First Century After the Expulsion 59 
     
    
   
   
    
     the Margaree area. They informed the governor of Cape Breton that 
     
     Governor Fanning would like to have granted them lands free of 
     
     charge, but that he was not authorized to do so since Crown land on 
     
     St. John’s Island had to be sold‘. Yet, around the same time an 
     
     exception was made for the Loyalists who received free grants. 
     
    

    
     Not all the Acadian families in Bay Fortune moved to Cape 
     
     Breton. The inhabitants who thought they possessed valid titles stayed 
     
     on their lands, at the risk of having to face another landlord. In 1798, 
     
     William Townsend and Edas Summers together bought Lots 17 and 
     
     43. They demanded that the occupants pay several years of back 
     
     rents. The Acadians who considered themselves landlords took the 
     
     matter to court, but by clever manoeuvring on the part of the pro- 
     
     prietor Townsend and the legal system, they lost their case?>. 
     
    

    
     Confronted with this defeat, more Acadians decided to join the 
     
     families already established in Cape Breton. Others bought fifty acre 
     
     farms from John Cambridge in the adjacent lot (Lot 44) where they 
     
     moved in 1801 and 1802. These Acadians thus became the first settlers 
     
     in the parish of Rollo Bay’. 
     
    
   
   
    
     RUSTICO 
     
    
   
   
    
     The Acadians who settled in Rustico (Lot 24) likewise had to 
     
     face the absentee landlords’ agents. It is not known whether the 
     
     original proprietors of the Lot, Charles Lee and Francis MacLean, 
     
     made the Acadians sign leases. Whatever the case, in 1787, sixteen 
     
     Acadian families were obliged to sign perpetual leases, thus recognizing 
     
     the authority of Alexander Fletcher as the agent of the new landlord 
     
     Isaac Todd?’. 
     
    

    
     Lot 24 changed ownership several times at the beginning of the 
     
     nineteenth century. The Acadians came to terms with each of their 
     
     new landlords although that did not mean that their situation im- 
     
     proved. Reduced to extreme poverty they were barely able to pay 
     
     their annual rent. Given this impasse, the only solution was to seek 
     
     a better life elsewhere. Like their compatriots from Bay Fortune these 
     
     Acadians made their way to Cape Breton. The missionary, Joseph- 
     
     Etienne Cécile, was worried that Rustico would be entirely deserted. 
     
     He wrote of his concern ina letter to his bishop dated January 22, 1822: