This was the former Samuel McKean grant.
In 1874 , MacLeods built a ship called the "Alexander Keith". William
MacLeod who came to Richibucto in 1817, named this ship after his lifelong
friend.
Tradition says that during the Civil
War in the United States of 1861-1865, many Halifax families were much
more interested in the success of the South than of the North. While
many a young man from this city and others parts of the Province served
in the Union Armies, for adventures sake, a considerable number were
engaged in blockade running to the Southern ports.
Business interests in the capital city
were closely associated with the confederate cause, perhaps because
of the intimate link of the latter with Britain due to the similarity
of upper class customs based upon many retainers and large estates.
It is a tradition that the Hon. Alexander
Keith on more than one occasion assisted southern raiders, captured
off this port, to escape when they were being landed with a guard at
one of the docks along the waterfront. The only confederate ship to
escape the eastern blockade was the "Tallahassee" witch was Captained
by Jeff Davis`s nephew. (Davis
was the President of the Confederacy).
Keith by sheer impertinence, as a paper
of the day called it, stood before the guard while the men leaped into
a boat and were rowed across the harbor to escape near Dartmouth. The
newspaper discussed the event in such general terms that it is impossible
at this later date to piece them together, apparently taking it for
granted that the whole town knew the circumstances.
Alexander Keith a man who first stepped
foot in America at Richibucto, and went on to be Canada’s richest brewer.