company's day book the names of 120 customers, nearly all
of them heads of families. Of these, 25 were residents at Portland
Point, 20 lived across the harbor in Conway, 45 belonged to
Maugerville, 20 to other townships up the river and ten were casual
visitors, fishermen and traders.

The partners amidst all their variety of business continued to make
improvements upon their lands at St. John. They cleared up the Great
Marsh and cut hay there, for in June, 1768, Mr. Simonds writes to
Newburyport, "Please send half a dozen Salem scythes; Haskel's tools
are entirely out of credit here; it would be a sufficient excuse for a
hired man to do but half a day's work in a day if he was furnished
with an axe or scythe of that stamp." The next year plans were
discussed for the general improvement of the marsh, and a number of
indigent Acadians were employed to assist in the construction of a
"Running Dike" and aboideau. These Acadians probably lived at French
Village, near the Kennebecasis, and the fact that they had some
experience in dykeing marsh lands shows that they were refugees from
the Expulsion of 1755. The situation of the first dyke was not, as
now, at the mouth of the Marsh Creek but at a place nearly opposite
the gate of the cemetery, where the lake-like expansion of the Marsh
begins. The work was completed in August, 1774, by the construction of
an aboideau. Those employed in the work were the company's laborers,
six or eight Acadians and a number of the Maugerville people--about
twenty-five hands in all. William Hazen was at St. John that summer
and he and James White gave their personal attendance, "not in
overseeing the work only but in the active and laborious parts
thereof," the company providing the implements, tools, carts, several
teams of oxen, gundolas and other boats, materials and supplies of
every kind including rum for the workmen. This dyke and aboideau
served the purpose of shutting out the tide from about 600 acres of
marsh land. Ten years later Hazen & White built a new aboideau a
little above the first one which had fallen into disrepair. A much
better one than either was built at the mouth of the creek in 1788 by
James Simonds at a cost of L1,300. The House of Assembly voted L100
towards building a bridge at the place and Mr. Simonds agreed to erect
a structure to serve the double purpose of a public bridge and
aboideau. The width of the structure was 75 feet at the bottom and 25
feet at the top