[EATON] THE SETTLING OF COLCHESTER COUNTY 223 
Council granting fifty-three rights or shares of two hundred acres each 
in the township to Timothy Houghton and others of Massachusetts, of 
this group thirteen to settle September 30, 1760, twenty September 30, 
1761, and twenty on or before September 30, 1762. The same date 
Joseph Twitchell and Jonathan Church obtained a grant of fifty shares 
in the township for fifty persons including themselves, all then in New 
England except Joseph Fairbanks of Halifax, gentleman, who had 
some time earlier come from Connecticut to that town. 
On the 26th of October, 1759, Daniel Knowlton applied to the 
Council for a hundred and fifty more shares in the township, but there 
being only forty-one left, in order to accommodate him and his asso- 
ciates it was resolved that another township, to be called “ Wolfe,” 
adjoining Onslow, on the river Chibbenacadie, should be laid out. 
Whether the boundaries of Wolfe were precisely those of the later 
formed Truro we do not know, but apparently the resolve of the Council 
to form the township was never carried out. 
In the fall of 1759, local Colchester tradition states, about twenty 
men, most of whom had previously done military duty in the Province 
came up the Bay of Fundy and planted themselves in Cobequid, some 
on the spot where part of the town of Truro now stands, some ap- 
parently on the Onslow side of the Salmon river. Before winter fully 
set in, however, they returned to New England, but the next spring 
they came back with their families, and by June, 1760, there seems to 
have been some permanent settlement in both Onslow and Truro. 
None of these first settlers, however, or their friends who soon followed 
them, received their grants until 1769, when Lord William Campbell 
was governor of Nova Scotia. In the decree for the establishment of 
Onslow passed by the Council July 24, 1759, the township is described 
as lying on the north side of Cobequid Basin, and as running westerly 
six miles, from thence northerly about twelve miles, thence easterly 
about twelve miles, thence southerly twelve miles, and thence to 
Cobequid Basin, six miles, all the township to be laid out on the north 
side of Cobequid River. Of this township, Scott and Knowlton, and 
their associates, who with their families numbered in all 309 souls, were 
to settle in the township, half in October, 1760, and half in May, 1761. 
The grant of 1769 is recorded in the Crown Land Registers at 
Halifax; but the original grant on vellum, sent to the township, is still 
preserved in Colchester, though in private hands. The endorsement 
of the grant is as follows: 
