Anon. (1772) and Anon. (1773) Three letters, published anonymously in the Belfast News Letter (3 March 1772, 30 April 1773). [Also printed in: Royle, S. A. and Ni Laoire, C. (2003) ”Do not send my dear babies here to starve” — St. John’s Island in 1772. The Island Magazine, No. 53: 12-15.]

Below are extracts from three different letters that were published anon ymous/y in the Belfast News Letter in March 1 772 and April 1773. According to Boyle and Ni Lao/re the first letter is by an unidentified person (proba bly a man) who claims to be writing from Boston to a ”gentleman in London”. The letter was published without attribution in the Belfast News Letter, which in the previous year had published several letters and advertisements concerning the Island of St. John — see Anon. I I 77 1) and DesBrisay (1770-7772). The writer of the letter claims to have spent several months on the island, from the autumn of 7 770 until the end of the following spring, and he says that he was there because he wished to become a proprietor of land on the island. * His comments on the island ’3 forests are brief but positive in tone, and fit in with that of the letter as a whole, which is very positive about the island ’s future prospects. Since the other two letters were published together in the same issue of the News Letter, they may have been written by a single person, though this is not certain. It is very likely that the writer (or writers) was one of the settlers who had been sent out from the north of Ireland by Thomas DesBrisay in I 771. Unlike the letter from Boston, both of these letters express a very negative attitude to wards the island, including its forests: what was viewed as ’weII-grown’ and ’useful' timber to the prospective proprietor of the first letter is seen as ’thick woods' to the person who had to clear the land of trees.

REFERENCE: Royle, S. A. and Ni Laoire, C. (2003) ”Do not send my dear babies here to starve" — St. John's Island in 1772. The Island Magazine, No. 53: 12-15.

lExtract from an undated letter concerning St. John ’3 Island. ] *

The land in general is exceedingly rich, and highly capable of every species of culture

adapted to the climate, which is also very temperate both in winter and summer. Well—grown and

“$8,“, t’mber' The timber in common is well grown, and of the useful kinds.

[Belfast News Letter, 3 March 1772]

”Extract from a letter dated from St. John’s Island, 26th July 1772."

The lands here are good but we have five months of frost and snow, that we can

Thick woods. carry on no labour until the first or tenth of May; the woods are as thick as ever the trees can stand together.

[Be/fast News Letter, 30 April 1773]

”Extract from a letter from St. John’s [Island], dated October 12 1772.”

A mouse plague. We cannot put anything into the ground before the middle of May at soonest; and mice that are as large as rats without any tails, destroy everything as soon as it comes to perfection.

[Be/fast News Letter, 30 April 1773]

There are reasons for believing that the author of the first letter is none other than Governor Walter Patterson himself. The thoughts in the letter are in agreement with those of Patterson, and about a quarter of the letter is taken up with effusive praise of the governor’s actions. The author is also caught out in an inconsistency: he says that he arrived on the island in the ’autumn’ of 1770 (incidentally, Patterson arrived on 30 August) and implies that he passed only the following winter and spring on the island. However, he later quotes in full a lengthy address from “the Grand Jury of the island” lauding Patterson, which he dates to 12 August 1771 ~ he would only have had access to this had he remained on the island to that date. There is also no evidence of which I am aware, of any prospective proprietor having been present on the island over the winter of 1770—1 771; in fact Patterson himself in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough (24 October 1770: PARO CO-226, fols. 11-13. 8-1238) said that he could barely sort out his own accomodation and supplies for the winter.