A remarkable tale of dastardly murder, daring escape, and disastrously bad luck in the earliest days of New Brunswick is so (in)famous that it is still known on Campobello Island today.
It all began in the chaotic days when the Loyalists first arrived in the Maritimes. They had been promised land grants, but the bureaucratic process of awarding these land grants was slow.
A group of 100 Loyalists under the leadership of Captain Neremiah Marks decided they would wait no longer. They would go find some land to settle all by themselves.
The former soldiers sailed off and founded a place they called Morristown, which we today know as St. Stephen, NB.
A century later, W. O. Raymond described those events in his history column called “Glimpses of the Past”:
“When Capt. Marks and his colonists arrived, they found several persons settled on their spot, without any claim to their lands other than occupation.”
It was implied that these "old inhabitants" may have been Wolastoqiyik. While Raymond acknowledged that “Generally in such cases, the ‘old inhabitants’ were dispossessed,” he pointed out that, in this instance, the Loyalists settled alongside them.
However, this seemingly harmonious arrangement didn’t go as smoothly as hoped, largely due to the actions of one man — John Dunbar.
The new settlers divided into several groups, each claiming their own land grants around the "old inhabitants." Dunbar, taking advantage of the situation, went to each group and managed to secure a land grant from each one, slyly accumulating land for himself.
This was definitely not allowed!
According to Raymond, Dunbar didn't even farm the land but rather he "sold the lot for … rum.”
Raymond wrote that Captain Marks' son recalled “being told that John Dunbar lived [next door] in a log house, for a year or more, and that the inhabitants were very glad when he left.”
After selling his land for booze, being a drunk and disorderly nuisance, and generally wearing out his welcome in Morristown, John Dunbar departed and went to St. Andrews.
There he found work as a carpenter, working on building a courthouse.
"Law and order" in those days was significantly harsher, and violence was a standard part of the justice system. More than 220 criminal offences were punishable by the death penalty.
If you committed murder, the punishment was death.
The punishment was also death if you stole a sheep.
Theft of goods worth more than a shilling?
Death.
Shoplifting?
Death.
Being in the company of a “Gypsy” for more than one month?
Death.
"Strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age"?
Death.
With so many crimes punishable by death, St. Andrews certainly needed a gallows for its courthouse.
John Dunbar constructed those gallows.
It seems that John Dunbar wore out his welcome in St. Andrews about as quickly as he did in Morristown. He and his wife moved away to Campobello Island.
W. O. Raymond quoted Sheriff Paul as saying:
“[John Dunbar] was living in Campobello, about the year 1798, and worked in a saw mill there. His wife had a gold coin, of which he wanted to take possession in order to buy rum. Upon her refusing to give it to him, he killed her.”
According to an oft-repeated story on Campobello, John Dunbar decided to dispose of his wife’s body by putting it in a barrel of pork. He deposited that on a beach at low tide.
Presumably, his plan was that the tides would sweep the barrel away to sea.
The tides did take the barrel to sea, only to deposit it right back on the shores of Campobello.
Raymond wrote that Dunbar “was arrested, taken to St. Andrews, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged.”
The day before he was set to be executed, John Dunbar escaped.
Most people who escaped prison — especially when facing the death penalty — would probably run really fast and really far away. John Dunbar, however, only fled as far away as Bay Side, which is only seven miles away from the jail.
He seems to have asked a young man in Bay Side if he could have a job. The young man employed him to work in the woods as a lumberjack.
It just so happened though that this particular young man's father was named Captain Bradford. He just so happened to be one of the original Loyalists who had settled Morristown with John Dunbar.
“The captain was away from home at the time," wrote Raymond, "but on his return, when he saw Dunbar, he recognized him as the escaped prisoner. He communicated his discovery to jailer Hitchins, who came out to Bay Side, arrested Dunbar, and took him back to jail.”
Almost as soon as he was returned to his cell, Dunbar escaped from jail, again.
He learned his lesson though. This time he fled all the way to Boston.
There he got a job as a roofer.
And everything was fine, Raymond wrote, until Bentley went to Boston:
“A man named Bentley, [who was] a resident of St. Andrews, afterwards went to Boston and one day, as he was passing a house on a street in that city, was struck in the head by a shingle.”
“On looking up to see whence the shingle came he recognized the man engaged in shingling to be Dunbar.”
“Bentley gave information which led to Dunbar being once more arrested.”
John Dunbar was again brought back to the jail in St. Andrews, where he was put right back in the same cell he’d escaped from twice before.
This time though, John Dunbar did not escape.
“The next time he emerged from [the] jail,” Raymond wrote “was on the march to the gallows.”
The day of John Dunbar’s execution was a big one — he was to be the first person ever executed in Charlotte County.
As John Dunbar was led from his cell to meet his fate, he faced a grim irony: the very gallows awaiting him were the same ones he had helped build years before.
The Backyard History Halloween Adjacent Story Collection
Old Ned, The Lake Utopia Monster (Appears in Book One)
The Ghostly Fire Ship of the Baie des Chaleurs (Appears in Book Two)
The Spectre of Rexton (Appears in Book One)
The Ghost of Binstead Manor (Appears in Rebellious Women In The Maritimes)
