Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/94

new settlement at the mouth of the St. John were those conducted by the Rev. Thomas Wood of Annapolis, on the 2nd July, 1769; and it is very doubtful if any clergyman before or since has had so varied an experience as that of Mr. Wood the Sunday he, for the first time, officiated there. In the morning he held divine service in English and baptized four children. In the afternoon he held an Indian service for some of the natives who chanced to be there, and baptized an Indian girl; after service the Indians were asked to sing an anthem which, he says, "they performed very harmoniously." In the evening, many of the French inhabitants being present, he held service in French, the Indians also attending, many of them understanding that language. It is propable that there were present at the English service Mr. Simonds and Mr. White with their employees, Edmund Black, Samuel Abbot, Samuel Middleton, Michæl Hodge, Adonijah Colby, Stephen Dow, Elijah Estabrooks, John Bradley William Godsoe, John Mack, Asa Stephens, Thomas Blasdel and Thomas West, with perhaps a few other settlers living near the harbor.

Of the men whose names are here given it may be observed in passing that Edward Black was employed as foreman in the lime burning; Abbot, Middleton and Godsoe were coopers employed in the manufacture of hogsheads and barrels, intended usually for lime—sometimes for fish; Hodge and Colby were shipwrights and were then engaged in building a schooner for the company; the rest were fishermen and laborers. Thomas West was a colored man, apparently of an easy going temperament, as Mr. Simonds says in one of his letters to Hazen and Jarvis, "That rascal negro West cannot be flattered or drove to do one fourth part of a man's work; shall give him a strong dose on