142 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
would have been very different. Upon such small accidents does the 
course of history often turn! 
NAMES. 
The island has borne several names,—Met-a-neg-wis, Saincte Croix, 
Bone, Dochet and Doucett, Neutral, Big (or Great), de Monts, and 
Hunt's, all of them more or less closely interwoven with its history. 
Dochet.— (Universally pronounced in the neighbourhood, Do [like 
so] -shay, with accent on the first syllable.) This is the name by - 
which it is exclusively known in the St. Croix valley at present, all 
other names being unknown or merely matter of tradition among the 
older residents. To ascertain its origin we turn, of course, to early 
records. The earliest use of this name I can find is in documents of 
1797, connected with the boundary disputes, where it appears as 
Doceas.1 I do not find it again until 1841, when it occurs as Docias 
in a manuscript lecture on New Brunswick History, by Moses Perley, 
preserved by the New Brunswick Historical Society in St. John, and 
in the same year, Gesner, the geologist, spelled it Dochez in a letter.? 
Next it appears upon Owen’s Chart, “ Quoddy Hd., to C. Lepreau,” 
of 1848, spelled (for the first time) Dochet, and this form is followed 
upon all charts, both English and American, down to the present day. 
I find it next on Wilkinson’s fine map of New Brunswick of 1859 as 
Doucetts, which is followed as Doucette on the Geological Survey Map 
of Charlotte County of 1880, by Loggie’s map of 1884, by New Bruns- 
wick Statutes, mentioned below, in 1896 and 1899, and by many other 
maps and records. Indeed, Doucetts has become the recognized spell- 
ing in New Brunswick. Such are the facts, but for their interpreta- 
tion we have the aid only of tradition and inference. The local 
tradition derives the name from that of a young woman named Dosia 
(Theodosia) formerly associated with the island. The late Peter E. 
Vose, of Dennysville, Me., a devoted student of local history, wrote 
me in 1891, quoting an earlier article of his own in the “ Eastport 
Sentinel,” that when a boy he had heard from his father the story of 
a young woman named Dosia who, sometime after the permanent set- 
tlement of this part of the river in 1784, used to resort with her lover 
to the island, to the great scandal of the neighbourhood which thus 
came to speak of the island as Dosia’s. Another form of the story 
is given by the late Edward Jack, also deeply versed in local history, 
> Document given later on page 200; used as Docias in Benson’s Report of 


1798, mentioned later, page 209. 
2 Cited in the St. Croix Courier Series (on which see later, page 151), No. 
XXIII. 
