The first intimation we have of the formation of the new county is contained in a letter of James Simonds to William, Hazen, dated at Halifax, March 18, 1765, in which the former writes: "I am just arrived here on the business of the inhabitants of St. Johns. * * I have seen Captain Glasier, who informs me that he is getting a grant of a large tract of land at St. Johns for a number of officers and that your brother is one of them. St. Johns is made a county [Sunbury] and I hope will soon make a formidable appearance." The decision of the government in this instance seems to have been consequent upon the visit of Mr. Simonds, who doubtless was supported in his advocacy of the new measure by Capt. Beamsley Glasier. The latter was elected one of the first two representatives of the county in the Nova Scotia legislature, with Capt. Thos. Falconer as his colleague. The announcement contained in Mr. Simonds letter anticipated the action of the governor and council, for it was not until the 30th April, six weeks later, that the matter was carried into effect by the adoption of the following resolution, viz: "That St. John's River should be erected into a county by the name of Sunbury, and likewise that Capt. Richard Smith should be appointed a justice of the peace for the County of Halifax." The terms of this grotesque resolution are suggestive of the idea that in the estimation of his excellency and the council of Nova Scotia the appointment of a Halifax J. P. was about as important a matter as the organization of the County of Sunbury, although the latter was as large as the entire peninsula of Nova Scotia. The County of Sunbury did not, as has been commonly supposed, include the whole of the present province of New Brunswick. Its eastern boundary was a line starting from a point "twenty miles above Point Mispeck, up the Bay of Fundy, being the eastern point of Head Land of the Harbor at the mouth of the River Saint John, thence to run north by the needle till it meets the Canada Southern boundary."