When the attention of James Simonds, was directed to the River St. John, by the proclamation oaf Governor Lawrence inviting the inhabitants of New England to settle on the vacant lands in Nova Scotia, he was a young man of twenty-four years of age. His father had died at Haverhill; August 15th, 1757. The next year he went with his uncle, Capt. Hazen, to the assault of Ticonderoga, in the capacity of a subaltern officer in the Provincial troops, and shortly after the close of the campaign proceeded to Nova Scotia in order to find a promising situation for engaging in trade. The fur trade was what he had chiefly in mind at this time, but the Indians were rather unfriendly, and he became interested along with Captain Peabody, Israel Perley and other officers of the disbanded Massachusetts troops in their proposed settlement on the River St John. His future partners of the trading company formed in 1764 were, with the exception of Mr. Blodget, even younger men than himself. William Hazen, of Newburyport, had just attained to manhood and belonged to a corps of Massachusetts Rangers, which served in Canada at the taking of Quebec. Samuel Blodget was a follower of the army on Lake Champlain as a sutler. James White was a young man of two-and-twenty years and had been for some time Mr. Blodget's clerk or assistant. Leonard Jarvis--afterwards Wm. Hazen's, business partner and so incidentally a member of the trading company at St. John--was not then eighteen years of age. While engaged in his explorations, James Simonds obtained from the government of Nova Scotia the promise of a grant of 5,000 acres of unappropriated lands, in such part of the province as he should choose, and it was under this arrangement he entered upon the marsh east of the city of St. John (called by the Indians "Seebaskastagan") in the year 1762 and cut there a quantity of salt marsh hay and began to made improvements. Mr. Simonds says in one of his letters: "The accounts which I gave my friends in New England of the abundance of Fish in the River and the convenience of taking them, of the extensive Fur trade of the country, and the natural convenience of burning Lime, caused numbers of them to make proposals to be concerned with me in these branches of business, among whom Mr. Hazen was the first that joined me in a trial. Afterwards, in the year 1764, although I was unwilling that any should be sharers with me in the Fur trade, which I had acquired some knowledge of, yet by representations that superior advantage could be derived from a Cod-fishery on the Banks and other branches of commerce, which I was altogether unacquainted with, I joined in a contract for carrying it on for that year upon an extensive plan with Messrs. Blodget, Hazen, White, Peaslie and R. Simonds."