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complications seemed to increase, and in the spring of 1791—nearly three years after their appointment—they declined any further proceedings and no final award was made.

About this time James Simonds employed a surveyor to run the southerly and easterly line of the second grant anew, taking as his starting point not Red Head, as commonly understood, but a red bank near the mouth of Little River. The practical effect of this is apparent at a glance (see the plan at page 4.) The bounds are extended nearly half a mile eastward, and there is the further advantage of counteracting, to some extent, the effect of the diagonal line should such a line be decreed as correct by the Court of Chancery—as it eventually was. A study of the map is quite sufficient to show that if Mr. Simonds had been upheld in his location of the Red Head intended in the first and second grants as being at the mouth of Little River, a much larger part of the marsh would have fallen to his share. Hazen and White based their claim to ownership of that portion of the marsh eastward of the old dyke (near the present cemetery gate) on their purchase of the grant to Lieut. Graves, in 1784.

James Simonds supported his claim to the red bank at Little River as the starting point by insisting upon a literal construction of the wording of the first and second grants. His contention afterwards proved to have something of the nature of a boomerang, for similar arguments were used against him in 1830 by the Common Council of St. John in support of their claim to a Red Head near the outlet of the old millpond.

After getting his surveyor to run the lines mentioned above, Mr. Simonds proceeded to lease 400 acres of the marsh lands in dispute to one Thomas Nokes, who upon entering into possession was promptly