256 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
without shelter. As soon as possible after landing, McNutt waited 
on the Lieutenant Governor and Council, informing them that he 
purposed “to set out in a few days with a number of the principal 
people to view the lands at Cobequid and Shubenacadie, after which 
he was to return to Ireland with their report of the country, and ex- 
pected in the Spring to bring over ten thousand persons to settle in the 
Province.” Whether Londonderry township had been definitely fixed 
upon by McNutt before he brought his Irish settlers to Halifax, as a 
suitable place in which to locate them, is not certainly known, but with 
the exception of a small group of families who settled in Hants County, 
chiefly in the township of Windsor, a few probably in Truro and Onslow, 
and some perhaps in King’s, most of them in 1762 settled finally in 
Londonderry. The common tradition is that twenty families located 
along the Bay shore of this township, from Ishgonish river to Bass 
river. 
Exactly how many settlers McNutt brought with him from Ire- 
land at this time it is impossible to tell. To the Council at Halifax, on 
their arrival, McNutt reports the number of his immigrants as “up- 
wards of three hundred,” to the Lords of Trade, in his memorial of 
March 23, 1763, he represents them as “near four hundred.” Lieu- 
tenant Governor Belcher, however, in his letter of November 3, 1761, 
says they numbered “upwards of two hundred,” while Mr. Francklin, 
as we have seen, states their number as about two hundred and fifty. 
That a vessel such as the Hopewell probably was would be able to 
accommodate more than two hundred people, if so many, besides the 
crew, especially as the immigrants must have brought with them a 
good deal of household stuff, seems to us very unlikely, and we must 
therefore believe that the dispatch to the Boston newspaper stated 
the number virtually correctly. 
To make anything like an accurate list of names of these settlers 
from Ireland in 1761, in the absence of shipping lists is impossible. 
The greater number of the names in the Londonderry grant we shall 
presently give were undoubtedly on the list of the Hopewell’s passengers, 
but some families who settled in other townships like Windsor were also 
probably in this ship. 
How soon after McNutt’s arrival with his first band of immigrants 
he again sailed for Ireland we do not know, but we can hardly suppose 
that he left Nova Scotia until he had become satisfied that the people 
he had brought would all soon be comfortably settled in Londonderry. 


‘A few families in Colchester County and probably some in other counties 
evidently came in 1765, but it is not easy to know in all cases when the ancestors of 
the present Scotch-Irish families in the Province did come. 
