Voices of the People

Nova Scotia House of Assembly Petitions and Correspondence

1 December 1806

Petition of George Johnson, Caleb Forsyth and other inhabitants of Horton and Cornwallis. They own large quantity of dyke land "and conceiving that great advantage might be derived not only to themselves but to the public at large, by diking in the same, and after due consideration they agree to undertake it and the summer before last by great exertions nearly accomplish’d the running dikes, and some of the small Abbiteaus, and the last summer undertook the large ones, but though they used every precaution and exercised their best judgement, they were so unfortunate as to lose four of their largest Abbiteaus after they were nearly compleated, two of them nearly…as Large as any one every built in the province by which misfortune your petitioners sustain’d a heavy loss of between four and five thousand pounds and far beyond the means of any of them to bear, without great injury to their families" since the dyke must be finished. Ask relief.

Reference: Nova Scotia House of Assembly Nova Scotia Archives RG 5 Series A volume 13 number 80