The Reverend Thomas Wood closed a laborious and successful ministry of thirty years at Annapolis, where he died December 14, 1778.
Some account has already been given, in the chapter descriptive of the progress of the settlement at Maugerville, of the first religious teachers in that locality, Messrs. Wellman, Webster and Zephaniah Briggs. We shall have something more to say of their first resident minister, the Rev’d. Seth Noble, when we come to deal with events on the river at the time of the American Revolution. As already stated the first Protestant church on the river was erected at Maugerville in the year 1775. This building was at first placed on a lot the title of which was afterwards in dispute, and regarding the possession of which there was rather a bitter quarrel between the old inhabitants and the Loyalists. In consequence the 257 building was removed to the lot in Sheffield where the Congregational Church now stands. An interesting account of this incident is given in the narrative of the Rev. Joshua Marsden, a Methodist pioneer missionary on the St. John river, who says:—
“The Presbyterian [i. e. Congregational] chapel at Sheffield, was a church-like building of frame-work, with a spire steeple and a spacious gallery. This chapel had been drawn down upon the ice of the river more than five miles: it had first been erected at Maugerville, upon a litigated lot of land, which the society, not choosing to bring to the issue of a law-suit, they determined to remove the chapel bodily to their own glebe, five miles lower down the river. The whole settlement, men, horses and more than one hundred yoke of oxen, were present to assist in this more than herculean enterprise. The chapel was raised from its stone foundation by immense lever screws. Prodigious beams of timber were then introduced under the whole length of the building; into these were driven large staples, to which the oxen were yoked with strong chains of iron. When all things were ready for a movement, at a given signal, each man standing by his horse or oxen, this great building, capable of holding eight hundred persons, was drawn along and down the bank of the river to its appointed place, where another foundation having been prepared, it was again raised by levers upon it with very little damage. Not a single pew in the gallery or bottom having been removed in the process. In this emigrated chapel, I had the satisfaction of preaching the gospel of the kingdom to a large congregation. Perhaps you will wonder how the ice of this mighty river bore upon its bosom so ponderous a body; but your surprise will cease when I inform you that in the depth of winter, it is from two to three feet in thickness, making a bridge of aqueous crystal capable almost of bearing up a whole town.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
On the Eve of the American Revolution.
When the county of Sunbury was established in 1765, there was no English settlement north of St. Ann’s and the river was but sparsely settled from that place to the sea. Nevertheless the immense forest wealth of the St. John was gradually becoming known and appreciated.
The French ship of war “Avenant,” as long ago as the year 1700, after discharging her cargo of supplies for Villebon’s garrison and goods for the French traders, took on board some very fine masts for the French navy that had been cut upon the River St. John. Afterwards, when the control of Acadia passed into the hands of the British, they in turn began to procure masts for the navy on the St. John. England’s place among the nations then, as now, depended very largely on the efficiency of her navy, and the reservation of trees suitable for masts for the largest ships of war became a matter of national concern. In consequence Governor Legge, at the request of the home government, desired Charles Morris, the Surveyor general of Nova Scotia, to report as to ungranted lands in the province that might be reserved for the purpose of supplying masts for the navy. On the 21st May, 1774, Mr. Morris submitted his report. He states that his knowledge of the country was based upon personal observations during a residence of nearly twenty-eight years, in the course of which he had visited nearly all parts of the province. In the Nova Scotian peninsula there were very few pines fit for masts, but on the River St. John, above the settlements, and on the other rivers flowing into it were great quantities of pine trees fit for masts and great quantities of others growing into that state, which being so far inland, protected by growth of other timber and by hills, and remote from those violent gales which infest the coast would prove the most desirable reserve for the purpose intended. Mr. Morris adds: “I am of opinion that a reserve of all the lands on the River St. John above the settlements for the whole course of the river, at least twenty-five miles on each side, will be the most advantageous reserve to the Crown of lands within this province, especially as the river is navigable for boats and rafting of masts the whole course of it, as also for rafting of masts in the several branches of it; and in this tract is contained a black spruce, fit for yards and topmasts, and other timber fit for ship-building.”
The importance to coming generations of the “black spruce, fit for yards and top-masts,” was little dreamed of by Charles Morris. However, it seems that in accordance with his recommendation the region of the upper St. John was at this time reserved to the crown because its towering pines supplied the best masts in the world for the British navy, and at the close of the American Revolution it was still unbroken forest.