[GANONG] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 281 
tion, which was acknowledged by the inhabitants, over Moose and the 
other islands of that region.1 It was not unnatural, therefore, that 
locally, in the absence of knowledge of the charters and other docu- 
ments on which the Nova Scotia rights were founded, the question 
was supposed to hinge upon the exercise of jurisdiction in the period 
preceding 1783. The British settlers, very numerous immediately 
after the revolution, immediately claimed all of the Passamaquoddy 
Islands with Grand Manan, in which they were backed by the Nova 
Scotian Government. On the other hand, Massachusetts immediately 
laid claim to Moose Island and the small islands, Dudley and Freder- 
icks Island adjacent. We have a most interesting account of the local 
feeling upon the subject in the letter of General Rufus Putnam to a 
Massachusetts Legislative Committee of date December 27, 1784. 
(State Papers, I., 93.) 
In this fair-minded, and scarcely partizan, letter, he discusses and 
combats the absurd claim? of the Scoodic settlers as to the eastern 
boundary of the United States, points out the difficulties of the inter- 

* Thus John Curry testified that he came to this Province in 1770, and 
“that James Cockran deceased, then an inhabitant of Moose Island, was 
appointed Deputy Provost Martial for the said district of Passamaquoddy, 
and was, by the said deponent sworn into office, which office he the said 
Cockran held and executed till the commencement of the late war.” This 
jurisdiction was continued after 1783, for Robert Pagan a magistrate of Char- 
lotte County deposed ‘“ that a Court of General Session of the Peace was held 
on Campobello Island under the Government of Nova Scotia before the sep- 
aration of the said Province, at which this deponent attended ‘as a justice, 
and that as well at this Court as at the Courts since held at Saint Andrews 
under the said Province of New Brunswick the said courts have always hith- 
erto uniformly had and exercised jurisdiction over the Island of Grand Manan, 
and all the Islands in Passamaquoddy Bay . . . . and the deponent further 
saith that the said courts exercised jurisdiction over the three islands in Pas- 
samaquoddy Bay referred to, namely, Moose Island, Dudley Island and Fred- 
erick Island, and inhabitants of Moose Island were occasionally returned on 
the Sheriff’s panel to serve as jurors at the Courts in Saint Andrews until 
the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one.” . . . Compare also 
the document given by Howe in Coll. N.B. Hist. Soc., I., 363. 
2 This claim, fully described by Putnam (State Papers, I., 92; in part in 
Kilby, 97) was that the eastern boundary of the United States was a straight 
line from the mouth of the Scoodic, which was considered by the settlers and 
admitted by Putnam to be at the Devils Head, to the mouth of St. Marys 
River in Florida. On this contention all eastward of that line including a 
goodly slice of the present State of Maine as far as Machias belonged to Great 
Britain together with all of the islands. Putnam says this contention was 
carried so far that a British surveyor began to lay out lots at the present 
Lubec. The claim had no basis whatsoever, and its absurdity must have 
soon been realized for we hear nothing more of it. 
Sec. II., 1901. 18. 
