Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/115

 SL John, N, B.

��109

��WAS ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, FOUNDED BY SETTLERS

FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE?

New Hampshire Names a?nong- the Pioneers,

��Treasury Department, Fourth Auditor's Office,

March 14, 1884. J. N. McClintock, Esq.

Dear Sir: In exphiuation of my interest in the subject noticed in the enclosed, I would state that I am in- terested in obtaining the history and genealogy of families of Old Mon- mouth county, New Jersey. Think- ing that possibly some of the Loyal- ists who left in 1783 might have carried away items of family histor}^ I commenced a series of articles in the Daily Sun, of St. John, giving sketches of the ancestry of New Jer- sey Loyalists who settled in that vicinity, and asking descendants for such additional information as they might possess. These articles have called forth a number of letters from "our cousins over the border" who descend from settlers who came from other places than New Jersey. In looking up the origin of the pioneers of St. John, so far as I have been able, I am satisfied that nearly or quite all came from New Hampshire, instead of Massachusetts and Con- necticut, as usually stated, and that the error occurred because the pio- neers sailed from a Massachusetts town. I give the pioneers' names, and trust your local historians and genealogists will give some additional information on the subject. As the Quinten family is about the oldest there, and the first child born there was a Quinten, I am anxious to ob- tain some items about the family of Hugh, as also are his descendants at St. John. I cannot find here any histories of Chester or of Rockingham and Cheshire counties.

Yours truly, Edwin Salter.

The first exploration of the river St. John was made by a party which

��left Massachusetts, 1761, led by Israel Perley. They proceeded to Machias by water, and on through the woods to Oromecto, descended to the river St. John. Of the Mauger- ville settlement Mr. Perley was the founder. He died in 1813, in his seventy-fourth year. The 28th of August, 1762, James Simonds, James White, Jonathan Leavitt, Francis Peabody, Hugh Quinten, and others, twenty in all, including families, ar- rived at St. John from Newburyport. On the evening of their arrival, James, son of Hugh Quinten, was born at Fort Frederick, western side of the harbor. The year previous. Fort Frederick (old Fort Latour) had been garrisoned by a Highland regiment, and a survey made of the harbor of St. John by Capt. Bruce of the Royal Engineers.

Mr. Simonds, who came in 1762, erected his dwelling on the ruins of an old French fort — Portland Point. At the Upper cove (Market slip), Jonathan Leavitt built a schooner as early as 1770, and named her the Min- nequash, the Indian name of the penin- sula, afterwards Parr-Turn and now St. John. Messrs. Simonds, White, and Leavitt married daughters of Francis Peabody, and settled at Maugerville, on the river St. John. His will was proven and registered the 2.5th of June, 1773; James Si- monds, judge of probate; Benjamin Atherton, register.

In 1763 came a large party, among them Perleys, Barkers, Burpees,

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