r each province had its own
particular grievances and its own separate interests. Thus it happened
that the battle for responsible government in New Brunswick was fought,
to a large extent, without reference to what was being done in the
other provinces which now form the Dominion of Canada, and the leaders
of the movement had to be guided by the peculiar local circumstances of
the situation. Still, there is no doubt that the efforts of all the
provinces, directed to the same ends, were mutually helpful and made the
victory more easily won.

Among the men who took a part in the contest for responsible government
in New Brunswick, Lemuel Allan Wilmot undoubtedly held the foremost
place, not only by reason of the ability with which he advocated the
cause, but from the trust which the people had in him, which made him a
natural leader and the proper exponent of their views. There were,
indeed, men working in the same field before his time, but it was his
happy fortune to witness the fruit of his labours to give the province a
better form of government, and to bring its constitution into line with
the system which prevailed in the mother country. He not only viewed the
land of promise from afar, but he entered into it, and he became the
first native lieutenant-governor of the province,--a result which even
he, sanguine as he was, could hardly have contemplated when he began his
career as a public man.

{THE WILMOT FAMILY}

Lemuel Allan Wilmot was born in the county of Sunbury, on the banks of
the St. John River, on January 31st, 1809. He was the son of William
Wilmot, a respectable merchant and lumberman, who was in partnership
with William Peters, grandfather of Sir Leonard Tilley. William Wilmot
was the son of Lemuel Wilmot, a Loyalist, who was a resident of
Poughkeepsie, New York, at the beginning of the Revolution. He (Lemuel)
raised a company of soldiers for the service of the king, and became a
captain in the Loyal American Regiment which was commanded by Beverley
Robinson, serving in that corps during the war. At the peace, he came to
New Brunswick and settled in Sunbury County on the river St. John. The
Wilmots were a respectable English family, and the first of the name in
America was Benjamin Wilmot, who was born in England in 1589 and came to
America with his wife Ann, probably prior to 1640. He was one of the
early settlers of New Haven, Connecticut, and the records of that colony
show that he took the oaths