After the evacuation of Louisburg the population received a considerable accession; a number of the English inhabitants came with Governor Hobson and became settlers, and many from New England were daily arriving, and upwards of 1000 more from the old provinces had expressed themselves desirous of joining the Settlement before winter. The Governor therefore gave orders to all vessels in the Government service to give them a free passage. The New England people soon formed the basis of the resident population, and are the ancestors of many of the present inhabitants. They were better settlers than the old discharged soldiers and sailors who came on the fleet; most of whom died or left the country during the first three or four years, leaving, however, the most industrious and respectable among them as permanent settlers. Many settlers and traders came out for the purpose of making money; these people infested the Settlement in great numbers, and gave Mr. Cornwallis and his successors much trouble and annoyance, in demoralizing the people by the illicit sale of bad liquors, and in other ways retarding the progress of the country.
A proposition was made about this time by a French merchant from the West Indies to Governor Cornwallis to bring to Halifax some Protestant families from Martinique with their effects, if he would give them protection and grant them lands, and the Governor was furnished with a list of their names, with what each of them was worth, which approached in all nearly £50,000. This gentleman proceeded to Louisburg to obtain for them a passport, and proposed to have his people on before winter; but it does not appear as far as any information on the subject can be gathered from the public records that any of these French Protestants ever arrived.
The Government found it necessary to check the indiscriminate sale of spirituous liquors by a license duty. On the 28th August an ordinance passed for that purpose, and all such licensed houses were to be closed at 9 p. m. under penalty. On the 31st August the Governor and Council for the first time sat as a Court of Law. This was named the General Court, all authority – legislative, executive and judicial – being vested in the Board. They met on this day for the trial of Abram Goodside, the Boatswain's mate of the Beaufort, who stabbed and wounded two men. A grand jury was summoned who found a bill of indictment; he was tried and found guilty by a petit jury, and hanged under the Governor's warrant on 2nd September, 1749. On 31st August, another Court was held for the trial of one Peter Cartal, for murder. The Acadian Deputies having returned from the country, they were called before the Governor and Council on September 6th, when they presented a letter signed by 1000 inhabitants claiming to take only a qualified Oath of Allegiance.
On the 30th August, a sloop from Liverpool, Great Britain, with 116 settlers, arrived after a passage of nine weeks. They were, however, all quite healthy, not one person being sick on board at the time of their arrival. Two streets were then added to the Town and lots assigned to these people. This was Forman's new division. We have no names of these settlers or the name of the sloop.
Information having reached the Government that the Indians of Acadia and St. John's Island, designed to molest the settlement at Halifax on the approach of winter,17 it was deemed advisable to erect outworks for its defence; accordingly the troops and inhabitants were immediately employed to construct a line of palisades around the town in connection with square log forts which were to be placed at convenient distances. A space of thirty feet was cleared without the lines, and the trees thrown up by way of a barricade, which constituted a complete defence against any attempt on the part of the Indians. Those settlers who had built their houses without the town had arms given them, and their dwellings being built of logs were musket proof; also the Ordnance Artificers, those from New England and such of the settlers as had been in the army, and such others as could be trusted with arms within the town, also received them, and an order was sent to Boston for a supply of lamps to light the streets during the winter nights. Col. Goreham was sent to the head of the Basin with his company of Rangers for the winter, with an armed sloop to assist him, and every preparation possible was made for the protection of the people during the ensuing winter.
The Indians had appeared in the neighbourhood of the town for several weeks, but intelligence had been received that they had commenced hostilities, by the capture of twenty persons at Canso under frivolous pretences, and of two vessels having been attacked by them at Chignecto, when three English and seven Indians were killed. In consequence of this information it was resolved in Council to send a letter to M. Desherbiers, Governor of Louisburg, to recall LeLoutre. On the last day of September they made an attack on the sawmill at Dartmouth, then under the charge of Major Gilman. Six of his men had been sent out to cut wood without arms. The Indians laid in ambush, killed four and carried off one, and the other escaped and gave the alarm, and a detachment of rangers was sent after the savages, who having overtaken them, cut off the heads of two Indians and scalped one.18
These proceedings compelled the government to take more active measures, and orders were given to the commanding officers at the out stations, to destroy the Indians wherever they met them, and a premium of ten guineas was offered for every Indian killed or taken prisoner, this offer was in consequence of the large rewards offered by the French to the Indians for English scalps. Orders were given for raising two independent companies of rangers, one of one hundred men by Major Gilman, who was sent to Piscataqua for that purpose,19 the other a company of volunteers by Captain Wm. Clapham, who with Goreham's Indian Rangers, now returned from their stations at the head of the Basin with a company of Philips' Regiment, were to scour the whole country around the Bay. The St. John Indians having kept the treaty, received from Governor Cornwallis a present of 1000 bushels of corn, and an order was also given to purchase at Minas 500 bushels of wheat, to be baked into biscuit for the same purpose. Captain How was intrusted with these and other presents, and was directed to bring back with him, if possible, some of the tribe to go against the Mic-Macs. The preparation necessary to the protection of the town against French-Indian hostilities tended to expedite the progress of the settlement; before the middle of October, about three hundred and fifty houses had been completed, two of the square forts finished and the barricade carried all around. A number of store houses and barrack buildings for the accommodation of the troops had been also erected and the Governor's residence completed. The Council met there on the 14th October. About 30 of the French inhabitants were employed on the Public Works, and in cutting a road from the town to the Basin of Minas. A number of influential and industrious families from New England and other places had already become settlers, and Halifax Harbor was the resort of a large number of fishing vessels.
About this time a destructive epidemic made its appearance in the town, and it is said nearly 1000 persons fell victims during the autumn and the following winter. On the 14th day of October, the Government found it necessary to publish an ordinance, commanding all Justices of the Peace, upon the death of the settlers, to name so many of the neighbourhood or quarter (not exceeding 12) to which the deceased belonged, to attend at the burial and carry the corpse to the grave, and whoever refused to attend without sufficient reason should have his name struck off the Mess Book and Register of Settlers as unworthy of His Majesty's bounty; again in December, another order was made commanding all householders to report their dead to a clergyman within twenty-four hours.
Owing to the frequent alarms of invasion from the Indians and French stragglers during the winter, it was resolved in Council to organize a militia force for the protection of the settlement, and on the Sunday following the 6th day of December, after divine service, all the male settlers, between the age of sixteen and sixty, were assembled on the parade, and drawn up in the following order: – "Those of Mr. Ewer's and Mr. Collier's divisions to face the harbor, those of the quarters of Mr. Galland and Mr. Foreman to face the Citadel, and those of Mr. Callendar's division at one end of the parade." The proclamation bears date the 7th day of December, 1749. On the 16th, information