of some fraudulent traders, which led to much resentment against him.

He applied to the British government for relief, and in 1787 was appointed Comptroller of Customs on the Island of St. John at a salary of £40 per annum. He was recommended by William Montgomery to replace David Lawson as Sir James’ agent for Lot 34, and things went much better from then on. He was that rara avis in colonial North America, a scrupulously honest man and brought to the Island the finest tradition of eighteenth-century Scottish estate management: loyalty, integrity, tenacity, and attention to detail. (J .M. Bumsted, Acadiensis, Spring 1978, p. 93). He instituted regular accounting, collected rents, and put Sir James Montgomery’s Island interests on a self-sustaining basis. (ibid.) Sir James even received a small regular income from his lands, though not nearly enough to reimburse him for earlier expenses and losses; more important for the Island, the quit- rents were paid. Douglas’s relations with the Stanhope tenants seem to have been excellent; and it is remarkable how well business was conducted between Sir James in Scotland and the tenants here, by correspondence, when mail might take several months to reach its destination. James Douglas’s letters, in beautiful handwriting, are fascinating to read.

His forays into Island politics were not as rewarding as his work as agent for Lot 34; in alliance with Captain John MacDonald of Glenaladale in Tracadie and Attorney-General Joseph Aplin, James Douglas came to represent the major Island opposition to Sir Edmund Fanning’s government in the issues of escheat, annexation of the Island to Nova Scotia, and the Island’s judicial system. He was much frustrated by the byzantine intricacies of Island politics at this time; Chief Justice Peter Stewart seems to have been his main opponent, and also Montgomery’s. James Douglas died on September 26, 1803, the same year as’ Sir James Montgomery, and was followed as agent for Lot 34 by James Curtis. (q.v.)

Stanhope Farm and the Bovyers

Stanhope Farm was re-rented on November 7, 1788 to Stephen Bovyer Jr. and his brother John Bovyer, sons of Stephen Bovyer Sr. and his wife Dorothea Lowe; they were supposed to pay £50 rent per annum on the 1000-acre farm, which at the time of transfer had only about 200 acres cleared, plus the area of marsh hay round Long Pond. Stanhope Farm was bounded on the north by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the east by Lot 35, on the west by a line running from the Gulf Shore along the boundary with William Lawson’s 300 acres, then along the Bay Shore as far as Auld’s Creek, and on the south by a line running west

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