ver. He made rather a better attempt at cultivating the land near
his residence upon his brother's seigniory, for the census of 1695
shows that he had raised there 80 minots [bushels] of corn, 16 minots
of peas, 3 minots of beans. He had 3 horned cattle, 12 hogs and 60
fowls; two men servants and one female servant; three guns and a
sword.

The seigniory of Mathieu d'Amours, sieur de Freneuse, lay between the
two seigniories of his brother Louis at Jemseg and Nashwaak, extending
a distance of seven leagues and including both sides of the river.
Both Louis and Mathieu made far greater improvements than Rene, having
a large number of acres cleared and under cultivation, together with
cattle and other domestic animals. They had a number of tenants and
eight or ten servants.

The census of 1695 contains the following interesting bit of
information: "Naxouat, of which the Sr. Dechofour is seignior, is
where the fort commanded by M. de Villebon is established. The Sr.
Dechofour has there a house, 30 arpents [acres] of land under
cultivation and a Mill, begun by the Sr. Dechofour and the Sr. de
Freneuse."

The reference to a mill, built by the brothers Louis and Mathieu
d'Amours in the neighborhood of Fort Nashwaak, may serve to explain
the statement of Villebon in 1696, that he had caused planks for
madriers, or gun platforms, to be made near the fort.[95] This mill at
any rate ante-dates by the best part of a century the mill built by
Simonds & White at St. John in 1767 and that built by Colonel Beamsley
Glacier's mill wrights at the Nashwaak in 1768. Doubtless it was a
very primitive affair, but it sawed lumber, and was in its modest way
the pioneer of the greatest manufacturing industry of New Brunswick at
the present day.

[95] See Murdoch's Hist. of Nova Scotia, Vol. I., p. 223.

Among the contemporaries of the brothers d'Amours on the River St.
John were Gabriel Bellefontaine, Jean Martel,[96] Pierre Godin,
Charles Charet, Antoine Du Vigneaux, and Francois Moyse. The author is
indebted to Placide P. Gaudet for some interesting notes regarding
the family of Gabriel Bellefontaine. Mr. Gaudet has satisfied
himself in the course of years of genealogical research, that the
Godins now living on the River St. John and in the county of
Gloucester, the Bellefontaines of the county of Kent, and the
Bellefontaines and Beausejours of Anichat and other parts of Nova
Scotia all have a common origin, and that in each case th