Savary Island's first non-indigenous resident, John Green, also known as Jack, is believed to have settled on Savary in 1886. He was born in 1817 in Hull, England but left at an early age, first travelling to the United States and then to Vancouver Island, where he farmed north of Nanaimo. He was 69 when he sailed to Savary on his sloop The Wanderer and set up his trading post, which was tucked in close to the rocky point at the east end of the island facing the mainland and Lund. Here he logged a substantial area and built a one-room log cabin, store and outbuildings for the sheep, pigs and chickens he kept and sold. In time, he had cleared 160 acres. The store was busy as he kept a variety of products including canned goods, flour, tobacco, fishing gear, powder and shot, and whiskey. He also sold his hand-made oxen yokes fashioned from yew trees found on the island’s south shore. The trading post was a natural stop for loggers, fishermen and indigenous travellers on their way up and down the coast.
On October 24,1888, after years of squatting on the property, John applied for and was granted pre-emption under the Homestead Act for the 160-acre District Lot 1372 at the north-east end of Savary for one dollar an acre. His property purchases continued and he ended up owning most of the island.
On August 2, 1891 he purchased DL 1375 which was 317 acres in the middle of the island.
On August 27, 1891 he purchased DL 1377 which was 316 acres at Indian Point.
In 1892 Mr. R.S. Sherman visited Savary and reported that Mr. Green, who was now in his 70s, was quite crippled and needed two sticks for canes. At this time Tom Taylor, a younger man, was helping him and was a partner in his business.
It was well known that John Green did not trust banks and for that reason it was thought he kept a large amount of cash hidden around his property. On October 30, 1893, John Green and Tom Taylor were found dead. At first it looked like they were victims of a mutual shootout but it was soon determined that the scene had been staged and it was in fact robbery and murder. The events of the murder and resulting trial of Hugh Lynn are well documented in Ian Kennedy’s book Sunny Sandy Savary and Gladys Bloomfield's Magnetic Isle.
Green's cabin remained vacant for many years. Sometime in the 1930s it was reportedly burned to the ground, perhaps for safety reasons. The money John Green would have collected over the years was never found. It was believed that due to his distrust of banks it must be buried on the property and for many years islanders dug up the ground around the cabin in hopes of finding “Green's Treasure”. The rocky point where John Green had settled was known as Green's Point until the name was changed during WWII to become Mace Point.
Editor's note: the following is an excerpt from the writings of Bill Ashworth about his father George Ashworth. George, as the courthouse reporter for the Daily Province, had come across an account of the pursuit, arrest, trial, conviction and execution by hanging of the murderer of a trader named Green.
On a calm sunny Sunday morning in the spring of 1910, George Ashworth and the
press photographer stepped ashore on the beach at Savary from a rowboat they had hired at Lund. They walked along the shore towards the abandoned trading post which had been built by the murdered man below a high rock bluff which sheltered it from the fury of the winter southeast gales.
The main building was a substantial cabin of peeled and whitewashed cedar logs,
each about ten inches in diameter, notched together at the corners. The door, made of riven
planks, stood open hanging on a broken hinge. One window, from which the sash had
been removed, faced west. Outside the window stood a giant gooseberry bush replete with ripe berries, fairly sweet, of which the explorers tasted a few. The bush would break
the glare or the afternoon sun shining through the window. The cabin roof was of split
cedar shakes four feet long, of which a few were missing.
There was no furniture, but two built-in bunks were still in place. Photographs
taken by the police at the time of the murder had shown the bodies of the two murdered
men sprawled across the bunks.
Across a breezeway was a lean-to shed, apparently used as a storeroom or possibly
for shearing sheep. Green was said to have run, in his younger days, as many as three
hundred sheep on the meadow land of the island.
The cabin was the residence of the murdered man’s ghost, which has been seen to
appear there from time to time since. And somewhere behind the haunted cabin was
buried Green’s treasure, which is still searched for by every generation of small boys and girls, and has not yet been found.
Published 2025
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