On 17th August a fire broke out in the property of John Welner, soap-maker in Granville Street. Six tenements and the Ordnance laboratory were consumed; Welner and his wife, two aged persons, were burnt to death. The sum of £140 was raised by subscription for the sufferers at the fire. The principal sufferers, however, declined to receive any aid, and a committee was appointed to examine the claims and distribute the fund.
Folger and Starbuck, the Quaker whalers, who settled at Dartmouth a year or two since, left Halifax this year, for Milford Haven, in Great Britain, where they expected to carry on their whale fishery with greater facilities than at Dartmouth.
Died at Halifax, on 27th September, 1792, Mrs. Hester Godfrey, aged 101 years.
The Grand Jury at Halifax, for 1792, were as follows, viz:—George Smith, foreman, Andrew Liddell, John Masters, Philip Marchington, Benjamin Mulberry Holmes, Rufus Fairbanks, Peter Smith, Michael Wallace, John Steeling, Richard Jacobs, John Kirby, Thomas Filles, Charles Hill, J. W. Schwartz, William Cochran, John Butler Dight,[57] Thomas Russell, Alexander Brymer, George Grant, William Williams and George Deblois.
Several petitions were presented this year to the Governor and Council, from the merchants and others of Halifax, on the subject of trade regulations and the collection of debts. Among the signatures to these petitions, we find the names of James Forman & Co., James Moody, William Veitch, George Grant, Winkworth Allen, William Kidston, Samuel Rudolph, Benjamin M. Holmes, James and Alexander Kidston, Chas. Geddes, Wm. Forsyth & Co., Thomas Russell, Hall, Bremner & Bottomry, William Taylor, Burnes, Liddell & Co., P. Smith, Jonathan Masters, Williams & Lyons, Geo. Deblois, John Moody, and S. Hall & Co.
Again 1793: Brymer & Belcher, Forman & Grassie, John Steeling, Jonathan Tremain, P. Marchington, Andrew Liddell, George Sherlocke, Francis Stevens, Geo. Bell, Geo. Moren, Edward Butler, Nathan Hatfield, Thomas Watson, Peter McNab, Benjamin Salter, Frederick Major and John Brown.
The town Assemblies were held this winter in Mrs. Sutherland's rooms in Bedford Row, opposite the Commissary offices.
On Thursday evening, Dec. 20th, 1792, Governor and Mrs. Wentworth gave a grand ball. The decorations in the supper room were very elegant. The ladies sat down and the gentlemen waited on them. Among the decorations were the exact representations of Mr. Jonathan Tremain's new flour mill at Dartmouth, of the windmill on Halifax Common. A model of the red light house at Shelburne, and the tract of new road from Pictou, was delineated in the most ingenious and surprising manner, as was also the representation of our fisheries.
To all these inimitable ornaments, corresponding mottoes were attached, so that not only taste and elegance were conspicuous, but encouragement and genius were displayed. Such was the description of this affair as it appeared in the newspapers of the day.
Cochran's buildings were again on fire, 30th January, 1793, but the fire was extinguished without much damage.