48 SCRAPS OF LOCAL HISTORY. 



Key was a little man and very i)assionate, and he went into A. D. 

 Shirreff' s and got a <^nn from him and fired at the ship, putting 

 the ball in the mainmast. She hove to and he put her also in 

 quarantine. I think there was ship fever on board. She lay 

 there about twelve or fift.een days. 



THOMAS CURRIE. 



JAS. H CURRIE S STORY. 

 I was 84 on the i58th January last. My father came from 

 Dumfries, Scotland, about 1818 or '20. His business was stone 

 mason, and his name Andrew. It was he that built the Peabody 

 and Jno. T. Williston houses. The Williston house was the old 

 stone postoffice. He built also the Fallen building. I was born 

 in this country. I was only about three years old, I think, when 

 he built the Peabody house. I saw Cunard the night he left town, 

 when he failed. He left at twelve at night. I have often been 

 told by my father of the Miramichi fire. It burned all Moorfield. 

 The church stood in front of the graveyard on the main road. I 

 have often seen the stone foundation, but there is nothing left 

 now but the graveyard. Mrs. McMurray, who was formerly a 

 Lyons, remembered the fire well and has often spoken to me of it. 

 My father got into a canoe on the Chatham side of the river, the 

 morning after the fire, and came across to this side and went out 

 to the back lots. He lived at that time on a little farm that he 

 had bought from Peter Taylor, the lot below England's in the 

 original Chatham grants. He found a man and woman, Kil- 

 patrick by name, on the side of the road, dead, where there is 

 now a fence around their graves on the road out to George 

 Creigh ton's. Beside them lay a leaf of the Bible, and he brought 

 that home with him and gave it to Rev. Jas. Thompson, and he 

 preached from it the next Sunday, "The Lord hath kindled a fire 

 against his people." In reference to the fever ships. My father 

 kept his cows over here where I live, not at Moorfield, and I had 

 to come over in a canoe twice a day to milk the cows and pass the 

 fever ship each time. I took the fever from them. Dr. Key was 

 the doctor, and he ordered all hands out of the house, except my 

 mother, who stayed to nurse me. The rest of the family came 

 over here to a camj) we had here and stayed. I was well acquaint- 

 ed with Dr. Vondy, who died of fever, on the island, Andrew 



