[EATON] THE SETTLING OF COLCHESTER COUNTY 241 
emigrants from Londonderry, Ireland, or its adjoining counties, to New 
Hampshire, from whence they were removed to this Province by 
Colonel [sic] McNutt, who was the agent of many settlements both in 
the United States and in Nova Scotia! In July, 1759, a volunteer’ 
corps was raised [in Massachusetts] to serve at Fort Cumberland, in 
which were a number of Irish from New Hampshire. Some of them, in 
consequence of the Proclamation of Governor Lawrence, visited Truro, 
and in the following year [sic], 1761, returned with several families of 
their countrymen and made their first effectual settlement. In various 
manuscript letters of Colonel McNutt, both Truro and Onslow (though 
the patents were not then executed) are mentioned as townships as early 
as 1762,and many of the original settlers. are addressed by him as old 
friends.” j 
Mr. Israel Longworth has stated, and no doubt the statement is 
correct, that there were earlier petitioners for lands in Truro than 
MeNutt’s people. Joseph Rendle, he says, and fifty-five others, princi- 
pally of Boston, at some unmentioned date applied for lands, but how 
their petition was treated or why they did not receive lands he does not 
say. <A few of these earlier petitioners, he tells us, eventually found 
their places among the Onslow grantees. The grant to the people to 
whom Mr. Longworth refers was actually made, we believe, to a hundred 
and nineteen persons, on the 24th of November, 1759, in response to a 
petition from Daniel Knowlton and Stephen Knowlton. For some 
reason the grant was never taken and some of the names mentioned in it, 
as Mr. Longworth says, are found in the later-given Onslow grant. 
This earliest Truro grant is described as a tract of land comprising 
a hundred thousand acres more or less, situate, lying, and being in the 
District of Cobequid, with boundaries clearly defined. The number of 
shares or rights in it is said to be two hundred, each share to consist of 
five hundred acres, and each grantee to have one share, “to be divided 
into one or more lots to each share or right as shall be agreed upon by 
the major part of the grantees.” The conditions on the grantees’ parts 
are that each of them shall bind himself to plant within ten years, two 
acres with hemp, and to keep up the same or plant a like number of 
acres (probably each year) during succeeding years; and that the grant- 
ees shall come to their lands before the 30th of September, 1760. The 
grantees, all except Deborah Hayward, widow, are described as yeomen, 
and all are said to be from the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The 
names, alphabetically arranged and not in the order in which they stand 

‘ We have found no evidence that McNutt founded or helped found settlements 
in the United States, and we know that his assertions to the Lords of Trade that he 
had made many settlements in Nova Scotia were unqualifiedly false. 
