the former writes: "I am just
arrived here on the business of the inhabitants of St. Johns. * * I
have seen Captain Glasier, who informs me that he is getting a grant
of a large tract of land at St. Johns for a number of officers and
that your brother is one of them. St. Johns is made a county [Sunbury]
and I hope will soon make a formidable appearance." The decision of
the government in this instance seems to have been consequent upon the
visit of Mr. Simonds, who doubtless was supported in his advocacy of
the new measure by Capt. Beamsley Glasier. The latter was elected one
of the first two representatives of the county in the Nova Scotia
legislature, with Capt. Thos. Falconer as his colleague. The
announcement contained in Mr. Simonds letter anticipated the action of
the governor and council, for it was not until the 30th April, six
weeks later, that the matter was carried into effect by the adoption
of the following resolution, viz: "That St. John's River should be
erected into a county by the name of Sunbury, and likewise that Capt.
Richard Smith should be appointed a justice of the peace for the
County of Halifax." The terms of this grotesque resolution are
suggestive of the idea that in the estimation of his excellency and
the council of Nova Scotia the appointment of a Halifax J. P. was
about as important a matter as the organization of the County of
Sunbury, although the latter was as large as the entire peninsula of
Nova Scotia.

The County of Sunbury did not, as has been commonly supposed, include
the whole of the present province of New Brunswick. Its eastern
boundary was a line starting from a point "twenty miles above Point
Mispeck, up the Bay of Fundy, being the eastern point of Head Land of
the Harbor at the mouth of the River Saint John, thence to run north
by the needle till it meets the Canada Southern boundary."

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 prop