Responded to the call by the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, to New Englanders to come and help settle Nova Scotia. He sailed on Captain Robert MacGowan’s sloop with 33 other families and settled at Shoreham, on 30 July 1759. This was just two months before the battle on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City where General Wolfe was killed. Shoreham was renamed Chester. These people were called ‘Planters’ or ‘Bluenosers’. The 1791 poll tax identfies Abraham as a ‘Master of Vessel’.


From the paper on thre “Loyalist Melvins of Charlestown, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia:

“On 30 July 1761 a sloop sailed from Boston, commanded by Captain John McGown, Mate, Matthew McGomery, and arrived in Chester, Lunenberg County,
Nova Scotia on 4 August. On it were the Rev. John Seccombe, of Harvard, Massachusetts, and 30 families from the neighborhood of Boston. Among them
were Robert Melvin of Concord and four motherless children, Sarah, Eleazer, “a child,” and James. Here lies a chink in the otherwise accurate“Palmer Groups .”

Ms. Leavitt, the researcher and author, states the voyage was in 1759, Seccombe’s diary makes it 1761. She cites sales of land in Massachusetts and New Hampshire
by Robert to Benjamin Melvin on 27 April 1761, Ephraim Spalding on 27 April 1761 and Daniel Stickney on 11 May 1761 as evidence that he returned from
Chester and remained for two years before settling permanently in Nova Scotia. Seccombe’s diary proves that the ship sailed in July, 1761, after the above deals
were completed. On 24 August a town meeting was held in Chester, and Capt. Timothy Houghton elected moderator. They drew lots for land. Clearing of land
and construction of homes began.

Among the Crown grants registered in the Adjutant General’s office in Halifax, NS, is one dated October 31, 1765, in which is given to Rev. John Seccombe,
Jonathan Prescott, Timothy Houghton, Simon Floyd, James Webber, Abraham Bradshaw, George Collicutt, Robert Melville, and many others under the seal of
Governor Wilmot, a tract of twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty acres of land in Chester Twp., NS, each share to consist of five hundred acres, on
condition of paying a free yearly quitrent of one shilling sterling every Michelmas day, for every expiration of ten years, beginning with the date of the grant, for
every fifty acres so granted, and so on, in proportions of fifty acres, forever. The grantees promise to plant two acres with hemp [for the making of
Naval rope] and a like quantity to be “improved.” One family, at least, with proper stock and material for said improvement, to be settled on every five
hundred acres on or before the last day of November, 1767. (Crown Lands Grants, vol 6, p548.)

August 14, 1784, he received another grant, in company with over a thousand others, under Governor John Parr, at Amherst, Nova Scotia, and in this
same year, another grant at Point Mishpeck; the place then called Parr Town is now St. John’s, New Brunswick.


June 1773, or four years before his will was drawn, he made a “deed of gift to my son, Eleazer Melvin, housewright, of Littleton, Middx. Co., Mass, of sixty acres of land at Nottingham West, in Massachusetts.” This deed was signed at Halifax, before Jonathan Prescott, justice of the peace. Palmer Groups”