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SILVER DOLLARS
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be a debatable one, the writer of this paper, at all events, will not presume to determine it.

The St. John Common Council, after careful con-sideration and legal advice, seem to have finally decided that the old grantees and their descendants had been too long in possession to warrant any proceedings to dispossess them.

W. O. Raymond.

SILVER DOLLARS.


Charity Newton was a Rhode Island maiden, born in the midst of peace and plenty, and surrounded by all the refinements of the best New England society of a century ago. Little did she imagine when she gave her heart and hand to the man of her choice how chequered and adventurous her life would be. Her husband (who by the way bore the unromantic name of Ebenezer Smith,[1]) was a pronounced Loyalist at the time of the American Revolution. He incurred the ill-will of his neighbors and was obliged to flee with his family for security within the British lines. At the peace of 1783 they came with other Loyal exiles to St. John, and thence plunged into the wild woods of Kings County to seek their fortune amidst very discouraging surroundings. The Newton family, not having espoused the cause of the mother country, remained quietly on the old Rhode Island homestead, and poor Mrs. Smith found herself far from her parents and relations.

Life in the wild woods of New Brunswick was a dreary contrast to the comforts and refinements in which Charity Newton had been born and bred, but

  1. ↑ Ebenezer Smith was the progenitor of most of the Smiths of Smithown, Kings County, N. B.
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