The Township of Monckton

The Township of Monckton was a 100,000-acre (40,468.6-hectare) tract of land situated on the Petitcodiac River in colonial Nova Scotia (in today’s Canadian province of New Brunswick). It was granted by the British government at Halifax in 1765 to a syndicate of four Philadelphia land companies headed, respectively, by John Hughes, William Smith, Matthew Clarkson and Isaac Caton. The companies also included Anthony Wayne, who was chosen to survey the township, plus Israel Jacobs, Benjamin Franklin and fifteen other Pennsylvania merchants and gentlemen. The township was named after Robert Monckton, who captured Fort Beauséjour from the French in 1755.

The founding of Monckton was a direct result of Col. Alexander McNutt’s efforts to resettle Nova Scotia with immigrants from Ireland. McNutt, whom American historian J.B. Brebner has characterized as “highly persuasive, distinctly untrustworthy,” succeeded in a few instances but failed to accomplish most of his grandiose schemes.

Monckton’s proprietors, as they were properly termed, were contractually obligated to import settlers from the American colonies to their township. Eleven families, totaling 60 men, women and children, were dispatched from Philadelphia on the last weekend of April 1766 and landed at Monckton township on June 3. The families, mostly of German extraction, included the names Stief, Lutz, Treitz, Sommer, Jones, Richter, Wortman, Koppel, Ackley, Reynolds and Smith. Under the terms of agreement with the proprietors the settlers were obligated to build houses, to clear and fence fields, and to plant crops.

Due to managerial and logistical problems that arose among the Philadelphia land companies, the proprietors failed to support their settlers and the township as an entity eventually disintegrated. In 1775 the settlers sued the proprietors for non fulfillment of obligations, and legally gained possession of the lands they had occupied since 1766.

In 1855 the township of Monckton was incorporated as a town, but lost its status in 1862 when the local ship-building industry collapsed. During its re-incorporation in 1875, a provincial clerk misspelled the name by omitting the letter ‘k,’ making Moncton the official spelling. The town was incorporated in 1890 as the city of Moncton, New Brunswick.

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