[ganong] historic SITES IN NEW BRUNSWICK 269 



at Jemseg of 1659, which originated the Jemseg Fort, later to be 

 described. Then comes the settlement of the Sieur de Marson and his 

 family and retinue at the mouth of the river, mentioned in the Census of 

 16*76. This settlement was undoubtedly at Carleton, and no doubt on the 

 site of Old Fort. 



The later censuses show very slow increase, most of the settlers being 

 seigniors and their families, not Acadian habitants. Thus, the census of 

 1686 gives eight settlers ; that of 1693 gives twenty, that of 1695 gives 

 forty-nine, that of 1698 gives forty-one. It was evidently not until well 

 after ITOU that any number of Acadians came to settle on the river. 

 There was no other census untilthatof ITSB, which gives one hundred and 

 eleven settlers, and most of these probably had been there but a short 

 time, for a document of 1^32, cited below, implies that a colony had only 

 recently settled on the river. The reason for so small a population in so 

 fertile a region is doubtless to be found in the preference of the Acadians 

 for the rich marsh lands of the head of the Bay of Fundy, which were 

 more abundant than they were able to settle. After the expulsion, how- 

 ever, in 1755, the population received great additions from those who 

 escaped from Beausejour, and from some of those who found their way 

 back from the southern provinces to which they were transported, so 

 that Monckton in 1758 found them on the river in considerable numbers, 

 and one document of 1759 estimates them at six hundred. (Broadhead, 

 X., 973.) Probably by the Acadians the St. John Kiver was thought 

 undoubted French temtory, for the French always claimed that the 

 Acadia ceded to England in 1713 included only the peninsula, the present 

 Nova Scotia, while England maintained that it included all of ancient 

 Acadia on the mainland, a contention which she supported first by logic, 

 and later, and more effectually, by force of arms. 



The sites of the residences of the seigniors of the St. John will be dis- 

 cussed later. We shall consider first the sites of the Acadian settlements. 

 For these we have seven lines of evidence, the Morris Maps of 1758 and of 

 1765, the Eeport of Monckton's Expedition to the St. John in 1758. a 

 MS. Eeport of 1762 by Bruce, and one of 1765 by Morris, place names, 

 and tradition. 



A.— French Village, Kingsclear. The origin of this village is uncertain, but 

 as there is no early mention of it, it probably was established after Monck- 

 ton's expedition in 1758. Neither Brace's Report of 17G2, nor Morris' of 

 1765, make mention of it, though both refer to the settlements at St. Anues. 

 Probably it was founded by Louis Mercure, a French courier in the employ 

 of the English, who settled here with some of his countrymen, and with 

 most of them removed in 1788 to Madawaska. A full list of these settlers, 

 together with others in the vicinity, is given in Collections, N. B. Historical 

 Soc. I., 110. Tradition places its exact original site on the great intervale a 

 short distance below the present Indian Village, and Munro in 1783 speaks 

 of it as a " French Village on a semicircular point of good intervale." It is 



