note: transcription publicly contributed - please contact us with comments, errors or omisions

101.

Preston 16th Novr. 1817

Honble Chs. Morris
      Sur. Gen.

      Sir

      Understanding by the Honble. Michael Wallace that the granting lands in compensation for those relinquished by individuals, for accommodating the blacks, and particularly those relinquished by myself is objected to — I beg leave to lay before you the following statement as to those lands, and the relinquishment of them.

      It will doubtless be in your recollection that in the month of August 1815, you informed me by letter, that it was in contemplation, to settle a number of the people of Colour, on lands then lately escheated in Preston; and requiring my assistance in pointing out a situation, in which a number of families might be settled in a compleat (sic) village, and in locating them in the most convenient manner possible.

      In consequence of this I made without loss of time a plan of the escheated lots that lay nearest together, which happened to be near the main road and from less than one mile to the distance of three miles from my own house. Upon laying this plan before you, by which it appeared that the Hon. M. Wallace, Wm. Lawson Esqr., Mr. Robt. Obrien, Mr. Edwd. Hughes, Mr. Tidmarsh and myself, owned land to the amount of one Thousand Acres, interspersed among the best of those escheated lots, you will I think likewise recollect that you yourself proposed to me to relinquish what belonged to me, and to use my endeavours with Mr. Wallace and the other proprietors of the lands in question to do the same; on condition of receiving a compensation in lands, to be granted us free of expences (sic), by which between two and three thousand acres of land would be laid together nearly in a square body, and most of it fit for Cultivation. With this plan and proposal you waited on Sir John C. Sherbrooke and Mr. Wallace and I were present. His Excellency approved of the proposal and directed me to set immediately about