Page:The-new-brunswick-magazine-v3-n3-sep-1899.djvu/26

directions about them, that then the prayer of their petition should be taken into consideration, of which the Board approved."

In June, 1732 Lieut.-Governor Armstrong in a letter to the Lords of Trade referred to this affair. He said that Mathieu Martin, the seigneur of Cobequid, had lately died without issue, but had by will devised his estate. He had been disrespectful to His Majesty and Armstrong thought his will might be set aside. It is difficult to reconcile these contradictory statements. If Mathieu Martin had died prior to the 28th April, 1724, Lieut.-Governor Lawrence would hardly have spoken of him in June, 1732 as having lately died. Again if Mathieu Martin had willed his property to Patrou he could not have made John Bourq and the other petitioners of 1731 his heirs. Probably Mathieu Martin was not dead in 1724, but his mean relations had reason to fear that he had made a will or was about to make a will devising his property to strangers.

Port Royal or Annapolis continued to be the principal home of the Martins up to the year 1755. There was not one family of that name deported from Mines by Winslow in that year, but in 1752 there were seven families of Martins at Beausejour, three of whom had come from Petitcodiac and three from Shepody. When the Loyalists came to Nova Scotia in 1783 there were five families named Martin, numbering thirty persons, on the St. John River. The Martins now residing in the county of Madawaska are doubtless the descendants of these people.