[RayMonD] PRE-LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS OF NOVA SCOTIA 213 
“To the Hon’ble Jonathan Belcher, Esq’r, President of the Council and Com- 
mander in Chief for the Time being in and over His Majesty’s Province of Nova 
Scotia, &c. 
The Memoria! of Alex’r McNutt 
Sheweth— 
That your memorialist upon application to His Excellency the late Governor 
of this Province for lands had a promise from the said Governor of several tracts of 
land on the River Cobequid & Shebenuacadie and at Port Rosway, on Cape Sable 
Shore, on condition that your Memorialist would procure settlers, which would have 
been effected this year according to his engagement had not a great number of said 
settlers inlisted into the service for this present year, all which your Memorialist can 
sufficiently make appear. 
That your Memorialist has already been at a considerable Expence and Trouble 
in procuring a subscription of above eight hundred and fifty subscribers, whit whom 
he has contracted to settle those lands as early in the beginning of the next year as 
they possibly can sett out, and has Agents in the several Provinces for managing 
and conducting the same, and hath also agents in the Kingdom of Ireland for the 
same purpose, where your Memorialist hath already sent a vessel to bring settlers 
from thence. And your Memorialist is now proceeding to the northern parts of that 
Kingdom in order to procure settlers. And as your Memorialist was promised all 
reasonable encouragement in this difficult undertaking by his late Excellency, 
which has hitherto been attended with great expence to your Memorialist, he is 
under the necessity of laying the same before your Honour. 
May it therefore please your Honour on considering your Memorialists under- 
takings to grant such encouragement to the same as to your Honour shall seem 
meet, more particularly that you would be pleased to order some of the Province 
Vessels to assist in the Transporting some of the settlers from the neighbouring 
provinces with their effects to this Province. And that your Honour would be 
pleased to recommend your Memorialist to the Board of Trade for their encourage- 
ment in order to bring over settlers from Ireland. 
And your Memorialist as in duty bound shall ever pray, &e., &c. 
[Signed] AuEx’rk McNurr.” 
The Council assured Mr. McNutt that he would have all the en- 
couragement it was in their power to give and that he would be assisted 
and recommended to the Lords of Trade and Plantations. He returned 
to Boston well pleased. His pleasant recollections of Halifax, however, 
were disturbed when Samuel Clyde of that place “attached” his chest 
for a debt of £21.3.0. due him and obtained a judgment against him in 
the Inferior Court of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. He paid the debt 
and did not go to court. The incident occurred on the Ist January, 
1761. McNutt is described in the suit as “now residing in Boston.” 
Colonel McNutt’s projects were so gigantic that he was often hampered 
in his work by lack of funds. It does not follow however, that the in- 
cident just mentioned must be regarded as an indication of an impecu- 
nious condition. 
Passing over the period of McNutt’s operations as a colonizer, which 
has been very fully discussed in another paper, a few words may be 
added with reference to his experience during the American Revolution. 
It is evident from the documents in the State House in Boston,’ quoted 
by Edmund Duval Poole in “ Annals of Yarmouth and Barrington in the 
Revolutionary War,” that Alexander McNutt and one of his brothers 

1 See Poole’s Annals of Yarmouth and Barrington; pp. 45-49. 
