216 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
main island. In 1847, or thereabouts, Admiral Owen used the island 
as a station in making his survey of this region for the British Admir- 
alty, the survey on which our present charts are based. He cut down 
many of the trees on the island to open lines of sight for his instru- 
ments, doing much to destroy the fine woods which Mr. Mingo remem- 
bers to have occupied most of the island in his early boyhood. 
We come now to a new and important chapter in the history of 
the island. On June 4, 1856, the heirs of Stephen Brewer of North- 
ampton, Massachusetts, sold to the United States of America, for the 
sum of one hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents 
a certain Messuage situated on Neutral or St. Croix Island, so called, in the 
St. Croix River opposite the Plaster Mills at Red Beach in Calais. 
Two undivided third parts of the northerly half of the Island atovenetal 
beginning on the westerly shore of said island at a rock marked with a cross 
at high water mark, thence running south sixty-three degrees east’? across 
the said island to the eastern shore of the same where there is a marked stake 
at high water mark, thence northerly westerly and southerly by the shore of 
said island to the place of beginning, containing two and a half acres of 
upland, more or less, with the beach and flats pertaining to the said northern 
half, meaning to convey to the said United States two undivided third parts 
of the above described premises. + 
(Washington County Deeds, Vol. 86, page 27.) 
Thus, the larger part of the island passed into the pos- 
session of the United States, by whom it was bought for the erection of 
a light station. This station was established the next year (1857). 
The full records of the station are, of course, preserved in the archives 
of the Lighthouse Board at Washington, and through the courtesy 
of the Engineer-Secretary in charge I am enabled to cite the follow- 
ing facts. The first keeper was Elias Barber (December 15, 1856— 
August, 1859). The light was discontinued August 1, 1859,° and 

1 The position of the mark is not known exactly, nor is the line marked. 
2 The British Chart of 1827, and some other maps, mark a lighthouse on 
the American shore below Dochet Island, and I supposed the Dochet light 
was estabished to replace it, but I am informed by the U. S. Lighthouse 
Board that this was not the case. I know nothing of the shore Station. 
Among the papers cited by the Lighthouse Board is a letter of 1853 from a 
captain who says “A lighthouse upon this [Big, viz., Dochet] Island is very 
necessary as the many vessels wrecked upon it abundantly prove.” I have 
no information about these wrecks. 
? An interesting reference to the Island at this time is given by Willis in 
the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. XV., 1861, p. 212: 
“This island is now called Neutral Island. . . . . It has a lighthouse upon 
it, with a house for the keeper: is well covered with grass, and has some old 
fruit trees, apple and cherry, upon it. I took from it, in the summer of 1860, 
some pieces of French bricks, of which there are many fragments remain- 
