INTRODUCUON

The Beginnings of Settlement in Lot 30

Shortly after the British took Isle St. Jean (as Prince Edward Island was then called) from the French, Captain Samuel Holland, a surveyor with the Royal Navy, conducted a survey of the Island between February and October 1765. His job was to divide the Island into townships of 20,000 acres each and to report on the quality of the Island for agriculture, forestry and fisheries. The townships laid out by Holland were given away by the Crown in a lottery on July 23rd 1767 and as a result were known as "lots", a term still in use today (1).

Lot 30 was given to John Murray, Esquire of Philiphaugh, near Selkirk in Scotland, and was officially granted to him by the Governor of Nova Scotia ( who was responsible for the Island) on the 26th of August 1767. The grant was made on the understanding that the Lot would be settled at the rate of one person per 200 acres within ten years. John Murray made no efforts to settle anyone and sold the township to Sir James Montgomery of Stobo Castle, Peeblesshire, Scotland, on March 11th 1769. The price paid was not recorded (2).

James Montgomery also held Lots 7 and 34 and had made great efforts to settle these. Only token efforts were made in Lot 30. In 1779 no settlers were living in the township and it is only in 1785 that the first land transactions occurred (3).

In 1783 Montgomery and a number of other Lot owners made an offer to the Crown of a quarter of their lands as grants to persons displaced by the American Revolution (1). These lands were to be made available to former soldiers or people we now know as United Empire Loyalists. It was these people and a Malcolm McPhail who were the first settlers in Lot 30.

On September 14th 1784 an order to survey was sent to the Surveyor-General of the Colonial government requesting ten 'refugee' shares be laid out in Lot 3 0 (4). It appears that Thomas Wright,

the Surveyor-General, had anticipated the order as his plan of the survey was dated September 18th 1784 (5).

Thomas Wright's plan not only shows the Loyalist grants but the presence of Malcolm McPhail on 300 acres near the south western corner of the Lot. The plan also shows two houses,

one on Malcolm McPhail’s land and the other on James Frazer’s land on the south shore of the West/Elliot River (6)