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The operations carried on by Simonds and White at St. John and Passamaquoddy might be regarded for the first few years as experimental, but at the time of the reorganization of the Company in April, 1767, the business had become fairly well established. The two partners, realizing that their situation was likely to become permanent, began to contemplate a partnership of a different character, and ere long both took the most effectual means of making themselves comfortable and happy in their remote situation by entering upon the married state. Their wives were sisters, daughters of Captain Francis Peabody. Scarcely were they settled in their new relationships, when their situation became yet more solitary through the withdrawal of the garrison at Fort Frederick. This left them in a peculiarly exposed and defenceless condition. On the evacuation of the Fort the ordnance and stores were placed in charge of James Simonds, who frankly admits his motive in accepting such a charge was to prevent another person being appointed, who might perhaps be a trader. He was allowed, in consideration of the trouble and