‘ IN THE BEGINNING * The earliest mode of travel was by water, consequently when the United Empire Loyalists were looking for land in 1784, on the Island of St. John, now Prince Edward Island, many settled in Bedeque along the shores of Bedeque Bay. There was also a settlement at Malpeque on the north side of the Island, and the shortest overland travel route between the two settlements passed through what afterward became Lower Freetown. Starting first as only a trail through the woods, this road gradually widened ‘into what became one of the first roads of the province.

This road, between Bedeque and Malpeque, runs in an oblique, north- 1easterly direction with various curves and bends, caused no doubt, by the fact that the first rabbit that went through had zigged when he should have zagged, and leaving the adjoining fields, which afterward were created when the lines were run north and south, with their various angles and contours a

veritable ploughman’s headache. Before the days of settlement, this part of the country was swept by a huge forest-fire. This fact is borne out by the older present day residents having in their younger days seen blackened stumps deep in the woods, but now completely rotted, and also by the ‘absence of any very old trees. Some of the older North Bedeque land deeds, notably MacDonald’s, give as a boundary, the road leading to the “burnt woods.” Tradition has it that after the fire a good growth of grass sprang up,

fand the North Bedeque farmers used it as a sort of community pasture, lbringing their cows up in the spring and taking them back in the fall. ‘ Sterling Tucker told me his ancestors were residents here when all was dense woods, and that one ofthe girls in search of the cow, wandered off in the woods and was lost. Before she was found, she had died from exposure to the elements. Another version of the same story is that the little girl was picking mayfiowers and got lost, and she was found sitting up against a tree with the flowers still clutched in her lifeless hands. The details may be lacking, but the fact remains that a young girl gave her life in the relentless fight against the wilderness conditions, and we have entered into the heritage passed on to us.

The earliest authentic fact in the settlement of the district is a deed in possession of Robert E. Burns, showing that his Great-Great-Grandfather James Burns had in 1810 bought 1000 acres of land from John Clark for

567 pounds, 10 shillings, which land was part of the. Loyalist Reserve in Lot 25 granted by Governor Patterson. Also in 1810 William Taylor, the miller, Ebought 320 acres from George Thompson. From a very small beginning in 1,810 by 1863, according to Lake’s Map, there were twenty-nine families living within the confines of Lower Freetown, and strange to say this number has remained almost constant for the last hundred years.