American Settlement
In June 1766, Captain John Hall arrived from Pennsylvania armed with a land grant and a charter from the Philadelphia Land Company (one of the principal investors of which was Benjamin Franklin) to establish Monckton Township on the site of the previous Acadian settlement of Le Coude. On Captain Hall's ship were eight immigrant Pennsylvania "Deutsch" families. The Settlers included Heinrick Stief (Steeves), Jacob Treitz (Trites), Matthias Somers, Jacob Reicker (Ricker), Charles Jones, George Wortman, Micheal Lutz (Lutes) and George Copple. There is a plaque dedicated in their honor at the mouth of Hall's Creek. They named their new settlement The Bend of the Petitcodiac, or simply The Bend. There is one surviving building in the city dating from this era; the "Treitz Haus", which has been dated by architectural styling and dendrochronology to have been built in the early 1770s. It has recently been renovated as a downtown tourist information centre.
The American Revolution had virtually no effect on The Bend. The Deutsch settlers were apolitical, mostly concerned with simply surviving in their new homeland and had no interest in the revolutionary cause. There was however an important rebel attack on nearby Fort Cumberland (the renamed Fort Beausejour) in 1776. This attack was led by the American sympathizer Jonathan Eddy and was supported by local Yankee settlers and some Acadians from the Memramcook Valley. The attack was intended to encourage Nova Scotia to join the revolution and although the fort was partially overrun by the rebels, the attack was ultimately unsuccessful due to the timely arrival of British reinforcement forces from Halifax.
Read more about this topic: History Of Moncton
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or settlement:
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“A Tory..., since the revolution, may be defined in a few words, to be a lover of monarchy, though without abandoning liberty; and a partizan of the family of Stuart. As a Whig may be defined to be a lover of liberty though without renouncing monarchy; and a friend to the settlement in the protestant line.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)