and chattels, the property of Simonds and White, was a very meagre one indeed. The more common and necessary articles of furniture such as bedsteads, tables, benches, etc., were probably manufactured on the premises by means of the carpenter’s axe, adze, hammer and saw. In addition they had a small supply of bedding, 6 camp chairs, 1 desk, 1 writing desk, 1 lamp, 4 iron candlesticks, 1 ink stand.

Dishes—4 pewter plates, 2 pewter platters, 2 pewter porringers, 2 metal teapots, 8 stone plates, 1 stone platter, 1 stone jug, 1 earthen teapot, 3 china cups and saucers, 2 quart basons, 2 punch bowls.

Cutlery, etc.—1¼ doz. case knives and forks, 1½ doz. spoons, 1 large spoon, 6 silver tea spoons. Kitchen utensils—2 frying pans, 2 tea kettles, 1 chafing dish, 1 cullender, 4 iron pots, 1 brass kettle, 2 quart pots, 2 two-quart pots, 3 pints, 2 tin kettles, 1 pail, 1 pair dogs, 1 shovel and tongs, 1 tea-chest, 1 coffee mill, 2 pairs steel yards, 1 beam scale, 2 sets weights.

The total value of household articles was but £33, 17, 5, and it is doubtful whether the personal belongings of Simonds and White would have added much to the common stock. No wonder James Simonds observed with grim humor, as he described life at St. John in those days, “gentility is out of the question.”

William Hazen was afraid the business during the first year had been unprofitable, and at the end of the year called for a settlement of accounts in order to find out the exact state of affairs. James Simonds wrote: “We are sensible of the necessity of settling our accts. soon, but have always been obliged to work so much abroad as not to be able to have our books posted up, besides the necessity of taking an exact acct. of all goods on hand and making an exact computation of the cost of all buildings and works cannot be hurried over and would require time. We could have had all those things ready, but must have neglected completing preparations for the winter’s work, which we think would be far greater damage to us than the accts. remaining unfinished for a few months and for us to finish them in the winter evenings.”

Doubtless the winter evenings were entirely at their disposal. There were no social engagements to fill, no societies to attend, no places of amusement to while away the hours. The church, the lodge room, the club were reserved for coming generations. Even the satisfaction to be derived from good, general reading was wanting for an inventory of household effects made in 1775 shows that Mr. Simonds owned a Bible and Prayer Book and Mr. White a Bible and a copy of Watt’s psalms and hymns, and the only other book of which mention can be found is an almanac. It would seem that one at least of the partners was fond of fiction, for Samuel Blodget writes in a letter to James White—the latter then at Crown Point—Dec. 8, 1762: “I confess I was a little surprised att your opinion of Roderick Random, for it is allowed by all that I ever heard judg of it, that it is a well wrote Novell.”

No account of the business of St. John during the period of the operations of its finest trading company, would be complete without some mention of its shipping. Naturally it was the day of small things with the future “winter port” of Canada. The ship that bore de Monts and Champlain to the Bay of Fundy in the month of June, 1604, was a little vessel of 150 tons, smaller than some of our coasting schooners of today; but the vessels employed in the business of Hazen, Simonds and White and their associates, were smaller still, ranging from ten to eighty tons burden.

The qualities essential to successful navigation—pluck, enterprise and skill—were admirably displayed by the hardy mariners of New England, the pioneers of commerce in the Bay of Fundy. In their day there were no light houses, or beacons, or fog-horns and even charts were imperfect, yet there were few disasters. The names of Jonathan Leavitt and his contemporaries are worthy of a foremost place in our commercial annals.

The following list of the vessels owned or chartered by Hazen, Simonds and White in their business at St. John, A. D. 1764–1774, is probably as complete as at this distance of time it can be made:

Names of Vessels and Masters.

Of the vessels enumerated the schooners Wilmot, Polly, Eunice and Betsy and the sloops Bachelor, Peggy & Molly, Merimack and St. John’s Paquet were owned by the company.

For some years the company paid insurance at the rate of 3 per cent. on the vessels and their cargoes, but the insurance was obtained with difficulty and after a time was discontinued on the ground that the business would not bear the expense.

The Wilmot proved unfit for the company’s business and on May 23, 1766. Hazen & Jarvis wrote their partners: “We have purchased a very good and valuable cargo for the schooner Wilmot. It consists of oxen, cows, calves, flour, cyder, boards and bricks, and we have sent her under care of Captain Beck to Newfoundland for sale. We hope we will get a good price for her.” This hope was not realized, for the schooner lost her deckload of cattle in a storm and the voyage was unprofitable.

The first vessel built and launched at St. John was the little schooner “Betsy,” the construction of which was undertaken by Simonds & White at Portland Point in 1769. Little did her designers and builders imagine that they were the pioneers of an industry that would one day place St. John in the fourth place among the cities of the British empire as a shipowning port and lead her to claim the proud title of “the Liverpool of America.” And we may note in passing, that at the time of the turning of the first sod of the Intercolonial railway in 1853, employes from seventeen shipyards—1,090 men in all—marched in the procession and shipbuilding had not then attained its greatest development. It was an important industry indeed in its day.

The materials used in building, the Betsy were cut almost upon the spot, and the rigging was sent from Newburyport by William Hazen, while about half the iron was taken from one of the company’s old vessels. One Michael Hodge agreed to build the schooner for 23 1–3 shillings per ton. Adonijah Colby was his assistant. The schooner was launched in the autumn of the year 1769 and named the Betsy in honor of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who about this time was married to James White. The little vessel sailed for Newburyport with her first cargo on the 3d of February following, Jonathan Leavitt going in her as master. She was sold the next year for £200, and Mr. Simonds expressed his satisfaction at the price as better than he had expected.

This first venture in the line of shipbuilding was followed in due course by others. Jonathan Leavitt and Samuel Peabody in 1773 built a schooner which they called the “Menaguash,” in honor of the old Indian name of St. John, and the following year William Hazen made an agreement with James Woodman and Zebedee Ring to build a vessel at St. John, Woodman’s wages to be art the rate of 4 shillings a day, and the payment in part to be one hundred acres of land at two shillings an acre. The land referred to was situated in the old township of Conway opposite the Indian House—probably at Pleasant Point.

With a view to pursuing the business of shipbuilding William Hazen at the time he settled at Portland Point brought with him one John Jones, a master ship-builder. The outbreak of the Revolutionary war put a stop to every kind of business, but it is said that Mr. Jones’ employers paid his wages for some time in order to retain his services under the expectation that the war would soon be over and they would be able again to build ships. Mr. Jones improved the waiting time by taking to himself a wife, Mercy Hilderick, who had come to St. John on a visit to her sister, the wife of Samuel Peabody. There being no clergyman at hand the ceremony was performed by Gervas Say, a Justice of the Peace for the county of Sunbury, who then lived on the west side of the Harbor in the Township of Conway.

A great impetus was given to the settlement of the wilderness parts of Nova Scotia by the proclamations issued by Governor Lawrence in 1758 and 1759 offering free grants of lands to those who would become settlers. In consequence of these proclamations attention was directed to the St. John river. The fertile lands along its borders greatly pleased the men of Massachusetts who explored it, and led to their founding the Township of Maugerville, while, almost simultaneously, Messrs. Simonds and White established their little colony at Portland Point.

The Royal proclamation, issued at the Court of St. James in October, 1763, offering grants of lands to officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers that had served in the late French war, in token of his majesty’s appreciation of their conduct and bravery, had the effect of creating a species of land-hunger which ere long led to a general scramble for the possession of all lands that were of value and were not already appropriated. However, up to the year 1765, only three land grants on the St. John river were recorded at Halifax. Then came the deluge! In the course of the month of October some twenty grants were issued, comprising nearly 750,000 acres of the best land on the River St. John, and immense tracts were granted in other parts of Nova Scotia. Charles Morris, the surveyor general at this time, explains that the vast number of applicants for land and their importunity were due to the fact that the obnoxious “stamp act” was about coming into operation and those desirous of securing lands were pressing hard for their grants in order to avoid the stamp duties.

This land boom, if we may so term it, had the effect at first of stimulating the settlement of the country, but it is, to say the least, very doubtful whether subsequent growth and development were not retarded by the rashness of Governor Wilmot and his council in giving away the unsettled lands from the power of the crown and the people in so prodigal a fashion.

The land grants of this period were usually made under the following conditions:

First—The payment of a yearly quit rent of one shilling sterling to be made on Michaelmas day for every fifty acres, the quit rent, to commence at the expiration of ten years from the date of the grant.

Second.—The grantee to plant, cultivate and improve, or inclose, one-third part within ten years, one-third part within twenty years and the remaining third part within thirty years from the date of the grant, or otherwise to forfeit such lands as shall not be actually under improvement and cultivation.

Third.—To plant within ten years one rood of every thousand acres with hemp, and to keep up the same or a like quantity during the successive years.

Captain Beamsley Perkins Glasier was a very important and influential person at this time in the affairs of the new county. He was an officer in the 60th or Royal American Regiment, and subsequently rose to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel. On the 14th December, 1764, Capt. Glasier on behalf of himself, Capt. Thomas Falconer and others, presented a memorial to the governor and council at Halifax for a tract of land to include both sides of the River St. John and all the islands from the lower end of Musquash Island to the Township of Maugerville, and if there was not in the tract any river proper for erecting mills then “as settlements can’t be carried on without, the memorialists pray for any river that may be found fit for the purpose by their committee, with a tract of 20,000 acres of timber land as near the mills to be erected as possible.” Application was made at the same time for a Point or Neck of land three-quarters of a mile from Fort Frederick with 60 acres adjoining to it “for the making and curing fish.” It was ordered by the governor and council that the lands on the river should be reserved for the applicants, but that the point and sixty acres adjoining, situate near Fort Frederick, should be a matter for further consideration. It is not improbable the point referred to was the peninsula on the east side of St. John harbor, on which the principal part of the city stands today. Had it been granted to the applicants at this time it is hard to say what might have been the effect on the future, but very likely St. John, as the “City of the Loyalists,” would have had no existence.

Capt. Beamsley Glasier and Capt. Thomas Falconer were the active agents of an association or society, composed of more than sixty individuals, who designed to secure and settle half a million acres of land on the River St. John. The association included Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, General Frederick Haldimand (afterwards governor of Quebec), Sir William Johnson of New York, Capt. Isaac Caton, Capt. William Spry, Capt. Moses Hazen, William Hazen, James Simonds, Rev. John Ogilvie, Rev. Philip Hughes, Rev. Curryl Smith, Richard Shorne, Daniel Claus, Philip John Livingston, Samuel Holland and Charles Morris. The membership of the association represented a very wide area for among its members were residents of Quebec, Halifax, Boston, New York and the Kingdom of Ireland. A little later the association was termed the Canada Company probably because General Haldimand and some of its most influential members lived in Quebec.

The company obtained in October, 1765, a grant of five townships on the River St. John known as the townships of Conway, Gage, Burton, Sunbury and New-Town, of which all but the last were on the west side of the river. The first three were named in honor of Gen. Henry S. Conway, Secretary of State; Gen. Thomas Gage, who was one of the grantees; and Brig. Gen. Ralph Burton, who was stationed in Canada at the time. The location and extent of the townships may be generally stated as follows:

1. Conway, 50,000 acres, included in its bounds the parish of Lancaster and a part of Westfield extending from the mouth of the river up as far as Brandy Point.

2. Gage or Gage-town, 100,000 acres, extended from Otnabog to Swan Creek and included the present parish of Gagetown.

3. Burton, 100,000 acres, extended from Swan Creek to the River Oromocto, including the present parish of Burton and part of the adjoining parish of Blissville.

4. Sunbury, 125,000 acres, began at Old Mill Creek, a little below Fredericton, and extended up the river as far as Long’s Creek, including the City of Fredericton, the parish of New Maryland and the parish of Kingsclear. A part of this grant (20,000 acres) was added a little later to the Township of New Town on the opposite side of the river.

5. New Town extended about eight miles up the river from the Township of Maugerville on the east side opposite Fredericton and at first contained 20,000 acres, afterwards increased to 40,000.

It is an interesting circumstance that the site upon which Alexander Gibson’s mills at Marysville stand today, was selected by Beamsley Glasier and his associates in 1765 as the most desirable mill site along the St. John river. We even know the names of the pioneers of milling in that locality.

In the month of July, 1766, the sloop, “Peggy and Molly” sailed from Newburyport for St. John and on the way she called at Portsmouth and took on board Capt. Beamsley Glasier and five mill-wrights, Jonathan Young, Hezekiah Young, Joseph Pike, Tristram Quimby and John Sanborn each of whom paid Simonds & White 20 shillings passage money. Soon after their arrival they framed and erected the first saw mill on the Nashwaak, probably the first built by English hands in the province. In September, same year, the “Peggy and Molly” brought a large consignment from New England for Capt. Glasier, including all the mill gear, a quantity of seed corn, barley and garden seeds, some live stock and fowls, household utensils and provisions. Capt. Glasier says in a letter to Wm. Hazen written in August, 1766, “Young and all the Carpenters intend to stay and settle here and he begs you’ll be so good as to acquaint his wife and family of it.” No permanent settlement, however, seems to have been made at the Nashwaak at this time other than Anderson’s trading post at the mouth of that stream.

As early as the 27th of January, 1765, the plans of the Canada Company had so far developed that Captain Falconer sent one Richard Barlow as storekeeper to the River St. John, where the company’s headquarters was about to be established under the supervision of Colonel Glasier. Barlow was promised a lease of 200 acres at a nominal rent, and at once removed with his family to the scene of operations. There were frequent business transactions in the course of the next six years between Simonds & White and the agents of the Canada Company, who figure in their accounts as “Beamsley Glasier & Co.”. In the years 1765 and 1766, for example, Mr. Rogers, the treasurer of the Canada Company, paid Hazen & Jarvis £146 for certain goods supplied by Simonds & White at the River St. John.

The value of the lands on the River St. John had not escaped the notice of the keen-eyed pioneers at Portland Point, and in the first business letter extant James Simonds writes to Wm. Hazen, “the lands are very valuable if they may be had.” Again on the 16th December, 1764, he writes, “I have been trying and have a great prospect of getting one or two Rights [or shares] for each of us concerned in our company, and to have my choice in the townships of this River, the land and title as good as any in America.” Hazen & Jarvis manifested much interest in the matter and soon afterwards obtained a footing among the proprietors and promoters of the scheme.

The arrival of Colonel Glasier with his millwrights and carpenters in the fall of 1766 has been already mentioned. The progress made in settling the townships during the first two years was, however, slow and the mills on the Nashwaak were some time in being completed. Simonds & White on the 20th June, 1767, wrote to their partners in Newburyport, “When Col. Glasier left this place he was in such a hurry, the vessel being bound directly to sea, that we could not make a complete settlement, not having the people’s accounts up the River that had worked on the mills, logging, etc. We have inclosed his order for what could be settled. The lots in Gage Town are drawn, Moses and William Hazen Nos. 53, 54, Mr. Simonds No. 12, none of them either the best or the worst in the Township. * * If young cattle are cheap at your place we recommend sending some every opportunity; the growth of them is profitable, and the King’s Instructions to the Government are that three cattle be kept on every fifty acres of land granted.”

The manner of laying out and drawing lots in the townships, as first agreed on, did not work very well and led to a vigorous remonstrance on the part of Capt. William Spry, which is dated at New York, April 11th, 1768. The “remonstrance” appears to have been framed after consultation with others of the committee appointed by the Proprietors to carry on the settlement of the Townships, and its contents were approved at a meeting held the next day. The “remonstrance” was addressed to Rev.’d Dr. Oglevie and William Johnstone, Esq., and to such other Proprietors, or their attornies, as were then in New York. The document is of sufficient historic value to be quoted in full:—

A meeting was immediately held at the house of George Burns, innholder, in New York, and it was unanimously decided by the proprietors of the townships and their agents, to annul the former division of lands and adopt the proposals of Capt. Spry. In accordance with this decision the proprietors or their representatives, held a meeting on Wednesday the 20th of April, 1768, and in the presence of Dirck Brinckerhoff and Elias Desbrosses, justices of the peace and aldermen of the City and County of New York, made a drawing of the townships in the manner proposed, the result of which appears below.