52 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



land would produce pitch and tar, and afterward such lands as 

 could be spared from corn and pasturage might be tilled and 

 sown for hemp, to pay rent to the king for the land taken up. 

 No definite action was taken on this proposal, but the request 

 was renewed' in a more definite form, in 1724.^ Each of the 

 petitioners proposed to take over ten families of at least three 

 persons. The cost of transportation was to be defrayed by the 

 government, w^hich would also furnish forts, garrisons, arms 

 and ammunition ; and the lands were to be granted gratu- 

 itously, with merely a quit-rent of twenty-eight pounds of good 

 hemp, annually, for every acre of land cultivated, this rent to 

 commence seven years after the land should be cleared and 

 made fit to bear hemp. They proposed to raise a fund to buy 

 tools, fishing tackle and provisions, while the charge of trans- 

 porting and maintaining the people was to be repaid in naval 

 stores, after seven years. 



I have been unable to find any satisfactory records of the 

 history of this petition. Although approved by the Board of 

 Trade, the project is said to have fallen through, owing to the 

 opposition of Jeremiah Dummer, the agent for Massachusetts, 

 who objected to certain restrictions upon the fishery.- Tliere 

 the matter rested, until renewed, in still another form, by David 

 Dunbar on his appointment as Governor of the territory of Sa- 

 gadahock (Kennebec), in 1729. The reason of this appointment 

 was the determination of the Board of Trade to re-establish the 

 fort at Pemaquid, which was considered to be an important out- 

 post on the frontier. The old fort had been destroyed by the 

 Indians forty years before, and ever since that time the Board of 

 Trade had been trying to induce Massachusetts to rebuild it ; 

 but successive governors had argued in vain. The Assembly 

 refused to incur such an expense for a fortification which they 

 held to be too remote for efficient protection. Failing to coerce 

 Massachusetts, the British government decided to take the 



'Answers by petitioners to questions put to them by the Board of 

 Trade, B. T. New Eng., Y: 23. 



^Palfrey, " History of New England," Vol. IV, p. 567. 



