Settlers from Philadelphia began to migrate to the Petitcodiac River area in 1766: the Trites, Jones and Stieff families moved to present-day Moncton, but the Stieff family (now Steeves), later moved south-east to Hillsborough. Nine families bought land up to west from the bend of the river, ranging from per grant. In 1829, the population of Moncton reached 100, composed mainly of descendants of these settlers. Moncton's shipbuilding era began in 1840 with the arrival of Stewart Russell, a shipbuilder from Hopewell. Russell built the Aginora, which sailed down the Petitcodiac River to trade at the ports in Saint John and New England. The ship and its crew sank in a storm on 24 December 1850, during a trip to Boston for Christmas. A ferry service on the Petitcodiac River was launched around 1841, thanks to a license obtained by Simon Outhouse. The Larch, built by Stephen Binney in 1845, was another important vessel, becoming the largest to sail on the river. But it was not until the arrival of Joseph Salter in 1846 that the shipbuilding boom began: a shipyard founded by Binney and Salter produced 24 vessels from 1847 to 1859, and employed almost 500 of the 1,000 inhabitants in Moncton. Salter would become the first mayor of Moncton in April 1855, the year the town was incorporated. The European and North American Railway was extended to link Pointe-du-Chene to Moncton in 1857, with an eventual goal of reaching Saint John in 1860. The move, according to Larracey, caused the town to become "but a station stop along a railway line". This coincided with the failure of Moncton's shipbuilding industry and a population drop from a peak of 2,000 to about 500. The town declared bankruptcy and was unincorporated in 1862, but it later regained its status in 1875, after it became the Intercolonial Railway's headquarters for its shops in 1871. While the Petitcodiac River continued to aid in the shipping of goods into the 20th century, shipbuilding essentially ended in the 1890s. The final vessel built in Moncton was the Woolastook II on 14 May 1980, while the final ship to sail up the Petitcodiac River was the Inox from France, which arrived on 12 July 1986, (and was, ironically, stranded in Moncton until 3 November due to the river's tidal fluctuations). In 1924, the Petitcodiac Tidal Power Company proposed a tidal power project. This called for