Old St. Andrews

Main

Title

Rev. Samuel Andrews

Content

Item

Captain Osborn did not have the same attachment to the Chamcook Island as Hanson and Young. There is no evidence that he lived on it or had anything to do with it. According to one story he knew before he acquired it that he would soon be sent back to England, and so it was merely an investment. In a deed dated 1791, originally drawn up in London, Osborn sold Chamcook Island to the Rector of St. Andrews, Reverend Samuel Andrews of Wallington, Connecticut. Andrews paid 250 pounds for the Island. In 1897 his grandson, Marshall Andrews, visited the St. Andrews Beacon newspaper office, bringing with him the impressive document granting the Island first to Osborn from George III, and then transferring it from Osborn to Andrews. This was in rebuttal to an article by R. B. Hanson, a descendant of John Hanson, which had appeared a few issues earlier contending that Reverend Andrews in cahoots with Osborn had in fact tricked Hanson into signing over his property.

(There is some confusion as to exact date of purchase. According to Editor Armstrong, the original document bore on its back the words: "Received of the Rev. Mr. Samuel Andrews, Missionary of the Parish of St. Andrews, the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, current money of the Province of New Brunswick, being the full consideration money for the Island within mentioned," with the date of Feb. 23, 1788.)

At some point between 1788 and 1791 Reverend Andrews built a small stone cottage on the Island, and thereafter it acquired its informal designation as Minister's Island. But life on Minister's Island was not much easier for Andrews than it had been for Hanson and Young. The Rector is remembered to have laboured by horse and buggy along treacherous winter roads and trails to visit parishioners in the outlying areas. With the tide covering the bar a large part of the day, getting on and off the Island, and even coming into town for regular church service, would not have been the easiest task. Perhaps for this reason Andrews spent about half his time on the mainland.

In 1798 Chamcook Island was listed for sale in the Royal Gazette, but there weren't any takers, for upon his death in 1818 the property passed into the hands of his son Elisha, the town Sheriff. Elisha may have sold part of the Island to a Reverend Cassels in the decade after his father's death. What is certain, is that a Scotchman by the name of William Douglas acquired a piece of it in 1828, and another fifty or so acres in 1832; mortgaged it to Neville Parker in 1838, and eventually saw it revert to the Andrews family for non-payment of debt in 1841.

Except for this brief interlude, however, Minister's Island remained entirely in the Andrews family until 1891, when a part of it was sold by Edwin Andrews, great grandson of Reverend Andrews, to that celebrated Canadian, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne.