A 1785 land transfer document between Christian’s father Jacob and himself states that in exchange for the 1065 acres in the western half of the original Treitz grant, Christian was required to annually provide his mother and father with sustenance: “one hundred w[eigh]t of Meat half pork half beef Six Busshels of Wheat grinded into Meal six Cord of firewood laid at the Door and one Cow kept summer and Winter to be paid yearly and every year...”117

The list of “Town Officers” of Moncton in 1786 includes Christian Trites as “Commissioner of Highways” and a “Overseer of the Poor”119

from Gubbins Journals, 1811 Tour Sunday, 14th July pg 14-15 "I was this night accommodated in a good brick house (the first I had seen in the Province) belonging to a German farmer of the name of Tritz (25). this man informed me that he and his relations were the first white inhabitants that had settled in this part of the country and the difficulties they had to contend with appeared to me almost increadible. His mother, he said, had lost the use of both of her arms, and not being able to protect herself from the flies, she was actually killed by them, they not being aquainted at that time of the method now practised of keeping insects off by smoak. They had been brought to the country by some speculators in land, whose means had failed, and they were left to perish with hunger, which was very near being the case. When I Saw them, about twenty five years afterward, they were in possession of most flourishing farm surrounded by others which they had established for their sons and daughters, who were married and settled in the neighborhood.
Footnote 25: Christian Trites (1759-1836). In 1766 a party of German emigrants from Pennsylvania, led by his father Jacob Trites, Sr, Michael Lutz, and Heinrich Steif, was settled on the Petitcodiac by John Hughes, a Pennsylvania land speculator. Esther Clark Wright, Samphire Greens: The Story of the Steeves (New Brunswick,1962)"108

Date : December 11, 1889
County : Westmorland
Place : Moncton
Newspaper : The Times

Christian TRITES built his first house of logs near where the Intercolonial Railway round house now stands. He afterwards built a frame house which was burned down and then a brick house which is believed to have occupied a site on the property purchased by Mr. Steeves on Bridge street. Bricks for this were made on the marsh near where the bridge now crosses. Christian Trites had two sons and seven daughters and as they grew up, he gave a farm to each. Mrs. John JONES got land next to the homestead and the other daughters, Mrs. GRANT, Mrs. GESNER, Mrs. James ROBERTSON, sr., Mrs. STEEVES and Mrs. STEADMAN received lots in their order. Several residents of Moncton still remember Christian Trites when an old man and his only surviving son died here a few years ago. Jacob TRITES, jr. got the land next in a westerly direction, taking up an immence tract, with a frontage of over half a mile on the river and running away back in the mountains, a distance of upwards of 100 chains or more than five miles, his tract containing 1,900 acres.51