ot indisposed to side with the Revolutionary party.
A public meeting was held on the 14th of May, 1776, at the meeting
house in Maugerville, at which a number of highly disloyal resolutions
were unanimously adopted. One of the leading spirits at this meeting
was the Rev. Seth Noble, who had already written to Gen'l. Washington
to represent the importance of obtaining control of western Nova
Scotia, including the River St. John. Jacob Barker, Esq'r., was chosen
chairman and a committee, consisting of Jacob Barker, Israel Perley,
Phineas Nevers, Daniel Palmer, Moses Pickard, Edward Coy, Thomas
Hartt, Israel Kinny, Asa Kimble, Asa Perley, Oliver Perley and Hugh
Quinton, was appointed to prepare the resolutions which were
subsequently adopted by the meeting. One of the resolutions reads:--

"Resolved, That it is our minds and desire to submit ourselves to
the government of Massachusetts Bay and that we are ready with our
lives and fortunes to share with them the event of the present
struggle for liberty, however God in his providence may order
it."

The resolutions adopted were circulated among all the settlers on the
river and signed by 125 persons, most of them heads of families. The
committee claimed that only twelve or thirteen persons refused to
sign, of whom the majority lived at the river's mouth. If this
statement be correct, the resolutions certainly could not have been
submitted to all the inhabitants, for there is evidence to show that
at least thirty families outside of the township of Maugerville were
steadfastly and consistently loyal to the government under which they
lived. The names of these people are as deserving of honor as the
names of the Loyalists, who came to the province from the old colonies
in 1783. In the township of Maugerville the sentiment of the people
was almost unanimous in favor of the Revolution and we have no data to
determine who were loyalists--if any. But at St. Anns we have Benjamin
Atherton and Philip Weade; in the township of Burton, John Larley,
Joseph Howland, and Thomas Jones; in Gagetown Zebulon Estey, Henry
West, John Crabtree, John Hendrick, Peter Carr and Lewis Mitchell; on
the Kennebecasis Benjamin Darling; in the township of Conway, Samuel
Peabody, Jonathan Leavitt, Thomas Jenkins, John Bradley, Gervas Say,
James Woodman, Peter Smith, and Christopher Cross; at Portland Point,
James Simonds, James White, William Hazen, John Hazen, William Godsoe,
Lemuel Clevelan