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Its military days over, Blockhouse Point soon returned to its ways of peace. Probably it was not occupied by the first permanent settlers who came about 1770, as DesBarres and his agent, Wellwood Waugh, had for a time a notion that it was reserved for military purposes. But by 1795, it was in possession of George Langille, Jr., evidently a son of one of the original Langille settlers. Langille tried to lease it but because of the supposed military reservation, Waugh, in DesBarres ’ absence, would sign no lease. In 1804, DesBarres , through Waugh as his agent, granted subject to His Majesty’s right to the fort, a lease to one Patrick Carrel, who for a few years held the farm. The term was for nine hundred and ninety-nine years at an annual L2 rent. He was followed by Samuel Chambers, a son of an early settler, Chambers or Chalmers as his name was then spelled. At one time, John Cole, another early settler occupied the property as a tenant of the DesBarres estate. Cole was the man who owned a cow which on one occasion gave birth to seven calves. Cole stuffed their bodies and exhibited them around the country as "Cole’s calves." He at least knew the value of alliteration as an advertising medium. The title of the property remained in the DesBarres Estate until 1861, when it was purchased by "Blockhouse Bob" Gass. Well remembered is his old-fashioned Colonial farm house with its green shutters which in modern times was destroyed by fire.
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