[GANONG ] DOCHET (ST. CROIX) ISLAND 143 
as follows:! “My father told me that a party of young people who 
were on a picnic at the island early in the present century named it 
Dosia’s Island, because they had seen a very pretty young lady in 
St. Stephen who was called Theodosia. She was, I believe, a Miss 
Milberry.” Yet another form of the tradition makes her a visitor to, 
or resident of,” the island and attributes to her such great personal 
beauty as to have led the residents in the vicinity to speak of the 
island by her name. There are sundry other variants of the tradi- 
tion, but the foundation of them all, a close connection between a 
young woman named Dosia (Theodosia) and the island, causing them 
to be long talked about in the neighbourhood in connection with one 
another, explains, I believe, the real origin of the name. Dosia is 
a commonly used contraction for the name Theodosia, and, locally 
at least in this region, where women still bear the name, it is pro- 
nounced as Do-shay, precisely as the name of the island is. Such 
an origin is in entire accord with the methods by which place-names 
arise, and it explains perfectly the first use of the word in the form 
Doceas or Docias. The later variations are easily explained. Captain 
Owen seems to have originated the form Dochet; doubtless he, knowing 
the early association of the island with the French, supposed the name 
as locally pronounced to be of French origin, and gave it a French 
spelling to agree with its pronunciation; and the great influence of 
his chart, the basis for all those in use to-day, caused this form to be 
widely adopted. The other form, Doucette, originated with Wilkinson 
in 1859, and, I believe, represents another effort to attribute to the 
word a French origin, of which there are other examples on Wilkin- 
son’s map. It is quite possible that Wilkinson supposed the word 
had some connection with the name of John Doucett, Lieutenant- 
Governor of Annapolis Royal in 1718, and this determined his spell- 
ing, though on this theory the final e should be absent. Kilby (in his 
Eastport and Passamaquoddy, page 126), suggests that the island may 
be named for Lieutenant-Governor Doucett, but there is absolutely 


2 A fact which may have some significance in this connection is this:—A 
Miss Milberry, now living in St. Stephen, says that the island once belonged 
to her grandfather. As shown later in this paper, he could never have been 
its legal owner, but he may have been an earlier resident than we have other 
evidence of, in which case Theodosia Milberry may have been a resident on 
the island. 
3 The final s of the word, following the law in such cases, was probably 
by this time commonly dropped. It is now rarely heard, though old people 
occasionally use the form Doshays Island. 
Sec. II., 1902. 10, 
