At the time the Maugerville grant was made out the obnoxious Stamp Act was about coming into force in America and the Crown Land Office at Halifax was besieged with people pressing for their grants in order to save the stamp duties. In the hurry and confusion existing Mr. Morris says that the shares of the township were inadvertently fixed at 500 acres each, whereas it had been his intention to lay out one hundred farm lots, each forty rods wide and extending one mile deep into the country, and to give each grantee the balance of his 1,000 acres in the subsequent division of the rest of the township. It is quite likely the Maugerville settlers were glad to accept the smaller shares allotted them in view of the fact that they had been so near losing the whole by the decision of the British government to reserve the lands for the disbanded regulars of the army. By the terms of the grant it was provided that all persons who failed to settle on their lots, with proper stock and materials for the improvement of their lands, before the last day of November, 1767, should forfeit all claim to the lands allotted them. The township was supposed to consist of 200 shares but only 61 shares were included in the grant of 1765. At least two other grants were passed prior to the coming of the Loyalists--one in 1770, the other early in 1783; but there were still some vacant lots which were gladly taken up by these unfortunate exiles. For their accomodation also a grant was made Dec. 22, 1786, of the rear of the township and such men as Samuel Ryerson, Justus Earle, Joseph Ryerson, Wm. Van Allen, Abraham Van Buskirk, Samuel Tilley and Lodewick Fisher[59] were among the grantees. [59] Samuel Tilley and Lodewick Fisher were the progenitors respectively of Sir Leonard Tilley and Hon. Charles Fisher, the one came from Long Island, N. Y., the other from New Jersey. It is curious they should have settled on adjoining lots in view of the intimate relations of their distinguished grandsons in the battle for responsible government. The other names given above are those of officers in Lt.-Col. Van Buskirk's battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers who were of Dutch descent. Nearly all the original settlers in the township of Maugerville were from Massachusetts, the majority from the single county of Essex. Thus the Burpees were from Rowley, the Perleys from Boxford, the Esteys from Newburyport, while other families were from Haverhill, Ipswich, Gloucester, Salem and other towns of this ancient county which antedates all others in Massachusetts but Plymouth. These settlers were almost exclusively of Puritan stock and members of the Congregationalist churches of New England. The list of the grantees of the Township of Maugerville, alphabetically arranged, includes the following names:--