a
"Mulotta" girl, to Mary Wood of Annapolis for L15 currency[7] and next
year Mary Wood assigned the girl to her daughter Mrs. Mary Day. In
June, 1767, James Simonds of the St. John River wrote to Hazen and
Jarvis at Newburyport, Massachusetts, a letter in which he complains
of "that rascal negro, West" who cannot be got to do a quarter of a
man's work. In an advertisement in a Halifax paper in 1769 are offered
for sale to the highest bidder "two hogsheads of rum, three of sugar
and two well-grown negro girls aged 14 and 12." Those were clearly a
consignment from the West Indies. The executors of John Margerum of
Halifax deceased, in their accounts give credit for L29.9.4.1/2 "net
proceeds of a negro boy sold at Carolina." In 1770 the executors of
Joseph Gerrish of Halifax lost L30 on the sale of three Negroes for
L150 to Richard Williams and Abraham Constable, the Negroes having
been appraised at L180: and a Negro boy named John Fame was not then
sold. In April 1770, Mrs. Martha Prichard of Halifax, widow,
bequeathed to her daughter, wife of Moses Delesdernier a Negro slave
woman named Jessie. If Mrs. Delesdernier did not wish to retain the
slave, she was to be sold and the proceeds of the sale given to Mrs.
Delesdernier. If she kept her, the slave at the death of Mrs.
Delesdernier was to be the property of her son Ferdinand. By the same
instrument the testatrix bequeathed to her grand-daughter a mulatto
slave John Patten two and a half years old.

By the census of the year 1771 the Rev. James Lyon, the first
Presbyterian Minister in Nova Scotia, is shown to have owned a colored
boy, the only Negro in the township of Onslow and John Young in the
township of Amherst also a Negro boy, the only one in the township. In
Annapolis, Magdalen Winnett owned a man, woman and girl; Joseph
Winnett owned a woman and a boy; Ebenezer Messenger and Ann Williams
each a man, and John Stork of Granville owned a man the only Negro in
the township; and Henry Evans of Annapolis had the previous year owned
a colored girl.

Jacob Hurd of Halifax offered in 1773 a reward of L5 for the
apprehension of his runaway Negro, Cromwell, a "short thick set strong
fellow," strongly pock marked "especially on the nose" and wearing a
green cloth jacket and a cocked hat. In July 1773, in the _Nova Scotia
Gazette and Weekly Chronicle_ the executor and executrix of Joseph
Pierpont of Halifax advertised "a Negro named Prince to be sold at
private sale." T