NOTE: My Jamboree Vendors post will be up tomorrow. There just wasn’t enough time left after driving home from Burbank to Tucson.
Sometimes, I forget about treasures that I’ve collected over the last 3 1/2 decades of family history research. I’ve been renaming and organizing scans of images and came across this one, which is a true treasure to me:
Israel Hicks, et al., Land Petition in 1816
To His Honor George Stracey Smythe Esquire, President
of His Majesty’s Council and commander in chief in and over
the Province of New Brunswick* * *
The memorial of the Subscribers all Settled in the Parish of Wellington, on the River the buctoush most humbly sheweth
That the several marshes in the said Parish reserved for Public uses
have for more than ten years past have been occupied by Dominic Robishaw on which he cuts a large quantity of Hay annually, and frequently sell it at Four Pounds per Ten That your memorialists have come into this Parish since that time, and have taken up or purchased lands without any marsh adjoining and have no way to procure Hay to keep a single cow without buying at a high price until they can cultivate their lands.
They therefore pray that your Honor will be pleased to take this case into consideration, and order that the said reserved marches may be leased in such a way that the applicants and others in similar Situations may each have the benefit of them, and that the monies arising from the leasing of the same may annually be applied in such way as you Honor may be pleased to direct.
And your memorialists as in duty bound will ever pray
Wellington, 7 March 1816
Why is this seemingly ordinary, actually bland, petition such a treasure to me? It’s because of these signatures, written in individual hands.
Original Signatures
“Iseral” Hicks is my 3x great grandfather. John “Carlile” (aka Carlisle) was his brother-in-law, his wife Abigail’s brother. John and Abigail were children of Robert and Catherine Carlisle, my 4x great grandparents. Robert was a Loyalist; another child was another of my 3x great grandparents- Catherine Carlisle who married John Stewart.
The Hicks and Thornton families were pre-Loyalists who migrated from Rhode Island to New Brunswick in the 1760’s. I am related to the Thorntons, as the grandfather of this Titus “Thorton,” also named Titus, was my 4x great grandfather.
This tells me that all were literate. It also helps me place John Carlisle, as I don’t know as much about him as I do some of the other Carlisles.
This document was acquired from the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Film F4255, page 912.