The arrival of so considerable a number of English speaking inhabitants as came to the River St. John in the course of a few years after Lawrence had published his proclamations, rendered it necessary that measures should be adopted for their government. When Nova Scotia was divided into counties, in 1759, what is now New Brunswick seems to have been an unorganized part of the County of Cumberland. For a year or two the settlers on the River St. John were obliged to look to Halifax for the regulation of their civil affairs, but this proved so inconvenient that the Governor and Council agreed to the establishment of a new county. The county was called Sunbury in honor of the English secretary of state, the third Earl of Halifax[74] who was also Viscount Sunbury.
The first intimation we have of the formation of the new county is contained in a letter of James Simonds to William, Hazen, dated at Halifax, March 18, 1765, in which the former writes: “I am just arrived here on the business of the inhabitants of St. Johns. * * I have seen Captain Glasier, who informs me that he is getting a grant of a large tract of land at St. Johns for a number of officers and that your brother is one of them. St. Johns is made a county [Sunbury] and I hope will soon make a formidable appearance.” The decision of the government in this instance seems to have been consequent upon the visit of Mr. Simonds, who doubtless was supported in his advocacy of the new measure by Capt. Beamsley Glasier. The latter was elected one of the first two representatives of the county in the Nova Scotia legislature, with Capt. Thos. Falconer as his colleague. The announcement contained in Mr. Simonds letter anticipated the action of the governor and council, for it was not until the 30th April, six weeks later, that the matter was carried into effect by the adoption of the following resolution, viz: “That St. John’s River should be erected into a county by the name of Sunbury, and likewise that Capt. Richard Smith should be appointed a justice of the peace for the County of Halifax.” The terms of this grotesque resolution are suggestive of the idea that in the estimation of his excellency and the council of Nova Scotia the appointment of a Halifax J. P. was about as important a matter as the organization of the County of Sunbury, although the latter was as large as the entire peninsula of Nova Scotia.
The County of Sunbury did not, as has been commonly supposed, include the whole of the present province of New Brunswick. Its eastern boundary was a line starting from a point “twenty miles above Point Mispeck, up the Bay of Fundy, 208 being the eastern point of Head Land of the Harbor at the mouth of the River Saint John, thence to run north by the needle till it meets the Canada Southern boundary.”
Captain Beamsley Perkins Glasier was a very important and influential person at this time in the affairs of the new county. He was an officer in the 60th or Royal American Regiment, and subsequently rose to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel. On the 14th December, 1764, Capt. Glasier on behalf of himself, Capt. Thomas Falconer and others, presented a memorial to the governor and council at Halifax for a tract of land to include both sides of the River St. John and all the islands from the lower end of Musquash Island to the Township of Maugerville, and if there was not in the tract any river proper for erecting mills then “as settlements can’t be carried on without, the memorialists pray for any river that may be found fit for the purpose by their committee, with a tract of 20,000 acres of timber land as near the mills to be erected as possible.” Application was made at the same time for a Point or Neck of land three-quarters of a mile from Fort Frederick with 60 acres adjoining to it “for the making and curing fish.” It was ordered by the governor and council that the lands on the river should be reserved for the applicants, but that the point and sixty acres adjoining, situate near Fort Frederick, should be a matter for further consideration. It is not improbable the point referred to was the peninsula on the east side of St. John harbor, on which the principal part of the city stands today. Had it been granted to the applicants at this time it is hard to say what might have been the effect on the future, but very likely St. John, as the “City of the Loyalists,” would have had no existence.
Capt. Beamsley Glasier and Capt. Thomas Falconer were the active agents of an association or society, composed of more than sixty individuals, who designed to secure and settle half a million acres of land on the River St. John. The association included Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, General Frederick Haldimand (afterwards governor of Quebec), Sir William Johnson of New York, Capt. Isaac Caton, Capt. William Spry, Capt. Moses Hazen, William Hazen, James Simonds, Rev. John Ogilvie, Rev. Philip Hughes, Rev. Curryl Smith, Richard Shorne, Daniel Claus, Philip John Livingston, Samuel Holland and Charles Morris. The membership of the association represented a very wide area for among its members were residents of Quebec, Halifax, Boston, New York and the Kingdom of Ireland. A little later the association was termed the Canada Company probably because General Haldimand and some of its most influential members lived in Quebec.
The company obtained in October, 1765, a grant of five townships on the River St. John known as the townships of Conway, Gage, Burton, Sunbury and New-Town, of which all but the last were on the west side of the river. The first three were named in honor of Gen. Henry S. Conway, Secretary of State; Gen. Thomas Gage, who was one of the grantees; and Brig. Gen. Ralph Burton, who was stationed in Canada at the time. The location and extent of the townships may be generally stated as follows:
1. Conway, 50,000 acres, included in its bounds the parish of Lancaster and a part of Westfield extending from the mouth of the river up as far as Brandy Point.
2. Gage or Gage-town, 100,000 acres, extended from Otnabog to Swan Creek and included the present parish of Gagetown.
3. Burton, 100,000 acres, extended from Swan Creek to the River Oromocto, including the present parish of Burton and part of the adjoining parish of Blissville.