Among the decendants of Jacob Barker may be mentioned Thos. B. Barker, who was born in Sheffield in 1820 and came to St. John in 1853, where he was associated in the drug business with the late Sir Leonard Tilley, and eventually became the head of the firm of T. B. Barker & Sons. The Hon. Frederic E. Barker, judge of the supreme court, is also a descendant of Jacob Barker and a native of Sheffield.
ATHERTON.
Benjamin Atherton, the first English speaking settler at St. Anns, was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, December 20, 1746. His acquaintance with Nova Scotia dates back to the time of the Acadian Expulsion, when as a young man of less than twenty years of age he enlisted in Captain Willard’s company in Lieut. Colonel Scott’s battalion of Massachusetts troops. He sailed from Boston on the 20th of May, 1755, in the sloop “Victory,” and served a year in Nova Scotia under Colonel John Winslow.
In the year 1769, by arrangement with James Simonds, Benjamin Atherton settled at St. Anns Point, where he established a trading post near the site of Government House, Fredericton. The position of a trader on the outskirts of civilization, in the vicinity of Aukpaque, the largest Indian village on the St. John, required tact and courage, but Mr. Atherton was equal to the emergency. In 1783, when the Loyalists arrived, he had at St. Anns “a good framed house and log barn, and about thirty acres of land cleared—partly by the French.” On March 30th, 1773, Benjamin Atherton married Abigail Mooers of Maugerville. She was a daughter of Peter Mooers and a sister of Mrs. Israel Perley. At the time of her marriage she was a girl of seventeen. She died at Prince William, N. B., June 28th, 1852, at the great age of 97 years. By exchange with government Benjamin Atherton acquired a valuable property in Prince William in lieu of his lands at the upper end of Fredericton. His place in Prince William was well known to travellers of later days as an inn kept by one of his descendants, Israel Atherton, for many years. Benjamin Atherton was a man of excellent education. He filled the offices of clerk of the peace and registrar of the old county of Sunbury when it formed part of Nova Scotia; a little later he was a coroner. The old prayer book from which he used to read prayers on Sunday for the benefit of his assembled neighbors in the absence of a clergyman, is still in existence. Benjamin Atherton died June 28th, 1816, and his ashes rest beside those of his wife in the little burial ground in Lower Prince William, hard by “Peter Smith Creek.” His descendants are numerous and widely scattered; among the number is Dr. A. B. Atherton, the well known physician and surgeon of Fredericton.
GARRISON.
Joseph Garrison was born in Massachusetts in 1734 and came to the River St. John as one of the pioneer settlers. He married in 1764, Mary Palmer, who was born in Byfield, Mass., in 1741, and who was most probably a daughter of Daniel Palmer, sr., his next door neighbor at Maugerville. Whether the marriage ceremony was performed at the River St. John or in New England the writer of this history is unable to say; but if at the former place it was probably celebrated after the fashion described in the following document:—
“Maugerville, February 23, 1766.
“In the presence of Almighty God and this Congregation, Gervas Say and Anna Russell, inhabitants of the above said township, enter into marriage covenant lawfully to dwell together in the fear of God the remaining part of our lives to perform all the duties necessary betwixt husband and wife as witness our hands.
GERVAS SAY,
ANNA SAY.(Witnesses.) Daniel Palmer, Fran’s Peabody, Sam’l Whitney, Richard Estey, George Hayward, David Palmer, Edw’d Coy.”
The respectability of the witnesses, and the solemn terms of this marriage covenant, suffice to show that marriages thus solemnized were regarded as perfectly regular, and it is probable that in the absence of a minister competent to perform the ceremony this was the ordinary mode of marriage.[127] It will be noticed that Daniel Palmer, whose daughter Mary had married Joseph Garrison a little before this time, was the first witness to the marriage covenant of Gervas Say and Anna Russell.
Joseph Garrison’s lot in the township was No. 4, opposite the foot of Middle Island in Upper Sheffield. His father-in-law Daniel Palmer and his brothers-in-law Daniel Palmer jr., and Abijah Palmer were his nearest neighbors. His third son, Abijah Garrison, born in the year 1773, married Fanny Lloyd who was born on Deer Island, near St. Andrews, in 1776. Their youngest son, William Lloyd Garrison, was the celebrated advocate of the abolition of slavery. Joseph Garrison is said to have been the first of the settlers to engage in mining coal at Grand Lake. The coal was shipped to New England on board one of the vessels of Simonds & White. His name occurs among the first customers in their books after the establishment of their trading post at the mouth of the river in 1764, and he had frequent business transactions with the firm.[128]