[SIEBERT] REFUGEE LOYALISTS OF CONNECTICUT 91 
unsheltered and on the brink of despair, by reason of the provincial 
government’s delay in assigning them lots.! 
This delay was due to the heavy demands on the time and strength 
of the surveyors, who were already swamped with the labor 
of laying out lands for the great number of refugees who had arrived 
earlier in the season. Twelve-mile tracts or blocks had, however, 
already been marked out for the regiments on the River St. John, the 
locations of the various corps being determined by lot. As five of the 
regiments, including the Prince of Wales American Volunteers, deemed 
their blocks too distant for occupation, they eventually obtained more 
convenient situations in the counties of York, Sunbury, and Queens. 
Block No. 4, or Canterbury Township, on the west side of the river 
fell to the King’s American Regiment, which early in 1784 formed the 
first settlement in old Lower Woodstock. This settlement was 
founded by Captain Isaac Atwood and a small number of associates 
at “Bel-viso,” forty miles above St. Anns on the land allotted to them. 
In August, 1785, this little community numbered thirty-one men, 
thirteen women, and twenty-three children, all but ten being con- 
nected with the regiment named. Two hundred and thirty-six others 
of this corps, including women and children, were also settled on the 
regimental land at this time. As the King’s American Regiment had 
a total enrollment of 345 on its arrival at Parr Town, fifty-two of its 
members had seen fit to seek domiciles for themselves elsewhere. 
Block No. 5, or Queensbury Township, on the east side of the River 
St. John had been drawn by the Queen Rangers, of whom 361 individ- 
uals out of a total of 397 were actually occupying their lands in the fall 
of 1785. The dissatisfaction in the Prince of Wales regiment with the 
block first drawn by its officers and the consequent delay in finding a 
new location serve to explain the greater decline in the number of 
those settling on the lands finally designated for their occupation 
than in the case of other regiments. The enumeration of 1785 shows 
that only 261 persons out of the 355 connected with the corps on its 
arrival in New Brunswick were in residence on their lands at the time 
indicated. What became of the other ninety-four it would be difficult 
to trace, although in a census of July 29, 1785, of those settled in the 
district between the Nashwaak and the Madam Keysquick we find 
eighteen of this corps accounted for, and five others appear among the 
inhabitants of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, at the same period. Shel- 
burne also contained thirty-seven representatives of the King’s 
American Regiment, namely, fifteen men, nine women, and thirteen 
1 Rev. W. O. Raymond’s article on ‘Early Days of Woodstock”’ in The Dis- 
patch of Woodstock, N.B., Dec. 5, 19, 26, 1906. 
