History of the Guild, Page 5
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The land where the Guild House now stands was originally a Crown Grant to Caleb Reynolds on December 15, 1796. He sold it in 1803 to Jean Baptiste Rousseau, whose widow sold it again on June 12, 1816 to James Mills and Peter Hess. At that time the property consisted of all the land between Bay Street and Locke Street, and between the Mountain and the Bay. On June 24, 1816 the two owners divided the property in half and James Mills retained the portion west of Queen Street, about 240 acres (at $2.00 per acre). At his death on July 2, 1852, the property was inherited by his fourth son, James Nelson Mills, the seventh child in a family of eleven. He began erecting low cost housing on the property.
On January 5, 1876, Nelson Mills was attacked and stabbed 8 or 9 times by a market butcher, Michael McConnell, whose goods had been attached by Mills for non-payment of rent. He had been with-holding the rent ($14.00) to try to force the landlord to make some much needed repairs. Nelson Mills died on January 9, 1876, after an attack of the hiccoughs had caused an inflammation of the wound.