Each document contains a high level of detail, ranging from the rates of assessment on each property to finance drainage or dyking work, to the rates of pay for labourers, and the prices paid for materials. The Commissioners operated with a high degree of autonomy, answering directly to the landowners of the marsh lots (including themselves) rather than to the dictates of a provincial government bureaucracy - although the latter was to come eventually. The Commissioners operated at a sub-municipal government level and in some cases were able to gather about them considerable influence on the directions of marshland agriculture. The Anderson family owned large portions of the Tantramar Marshes, at both Sunken Island and Coles Island and their involvement in the management of the marsh was entirely logical. As early as the 1820s, the marsh records in the Tantramar region indicate a concentration of political influence within the Commissioners of Sewers. Large landowners, such as the Andersons and the Botsfords (whose holdings on the Westcock Marsh were central to the family being the dominant agriculturalists listed in the 1861 census), dominated the work done on the marsh, in some cases ensuring that their own marshlands were well-drained and dyked. Land ownership was most concentrated in the Dixon’s Island and West of Cole’s Island marshes where between a quarter and a third of the proprietors owned approximately 60% of the marshland. Greater dispersion was seen in the East of Sunken Island and Bear Island/Middle Village marshes but even in these cases the top four proprietors owned over 50% of the marshland. The pattern of ownership on the large Great Marsh showed relatively little concentration, although the four largest proprietors owned in excess of 20% of the land and one landowner held 10%.
https://www.mta.ca/marshland/topic6_agriculture/management/sunken1884.htm
