The history of Kings County, Nova Scotia, heart of the Acadian land, giving a sketch of the French and their expulsion ; and a history of the New England planters who came in their stead, with many genealogies, 1604-1910

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY

HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

_ Corner! University Library

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"'®'°irjfiiiiffi!,.,!lii!?9* ^°""*yi Nova Scotia he

olin

3 1924 028 897 936

otber Booft0

By Dr. Eaton

The Church op England in Nova
Scotia and ths Tory Ci,ergy of
THE Revoi,ution

The Heart of the Creeds, Histor-

ICAI, S.EI.IGION IN the I<IGHT OF

Modern Thought

Acadian Legends and Lyrics

Acadian Bai,i,ads

The Lotus of the Nii,e and Other
Poems

Poems of the Christian Year

Poems in Notable Anthologies

Magazine and Bncyclop^dia Ar-

TICI,ES

Family Historical Monographs
Educational Works Compiled

The History

OF

KII^GS COUNTY

NOVA SCOTIA

HEART OF THE
ACADIAN LAND

GIVING A SKETCH OF THE FRENCH AND

THEIR EXPULSION; AND A HISTORY

OF THE NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS

WHO CAME IN THEIR STEAD

WITH MANY GENEALOGIES
1604 - 1910

BY

ARTHUR WENTWORTH HAMILTON EATON, M. A., D. C. I.

Prieat of the Diocese of New York; CorreipondinK Member of the Nora Scotia Hletorlcal

Society; Honorary Hembor of the New BruDBwiek Historical Society; Life

Member of the New England Historic Genealogical

Society ; Member of the Boston Authors Clnb

SALEM, MASS.

THE SALEM PRESS COMPANY

1910

''>! '%

\' I

,--»— .^j'^, '

TO

Of My Brother
FRANK HERBERT EATON, M. A., D. C. L.

This Book is Affectionatei,y
Inscribed

The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028897936

CONTENTS

Faqb

Preface ... ix

I. King's County 1

II. The Micmac Indians . . 16

III. The Acadian French 23

IV. The Acadians to the Expulsion 39

V. The Coming op New England Planters to Corn-

wallis and Horton 58

VI. The Township of Aylesford 90

VII. The Township of Parrsborough 115

VIII. Kentville, the Shire Town 123

IX. WoLFviLLE, Canning, Berwick, and other places 147

X. County Government, Public Officials .... 159

XI. Roads and Travelling, Dyke Building .... 176

XII. Chief Industries op the County 190

XIII. Houses, Furniture, Dress 207

XIV. Marriages, Domestic Life, Slaves, Etc 224

XV. The Anglican Church 240

XVI. The Congregationalist Church, and the Alline

Revival 271

XVII. Early Presbyterianism 294

VUl CONTENTS

FAOB

XVIII. The Rise of the Baptists 303

XIX. Early Methodism 322

XX. The Roman Catholic Church 329

XXI. The Progress of Education 334

XXII. Acadia University 348

XXIII. Literature, Authors, Newspapers 360

XXIV. Politics, Representatives to the Legislature . 410
XXV. The County's Militia 426

XXVI. Current Events 441

Population at Different Periods 458

Biographies 461

Family Sketches 542

Index 885

PREFACE

As the most prosperous part of the whole Acadian country in
French times, and as the scene of conspicuous events at the tragical
period of the Acadian expulsion, King's County, Nova Scotia, will
always have a wider interest for the world than is possible with
most rural localities. That part of the county which borders the
Basin of Minas is the scene of the early part of Longfellow's
Evangeline, and all through the two original townships of Horton
and Cornwallis, which compose the eastern part of the county, were
scattered the clustered hamlets and individual homes of those
thrifty French people who in 1755 were forcibly taken from their
fertile farms and rich dyke-lands into suffering exile in unfriendly
colonies, and placed as wretched paupers among people who had
no sympathy with their traditions or habits of mind, who were
unfamiliar with their faces, and who profoundly hated their speech.
"When the Acadians had been deported the red tide-floods of the
Bay of Fundy bore to Minas Basin's shores a new population, repre-
senting families that had long been conspicuous for energy and
worth in various parts of New England, and with these began a
fresh civilization in King's County, that continued and conserved
much that had been best from the beginning in New England's own
life. From such favoured towns as New London, Norwich, Say-
brook, Colchester, Lebanon, and Lyme, and from similarly inter-
esting places in Rhode Island, these King's County successors of the
Acadians were largely drawn, and it is with them and their institu-
tions and their deeds that the volume here introduced will be found
chiefly to deal.

That the descendants of these New England planters in the
favourable conditions in which they found themselves in the fruitful
Acadian country in not a few cases have carved out for themselves
brilliant careers will not seem strange when one remembers the fine
qualities of the stock from which most of them sprang. In King's

X KING'S COUNTY

County the first New England owners of the land with untiring
industry replanted the long tilled but now vacant upland soil,
rebuilt and enlarged the great marsh spaces reclaimed from the
sea by their predecessors, set out new orchards, sowed flourishing
fields of flax and com, bnilt churches, established schools, and by
their intelligence and piety laid the foundations for a college,
where, in one of the loveliest regions in eastern America, for seventy
years now.'sound learning has been constantly fostered and solid
principles have been taught. At the close of the Revolutionary War
between thirty and thirty-five thousand Loyalists, from New Eng-
land, New York, New Jersey, and colonies farther south, poured
into Nova Scotia, and in King's County a certain number of these
refugees also established their homes. To these later important
settlers a certain amount of attention has naturally been given in
this book.

In the history of any colony the origins and interrelations of
families have an important place, but in a general History complete
Genealogies are, of course, impossible. In the laborious task of
writing this History the last three years have almost entirely been
spent, and not by any means the least difficult part of the task has
been the compilation of the many family sketches the book contains.
To make these sketches complete family histories, several lifetimes
would have been demanded and many volumes required to be filled,
but if the sketches here given, brief as some of them necessarily
are, shall give the families themselves chiefly concerned an impulse
for more thorough genealogical research on their own part, the
author's purpose in making them shall have been fully served.
That some families are not represented in the book at all is due to
the fact that the author's request in the newspapers for further
genealogical information, except in two or three cases has received
no response. On such omitted families, and on any families whose
Genealogies are nowhere yet fully in print, the author urges the
necessity for the careful preservation and collation of records. For
many decades until recently Nova Scotia has had no public registra-
tion of vital statistics and this fact makes more imperative the

PREFACE xi

careful preservation of private records of births, marriages, and
deaths.

To several persons, in and out of the county, for material aid
in the writing of this book, the author desires here strongly to
express his thanks. Major Robert William Starr, of Wolfville, has
the widest knowledge of any person living in the county of the
general details of the county's history, and from first to last the
author has had Major Starr's cordial and most important help. To
Mr. John Burgess Calkin, LL.D., of Truro, Mr. John Elihu Wood-
worth of Berwick, Hon. Judge Savary, the accomplished editor and
part author of the valuable Calnek-Savary History of Annapolis ; to
Harry Piers, Esq., of Halifax, Miss Donohue, Acting Librarian of
the Nova Scotia Historical Society, the Bev. Edward Manning
Saunders, D.D., of Halifax, Mr. Gustavus E. Bishop, of Greenwich,
Mr. John E. Chapman, of Boston, and in connection with the chapter
on authors and literature the Bev. Arthur John Lockhart, of Winter-
port, Maine, the author owes deep debts of gratitude. For con-
tinual inspiration and suggestion he owes much also to his cousin,
Dr. Benjamin Band, of Harvard University, one of the best friends
Nova Scotia, and indeed Canada at large, has in the United States.
By his cousins, Ralph Samuel Eaton and Mrs. Wilford Henry Chip-
man, of Kentville, the author has also been helped in important ways.

In the preparation of family sketches the well known news-
paper articles, now in scrap books, of the late William Pitt Brechin,
M.D., of Boston, have been of great assistance. Dr. Brechin was an
indefatigable genealogist of Cornwallis families, and although his
work has been available for this History only as furnishing a basis
for sketches, in the cases of several families such basis it has formed.
Owing, however, to the loyal labour in summer vacations of Dr.
Benjamin Rand in copying completely the vital records in the
Cornwallis Town Book the author has been able to make direct
appeal to the original source from which a very considerable part
of Dr. Brechin's material was drawn. In the fifty-fourth volume
of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register a slight
sketch of Dr. Brechin and his work by the author of this book wiU

xii KING'S COUNTY

be found. Among the many sons of King's County who in other parts
of the continent have kept loyal to their native traditions and have
reflected honour on the country of their birth, Dr. Brechin's name
deserves an important place.

Another debt of gratitude owed by the author, which he can
never adequately repay, is here gladly acknowledged. The History
of King's County has been written entirely in the Library of the
New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, and to the
kindly encouragement and unvarying courtesy of the able Libra-
rian of the Society, Mr. William Prescott Greenlaw, as also to the
friendly interest of the accomplished Assistant Librarian, Miss
Mary Ella Stickney, is due the fact that the book has come into
being at all. Much of the material for the History has been gradu-
ally collected during the author's twenty years residence in New
York City, but the writing of the book could hardly have been done
elsewhere than in Boston, and in Boston it could have been done
nowhere so pleasantly or so thoroughly as under the genial auspices
mentioned above. The most liberal subscriber to the book before
publication has been Mr. Arthur Watson Eaton, of Pittsfield, Mass.,
whose intelligent appreciation of the necessity for such a work as
the present has greatly strengthened the author's courage in carry-
ing to completion his laborious and dil&cult task.

Boston,

July, 1910.

IMPORTANT EVENTS

De Monts, Ghamplain, and Poutrincourt visit Minas . . . 1604

Ghamplain again visits Minas 1606

Poutrincourt and Biencourt yisit Minas 1607

First Settlement at Minas shortly before 1680

Col. Benjamin Church visits Minas and cuts the dykes . . . 1704

Acadia finally conquered by England 1710

Unconditional Oath of Allegiance refused 1755

Expulsion of the French 1755

Representative Assembly created in Nova Scotia 1757,

Proclamation for Settling French Lands adopted .... 1758

Townships of Horton, Comwallis, and Falmouth erected . 1759

Coming of New England Planters 1760- 61

Anglican Mission established 1762

Congregationalist Church founded about 1765

Eev, James Murdoch comes to Horton 1766

Henry Alline begins to preach 1776

New Light Congregationalist Church of Comwallis founded 1778

Hants County formed 1781

Migration to New Brunswick about 1783

Loyalists settle at Aylesford and Parrsborough 1783

The Congregationalist Church of Comwallis becomes Presby-
terian 1785

Aylesford Township erected about 1786

The Baptist Church of Comwallis founded 1807

The Shire Town named 1826

Horton Academy founded 1829

Parrsborough separated from King's 1840

Acadia College chartered 1840

King's County changed to a municipality 1879

Kentville incorporated 1886

Wolfville incorporated 1893

CORRECTIONS

In the printing of this volume certain slight errors have crept into the
text, these the author urges the owner of the book kindly to correct with his pen.

Page 45, line 6, omit in his place.

" 59, line 10, for ajfected read effected.

" 158, line 32, for speitt read spend.

" 163, line 31, for Cottman read Cottnam.

" 173, line 11, for Coronors read Coroners.

" 240, line 25, for Lunenberg, read Lunenburg,

" 240, line 27, for Louisberg read Louisburg.

" 256, line 13, for have ministered read may have ministered.

" 268, line 20, for have lost read have been lost.

" 269, line 32, for Earl Gray read Earl Grey.

" 273, line 10, for was he had sold read was that he had sold.
; " 288, line 20, for shut not read shut out.

" 303, line 11, omit other.

" 304, line 32, for a chaplain read as chaplain.

" 352, line 22, for Hon. S. P. Robie read Hon. S. B. Robie.

" 603, line 17, for Tarnar ( Troop) Starr read Tamar (Troop) Starr.

" 603, line 30, for as physician read as a physician.

" 611, line 28. The proper date of John Cogswell's birth is Sept. 26, 1781.

" 624, DeBlois family sketch, line 11, omit George.

" 643, 8th line from the bottom, for Volumtown read Voluntown.

" 651, line 5, for George, born April, 1790, read April 6, 1790.

" 716, at the end of line 19 insert his.

*' 731, lines 1, 2, 3, should read: You are on a summit of a hill over-
looking the valley. Before you lies its whole length of about 10 miles ( ?)
and a mile of breadth. Through its centre flows the narrow Gaspereau
stream, etc.

" 747, line 8, omit influence.

" 843, Thorpe family sketch, line 4, for gives as much light read gives us
much light.

" 859, line 7, after b. Dec. ij, 1837, insert m. (married).

NOTE
It was originally intended to add to this History a list of the chief sources
from which the materials for it have been drawn. Among these would have
been mentioned two manuscript historical sketches of King's County, written
many years ago for the Aikin Prize, and since then preserved in the library of
King's College, Windsor. The writers of these interesting manuscripts were
Charles S. Hamilton, Esq., Counsellor at Law, of New Haven, Conn., a native
of Horton, winner of the Aikin Prize, and Lieut.-Col. Wentworth Eaton Ros-
coe, K.C., Barrister, of Kentville, a native of Comwallis. To both these man-
uscripts the author is indebted for valuable suggestions.

CHAPTER I
KING'S COUNTY

In the history of Nova Scotia at large there is a certain dram-
atic interest that belongs to few portions of the American continent.
The little peninsula which with the island of Cape Breton now
forms this maritime province, for more than a century served as
the chief contending ground for empire in America of two great
European nations, whose strifes ceased only when the noted French
strongholds, Louisburg and Quebec, at last fell decisively into
English hands. To Port Koyal, now Annapolis Royal, in the county
of Annapolis, and to Fort Beausejour, now in Cumberland county,
attaches a stronger military interest than to any point in King's
County, but in the whole Acadian province there was not so pros-
perous a district as MinaS, and though Beaubassin, Cobequid,
Piziquid, and Port Royal share deeply in the tragic interest of the
expulsion, in the village of Grand Pre, and the country near it that
borders on the Gaspereau, the saddest romance of the expulsion
seems always to lie. In King's County was the district of Minas,
and the populous adjoining district at first included in Minas,
known in French annals as Riviere aux Canards.

Through the county, into Minas Basin, flow the five rivers, with
names now only slightly anglicized, the Gaspereau, the Grand Habi-
tant, the Riviere aux Canards, the Petit Habitant, and the
Pereau. From north-east to south-west run the two ranges of hills
known as the North and South mountains, the North Mountain
terminating at Minas Channel in rugged Cape Split and the bold
bluff, Blomidon. The county's northern and eastern boundaries,
respectively, are determined by the Bay of Fundy and Minas Basin,
and the bordering counties, that make its western and southern
boundaries, are the counties of Annapolis, Lunenburg, and Hants.

2 KING'S COUNTY

Within its ancient limits as a county, King's was one of the largest
counties in the province, with its present limits it is one of the
counties of second size. It now contains in all but eight hundred
and eleven square miles, hut its importance is not measured by its
acreage, for its landscape is so beautiful and the fertility of its soil
so great that it long ago came to be called appropriately, "the
Garden of Nova Scotia." In shape the county is very like the
letter V, the vertical point resting on the county of Lunenburg.
Nova Scotia's civil government began with the founding of
Halifax in 1749 ; and August 17th, 1759, at a meeting of the Council,
Messrs. Jonathan Belcher, Benjamin Green, John Collier, Charles
Morris, Eichard Bulkeley, Thomas Saul, and Benjamin Gerrish
being present, the first division of the province into counties was
made. The names given the five counties then created, were Halifax,
Cumberland, Lunenburg, Annapolis, and King's. The boundaries
of King's were described in the following way: "King's to be
bounded westerly by the county of Annapolis, and of the same
width, and from the southeasterly corner of said county to run east
24 degrees north to the lake emptying into Pisiquid (the Avon)
River, and thence continuing near the same course to the river
Chibenaccadie, opposite to the mouth of the river Stewiack ; thence
up said river ten miles, and thence northerly to Tatmaguash, and
from Tatmaguash, westerly, to the river Solier, where it discharges
into the channel of Chignecto." From this description we see that
King's County first comprised, besides the present county, a corner
of Lunenburg, almost the whole of Hants, more than a third of
Colchester, and about half of Cumberland. Between 1759 and 1785
four other counties, Hants, Sydney, Shelburne, and Queens, were
formed, and in the latter year the Council had the limits of all the
counties in the province described. The most important change
which had been made in the territory of King's since the beginning,
was the creation from it of Hants, and the boundaries of the reduced
King's were described as, "beginning at the bridge on Seven Mile
Brook in Wilmot, being the beginning bound of the county of
Annapolis, thence to run north ten degrees west to the Bay of
Fundy, and from the said bridge south, ten degrees east to the

KING'S COUNTY 3

north line of Lunenburg County, thence to run north seventy-five
degrees east until it comes to the south-west limit of Hants County,
thence north thirty degrees west until it comes to the south-east
angle of Horton township and by the dividing line of Horton and
Falmouth to the River Pizzaquid now called Avon, and bounded on
the north and north-east by the waters of the Bay of Fundy, Minas
Gut, and Basin, and River Avon aforesaid, and also including the
Tswnehip of Parrsborough and other granted and ungranted land on
the northern side of the Gut and Basin of Minas, which are ascer-
tained by a line drawn from Cape Chignecto to the northern bound-
ary line of Parrsborough, and thence to the south boundary of
Francklin's Manor, and thence to begin at the east boundary of land
granted Benjamin De "Wolf and John Clark on the north side of the
Basin of Minas aforesaid, thence to run north nine miles, and thence
to the south boxmdary of Francklin's Manor aforesaid".

At the meeting of the Council, December 16, 1785, when
this description was submitted, there were present, the Honourables
Richard Bulkeley, Henry Newton, Jonathan Binney, Alexander
Brymer, Isaac Deschamps, Thomas Cochran, and Charles Morris.

In 1821, '22, and '24, acts were passed calling for a new defini-
tion of county limits. Pursuant to these acts, such definitions
were prepared, and by another act, passed in 1826, were by the
Council affirmed. The boundaries then settled, as regards King's at
least, were, however, precisely those that had been fixed by the
Council in 1785. Since 1826 no re-definition of the boundaries of
King's has been necessary, or has been made.

May 21, 1759, the two townships of Horton and Cornwallis had
been created, and July 21st of that year the township of Falmouth
was made. In 1761, from the part of Falmouth east of the Piziquid,
which was known as East Falmouth, the township of Newport was
set off, and in 1764 the township of Windsor was formed. In
1781 these last three King's County townships petitioned to be
erected into an independent county, and July 2d of that year Fal-
mouth, Newport, and Windsor, "with the lands contiguous to them",
became the county of Hants. As early as July 1, 1761, the settle-

4 KING'S COUNTY

ment of Cobequid, now Masstown, in Colchester County, was thrown
into the county of Halifax, and finally new limits for the early
formed county of Cumberland were drawn. In Cumberland today,
most of the old township of Parrsborough, on the north side of
Minas Channel, is to be found, but until 1840 the district of Parrs-
borough remained a township of King 's.

The third of the three present townships of King's is Aylesford,
but the exact time or manner of the recognition of it as a separate
township we haVe never ascertained. "A part of Wilmot was now
set off as a separate township and named Aylesford", says Murdoch,
writing of the year 1786, but diligent inquiry has failed to give us
any more light on the matter.

May 13, 1784, it was resolved in Council that a large district
now in Cumberland county should be included in King's. This tract
is described as comprising "all that tract of land situate on the
north side of the Basin of Minas and Gut, and bounded on the south
by the shores thereof, on the western part by Cape Dore and along
the coast of Cape Chignecto, on the north by a line drawn from the
point of said cape to the north-western angle of a tract of land
called Francklin Manor and by a line from thence seventy degrees
east, twenty miles, and thence by a line to the north-east corner of
land granted to Benjamin Gerrish, Esq., by the said land to the
Basin aforesaid". It would seem from this action of the Council
that the tract here referred to, which covers the south-western part
of Cumberland, had up to this time lain outside of any county limits,
but possibly before this it may have been roughly included in the
county to which it now belongs. The history of the gradual forma-
tion of the present county of Cumberland bears a close relation to
the history of the formation of King's, but the details of the fixing
of Cumberland's boundaries must be left to the future historian
of that most northerly section of the Nova Scotian peninsula.

The County of King's is thus now limited to what, until the
erection of the county into a Municipality, in 1879, were the three
townships of Horton, Cornwallis, and Aylesford, Horton being much
the largest township of the three.

KING'S COUNTY 5

Of the general appearance of the townships of Horton and
Cornwallis as one comes to them from the east, Judge Haliburton
in his History of Nova Scotia eloquently says : "After leaving Pal-
mouth and proceeding on the great western road, the attention of
the traveller is arrested by the extent and beauty of a view which
bursts upon him very unexpectedly as he descends the Horton
mountains. A sudden turn of the road displays at once the town-
ships of Horton and Cornwallis, and the rivers that meander
through them. Beyond is a lofty and extended chain of hills, pre-
senting a vast chasm, apparently burst out by the waters of nine-
teen rivers that empty into the Basin of Minas, and here escape
into the Bay of Fundy. The variety and extent of this prospect,
the beautiful verdant vale of the Gaspereaux ; the extended town-
ship of Horton, interspersed with groves of wood and cultivated
fields, and the cloud-capt summit of the lofty cape that terminates
the chain of the North Mountain, form an assemblage of objects
rarely united with so striking an effect. * * * No part of the
Province can boast more beautiful and diversified scenery than the
township of Horton. Beside the splendid prospect from the moun-
tain just mentioned, and those in the vicinity of Kentville, there
are others still more interesting at a distance from the post road.
It would be difiicult to point out another landscape at all equal
to that which is beheld from the hill that overlooks the site of the
ancient village of Minas. On either hand extend undulating hills
richly cultivated, and intermingled with farm houses and orchards.
From the base of these high lands extend the alluvial meadows,
which add so much to the appearance and wealth of Horton. The
Grand Prarie is skirted by Boot and Long Islands, whose fertile
and well tilled fields are sheltered from the north by evergreen
forests of dark foliage. Beyond are the wide expanse of waters
of the Basin of Minas, the lower part of Cornwallis, and the isles
and blue highlands of the opposite shores. The charm of this
prospect consists in the unusual combination of hill, dale, woods,
and cultivated fields; in the calm beauty of agricultural scenery,
and in the romantic wildness of distant forests. During the sum-

6 KING'S COUNTY

mer and autumnal months, immense herds of cattle are seen quietly
cropping the herbage of the Grand Prarie ; while numerous vessels
plying on the Basin convey a pleasing evidence of the prosperity
and resources of this fertile district."

Of the fertility of the soil of Horton and Cornwallis too much
cannot possibly be said. Besides the present fifty thousand acres
of beautiful dyked land which these townships contain, a rich
alluvial country in successive epochs reclaimed from the sea, there
are perhaps seventy thousand acres of tilled upland, where grains
and root crops grow luxuriantly, and where apple, pear, and plum
orchards come to magnificent fruitage. Across the South Mountain
lies a large area of forest land, and even here there is some good
agricultural soil. It is in the so called "Annapolis Valley," how-
ever, between the North and South mountains, that the rich farms
and wonderful fruit orchards of this far famed region of the
province of Nova Scotia are to be found. An almost magical charm,
indeed, lies over this whole valley, its wide-spreading dyke-lands,
pink-blossoming orchards, scarlet-maple clad hills, clumps of droop-
ing willows, sturdy groves of oak, the graceful sweeping elms that
throw soft shade over country and town — where else in northern
America can such beauty be found! "The outlooks from many of
the most elevated points," says a recent writer, "are admirable pic-
tures of rural loveliness. Notable among them is the 'Lookoff',
on the North Mountain, from which portions of five counties are
visible, and where the eye ranges some ninety miles westward till
it reaches the shores of Annapolis Basin. When seen in the early
October haze it is a panorama of unforgettable charms. One has
but to turn one's head from this view of the valley to see in its
loveliness the historic Basin of Minas, framed in green and azure,
fretting the wide curves of its shores with far-famed tides that race
over the tawny flats, back and forth, from age to age. Another
turn of the head, and we have in view Minas Channel, and on its
farther shore the bold hills of Greville Bay and Spencer's Island,
and the frowning cliffs of Cape D'Or."

Of the beauties of the township of Aylesford, lying to the west

KIN<J'S COUNTY 7

and south-west of the other townships, somewhat less is to be said in
praise. The township covers a flat, sandy district between the
North and South mountains, part of which is a bog about five miles
long, known as the Aylesford or Caribou Bog, where cranberries are
largely cultivated, but it contains also much as good soil for agricul-
ture as Cornwallis and Horton. Of the large region which includes
Aylesford and "Wilmot, the Rev. Dr. Saunders says: "Not many
years have passed since it has been found that the swampy lands in
the valley could be drained, and were of excellent quality. Now this
section of the country is known as possessing all kinds of soil, from
barren sand to thick red clay. Much of it is the very best soil
for fruit raising, other parts are excellent for pasturage and hay
lands. Hence the products of this part of the valley are very
numerous." The distance from the eastern to the western boundary
line of Aylesford township, by the old road, in the Almanacs of the
18th century used always to be given as exactly ten miles.

On the geological structure of King's County many longer or
shorter treatises are to be found. Of these may be mentioned
Jackson and Alger's discussion of the Mineralogy and Geology of
Nova Scotia, 1832; Dr. Abram Gesner's "Remarks on the Geology
and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia", 1836, and "Industrial Resources
of Nova Scotia", 1849; Sir William Dawson's "Acadian Geology",
1855 and 1878; Dr. Honeyman's paper on "Nova Scotian Geology",
in the Nova Scotia Institute of Science, Vol. 5, Part 1 ; a paper by
Professor Ernest Haycock, in the publications of the Nova Scotia
Institute of Science, Vol. 10, Part 2 ; and a Summary Report of the
Geological Survey Department, with a map, 1901.

On the rich alluvial King's County marshes, and the remark-
able Minas Basin tides, no one has written so well as King's Coun-
ty's scholarly son, the late Frank Herbert Eaton, D. C. L., whose
knowledge of the county's natural history and resources was ac-
curate and wide. In an article in the Popular Science Monthly for
June, 1893, Dr. Eaton described the marshes and tides, and his
description is so graphic that with a few slight changes we repro-
duce part of it here.

8 KING'S COUNTY

"Among the many littoral indentations of the western Atlan-
tic", says Dr. Eaton, "no other possesses so many unique and in-
teresting features as the Bay of Fundy. Of this truly extraordinary
sheet of water the single fact is usually recorded in the school books
that it is noted for its very high tides. But so meagre a reference
to what is in itself an imposing exhibition of gravitational energy,
helpful as it may be in a mnemonic way to the learner of geograph-
ical catalogues, gives no hint either of the remarkable series of
physiographical conditions which are the cause of this phenomenon,
or of those which it creates. The Bay of Fundy is remarkable not
simply for the grandeur of its tidal phenomena, but equally so for
the exquisitely picturesque sculpturing of its coast line, and the
diversity, range, and richness of the geological evidence thereby
revealed; for the unique character of the extensive alluvial tracts
that skirt its head-waters ; and for the wealth of legend, tradition,
and romantic incident embodied in the early history of the people
that dwell about it.

"North of Cape Cod, the continental coast line recedes abruptly
westward and then sweeps in a long curve north-eastwardly till
the head-waters of the Bay of Fundy are reached. Turning again
on itself, its course is westward to Cape Sable, from which it
stretches away toward the east as the southern shore of Nova
Scotia. Thus between capes Cod and Sable lies the long, narrow,
open Bay of Maine which terminates toward the north and east in
the land-locked Bay of Fundy. In the shallower waters of this open
bay, the tidal impulse which over ocean depths moves only as a
wave of vertical oscillation, is gradually changed into one of trans-
lation. Under the influence of this transformation, the whole body
of water moves slowly shoreward, and sweeping round with the curv-
ing coast line, skirts the southern shores of Maine and New Bruns-
wick till it reaches the narrow strait between Briar Island and
Grand Manan. Compressed between these closer limits, the water
is forced onward with increasing velocity into the Bay of Fundy,
part finding its way into the Annapolis Basin and its tributary
rivers, the main current, however, moving onward till it meets

KING'S COUNTY »

the tongue of land which terminates in Cape D'Or. Here this cur-
rent divides, the northern portion filling Shepody, and Chignecto
basins; while the southern half rushes onward through the nar-
row entrance to the Basin of Minas. As it passes capes Split and
Blomidon, the swirling, eddying, foaming tide attains a velocity
of ten miles or more an hour. Thus, twice a day the low and un-
protected marsh-lands which former tides have made along the
Minas, Shepody, Chignecto, and Annapolis shores are covered by
the tidal flood, while in the tributary rivers the mingled salt and
fresh water fills the channels for many miles into the interior to a
height of ten, twenty, or thirty feet above the normal level of the
stream. Thus it is that the long sickle-curved Maine coast grad-
ually gathers up the water rolled upon it twice a day by the ocean
tide-wave, and throwing it backward, presses it into the long fun-
nel-shaped Bay of Fundy, within whose confines are exaggerated,
far beyond their normal limits, all the spectacular and physiograph-
ical effects of ordinary tidal phenomena.

"Such is the general character of the Fundy tides, while local
conditions determine great diversity in the height, velocity, and
specific effects. In some places the extreme elevation of the flood-
tide above low water mark is as great as sixty feet ; in some rivers
the upward flow against the fresh-water current forms a rapidly
moving wall or bore several feet in height, the rushing sound of
which can be heard at considerable distance, while in others the
two currents meet and mingle so quietly that an observer can hardly
tell where the backward flow begins.

"Lining the shores of the headwaters of the bay, and spread-
ing far inland up the valleys of its river tributaries, are extensive
tracts of alluvial marsh land of remarkable fertility. These great
alluvial tracts are unlike any other so-called marshes known to exist.
In general, alluvial deposits are formed as river basins by materials
washed down from higher levels by fresh water floods; here the
whole deposit is of tidal origin. Every incoming tide bears land-
ward its burden of finely comminuted sediment, formed by the
wearing action of the tidal currents upon the sides and bottom of

10 KING'S COUNTY

the bay. During the interval between the flood that covers the
unprotected river and basin margins and the ebb that leaves them
bare again, the suspended sediment is precipitated as a film of soft
and glistening mud, upon the partly dried and hardened deposi-
tions of previous tides. Thus, layer after layer accumulates, until
the flat becomes too high for any but extraordinary tides to cover.

"Instructive illustrations these marsh flats often give of Na-
ture's methods in the preservation of those records by which the
geologist reads our earth's early history. So plastic and impres-
sionable is the mud which the out-going tide has left, that it easily
takes and holds the tracings of any disturbing contact. A wind-
blown leaf, a resting insect, or a drop of rain, may make a tiny
mould, which hardening somewhat before the next incoming flood,
receives thereafter successive linings to which it gives its form. In
this way the rain marks of a passing shower have been fixed, and
then completely covered up; and yet when subsequently exhumed,
so perfectly were the spatter marks preserved that one could tell
in which direction the wind was blowing when the shower fell.

"It is obvious that the deposition of tidal sediment can in gen-
eral be made only between the lower and higher limit-levels of the
daily ebb and flow. The accumulation of mud to greater depths
than these can only be accounted for on the supposition of a grad-
ual subsidence of the littoral areas — a movement which would con-
comitantly widen the area of tidal inundation. That such a steady
and prolonged subsidence of the Fundy marsh-lined shores has
• been in progress since the marsh began to form, is attested not only
by the surprising depths of mud accumulated, but also by the occur-
rence in many places of deeply buried forests, which were clearly
once above the coexistent tidal levels.

"A general idea of the geological features of the depression
in which the Bay of Fundy lies, is necessary to a fuller tmderstand-
ing of the nature of these marshes and especially of the sources of
their wonderful fertility. In earlier geological times, but subse-
quently to what is known as the Carboniferous Age, the bay was
much wider and somewhat longer than it now is. The long ridge of

KING'S COUNTY 11

trap rock known as the North Mountain did not then exist, and the
waters of the bay extended uninterruptedly over the whole of the
Annapolis Valley to the base of the Silurian hills, which under the
name of the South Mountain form the southern enclosure of the
valley. Eastwardly the headwaters of the ancient bay washed the
Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of the Cobequid Hills, while the
northern shore line of the present bay, skirting the southern limit
of the Paleozoic rocks of New Brunswick, is in the main identical
with that of the original bay. In general character, the tidal move-
ments of this larger Atlantic inlet were the same as in the modern
smaller bay; and the semi-daily ebb and flow of the waters, by
incessant and violent attrition with the Carboniferous limestones,
shales, and sandstones, and the other ancient rocks that formed the
bed and margins of the bay, produced immense quantities of sand
and mud, sediment which was redistributed over the greater part
of the Fundy valley. Subsequent changes of level caused a reces-
sion of the waters to their present limits, and brought to view as
the Triassic or New Red Sandstone, extensive areas of the sediment-
ary deposits that had been accumulating beneath the surface. These
red sandstone strata are still to be seen in shreds and patches, at
various points in the Annapolis Valley and on the shores of the
Minas, Cumberland, and Chignecto basin. Their general dip
towards the north indicates that the epoch-closing movement which
narrowed the Bay of Fundy to its present limits was a subsiding
of its bed along its northern, or New Brunswick border. Follow-
ing this subsidence, as concluding events in the series of seismic
■convulsions — by which the region gained its present contour-fea-
tures— occurred the volcanic eruptions in which the North Moun-
"tain had its origin. This long trappeau wall forms the southern
boundary of the bay, from Cape Split to Digby Neck, a distance of
•a hundred and twenty-five miles; the only interruption to its
continuity being the singular gap called Digby Gut, which gives
an entrance into the beautiful Annapolis Basin. The effective shel-
ter from northerly storms afforded by this wall of trap renders
the climate of the apple growing region on its southerly incline,
the mildest in Eastern Canada.

12 KING'S COUNTY

"Though there were probably many volcanic vents along the
line of fracture, yet the scene of greatest eruptive activity was
no doubt near Cape Split, at the entrance to Minas Basin, scattered
along the shores of which, on either side, are isolated patches of
amygdaloidal trap. There are indications, too, that transverse
ridges of trap run at intervals across the sandstone bottom of the
bay. From these two Triassic rocks, the sandstone and the trap,
that form the floor and margins of the bay, subjected to the erosive
action of the ceaseless movements of the Fundy waters to and fro,
mainly derives the material which constitutes the fertile alluvium
at the head waters of the bay. The sandstone yields, of course,
the greater part of the marsh-creating sediment. Its detritus con-
sists of a large percentage of silica, a little clay, the iron which
mainly determines its reddish colour, and the calcareous matter
which served as a cement in the parent rock. This material, in
the extremely comminuted form in which it occurs in marsh-land
soil, would itself afford conditions highly favourable to the sup-
port of vegetable life. But an additional cause of the wonderful
fertility of these marshes is the richness of the trap-rock in various
salts of potash, lime, and alumina, which the action of the water
mingles freely with the sandstone mud. The plant supporting
power of this complex soil is increased still further by contribu-
tions from the upland soils through the medium of the streams and
rivers flowing towards the bay.

' ' The great fertility of this alluvium may be inferred from the
fact that portions of the Annapolis, Cornwallis, Grand Pre and
Cumberland marshes have been producing annually for almost two
centuries from two to four tons per acre of the finest hay. Besides,
it is a common practice, after the hay has been removed to con-
vert the marshes into autumn pastures, on the luxuriant, tender
after-growth of which cattle fatten more rapidly than on any other
kind of food. Thus virtually two crops are annually taken from
the land, to which no fertilizing return is ever made. The only
portions of the Acadian marshes that have as yet shown signs of
exhaustion are those about the Chignecto branch of the bay, on the

KING'S COUNTY 13

cliffs and bed of which the Triassic rocks do not occur, but in their
stead a series of blue and gray 'grindstone grits' of an earlier
formation. In this region the marshes situated well up towards
the head of the tide, where the red soil of the uplands has been
mingled with the gray tidal mud, are good, while those lower down
are of inferior quality and less enduring. Efforts are being made
to renew and improve these inferior tracts by admitting the tide
upon them.

"In general, however, the necessity for periodic innundations
by the muddy waters of the bay in order to maintain the produc-
tiveness of the marshes, as implied in the passage from Evan-
geline : —

'Dikes that the hand of the farmer had raised with labour
incessant

Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the
flood-gates

Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will
o'er the meadows' —

not only does not exist, but on the contrary, some two or three
years are required for the grass roots to recover from the injury
done them by the salt water, when, as occasionally happens, an
accident to the protecting dikes admits the unwelcome flood. The
exceedingly fine texture of the soil, and its consequent compactness
and retentiveness of moisture, render it for the most part quite
unsuitable for the production of root crops, and at the same time
adapt it admirably for the growt;h of hay and of cereals, especially
oats, barley, and wheat. As a rule, however, the succession of
grass crops is interrupted only at intervals by a single crop of
grain. The reproductive power of the grass roots declines per-
ceptibly with long-continued cropping, so that a renewal of the
stock by re-seeding is occasionally necessary. For this purpose
the marsh is plowed in the autumn or spring and new seed is sown ;
but to avoid the loss of a season, since grass does not mature for
harvesting the first year, grain is also sown and a large yield is

14 KING'S COUNTY

usually obtained. This plowing and re-seeding, at intervals often
of many years, is the only cultivation the soil receives or requires.
There is no reason to suppose that abundant harvests of grain
might not be obtained annually for an indefinite period, but as this
would involve annual tilling, the hay crop is more profitable.

"Along the river estuaries the encroachment of the land upon
the sea is in continual progress, so that there are always con-
siderable areas of unreclaimed salt marsh, the lower portions of
which are flooded every day, while the higher portions are covered
only by the highest tides. The reclamation of such new marsh is
effected by building around its seaward margin a wall or dike
of mud to prevent all tidal overflow. After two or three years
the salt will have sufiSciently disappeared to permit the growth of
a crop of wheat, and in a year or two more the best quality of
English grass will grow. At the head of Cumberland Basin an
interesting experiment in the reclamation of worthless land has
been successfully tried. Large areas of swamp, and in some in-
stances shallow lakes, have been connected with the tidal waters
of the neighboring rivers by channels cut through intervening
ridges of upland, thus effecting the double purpose of draining
and of admitting the mud-laden tides. In this way, in five or ten
years many acres of worthless swamp have been converted into
valuable dike land.

"The use of marsh mud as a fertilizer is very general among
farmers to whom it is accessible. It is taken in the autumn or
winter from the bank of some tidal creek or river, where the
daily depositions can soon replace it, and is spread directly on the
upland. Its effects are two-fold, it enriches with valuable supplies
of plant food the soil to which it is applied, and it greatly im-
proves the texture of all the light and open soils, making them
more compact and firm, and so more retentive of moisture and
of those ingredients which are otherwise easily washed away. This
permanent effect upon the physical character of the soil which the
marsh mud produces renders undesirable its application to clayey
soils already compact and firm and moist enough, for it makes them

KING'S COUNTY 15

more difficult to work, and more impervious to atmospheric influ-
ences. To well drained hay fields, however, which need but little
cidtivation the mud may be advantageously applied, even though
the soil be naturally stiff and heavy.

"The French settlers were the first dike-builders here. They
brought the art with them from the Netherlands; and to this day
no other class of Provincial workmen is as skillful as the Acadian
French. It was no doubt the existence of these vast areas of marsh
land, whose potential value was even then clearly seen, that induced
the first New World immigrants to settle about the Bay of Fundy
shores; and it was these same broad, fertile marshes, left unoccu-
pied by the expulsion of the Acadian French, that attracted the
New England settlers, whose descendants now derive from them an
income aggregating not less than a million doUars every year,"

CHAPTER II
THE MICMAC INDIANS

Pf the two great families of Indian tribes, the Algonquins and
Iroquois, that inhabited the North American continent when Euro-
peans discovered it, the Algonquins extended over part of Virginia
and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, south-eastern New York, New Eng-
land, the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,
and the province of Ontario. They were spread, also, along the
shores of the Great Lakes, and throughout the northern regions be-
yond, and they occupied "Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana,
and in detached bands "ranged the lonely hunting grounds of Ken-
tucky". In New England, where the Algonquins were most numer-
ous, were the tribes known as Mohicans, Narragansetts, Penacooks,
Pequots, and "Wampanoags, and further east the Passamaquoddies
or Etchemins, and Penobscots.

Inhabiting eastern Maine and New Brunswick were the
Maliseets, and throughout the country bordering on the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, from Baie Chaleurs to Nova Scotia, including Prince
Edward Island and Cape Breton, the Souriquois or Micmacs, which
tribe in later times spread also into Newfoundland. The boundary
line between the territories of the Micmacs and Maliseets, says
Professor Ganong, began at Quaco, east of St. John, in New Bruns-
wick, and followed the water-shed which divides the rivers flowing
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from those flowing into the Eiver St.
John. It ran, that is, from Quaco to the head of the Kennebecasis,
thence to the head of the "Washademoak, thence to the head of
Salmon River, thence away to the west, to the head of the Miramichi,
thence to the head of the Tobique, and thence to the head of the
Eestigouche; following everywhere the height of land, and giving
all streams, large and small, on the Gulf side, to the Micmacs, and

THE MICMAC INDIANS 17

all on the side of the St. John waters to the Maliseets. Similar
boundaries separated the Maliseets from the Penobscots and Pas-
samaquoddies on the west.

The Micmacs were larger framed and had flatter features than
the Maliseets, but the habits and characteristics of the two tribes
did not greatly differ. Both subsisted chiefly by hunting and fish-
ing, but both had some rude agriculture, and both, as far back
as the early part of the seventeenth century had cultivated corn,
squash, and tobacco. From Marc Lescarbot in the beginning, and
Nicholas Denys in the latter part, of the seventeenth century, and
from DiereviUe, in 1700, we learn much regarding the Micmacs
at that early time. To be a good hunter was the supreme ambition of
every young man in the tribe, for on his skill in hunting his stand-
ing with his people largely depended. In ancient times the country
was full of moose, caribou, and wild fowl, and these furnished the
Indians liberally with food. Beavers, martins, otters, lynxes, and
other small animals, were also most abundant, and from them were
got the valuable furs that formed the chief article of commerce
between the Micmacs and the French.

Before the conversion of the Micmac tribe by French Roman
Catholic missionaries, the Nova Scotia Indians are said to have
worshipped the sun as their creator, believing also in a demon
called Mendon, whom they frequently tried to propitiate with sac-
rifices and prayers. They made offerings, likewise, to departed
spirits, and looked forward for themselves at death to happy hunt-
ing grounds, where fatigue and hunger woidd be unknown, and
where game would be abundant and easily got. The marriage cere-
mony among them, wherever any existed, was simple, and was con-
nected, as among aU peoples, barbarous and civilized, with feasts
and merry-making. Funeral ceremonies, however, were conducted
with great demonstrations of grief, with loud wailings, and smear-
ing of the face with soot. Dead bodies were dried or embalmed
and then buried, pipes, knives, axes, bows and arrows, snow-shoes,
moccasins, and skins being put with them in the grave. The people
were keenly alive to the supernatural, and their mythology and

18 KING'S COUNTY

legends, which Charles 6. Leland finds strikingly like those of the
Scandinavians, show that almost all natural objects were invested
by them with mind and soul. They were superstitious to the last
degree, putting implicit faith in the incantations of jugglers, and
the charms of medicine men. They had much less warlike pro-
pensities than their neighbors the Maliseets, but they regarded
valor in war as the noblest characteristic they could be possessed
of and on occasion would fight bravely and well. They were gen-
erous, hospitable, chaste, and in common intercourse had a code of
etiquette, which they strictly observed.

In all parts of the Nova Scotian peninsula the tribe had favorite
camping places ; in winter, when the snows were deep they tramped
from place to place through the woods on snow-shoes, in single file,
men and women alike having heavy loads strapped on their shoul-
ders and dragging behind them long, narrow sledges or sleds.
On these sleds were piled skins, rude axes and kettles, dried moose-
meat, and rolls of birch-bark for covering their wigwams when
they should again encamp. In a little book of sketches published
some twenty years ago, Miss Frame, a Nova Scotian writer, gives
an imaginary but perfectly truthful picture of a Micmac encamp-
ment. The Indians were encamped in the dense forest on the edge
of a little brook which flowed into a larger river. "Here some of the
women were busy sewing new and repairing old birch-bark canoes.
In this primitive ship-yard neither broad-axe nor caulking-mallet
was required. The framework was made of split ash, shaped with
a knife and moulded by hand; this was covered with sheets of
white birch-bark, sewed round the wood-work with the tough root-
lets of trees. The wigwams were formed of poles stuck into the-
ground and secured at the top by a withe. This circular inclosure
was covered with birch-bark; a blanket or skin covered the aper-
ture which served for a door; and the centre was occupied by the
fire, the struggling smoke of which found its way out at the top.
Round the fire, boughs were laid, which served the family for seats.
Dogs snored around the camps, and papooses lay sleeping in the
cradles strapped to their mothers' backs, their brown faces up-

THE MICMAC INDIANS 19

turned to the sun. One mother sat apart, nursing a dying babe.
She had prepared a tiny carrying belt, a little pail, and a paddle,
to aid her child in the spirit land. Beside the spring some women
were preparing the feast for the congregated warriors. Over the
fire were suspended cauldrons containing a savory stew of porcu-
pine, carriboo, and duck. Salmon were roasting before the fires,
the fish being inserted, wedge fashion, into a split piece of ash
some two feet in length, crossed by other splits, its end planted
firmly into the earth at a convenient distance from the fire ' '. Until
the middle of the 19th century small encampments similar to this
imaginary one, might have been found, summer or winter, in
several places in King's County, one of the chief spots, latterly,
being the "Pine Woods", in Cornwallis, near Kentville, the county
town.

On the mythology of the Micmacs and Maliseets, as of the neigh-
bouring kindred tribes, the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots, Mr.
Charles G. Leland has written at length. These tribes, which to-
gether with the St. Francis Indians of Canada and some smaller
clans call themselves the Wabanaki, "have in common", he says,
"the traditions of a grand mythology, the central figure of which
is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always great, consistent, and
benevolent, and never devoid of dignity, present's traits which are
very much more like those of Odin and Thor, with not a little of
Pantagruel than anything in the character of the Chippewa Man-
obozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha." This demigod, who is called
Glooskap, like the Norse deities combines giant-like strength with
tender feeling and a light but never cruel or merely fantastic hu-
mour. In King's County, especially, conspicuous traces of his power
abound. While he roamed the province incessantly, encamping in
many different spots, his chief abiding place was the crest of
Blomidon. Before his time the beavers, who were then huge, pow-
erful beasts, had built a great dam across the strait from Blomidon
to the Cumberland shore, thus making Minas Basin an immense pond
or inland sea. One day by speaking a word or by waving his wand,
Glooscap broke the beaver dam and let the fierce Fundy tides rush

20 KING'S COUNTY

in, as they have ever since continued to do. Towards a beaver
who was in hiding near, and whom the demigod wanted to frighten,
he once tossed a few handfuUs of earth. These lodging a little to
the eastward of Parrsborough became the Five Islands. From the
site of old Fort Cumberland, running parallel with River Hebert
to Parrsborough, is a ridge known by the Indians as Ou-Wokun, but
by white men as the Boar's Back. This ridge was thrown up
by the demigod, whose power to do physical wonders was quite
unlimited, to make it easier for him and his companions, the old
Noogumee, who kept his wigwam, and the boy Abistariooch or the
Marten, who is connected with many of Glooskap's feats, to pass
over to Parrsborough, and from thence to Cape Blomidon. It was
Glooskap who created the spirits corresponding to elves and fair-
ies, which inhabited the woods and lived by the shores of rivers
and brooks. From an ash tree he created man. The names of all
animals and birds were given by him. The turtle, his uncle, he
changed into a man, and found a wife for. The dangerous wind-
bird, Wuchowsen, he seized and bound fast. Certain saucy Indians
he changed into rattlesnakes, giant sorcerers he conquered, whales
let him ride on their backs, loons became his willing messengers.
At last, however, he withdrew far into the west, and although
the Indians long expected that some day he would return, he has
never come back and his home, the high crest of Blomidon, remains
lonely and desolate still.

When the French explorers came to Acadia the Micmacs seem
to have welcomed them at once, and during the whole period of
French occupancy of Acadia these children of the forest kept loyal
to the first European usurpers of the soil. The Micmacs also took
kindly to the religion of the French, the baptism of the aged Chief
Membertou and his family at Port Royal, in 1610, being followed
in a few years by the conversion, chiefly under RecoUet friars, of the
whole tribe to Roman Catholicism. But towards the English, dur-
ing this period, the Micmacs . showed little love. As the end of
French rule in Acadia drew near, under the influence of the wily
priest Le Loutre and others of his spirit, they committed occasional

THE MICMAC INDIANS 21

depredations on English residents in King's and other counties,
and by the English garrison at Windsor, as indeed by the planters
and their families after the New England immigration, with good
reason were distrusted and feared. In 1720 John Alden, a New
England trader, was robbed of his goods at Minas by eleven In-
dians. In 1722, during the progress of Love well's war, the Mic-
macs captured several vessels in the Bay of Fundy. Two years
later, a party of seventy or eighty Miemaes and Maliseets com-
bined assembled at Minas with hostile intentions. In complicity
with them, it was charged, were two priests. Father Felix, the
Minas Cure, and Father Charlemagne the Annapolis Koyal priest,
and as a result of the charge the two cures were banished from the
province. In 1749, about three hundred Micmacs and Maliseets
attacked the English fort at Minas, but effected no injury. As
usual, the French were accused, perhaps justly, of having inspired
this fruitless attack.

For many years the Rev. Silas Tertius Eand, D. D., D. C. L.,
a native of Cornwallis, laboured as a Protestant missionary among
the Nova Scotia Indians. In the matter of doctrinal religion Dr.
Rand's mission was not successful, for few if any of the Micmacs
through his labours were permanently won to the Protestant faith,
but to Dr. Rand's scholarly enthusiasm for philological research is
due the preservation of the Micmac language and many of the
Micmac legends. Dr. Rand died in 1889, but shortly before his
death his distinguished service to native American philology and
mythology was suitably recognized, his Micmac dictionary being
subsidized and given to the press by the Canadian Government.

The whole province of Acadia, together with the island of
Cape Breton, seems to have been divided by the Micmacs into seven
districts, the greatest of these comprising the whole of Cape Breton,
and the other six extending eastwardly in two groups of three each.
Of these groups, the right hand one took in Pictou, Memramcook,
and Restigouche, the left the country from Canseau to Yarmouth,
this latter, of course, containing the present County of King's.
Originally each of these districts had its chief, but the chief of the

22 KING'S COUNTY

district which included Cape Breton was regarded as the head of
all. Some of the Micmac names of places in King's County were
the following: Blomidon, Owbogegechk, "Dogwood grove", and
also Ulkogunchechk, "Bark doubled and sewed together"; Cape
Split Plekteok, "Huge handspikes for breaking open a beaver
dam"; the strait at Blomidon, Pleegun, "Opening in a broken bea-
ver dam"; Cornwallis river, Ghijkwtook, "Narrow river"; Canard
river, Apchechknmoochwakode, "Resort of black duck"; Gasper-
eau river, Magapskegechk, "Tumbling over large rocks"; Kent-
ville, Penooek; Aylesford Bog, Eobetek, "The Beaver"; Long
Island, Mesadek, "Extending far out"; Mud Bridge (Wolfville),
Mtaban, "Mud-catfish catching ground"; Oak Point, Cornwallis,
Vpkwawegun, "A house covered with spruce rinds"; Partridge
Island, Pulowechwa, "A partridge island"; Pereau, Wojeechk,
"A white signal seen from afar" (a waterfall showing white in the
distance) ; Starr's Point, Nesoogwitk, "It lies on the water between
two other points."

Although the present King's County has never been without
a few small Indian encampments there is no Indian "reservation"
within its limits, and it is doubtful if, since the English settle-
ment at least, more than two or three hundred Micmacs have lived
here at any one time. On the earliest census reports of the King's
County Indians we cannot safely rely, nor are later reports much
more certainly correct. The census of 1871 gave the whole num-
ber of Micmacs in the province as only 1,666. In 1901, Bang's
County is said to have had as its share of the Indian population, the
very insignificant number of twenty-eight.

CHAPTEE ni
THE ACADIAN FRENCH

Ever since the writing of Longfellow's Evangeline, an atmo-
sphere of peculiar romance has encircled the country about Minas
Basin, in Nova Scotia's garden County of King's. Except Scott's
Lady of the Lake no modern narrative poem has done so much
to excite interest in a special locality as the famous poem which
perpetuates the loves and sorrows of the simple French peasant
folk who in the 18th century were rudely torn from thrifty homes
in a favoured province, and dragged forcibly into suffering exile
in other colonies, where as miserable paupers they were hated and
shunned. In the very names, Acadia or Acadie, and Grand Pre,
a certain compelling poetry for most men resides, and the opening
lines of Longfellow's poem:

"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minaa,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pr6
Lay in the fruitful valley" —

have awakened multitudes to feel the charm that lies in the ancient
musical nomenclature of this lovely region. No less have they
tended to arouse interest in the real beauty that dwells in the rural
landscape about this peaceful inland bay. "When one visits the
region one will not find very near the Basin the soft shade of
"murmuring pines and hemlocks", nor will one see waving in the
sunlight the Aeadians' pleasant fields of flax and corn, but one will
find the vast shimmering dyke-lands, the calm Basin's surface of
matchless turquoise blue; and from the hills above the spot where
the Minas Aeadians' chief village stood one will see a panorama of
unusually varied beauty imfold.

The first voyager of whom we know anything, who visited

24 KING'S COUNTY

this part of Acadia, was the famous explorer, De Monts. In 1604,
from Port Koyal, with Champlain and Poutrincourt he sailed up
la Baie Francoise, as the party then named the Bay of Fundy, and
at Mines, which they probably so named because of specimens of
copper they saw at Cape D'Or, and glittering purple amethysts
they picked up on the shore below Blomidon, they disembarked.
In 1606, Champlain a second time went to Minas, and in his "Voy-
ages" we have the following account: "We went", he says, "as
far as the head of this bay, and saw nothing but certain white stones
suitable for making lime, yet they are found only in small quan-
tities. "We saw also on some islands a great number of sea gulls.
"We captured as many of them as we wished. "We made the tour
of the bay, in order to go to Port aux Mines, where I had pre-
viously been, and whither I conducted Sieur de Poutrincourt, who
collected some little pieces of copper with great difficulty. All
this bay has a circuit of perhaps twenty leagues, with a small river
at its head, which is very sluggish and contains but little water.
There are many other little brooks, and some places where there
are good harbours at high tide, which rises here five fathoms. In
one of these harbours, three or four leagues north of Cap de Pou-
trincourt (Cape Split), we found a very old cross, covered with
moss and almost rotten, a plain indication that before this there
had been Christians there. All of this country is covered with
dense forests, and with some exceptions is not very attractive".

In 1607, Poutrincourt again visited Minas, but Port Royal,
which had been founded in 1605, being at the close of this year
temporarily abandoned and every European inhabitant removed,
we have no further mention of the district until 1612. In the lat-
ter part of August, 1607, Monsieur Biencourt, son of Poutrincourt,
who had returned to Acadia two years before, inheriting his father's
love of adventure went from Port Royal to "Mines and Chinictou"
in a small shallop, so that he might see what the country further
up the Bay of Pundy was like. A priest. Father Biard, probably
a Capucin, accompanied him, and at "Chinictou" they saw "fine
meadows reaching as far as the eye could see".

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 25

It is possible that some few settlers may have found their way
to Minas before the destruction of the French settlements by Cap-
tain Argal in 1613, but of this there is no record, and there was
no attempt at resettling Acadia under English auspices until 1621,
when James I of England granted Acadia to his favourite, Sir
William Alexander, also a Scotsman, whom he afterward created
Earl of Stirling. It is in Alexander's grant that the name Nova
Scotia first appears. In August, 1622, Alexander sailed for his
new dominions, and after this the ownership of Acadia was con-
tinually in dispute. From Sir William the province passed to Sir
David Kirk, one of the early merchant adventurers of Canada. By
the treaty of Saint Germains it was restored to France, and Isaac
De Razilly was appointed its lieutenant-governor. At De Razilly's
death. Monsieur d' Aulnay Charnisay was made governor, and then
began the long period of strife between him and Charles de la Tour,
in the climax of which figures so proudly the name of one of the
true heroines of modern history, the brave Madame de la Tour.

After the death of Charnisay, Major Robert Sedgwick, one
of Cromwell's officers, the founder of the well-known New Eng-
land Sedgwick family, was ordered by the Protector, who believed
that Acadia belonged to England by right of discovery, to seize
the French forts and take possession of the country. The mastery
being gained by the English, Sir Thomas Temple was appointed
governor, and the country was divided between Sir Charles St.
Stephen, Charles de la Tour, Thomas Temple, and William Crowne.
In 1667, by the treaty of Breda, Nova Scotia was again ceded to
France, but the little progress in colonization made from year to
year, is shown by the fact that in 1671 the entire French population
of the province did not exceed four hundred, and that in 1686, it
was not more than nine hundred and twelve, this number being
shortly after reduced to eight hundred and six. Under Sir William
Phipps, in 1690, England again achieved the mastery of Acadia,
but seven years later, by the Peace of Ryswick, it was once more
given to France.

The first permanent settlers in Acadia, says Placide Gaudet,

26 KING'S COUNTY

were the people who have been called de Eazilly's "three hundred
hommes d'elite". These came in 1632, and were joined by other
immigrants brought by Charnisay between 1639 and 1649. In 1651
more settlers came with Charles de St. Etienne de la Tour, and still
later, at various times, a few fresh groups increased the population.
These people were chiefly from Eoehelle, Saintonge, and Poitou,
a district on the west coast of France, now within the modern de-
partment of Vendee and Charente Inferieure. Their native coun-
try was a country of marshes, from which the sea was kept out by
artificial dykes, and in the new province to which they migrated
their intimate knowledge of dyke building soon found room for
exercise. The rich marshes on the shores of Annapolis Basin and
along the Annapolis river attracted them much more than the
forest covered uplands, and as early as 1672, Denys says, the Port
Royal marshes under their tillage were producing great quantities
of wheat. In 1671 a census was taken of the Acadia and Cape
Breton French, and the return showed at Port Royal, ninety-eight
families, numbering three hundred and sixty-three souls, at Pub-
nico fourteen persons, at Cape Negro fourteen, at Musquodoboit
thirteen; and at St. Peter's, in Cape Breton, seven, and Riviere aux
Rochelois three.

The settlement of Minas was begun shortly before 1680. Of
its founding we have a detailed account by Rameau de Saint
Pere in his Une Colonic Feodale en Amerique L'Acadie, published
in 1889. Towards 1680, Rameau says, two inhabitants of Port
Royal, Pierre Melanson and Pierre Terriau, the former of whom,
a tailor as well as farmer, seems also to have borne the name La
Verdure, quite independently migrated from Port Royal to the
country about Minas Basin. Both men were in comfortable circum-
stances, and both were sufficiently enterprising to see the oppor-
tunities Grand Pre offered for the further improvement of their
fortunes. Melanson was a man of about forty-five and was the
father of five young children ; Terriau was only twenty-six, but he
also had recently been married. Near Melanson, at Port Royal,
lived his brother Charles, one of the most prosperous colonists

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 27

there, his wife's brothers, the Messieurs D 'Entremont, seigneurs of
Pobomcoup (Pubnico), and his son-in-law, Jacques de la Tour, but
none of them seems to have had any idea of accompanying him.
Melanson, though he had all the energy necessary for a successful
pioneer, was of a somewhat morose and churlish disposition, and to
that fact, Eameau thinks, is due the comparative isolation in which
for a good while he remained on his Grand Pre farm.

Unlike Melanson, Terriau was open-hearted, genial, and frank,
and about him, on the banks of the Saint Antoine, where he located,
a stream which Eameau decribes as one of the loveliest streams
flowing into the Basin of Minas, settled also a number of his rel-
atives and friends. Terriau 's wife was Celine Landry, of another
Port Royal family, and with their sister and her husband also
migrated to Minas, Claude and Antoine Landry, and probably
Etienne Hebert and Claude Boudrot, all of whom were married
and presimiably had children. Shortly after the settlement began,
Terriau sent to Port Royal for one of his nephews, Jean Terriau,
and about the same time Martin Aucoin, Philippe Pinet, and Pran-
gois Lapierre, the last two, new comers from France, joined the
group.

Li 1686, four years from the migration of these men, in Melan-
son's neighborhood there were still only two or three families, but
in Terriau 's settlement there were seven families, comprising thirty-
five persons. During the next seven years, from 1686 to 1793, the
region attracted settlers in such numbers that the population in-
creased six-fold. Census returns give the population of Minas in
1686 as 11 families, comprising 57 souls ; in 1693, as 55 families, com-
prising 307 souls; in 1701, as 79 families, comprising 498 souls.
Following the farmers came a tailor, Frangois Rimbaut, son of an
old tailor at Port Royal, a blacksmith, Celestin Andre, a man newly
arrived from France, a physician, Amand Bugeant, also lately from
France, but now the son-in-law of Pierre Melanson, near whom
he established himself; and two or three sailors, who no doubt
did their part in establishing the export trade to Louisburg and
Port Royal that before long reached such comparative importance.

28 KING'S COUNTY

By the beginning of the 18th century other settlements had been
made, at Riviere aux Canards, across the Grand Habitant, and
at Piziquid, Cobequid, Chipody, and Peticodiac, the last two being
in what is now the province of New Brunswick.

It is difficult to define the exact limits either of the district
of Minas, or of the special part of that district known as Grand Pre.
In general, says J. P. Herbin, Minas may be said to have included
all the land bordering on the Gaspereau, Cornwallis (Grand Habi-
tant), Canard, Habitant (Petit Habitant), and Pereau rivers. This
covers the present territory of Avonport, Hortonville, Grand Pr6,
Gaspereau, Wolfville, Port "Williams, New Minas, Starr's Point, Can-
ard, Canning, and Pereau. The French settlement of Piziquid
(Port Edward, now Windsor) was for a time included in Minas,
but this before long became a separate district. In the township
of Horton, Minas extended as far west as Kentville, the site of which
town it included, but it is doubtful if beyond Kentville there were
ever any French houses or farms. In Cornwallis it included Church
Street, as far west as Robinson's Corner, Upper Dyke Village being
perhaps its western limit here. As the settlement on both sides of
the Grand Habitant river increased and the hamlets became more
numerous, the Horton part of the district was usually exclusively
known as Minas, the Cornwallis district being known as Riviere aux
Canards.

The special part of Minas in Horton designated Grand Pre,
was undoubtedly of much wider extent than the mere village or
hamlet of that name. Its limits were possibly nearly coterminous
with those of the present Grand Pre, which includes the country
between Long Island on the North, Gaspereau river on the south,
Horton Landing on the east, and "Wolfville on the west. The village
of Grand Pre was evidently very closely settled, — in comparatively
recent years, on the farm of the late Robert L. Stewart, along the
line of the railway no less than twenty-eight French cellars could
be seen, thirteen of these rather close together. At the time of the
expulsion, in the district of Grand Pre, 225 houses, 276 barns, 11
mills, and a large number of outhouses or sheds, were burned.

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 29

In eighty-four years from the beginning of the settlement of
Minas, the Riviere aux Canards district comprised twenty-one ham-
lets, with from three to eighty inhabitants each ; the Minas district
comprised seventeen hamlets, with from three to ninety-four inhab-
itants each. According to Herbin, the names of the Canard ham-
lets were : Antoine, Augoine, Brun, Claude, Claude Landry, Claude
Terriau, Comeau, De Landry, Dupuis, Francois, Granger, Hebert,
Jean Terriau, Michel, Navie, Pinous, Poirier, Saulnier, Trahan. The
names of the Minas hamlets were: Comeau, De Petit or Gotro,
Gaspereau, Grand Le Blanc, Grand Pre, Granger, Hebert, Jean Le
Blanc, Jean Terriau, La Coste, Landry, Melanson, Michel, Pierre
Le Blanc, Pinour, Pinue, Richard.

The largest hamlets on the Grand Pre or south side of the Grand
Habitant were : De Petit or Gotro (the chief village of this dis-
trict), Pierre Le Blanc, Michel, Melanson (the largest settlement
of what is now Gaspereau), Grand Le Blanc, Gaspereau, Jean Le
Blanc, and Grand Pre. The largest hamlets on the Canard or north
side of the Grand Habitant were : Claude, with eighty inhabitants,
Augoine, with seventy-seven, Comeau, Claude Landry, and Hebert,
with seventy-four each; Dupuis, Jean Terriau, Brun, Trahan, and
Saulnier. The exact location of the largest Canard villages is said
to have been at Town Plot, Boudro's Point (Starr's Point, the steep
bank at Town Plot being called Boudro's Bank), Blenn's Point,
Hamilton's Corner, and the late Mr. William Thomas' farm. There
"was a settlement about half way between Mr. Andrew McDonald's
place, at Upper Dyke Village, and the Gibson "Woods road; one
■which seems to have extended from the Gesner place, or the Beck-
with (now Mrs. William Young's) place, to the Isaac Reid place;
and one on the George Borden place, where a few years ago French
<iellars were said still to exist. On Wilson Pierson's farm on
Brooklyn or Shadow street, once owned by Mr. John Lyons, was
an Acadian hamlet, and on the site of an old French cellar Mr. Lyons
built his house. French orchards are remembered as having existed
on the Ward Eaton place, the Gesner place, the Beckwith place,
and the farm of the late Isaac Reid. In some places the houses

30 KING'S COUNTY

clustered more or less closely, but often, as in the case of the dwel-
lings of the New England settlers who succeeded the French, the
houses stood far apart.

The settlement known as "New Minas", between Kent-
viUe and Wolfville, must have been a somewhat important hamlet.
A letter from Mr. Edward Seaman to the late Dr. Brechin gives
traditions concerning this settlement that are probably based on
fact, though no historical documents known to the author men-
tion a chapel or a priest at this point. Mr. Seaman says :

"On what was formerly known as the Best Farm, now owned
by Amos Griffin, in New Minas, was a French village, where there
was a chapel and a resident priest. Most of the cellars have been
filled, but the foundations of the chapel, say 28x36 feet, are still
partly visible, as are also the supposed site of the priest's house, this
house being longer than the average. By the side of the brook, about
fifty rods from the chapel, some of the first English settlers found
a set of blacksmith's tools buried. They found also, a mile or two
south, in the woods, remains of a stone building, which has always
been known since as the 'French fort'. Very few traces can now
be seen except in rough places, of the old French roads. North of
Eobert Redden 's, across the hollow running east and west, the
French road can be traced yet. It can be seen again, crossing the
hollow east of Mr. Silas Elderkin's, about forty rods south of the
present road. Near the western limit of the Thomas Barss farm,
just off the post road, two or three cellars have always been viable.
Henry Terry's father built over a French cellar the house where
the Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge long lived. I have heard of a cellar
near Herbert Denison's, and that was probably as far west on this
side of the river as the Acadians built. About 1827 a Frenchman
travelling from French Town (Clare, Digby County) to Cum-
berland, staid all night at my father's and told the following story:
'Almost at the head of the tide was a French village. It had a
chapel and a priest. When the Acadians were summoned by
Winslow to Grand Pre the people of this village did not go,
but taking from their houses what they could, went south into

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 31

the woods, about two miles. There for eleven months they lived in
huts, building, however, a stone house for the priest. Always hop-
ing the French would recover Acadia, they used often to go along
on the hills to the westward, above Greenwich and Wolfville, and
look eagerly across the Basin to see whether the French colours
were visible there. Finally they became discouraged, and leaving
Minas went to the western part of the province'. The man said
that his father, who was then about eighty years of age, was one
of the children who with their parents underwent this experience,
and that he remembered the facts well".

Of the French settlement of New Minas, the late Mr. Edmund
J. Cogswell once wrote: "Minas, with its dykes, consisted of the
village along the banks of the upland, with the Grand Pre lying
in front, and with Long Island and Boot Island bounding it on
the north. As new lands for settlement were wanted, some of the
inhabitants went up the Cornwallis river and found a place that
seemed curiously familiar. There was a piece of marsh somewhat
resembling the Grand Pre, vdth Oak Island lying outside it. On
the edge was a similar chance for settlement to that furnished by
the upland that bordered the Grand Pre. They, therefore, put in
short dykes at each end of Oak Island, reclaimed a considerable
piece of marsh, built themselves some houses, and called their
settlement 'New Minas'. In later times French cellars have been
numerous here, and we know from the vitrified debris that has
been found that at the expulsion the houses above them were
burned. The centre of the hamlet was what afterward became
known as the Foster farm. The French burying ground is snid
to have been on a little knoll near the railroad track. To the south
and east of the 'Griffin house' a chapel was built, part of the foun-
dations of which can still be seen in the bushes. It would seem
as if there was a burying ground here, to®, and tradition says that
not far off there was a mill. After the removal of the Acadians
the English built their village further south, on the military road,
but although they left the old site they retained the name, 'New
Minas' ".

32 KING'S COUNTY

When the Acadians were expelled their buildings as a rule,
throughout the whole of Minas were burned, but in a few cases,
at least, barns were left standing. In testimony of this is a state-
ment once made to the author by the Hon. Samuel Chipman, who
died in 1891 at the age of a hundred and one, that he himself re-
membered a French barn still standing when he was a boy, on what
is now the land of Mr. Eoss Chipman. On the Stewart property at
Grand Pre, long after the New England settlers came, a French
barn still stood, and likewise one on the Albert Harris place in
Horton. As a rule, wherever in Horton or Cornwallis willow trees
were conspicuously present in the early part of the 19th century,
French hamlets had existed, for the wiUow, imported from France,
seems to have been the Acadians' favourite ornamental tree. "With-
in the memory of living men a large number of French cellars have
been visible in these two townships and it is probable that even at
this late day some few of them remain.

In a comparatively short time after its settlement, the district
of Minas became by all means the most prosperous part of the whole
Acadian land. The census of 1686 ascribes to it eighty-three acres,
probably of upland, under cultivation, and the people's posses-
sions as including ninety horned cattle, twenty-one sheep, and sixty-
seven swine. For weapons of defence, it says, they had twenty
guns. In 1714 the population numbered 878, and at the time of the
expulsion, according to Winslow, 2,743. In "Winslow's account
it is stated that the people were then possessed of 5,600 sheep, 4,000
hogs, and 500 horses. How soon the Minas French began to build
dykes we do not know, but it is estimated that before they were
expelled they had dyked, of the Grand Pre marsh some 2,100 acres
and along the Canard river no less than 2,000 acres.

In road building also, here as well as at other points in Acadia,
the French were far from inactive. In 1720 the Port Royal people,
and probably in conjunction with them the people of Minas, had
begun a road, on the basis, no doubt, of old Indian trails, between
Port Royal and the Minas settlements, but they were stopped by
Governor Phillips, who feared that there was some sinister in-

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 33

tention in their work. Nine years later the enterprise, thus ar-
rested, was still in abeyance, but before the expulsion passable
roads had been made from Minas, westward to Annapolis Royal,
and eastward to Windsor and so to Halifax. On the north side of
the Cornwallis river a road was made from Town Plot to Church
Street, where the Fox Hill road now runs. The present road from
Port "Williams to St. John's Church, for a considerable distance
from the river at least, was also a French road. Through the "Dry
Hollow" a road ran from Cornwallis into Kentville, a little to the
west of the present main Cornwallis road. This road probably be-
gan at Centreville, near the French hamlet on the "Gibson Woods"
road, passed through Steam Mill Village, south-west, by Harris
Vaughn's, through the Kentville Trotting Park, near the present
Aldershot Camp groimds, and then crossing "Gallows Hill" near
the spot where the house of the late Charles Jones long stood, came
into Kentville a little above the present Cornwallis bridge.

The following description of the French roads in Cornwallis
is taken, except for many necessary changes in expression, from
Dr. William Pitt Brechin's manuscript, written about 1890. To
people born in the county its details though intricate, for the most
part will be perfectly clear. The first roads, says Dr. Brechin, were
only paths made through the woods by the Indians, and were zig-
zag in their course, from one point of high ground to the next.
From time to time, as the need of more passable roads became
urgent, these paths were improved and widened, until they became
fairly good highways. When it was necessary to cross ridges they
always crossed, not straight, but diagonally. The main roads of
Cornwallis ran parallel with the rivers, in the most natural way,
and as close as possible to these streams. Of course, as the various
dykes were constructed across the Canard river, the direction of
the roads, for obvious reasons, was somewhat changed. The road to
the French settlement near Mr. William Thomas', must have been in
use prior to the building of the Grand Dyke, for before the Grand and
Wellington dykes were constructed all roads must have gone round
the head of the tides. After leaving the settlement this road prob-

34 KING'S COUNTY

ably wound round the meadow that makes up on the farm formerly
owned by Simpkins Walton, and passing the orchard on what was
formerly Mr. Ward Eaton's place, met the present Canard road.
Following this road till it came to the top of the hill at the Baptist
Church, it descended the hill and passed a spot at the foot, about
twenty yards south of an apple tree, near the willow trees on the
easterly side of Mr. Perez M. Brechin's farm, where it is said an
Acadian blacksmith shop stood. It then led toward the dyke on
the easterly side of Mr. Brechin's farm, took in the settlement on
the John Harris place, went westward across the brow of the hill
on the Brechin place, passed another stray cellar or two in its
course, went on till it reached the residence of George C. Pinep,
and after the completion of the Middle Dyke, crossed that and met
the French road that followed the course of the present Church
Street. Then it continued toward Kentville, running back of the
Hon. Samuel Chipman's place, at Chipman's Corner. Before the
completion of the Middle Dyke this road undoubtedly ran where
the road now does that leads from the George Pineo house to Mrs.
John T. Newcomb 's.

From this point it followed round Sheffield's Brook, which it
crossed, met the road that came up the southerly side of the Habi-
tant river, which can be traced from the John Gibson place, went
down on the westerly side of Sheffield's Creek, and after passing
two French cellars came out on the west side of William Newcomb 's
house. It then ran along the present Upper Dyke Village road
as far as William Newcomb, Sr.'s, from there went south, after
the Upper Dyke was constructed crossed that, and finally met the
continuation of the Church Street road. Before the Upper Dyke
was built it led, by the most accessible route, to Leander Crocker's,
then bore across toward Shadow Street, passed the settlement that
existed where the John Lyons house stands, and ran towards Kent-
viUe, across the "Gallows Hill", and down the Dry Hollow, a little
west of the present road. In its course the road ran through Steam
Mill Village, south-west of Harris Vaughn's, and crossed the Corn-
wallis river directly opposite Dry Hollow, which is about fifty rods

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 35

above the present bridge, at which place there is a spot that is easily-
forded. On the Horton side of the river is a gorge in the bank,
and the road came through that, ran round the base of the now
removed "Sand Hill", and connected with the road going west
beyond Kentville.

A Frenchman starting from the Pereau settlement to make a
visit to his friends in Minas, would have gone through Canning,
crossed the Habitant, and landed in his skiff at or near the place
now called the "Pickets". He would then have taken a southerly
course, and coming to the Canard road would have followed that
till he reached Hamilton's Corner. If his journey had been made
after the completion of the Grand Pre Dyke, he would have crossed
the Canard river on the cross dyke, which for part of the way
followed the present road (though for fully a quarter of the way,
particularly after crossing the present bridge, it lies west of this).
If his journey had been made before the dyke was built he cpuld
have gone over the river in his skiff, or by way of the ford, and then
would have passed on, down the road to Town Plot, and have
crossed the ferry to Minas. If he had wished to reach a part of
Minas further up the river, he would have crossed the ferry or ford
at the place now called Port Williams, for tradition states that at
both these places ferries or fords had been made.

Concerning the roads on the Horton side of the Grand Habi-
tant, Dr. Brechin has also much of importance to tell us. The chief
road of Grand Pre, to the westward, ran through the present vil-
lage of Grand Pre, north of the main highway, which it joined near
Scott's Corner. Thence it led to Johnson's Hollow, just beyond
the Horton Academy boarding-house, and from that point diverged
and ran near the present rail-road to Kentville. There was a road,
also, from the village of Grand Pre to the landing place on the
Gaspereau river. What is known as the "Island", where the French
well and the willows are, had a road running through its whole
length. Prom the main village of Grand Pre a road ran south,
over the hill, to Wall Brook, and crossing the river at that point
by a sunken bridge, which could be used only at low tide, proceeded

36 KING'S COUNTY

to Windsor. From Kentville the main highway to Annapolis Royal
ran parallel with the present post road, a little to the north. Pas-
sing a French cellar, opposite a French orchard, both of which lasted
till recent times, it reached the Col. Moore place, then crossed diag-
onally the present road to another French cellar, again ran parallel
with the post road, on the south, near Robert Harrington's bam;
followed beside the post road till it reached the place once owned
by William Harrington and afterward by Maurice Barnett, at this
point re-crossed the main road and ran north of it, opposite John
Harrington's, and then extended on to the Curry Brook and the
Thomas Griffin place. Some claim- that it ran from there round
the Aylesford Bog, and others that it ran through the Bog, for
near the place where the old Aldershot Camp Ground was, there
is a turnpike, about fifteen feet high and perhaps twenty feet across
the top, with ditches on both sides. It has been stated that the
French never made turnpikes, but they must have constructed some,
for between Kentville and the Moore place, and also at the Ayles-
ford Bog, a turnpike, or as some might call it, a breastwork, can
plainly be seen. That in the most advanced stage of their industrial
development in Nova Scotia the Acadians had turnpikes is further
shown by the fact that across the hollow, at the edge of the woods
west of the William Harrington place, near the old brick kiln,
there are clear traces of a French bridge. Besides the roads we
have mentioned, there was also, doubtless, a road running from the
Cornwallis valley over the mountain to the bay shore, probably
either to Baxter's or Hall's harbour. All French cellars now found
remote from the river banks were clearly on cross roads from
one settlement to another.

Ecclesiastically, the large district of Minas was divided into
two parishes, St. Joseph at Riviere aux Canards, and St. Charles, at
Grand Pre, and at each place was a wooden church with a tower
and a bell. The church of St. Joseph stood at Chipman's Corner,
almost on the site of the old Congregationalist-Presbyterian meet-
ing house, which was built in 1767-8, and taken down in 1874. The
church of St. Charles stood at Grand Pre on a little strip of land,
which at high tide was surrounded by water, where now is a clump

THE ACADIAN FRENCH 37

of old willows that every visitor to the "Evangeline Country" is
religiously shown; and an ancient well, which is supposed to have
been digged in Acadian times. About each church was a burying-
ground, and near the church of St. Charles was the house of the
cure, who was the loved and feared mentor and guide of the Grand
Pre people in both their spiritual and their temporal concerns.

Eegarding the French priests who ministered in King's County,
a few words must be said. The first priest who resided at Grand
Pre was Pere Claude Moireau, a Recollect, who made the earliest
entry in the parish register, June 25, 1684. From 1694 to at least
1697, M. de St. Cosme was there. In 1698 Bishop Valliers of Que-
bec visited Minas, but there was no priest there, for it is recorded
that finding the people entirely without religious ministration, the
Bishop staid with them a day to hear confessions, give them the
Holy Communion, and baptize their infant children. They were
very anxious for a priest and promised if one were sent them to
support him and build a church and a cure's house. In 1710 a priest
was residing at Minas, for Governor Brouillan reports the Minas
cure as having a salary of eight hundred livres.

In 1705, no doubt to replace the sacred vessels and ornaments
Col. Church and his soldiers the previous year had taken away,
Bonaventure, Lieutenant du Boi, presented to the church at Minas
as a royal gift, un ostensoir, tin calice, un ciboire, et un orne-
ment complet, for the furnishing of the altar and the celebration
of the Eucharist. From 1707 to 1710, Bonaventure Masson, a Recol-
let, was priest at Minas ; from 1711 to 1717, Abbe Gaulin was there,
after 1717, Fathers Felix Pain and Justinian Durand, perhaps to-
gether, held the cure. In 1724 Father Felix Pain and Father Charle-
magne of Annapolis Royal were charged with complicity with the
Indians, and Father Felix was dismissed from the province. The
latter 's successor, it is said, was Pere Isadore, but in 1739, and
until 1748, Abbe de la Goudalie was the priest. At the time of the
expulsion. Abbe Chavreulx was at Grand Pre, and Abbe Le Maire
at Riviere aux Canards.

Of the churches at these two places. Abbe Casgrain says : "These
temples surmounted by graceful spires, their wooden interiors

38 KING'S COUNTY

carved with taste, were all in oak, and had cost the people much,
sacrifice". With more definiteness Lady Weatherbe has, in sub-
stance, written: "The church of St. Charles at Grand Pre, so
far as we are aware, was constructed of wood, the style of the
building being similar to that of the churches in Canada at the time.
These were all built on the same plan ; the belfry tower, surmounted
by its cross was mauresque in style, as is the case now with the
old church of St. Anne de Beaupr6, near Quebec, though that of the
church of St. Charles was somewhat smaller. Twice daily sounded
the Angelus, always responded to by the pious inhabitants. The
interior also resembled the interiors of the churches of Canada.
Usually, the choir had its architectural ornamentation, pillars, either
Ionic or Corinthian, supporting the cornice, though sometimes the
entablature continued into the nave. The cemetery adjoined the
church, and was inclosed by a wooden railing or fence, and near
by was the house of the resident cure". "When "Winslow turned the
church at Grand Pre into an arsenal and prison, from the number
of men he made it accommodate we see that it must have been
large enough to hold five or six hundred worshippers. Before he
devoted it to this secular use, to his credit be it said, the Puritan
commander ordered the elders of the village to remove the sacred
things.

From time to time interesting relics of the Acadians have been
unearthed at Grand Pre and elsewhere in the county. Before the
French went away, it is said, some of them, perhaps hoping to
return, buried in caches, or stoned-up places like wells, their farm-
ing and household utensils. Some twenty years ago a cache was
discovered on the farm of Mr. John A. Chipman, on Church Street,
in which were plow-shares, pitch-forks, and other farming utensils,
all of the best iron. At about the same time, or perhaps a few
years earlier, some chains and plow-shares were unearthed on
Enoch Collins' farm at Port Williams. In 1892 a French Louis
D'Or, bearing the ef&gy of Louis XIV of France and Navarre, was
turned up by the hoof of a cow that was being driven to pasture
on the farm of a Mr. McGibbon, within the confines of the present
Grand Pre.

CHAPTEE ly
THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION

The history of the settlement of the Acadian French in King's
County covers a period of exactly eighty-four years. In this time,
in their two chief districts of Minas and River Canard, they built
houses and churches and small forts, reclaimed from wildness
many hundreds of acres of upland fields, the crops from which, as
from the fertile marshes, they sent in small schooners, chiefly to
Louisburg; traded also in some measure with the mother settle-
ment at Port Eoyal and with the early established fishing port
of Canso; spun and wove wool for their clothing and flax for their
household linen; and most laborious industry of all, inclosed from
the sea several thousand acres of marsh land on the Grand Pre,
and along the county's five rivers, the Grand Habitant, the Riviere
aux Canards, the Petit Habitant, the Pereau, and the Gaspereau.
Their district as we have said, was by far the most pros-
perous in the whole of Acadia, and that this fact, together with their
comparative isolation from the rest of the Acadians, should have
engendered in them a strong feeling of independence, that made
them almost republican in spirit, is not to be wondered at. "The
gentle and peaceful character of the Acadians", says Hannay,
"has been much insisted on. The people within reach of the guns
of Port Royal were tolerably obedient, but in the settlements where
there was no military force to coerce them they exhibited very
different traits". Governor Brouillan records that when he visited
Minas in 1701 he found the people there extremely independent,
not acknowledging royal or judicial authority, and very impatient
of control from without. "The judgments of the judge at
Port Royal", he says, "they entirely disregarded, and Bona-
venture, Lieutenant du Boi, had to use considerable pressure
to bring them to order. They expressed their fears to Brouillan

40 KING'S COUNTY

that the province was about to be put under the control of a
Company, and declared that in that case they would do nothing
for its defence, but would rather belong to the English. This
testimony of a French governor as to the disposition of the people
of Minas agrees precisely with that of Paul Mascarene, a French
Huguenot in the British service in Nova Scotia, who wrote to the
Lords of Trade in 1720; 'The inhabitants of this place * • *
are less tractable and subject to command. All the orders sent
to them, if not suiting to their humours, are scoffed and laughed
at, and they put themselves on the footing of obeying no gov-
ernment' ".

At some time, though possibly late, in their occupancy of the
country, the Acadians found a market for part of the produce of
their farms with Joshua Mauger, the enterprising son of a London
Jewish merchant, who long traded in Acadia, with Louisburg as
a centre. Mauger, of whom we shall have occasion to speak more
fully in a later chapter, established "truck houses" at Piziquid,
Minas, and Grand Pre, as well as on the River St. John, and
while buying the Acadians' produce at their doors, and in his own
vessels transporting it to Louisburg, he no doubt brought to their
homes much of the varied merchandise he so persistently smug-
gled from France.

But the people's prosperity was not without interruption. In
May, 1704, Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, disturbed by
the almost continual strife between the English and French on the
frontier settlements of New England, sent a naval force under
command of the noted Rhode Island Indian warrior. Col. Benjamiii
Church, to punish the French and their allies, the Indians, on the
eastern coast. This force comprised two war ships, the Jersey and
the Qosport, together with the province galley; fourteen trans-
ports, thirty-six whale-boats, and a scout shallop, and included in
all, 550 men. Church had already made four voyages to Acadia,
and through cruelties he had perpetrated at Beaubassin (Chignecto)
in 1696, had earned for himself the deserved reputation of a harsh
and mipit3dng man. On this expedition he fully sustained his repu-

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 41

tation. After visiting Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, killing and
making prisoners many of the French, carrying away among others
the daughter of Baron Castin and her family, he sailed to the Bay of
Fundy. There his fleet divided, his men-of-war proceeding to Port
Eoyal, but he and his soldiers going in the smaller vessels to Minas.
Following in part Governor Dudley's instructions to burn and
destroy the homes of the French, cut their dykes, injure their crops,
and take what spoils he could, he made huge openings in several of
the dykes, so that the destructive salt tides swept over the marshes,
and then did whatever other damage he could to the Minas farm-
ers' possessions. After this ruthless work, the fierce messenger
of Dudley sailed down the Bay and joined the ships he had ordered
to await him at Digby Gut. Before he returned to Boston, how-
ever, he went again to Beaubassin, and there burned twenty houses,
and killed a hundred-and-twenty horned cattle and a number of
sheep.

From this time we have frequent notices of the Minas settle-
ment. In December, 1704, Bonaventure complains of the bad state
of the fort, and says that there are only eight officers in the gar-
rison, and they inexperienced and young. In the same year Gov-
ernor Brouillan writes that he has exiled to Minas a certain Mad-
ame Freneuse, about whom there had been no little scandal among
the Port Royal settlers. In 1705 Bonaventure sends an inhabitant,
with four soldiers, to Minas, to bring back the King's bark, La
Galliarde, laden with wheat. The soldiers of this party got drunk
and seriously misconducted themselves, and eventually compelled
the sailors to take the King's bark to Boston, they evidently pre-
ferring to give themselves up to the authorities there and endure
whatever fate they might meet, rather than go back to Port Royal
and face the wrath of the French governor. Shortly after this
event, in the same year, Governor Brouillan died at sea, and Mon-
sieur Suberease came from France in his stead. In 1709 the new
governor enlisted with others seventy-five men at Minas, as an ad-
ditional force, in case the English should again visit the province,
as it seemed likely they would soon plan to do.

42 KING'S COUNTY

In 1710 the final conquest of Acadia was effected, under Gen-
eral Francis Nicholson, the holder, successively, of more governor-
ships in British colonies than any man known to history. On the
18th of September, with a fleet of six war ships, twenty-nine trans-
ports, and the Massachusetts province galley, Nicholson sailed
from Nantasket, and on the 16th of October, the French garrison,
a hundred and fifty-six half starved men, came out of the fort,
and Nicholson and his New England troops went in. On the 28th
of October, having left a sufficient garrison in the place, the leader
of this important expedition took his ships away. April 11, 1713,
a treaty of peace was signed at Utrecht, by which the whole of
Acadia was ceded to the British crown. Thirty-two years later,
again through the energy of New England troops, the renowned
fortress of Louisburg, which lay outside Acadia, was also captured
for the English King.

To the Acadians at Minas the sudden change of ownership
caused by the surrender of Port Royal must have brought no little
foreboding. The ill-feeling toward them of their New England
neighbors they had already had much opportunity to test, and what
fresh incursion the Puritans might now make into their prosperous
domain it was impossible for them to know. "When the treaty of
Utrecht, however, at last settled the status of the Acadian popula-
tion, what they had to expect from their conquerors remained no
longer uncertain. The treaty provided that such of the inhabitants
as were willing to stay in Acadia and be subject to Britain should
remain in unhindered possession of their lands, and should enjoy
the free exercise of their religion, "according to the usage of the
Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the
same", but that any who chose might within a year remove from
the province with their effects, forfeiting, however, all their lands.
That the Acadians did not take advantage of this last clause of the
treaty and remove to Canada or to Cape Breton, is a matter that
we shall speak of a little further on.

In 1731, Lieutenant Governor Armstrong ordered Nigau Robi-
chaux to buy black cattle and sheep at Minas and bring them to

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 43

Annapolis. About the same time the lieutenant governor reported
that he had been applied to for house and garden lots near An-
napolis, for farm lots at Minas, and for grants at Chippody, where
some young people had recently settled. In 1732 he planned to
erect a "granary" at Minas for the accommodation of soldiers,
but owing to the opposition of the Indians to such a project, and
to the disapproval of his scheme by the Council, he soon relin-
quished his plan. In his letter to the Duke of Newcastle in refer-
ence to the matter, Armstrong says: "Under the disguise of a
magazine I have ordered a house to be built at Menis, where I
design to fix a company for the better government of those more
remote parts in the Bay of Fundy, and as I hope, to perfect it, not-
withstanding all the opposition I meet with from the rebellious
spirits in these parts, incited to oppose it by Governor St. Ovide (of
Quebec), cost what it will".

In 1734 Ensign Samuel Cottnam, at Minas, wrote to the lieuten-
ant governor complaining of clandestine trade there. It was re-
solved in Council to authorize Cottnam to seize the traders who
were smuggling, and their vessels, and bring them to Annapolis.
To assist in the suppression of illegal trade, Mr. John Hamilton,
Deputy Collector and Naval oflScer at Annapolis, a cousin of Major
Otho Hamilton of the 40th Regiment, was employed to go up the
Bay. In 1735 the Deputies at Minas were reproved for not obey-
ing the governor's orders regarding the punishment of "petit
Jacques Le Blanc", who had grossly insulted the deputy collector.
In April of this year, an order was issued by the Council for re-
pairing the road between Minas and Piziquid, and for mending
dykes and fences at both places. The same month Lieutenant
Governor Armstrong sailed to Minas and found the people there
"very complaisant, and outwardly well affected", but in his judg-
ment, not reaUy loyal to the English crown. He was convinced
that they had incited the Indians to mischief, but he thinks the
erection of a blockhouse and the placing of troops there might
keep their rebellious spirit in check. Armstrong was destined,
however, never to carry out his wish to strengthen the fortress at

44 KING'S COUNTY

Minas, and it is possible that disappointment at not being allowed
to do so may have increased the melancholy which in December,
1739, led him to take his own life. A little over three years before
his death he had signed a grant of fifty thousand acres, in what
afterward became the County of King's (later the county of
Hants), to some thirty-five gentlemen, among whom were all the
chief military officials in Nova Scotia. It is interesting to note that
in this grant, the land given is said to be in the "township of Har-
rington, in the county of Southampton^ \ names that have never
been known in the later history of the province. May 27th of this
year, Alexander Bourg was reappointed "notary and receiver of
King's dues" at Grand Pre.

In the spring of 1742, a certain Captain Trefry, master of a
sloop engaged in trading at Grand Pre, was surprised, robbed,
and otherwise ill-used, by some Indians, probably on his vessel at
Horton Landing. The robbery caused great excitement at Minas,
and the two Deputies, Messrs. Bourg and Mangeant, were active in
recovering Trefry 's goods. In 1744 a Canadian named Joseph
Vanier was arrested at Annapolis and detained, on complaints made
against him at Minas. In connection with Vanier 's arrest, Lieuten-
ant-Governor Masearene wrote complainingly to the Minas Depu-
ties: "The people from your place bring us so many affairs to set-
tle, and they are in such a hurry to get home again, that we have no
time to write suitable answers". This one complaint is a sufficient
proof that however worthy the people of Minas in general may have
been, like people of other nationalities and times, they were a great
way from having reached a millennial condition of good-will and
peace.

In June, 1744, fresh disturbance arose between France and
England, and on the first of July a party of Indians, directly in-
spired in their action, it was believed, by the notorious priest, Le
Loutre, fiercely attacked the Annapolis garrison. The timely ar-
rival of a force from Massachusetts, however, defeated the attack,
and caused the Indians to retreat to Minas, where in a short time
they were joined by French troops from Louisburg. The siege

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 45

of the Annapolis fort was then resumed, but without success, and
the inhabitants of Minas, together with the people of Annapolis
and Chignecto, hastened to assure the government of their loyalty,
in spite of the fact that they had been entreated and menaced by
the invading force. This year the notary, Bourg, was suspended
for neglect of duty, and in his place one of the men whose name
has been made familiar to us by Longfellow's poem. Bene Le Blanc,
was appointed in his place. The next year Bourg and Joseph Le
Blanc were taken to Annapolis and closely interrogated regarding
their conduct during the recent invasion. In the end Bourg was
entirely freed of suspicion of having willingly given the enemy
aid.

A matter of continual dissatisfaction to the government at
Annapolis was that the inhabitants of Minas and Chignecto were
accustomed to supply the garrison at Louisburg with cattle and farm
produce. This, of course, was done in the way of legitimate trade,
and in spite of orders to the contrary from the lieutenant-gov-
ernor and his Council, must be felt to have been perfectly justifiable,
since any agricultural people must somewhere find a market for
what their fields and farm-yards yield them to sell. It is charged
truly, against the Minas farmers, that after the first fall of Louis-
burg for a time they refused to supply the new garrison there with
food, but it is strongly probable that this refusal, so distinctly in
opposition to their own financial interests, was chiefiy due to the ter-
rorism exercised over them by Le Loutre, the most persistent and
troublesome foe England ever had in the Acadian peninsula. On
the 17th of June, 1745, the first capture of Louisburg was effected
by Sir William Pepperrell and the troops who with almost the
zeal of ancient crusaders had enrolled themselves for the final de-
struction of French power on New England's borders. The next
year, France, grown desperate by the loss of her strongest fortress,
sent a fleet across the seas to recapture not only Louisburg, but
the whole of Acadia, as well. From Quebec, also, came a detach-
ment of troops to cooperate with the fleet. To protect Nova Scotia
from any attack the French might make, on appeal from Lieuten-

46 KING'S COUNTY

ant-Governor Mascarene, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts sent
five hundred volunteers to the province to assist the small number
of troops already there. One of the officers at the capture of Louis-
burg was Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Noble, who had made a fortune
by farming and trading at the mouth of the Kennebec. To his
command Shirley committed the volunteers, and in the late autumn
of 1747, this force with its commander landed at Annapolis. From
there, part of the five hundred marched directly by land, over the
rude highway to Grand Pre, part, however, going in vessels up
the Bay, At the "French Cross", now Morden, in Aylesford, on
account of severe storms they left the vessels; then, without paths
or guides, with great hardship they travelled across the North
Mountain, and through the Aylesford wilderness to Minas, where
they joined their comrades.

By this time it was too late in the season to erect a blockhouse-
and in twenty-four private houses, which they were able to se
cure for their accommodation, they prepared to spend the winter.
At Beaubassin, in Cumberland county, was then stationed, in com
mand of the French troops, a Canadian officer named Eamesay
Learning of the arrival of the New England troops at Minas, and
being told that it was Noble's intention in the spring to march
against him, this officer formed a plan immediately to surprise the
American commander anil attack his force. In January he car-
ried out his plan, and the march to Minas, amid cold and snow,
was made with such secrecy, and the attack, in the dead of night,
was so unexpected, that Noble, roused from his bed and fighting
in his shirt, with many of his officers and men was almost instantly
killed. At the foot of a bank, beside the present road leading
to. the old well and the willows, a trench was hurriedly made, and
all the dead, except Noble and his brother, were there interred.
These two brave officers were buried on the right of the road,
farther up the hill, on what a few years ago was the property of
Mr. James Laird. On each side of the spot stands now a large
apple tree, but no monument of any kind has ever been erected
to mark the double grave. The result of this night attack was

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 47

that the English were obliged to leave Minas for Annapolis, with,
however, the honours of war, within forty-eight hours, their sick
and wounded being left, under protection of a French guard, at
River Canard till they were well. The English loss was one hun-
dred killed, fifteen wounded, and fifty captured; the French loss
was seven killed and fifteen wounded. In all the history of Minas,
until the removal of the Acadians, no incident is so tragical as this
night battle between the French and the English at the hamlet of
Grand Pre.

There is a tradition that at some date, not specified, while the
French occupied the county, a company of British soldiers going
from Halifax to Annapolis under command of a lieutenant, were
met by a party of French and Indians at a place called "Bloody
Eun" or "Moccasin Hollow", a few miles west of Kentville, and
were cruelly slain. It is possible, says Dr. Brechin in his manu-
script, that the little force of British troops thus killed may have
been that under command of Col. Goreham and Major Erasmus
J. Phillips, that on the 9th of February, 1752, left Minas to go
by land to Annapolis. The trench where these British soldiers were
buried was visible, it is claimed, not more than twenty years ago.

In 1749 came the founding of Halifax, and in that year the
blockhouse at Annapolis was taken down and removed to Minas.
Thereafter, a small permanent force was kept at the latter place
under Major Handfield, the troops being quartered, as they had
previously been, in rented houses near the block house. How
early earthworks for fortification had been thrown up at Grand
Pre it is impossible to know, but it is likely that during much of the
period covered in this chapter, some such fortification did exist j
the name of the Minas fort, according to Murdoch, who no doubt
found it in some French document, was Yieux Logis. Late in
1749, a company of Micmac and Maliseet Indians attacked Vieux
Logis, and somewhere near the fort made prisoners a young offi-
cer, Lieut. John Hamilton, son of Major Otho Hamilton, and a
certain number of soldiers of the garrison. The attack on the
fort itself was unsuccessful, but the young officer and his men

48 KING'S COUNTY

the Indians took with them to Chignecto, where they were kept
until ransomed by the government.

With the surrender to England in 1755 of the northern Aca-
dian stronghold, the fort near the present boundary between Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick known as Beausejour, the whole of
Acadia at last came under British control, and the complete sub-
jection of the French population of the province to English rule
now seemed to the Governor and Council at Halifax a necessary
thing. In an earlier part of this chapter we have referred to the
clause in the treaty of Utrecht which allowed the Aeadians, if they
wished, to remove from the peninsula within a year. Until com-
paratively recent times the controversy between those, who like
Abbe Kaynal idealize the French inhabitants of Acadia, and those
who like Parkman more or less strongly uphold the conduct of the
English authorities in taking them away, has concerned itself chief-
ly with the unwillingness of the Aeadians to take an unqualified
oath of allegiance to Britain. Recently, however, the interest of
controversalists on the subject of the deportation of the Aeadians
has centred in the unwillingness of the British authorities to give
the French inhabitants the benefit of the last clause of the treaty
of Utrecht. The year after the treaty, the people were tendered
an unqualified oath of allegiance, but they objected to taking it,
since it demanded that in the event of war they should hold
themselves ready to take up arms against their fellow countrymen.
Reporting to the home government their refusal to take the oath,
Major Caulfield, the lieutenant-governor, however, urged that in
any ease, if possible, the people should be kept in the province,
since their leaving would almost certainly expose the English set-
tlers to attacks from the Indians, and would make it impossible for
the garrison at Annapolis to get proper supplies of food. In April,
1730, the Aeadians of Minas, Cobequid, Piziquid, and Beaubassin,
all the country bordering on Minas Basin, did, willingly subscribe
the following oath: "Nous Promettons et Jwrons sincerement en
foi de Chretien que nous serons entierement Fidelle et Nous
Soumettrons Y entablement a Ba Majeste George Le Second, Boy

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 49

de la Grande Bretagne, que Nous reconnoissons pour Le Soverain
Seigneur de La Nouvelle Ecosse et L'Acadie. Ainsi Dieu nous
swt en aide". To this oath there were five hundred and ninety-
one signatures, the names of the people subscribing being: Aigre,
Allan, Amiraul, Aucoin, Arsenau, Babin, Barriot, Bean, Bellem^re,
Bellivaux, Benoit, Bernard, Blanchard, Boudrot, Bourg, Bourgeois,
Breau, Brossard, Bujean, Bujeauld, Caissy, Caudet, Celestin,
Chaudet, Chene, Chiasson, Cloistre, Comeau, Cormier, Corporon,,
D'Aigle, D 'Aigre, D'Aroits, Dounaron, Doucet, Dugas, Dupuis,
Ely, Epee, Flanc, Fontaine, Foret, Galerme, Gantreaux, Garceau,
Gaudet, Gautrot, Girouard, Giroir, Gouzier, Granger, Grivois,
Guerin, Haehe, Hamel, Hautbois, Hebert, Henry, Hortements, Hu-
gon, Jareau, La Bove, La Croix, Lamirre, Lamon, Landry, La Pierre,
La Vaehe, Lebert, Le Blanc, Leger, Le Jeune, Levron, Le Prince,
Le Vieux, Martin, MazeroUe, Melanson, Michel, Mouton, Naquin,
Noge, Nuiratte, OUivier, Pas, Pitre, Poupar, Fourier, Prijeant (or
Pryjeau), Quaicie, Racois, Richard, Rivet, Robichaud, Roy,
Sampson, Saulnier, Savoie, Sesmez, Sire, Terriot, Tibodo, Trahan,
Trigeul, Turpin, Vincent.

In the brilliant pages of his "Montcalm and "Wolfe", Park-
man gives strong reasons why the action of the authorities in de-
porting the Acadians should not be condemned. In his "Missing
Links of a Lost Chapter in American History", Edouard Richard,
and in the Calnek-Savary "History of Annapolis", the learned Judge
Savary, as energetically takes the part of the French. These writers
both show that repeated attempts on the part of the inhabitants
to take advantage of the declared willingness of the British crown
to let them leave the province, on one plea or another were deter-
minedly resisted, and lay the blame for what they regard as un-
pardonable cruelty on the part of the British, chiefly on Colonel
Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and a Council of four men,
three of whom, Benjamin Green, John Rous, and Jonathan Belcher,
were Bostonians by birth. "It will be still quite new to
many who read these pages", says Judge Savary, "that it was
not by their own choice, but by that of the Government and its

50 KING'S COUNTY

repfesentatives in Nova Scotia that they (the French) remained;
and that they persistently sought to avail themselves of the priv-
ilege of removal guaranteed to them by the treaty, and were as
persistently prevented. A few who had lived in the banlieue were
permitted to sell out and depart, and some managed to make good
their escape in the autumn of 1749, after Cornwallis' declaration.
Governor Lawrence (the next governor but one to Cornwallis),
even after his conception of the plan for their destruction, wrote
thus: 'I believe that a very large part of the inhabitants would
submit to any terms rathe? than take up arms on either side'.
It is not, therefore, with any question of the expulsion of the
Acadians that we have to deal, but with their annihilation as a race
or nationality attempted, and with partial success, and untold
misery and ruin to the victims, by Governor Lawrence".

Without entering any further into a controversy so long now
and with so much feeling pursued, we may properly say that the
expulsion of the Acadians was part of a determined movement
by England and New England to break forever the power of Prance
in the new world. "The Acadians could be neutralized", says Dr.
Edward Channing in his recent History of the United States, "by
seizing and holding as hostages the leading men among them, or
by settling an overwhelming number of English colonists in their
country; they could be eliminated from the military problem by
distributing them throughout the old English settlements to the
southward. The last was likely to be the most efScacious solution
of the difficulty, as well as the easier and cheaper from a military
point of view". The Acadians, unfortunately for themselves,
"lived in one of the most important strategic points on the Atlantic
coast, holding the southern entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
* * * had their homes been a hundred miles farther south or
north, they might have lived placidly and died peacefully where
they were born".

Li the summer of 1755, an unqualified oath of allegiance, in-
volving willingness to bear arms for England, was again demanded
of the Acadian people, but the Deputies from Grand Pr6 and the

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 51

other Minas settlements, and from Annapolis, the two bodies repre-
senting nine-tenths of the population within the peninsula, ap-
peared before the Council, and on behalf of themselves and the rest
of the inhabitants respectfully but firmly refused to take any
other oath than that they had subscribed years before. During the
progress of the Government's final attempt to exact from them an
unconditional oath. Governor Lawrence wrote the Secretary of
State: "I am determined to bring the inhabitants to compliance,
or rid the Province of such perfidious subjects". When the Depu-
ties had finally left Halifax the Council at once began to make
plans for the people's removal. There were perhaps eight thou-
sand, in all, in the peninsula, and to carry so many away was a
somewhat formidable task. From Governor Shirley at Boston
transports were obtained and the removal of the Minas people was
given in charge to Lieut.-Colonel John Winslow, who was already
at Port Beausejour, then Fort Cumberland. Armed with Law-
rence's proclamation for the removal, the 14th of August Winslow
sailed down Chignecto Channel to the Bay of Fundy, and when the
tide set into Minas Basin held his course to the mouth of the Avon.
Where Windsor now stands was a stockade, known as Fort Edward,
and there with a small garrison Captain Alexander Murray held
command. The two officers quickly conferred, and by the end of
the month, at Windsor and Grand Pre, had fully matured their
plans. On the fifth of September four hundred and eighteen men,
representing the chief settlements of Minas, in obedience to Wins-
low's summons assembled in the Grand Pre church. "The per-
emptory orders of his Majesty", said the New England officer,
addressing them, "are, that all the French inhabitants of these
districts be removed; and through his Majesty's goodness I am
directed to allow you the liberty of carrying with you your money
and as many of your household goods as you can take without
overloading the vessels you go in. I shall do everything in my
power that all these goods be secured to you, and that you be not
molested in carrying them away, and also that whole families shall
go in the same vessel; so that this removal, which I am sensible

52 KING'S COUNTY

must give you a great deal of trouble, may be made as easy as his
Majesty's service will admit; and I hope that in whatever part of
the world your lot may fall, you may be faithful subjects, and a
peaceable and happy people. I must also inform you that it is his
Majesty's pleasure that you remain in security under the inspection
and direction of the troops that I have the honour to command".
The men were then declared prisoners of the King.

"Horton Landing" is an anchorage on a bold shore, where the
Gaspereau river joins the estuary of the Avon and the Basin of
Minas. It is a spot protected on the west and north by Boot Island,
and is some three or four hundred yards north of the present rail-
way, and some two miles from deep water, at low tide. At this
landing the vessels of Winslow were drawn up, and September ninth
two hundred and thirty young men were marched from the church,
a mile and a half, to the landing and placed on board three sloops,
at high tide. When they were on board, the vessels dropped out
to deep water and anchored. September seventeenth, in the same
way, further shipments were made. October eighth, the embarka-
tion of families began. "Began to embark the inhabitants", writes
Winslow in his Journal, "who went off very solentarily and un-
willingly, the women in great distress, carrying off their children
in their arms; others carrying their decrepit parents in their carts,
with all their goods; moving in great confusion, and appeared a
scene of woe and distress".

"All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply;
All day long the wains came laboring down from the village.
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting,
Echoing far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the church-yard.
Thither the women and children thronged.

On a sudden the church-doors
Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers."

On this day eighty families were put on board the ships. From
October twenty-third to twenty-seventh, on the Cornwallis side of
the Grand Habitant river, five sloops were loaded at Boudreau's
Bank (Town Plot) with the inhabitants of the various settlements

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 53

in Cornwallis, the people who lived in the scattered hamlets along
the Canard, Petit Habitant, and Pereau rivers. Haliburton tells us
in pathetic detail that near the spot where these Cornwallis Acadians
embarked, the New England people who five years later were given
their lands, found sixty ox-carts and as many yokes (tradition
adds, chains, and remnants of household goods), which the French
had used in conveying their goods to the vessels that had borne
them away, and that at the skirts of the forest they saw many
bleached skeletons of sheep and horned cattle, that the winter
after their owners left had died of starvation and cold. In a
short time, he adds, they encountered a few straggling Acadian
families who had escaped deportation, who afraid of sharing
their countrymen's fate had not ventured to till the soil, or even
appear in the open country, since their friends were removed.

By the beginning of November, 1,510 persons had gone, in nine
vessels, and the commander writes that he has more than six hun-
dred still to send. On account of the scarcity of vessels not all
were removed till the twentieth of December, but soon after the
removal began, "Winslow went to Halifax, leaving Captain Osgood
to guard those that remained. Before he left, however, he ordered
the houses and barns on the Cornwallis side of the Grand Habitant,
and at Gaspereau, to be burned, and in December a similar de-
struction was made of the houses and barns in and near the vil-
lage of Grand Pre. The first week of November two hundred and
six houses and two hundred and thirty-seven barns were burned
at Canard, Habitant, and Pereau, and forty-nine houses, and thirty-
nine barns at Gaspereau. Besides these, there were burned at
various places, eleven mills. In the burning of Grand Pre, the
Church of St. Charles with its furnishings, like the other buildings,
was destroyed. Besides the 1,510 persons shipped at Minas by
"Winslow, 732 were reported to have been shipped later by Osgood.
The whole number of people in the peninsula at the time of the
deportation, as we have said, was probably about 8,000, and from the
four centres, Minas, Fort Edward, Beaubassin, and Annapolis, a
little over 6,000, in all, Parkman estimates, were taken away.

54 KING'S COUNTY

From the district of Grand Pr6, as at the other centres, a certain
number escaped deportation by hiding in the woods. Tradition says
that when the New England planters came in 1760, they found here,
as in Cornwallis, some wretched people who had hardly dared ven-
ture out of the forest since their friends were removed, and who in
all the miserable five years of their fugitive life had never once
tasted bread. In 1762, a considerable number of these fugitives
were employed by the new inhabitants of Cornwallis and Horton in
the work they had undertaken of rebuilding the partly destroyed
dykes. In July of that year, by order of the government a hun-
dred and thirty of them in King's and Annapolis (King's, of
course, then including Hants) were brought to Halifax under escort
of a hundred of the King's County militia. A little later, the
lieutenant-governor representing the French neutral prisoners as
"insolent and dangerous", and as inciting the Indians near Halifax
against the English, advised that they should be transported to
Boston. Very soon they were sent to Boston, but the Boston au-
thorities refused to receive them and they were returned to Halifax
without being allowed to land. In 1764, there were at Fort Ed-
wards, seventy-seven families of Acadians, comprising 227 souls.

Of the deported Acadians the subsequent history is more melan-
choly, far, to read than any description of the expulsion that has
ever found its way into print. In pitiful groups, varying greatly
in size, they were set down on the American seaboard, from Maine
to Georgia, their poverty and their distress of mind being usually
as great as they well could be. Precisely how sorrowful their
plight was may be learned from documents in the archives of many
of the states of the American Union where they were unwelcomely
received, or were refused to be allowed to land. Hutchinson says
that some families were brought to Boston, mothers and children
only, without their husbands and fathers, the men having been
shipped to Philadelphia, and learning of their families' where-
abouts only through advertisements in the newspapers. Miss
Caulkins in her history of New London, Connecticut, states that
more of the neutrals were brought to New London than to any

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 55

other port: "The selectmen were desired to find accommodations
for them at some distance from the town, and to see that they were
kept at some suitable employment. A vessel with three hundred on
board came into New London harbour, Jan. 21, 1756. Another
vessel, thronged with these unhappy exiles, that had sailed from
Halifax early in the year, and being blown off the coast took shel-
ter in Antigua, came from thence under convoy of a man-of-war,
and arrived in port, May 22nd. Many in this last vessel were sick
and dying of small-pox. A special Assembly convened by the
governor, Jan. 21, 1756, to dispose of these foreigners, distributed
the four hundred then on hand among all the towns in the col-
ony, according to their list. The regular proportion of New Lon-
don was but twelve, yet many others afterward gathered here.
Some of the neutrals were subsequently returned to their former
homes. In 1767, Captain Richard Leffingwell sailed from New
London with two hundred and forty, to be reconveyed to their
country".

The great interest in Nova Scotia that the proclamation of
1758 offering the French lands to New England settlers, aroused
in eastern Connecticut, was no doubt largely owing to the knowledge
the Connecticut people had of Nova Scotia through the tragedy of
the expulsion of the "neutrals", as the exiles were commonly
called.

In the State Archives of Massachusetts are two large volumes
of manuscript documents, comprising orders of the Council concern-
ing the neutrals, charges from the Selectmen of a large number of
towns for their support, petitions from the people themselves, for
help, and for removal to places where they might be better able
to support themselves and their families, and facts of other sorts
that must arouse in the mind of any one who reads them a
deeper sympathy than he has ever felt before for the woes of the
exiled French, and a deeper feeling of indignation at the politi-
cal measures that were responsible for their unhappy fate. Of
documents to be found in New England which throw light on their
pitiful condition, two examples only can be given here. At Point

56 KING'S COUNTY

Shirley had been placed Prangois Leblanc, very likely one of
the Minas inhabitants. In the summer of 1756 this man wrote the
Government of Massachusetts as follows:

"To his Excellency the Governor, the Honorable, the Council
and Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay ; Fran-
gois Le Blanc, a poor French inhabitant of Accaday humbly shows
that he and his family, five of which are men, were placed at
Point Shirley, that they have with great difSculty supported them-
selves since the provision allowed by the Province ceased, but now
they cannot find work and they have a winter before them and
no prospect of any opportunity of labour during that season and
all necessaries of life are excessive dear there and your Petitioner's
family must perish with hunger and cold. Your Petitioner has
relations placed in the Town of York and is known to Col. Don-
nell and Capt. Dounell and has traded with them, and he thinks
he could support his family tho' he is 63 years old, with the help
of his sons and some little relief from the Public and as there
is but eight French in that town he hopes there will be no excep-
tion and humbly prays he may be placed there with his family".

This petition was read in Council, Aug. 20, 1756, and referred
to James Minot, Esq., and certain members of the House of Repre-
sentatives, as a committee, to be considered and acted on.

From Falmouth, now Portland, Maine, in 1763, among many
such petitions for relief from distress, came a similarly sad plea
from an Acadian whose name had been anglicized to "John White".

"To his Excellency Francis Bernard, Esq., Gov. of the Province
of the Massachusetts Bay :

"To the Honorable, his Majesty's Council and House of Rep-
resentatives in General Court Assembled :
February 23rd, 1763 :

"The petition of John White, one of the inhabitants of Minas
in Nova Scotia; living in Falmouth in Casco Bay (now Portland)
in behalf of himself and others, living in said Town. Humbly
Sheweth that we being brought from our Native Country, where-
by we are deprived of our Houses and lands and Stripped in a

THE ACADIANS TO THE EXPULSION 57

Great measure of our whole Substance, and now live among
strangers grappling with misery and want, and the Town of Fal-
mouth have rated us in their Public taxes which adds greatly to
our Distresses, —

"Wherefore we humbly intreat your Excellency and Honours
So Far to Compassionate our Miserable Circumstances as to Ex-
cuse us from paying to public Taxes, until we shall get into some
way of Business to maintain ourselves and families, or otherwise
relieve us as in your great Wisdom you shall think just and reason-
able".

In the House of Eepresentatives, Feb. 25th, 1765, this let-
ter was read, and it was ordered "that the assessors of the said
Town of Falmouth be directed to abate all the Poll Taxes here-
tofore imposed upon all the French Neutrals (so called) living in
said Town".

The chief family names at Minas at the time of the expulsion
were: Alin, Apigne, Aucoine, Babin, Belfontaine, Belmere, Benois,
Blanchard, Bondro, Bouer, Bouns, Bourg, Brane, Brasseux, Brassin,
Braux, Brun, Bugeant, Capierre, Caretter, Celestin, Celue, Cleland,
Clemenson, Cloarte, Commeau, Cotoe, Daigre, David, Diron, Doucet,
Doulet, Dour, Duis, Duon, Dupiers, Dupuy, Dusour, Duzoy, Forest,
Gotro, Granger, Herbert, Inferno, Labous, Landry, Lapierre, Le
Bar, Le Blanc, Leblin, Le Prince, Lesour, Leuron, Massier, Melan-
son, Mengean, Menier, Michel, Noails, Pitree, Quette, Richard,
Eobichaud, Eour, Sapin, Semer, Somier, Sorere, Sosonier, Terriot,
Tibodo, Tilhard, Trahan, Trahause, Timour, Vinson.

CHAPTER V

THE COMING OF NEW ENGLAND
PLANTERS TO CORNWALLIS AND HORTON

The first significant attempt at English settlement in Nova
Scotia was made by the Lords of Trade and Plantations in 1749.
In June of that year, 2,476 persons from England, under command
of the Hon. Edward Cornwallis, who had been commissioned Cap-
tain General of the expedition, and Governor of Nova Scotia, in
thirteen transports accompanied by the Beaufort, a sloop of war,
sailed into Chebucto Bay. Abolishing the Military Council which
had long existed at Annapolis Koyal, on board the Beaufort in
the harbour, Cornwallis organized a civil government, and with this
important event the settled history of Nova Scotia begins. The
new town established by Cornwallis, in compliment to George
Montague, Earl of Halifax, then head of the Lords of Trade, was
named Halifax, and henceforth the chief authority in the province
was located there. In the wake of the English settlers whom the
new governor brought out, the next year came some 1,500 or more
German and French Protestants, who for the most part finally
located in what soon became the County of Lunenburg.

The removal of the Acadians from the province, as we have
seen, was accomplished in 1755, and before the end of December
of that year, what is now King's County was almost entirely with-
out inhabitants. In 1753 the old fort, Yieux Logis, at Minas, erected
in the first year of Cornwallis' government, had been abandoned,
and its garrison sent to Fort Edward at Piziquid, which had suffi-
cient accommodation for both garrisons. After the French gen-
erally were removed, a small force for protection was still retained
at Fort Edward, and the Acadians of the vicinity who had es-

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 59

caped deportation and could be found, were kept there as prison-
ers. How many of these there were it is impossible to say, but
from the official returns it appears that the average number from
June 13, 1763, to March 18, 1764, was 343. In the former year,
however, there were nearly 400 there. After the expulsion, there-
fore, save for the garrison at Piziquid, the few French these soldiers
guarded, and the little companies of Micmaes in the solitary woods,
in what are now the counties of Hants and King's there could not
have been a single human inhabitant.

In 1758 the final capture of Louisburg was affected, and the
next year Quebec fell, and with the complete destruction of French
power on the continent the possibility of having a loyal British
population in Nova Scotia at last came strongly into view. It
is said that the scheme of settling the province that was now
matured by the Lords of Trade was suggested to that body by the
authorities of Massachusetts, and the statement is doubtless true.
That Governor Lawrence at Halifax, Cornwallis' successor, who
iad played a vigorous part in the expulsion of the French, warmly
seconded the plan, is also certainly true, and since several of the
Councillors, his advisers, were themselves New England men, the
•Council was naturally loud in its praise.

In the autumn of 1758, therefore, under instructions from Eng-
land, the Council adopted a proclamation relative to settling the
"vacant lands. The proclamation stated that by the destruction of
Prench power in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, the enemy who
had formerly disturbed and harassed the province and obstructed
its progress had been obliged to retire to Canada, and that thus
a favorable opportunity was presented for "peopling and cultivat-
ing as well the lands vacated by the French as every other part of
this valuable province". The lands are described as consisting
of "upwards of one hundred thousand acres of interval and plow
lands, producing wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, etc. " " These
have been cultivated for more than a hundred years past, and
never fail of crops, nor need manuring. Also, more than one hun-
dred thousand acres of upland, cleared, and stocked with English

60 KING'S COUNTY

grass, planted with orchards, gardens, etc. These lands with good
husbandry produce often two loads of hay per acre. The wild and
unimproved lands adjoining to the above are well timbered and
wooded with beech, black birch, ash, oak, pine, fir, etc. All these
lands are so intermixed that every single farmer may have a propor-
tionate quantity of plow land, grass land, and wood land; and all
are situated about the Bay of Fundi, upon rivers navigable for
ships of burthen". Proposals for settlement, it was stated, would
be received by Mr. Thomas Hancock of Boston (uncle of John
Hancock), and Messrs. De Lancey and Watts of New York, and
would be transmitted to the Governor of Nova Scotia, or in his ab-
sence to the Lieutenant Governor, or the President of the Council.

The next step was to have the proclamation made known, and
accordingly, on the 12th of October, 1758, the Council caused it to
be published in the Boston Gazette. As soon as the proclamation
appeared, the agent in Boston was plied with questions as to what
terms of encouragement would be offered settlers, how much land
each person would receive, what quit-rent and taxes were to be
exacted, what constitution of government prevailed in the province,
and what freedom in religion new settlers would have. The result
of these questions was that at a meeting of the Council, held Thurs-
day, January eleventh, 1759, a second proclamation was approved in
which the Governor states that he is empowered to make grants of
the best land in the province. That a hundred acres of wild wood-
land would be given each head of a family, and fifty acres additional
for each person in his family, young or old, male or female, black
or white, subject to a quit-rent of one shilling per fifty acres, the
rent to begin, however, not \mtil ten years after the issuing of the
grant. The grantees must cultivate or inclose one third of the
land in ten years, one third more in twenty years, and the re-
mainder in thirty years. No quantity above a thousand acres,
however, would be granted to any one person. On fulfilment of
the terms of a first grant the party receiving it should be entitled
to another on similar conditions.

The lands on the Bay of Fundy were to be distributed "with

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 61

proportions of interval plow land, mowing land, and pasture", which
lands for more than a hundred years had produced abundant crops
•of wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, and flax, without ever needing
to be manured. The government of Nova Scotia was constituted
like that of the neighboring colonies, the legislature consisting of
a Governor, a Council and an Assembly. As soon as the people were
settled, townships of a hundred thousand acres each, or about
twelve miles square, would be formed, and each township would
be entitled to send two representatives to the Assembly. The courts
of justice were constituted like those of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and other northern colonies; and as to religion, both by his
Majesty's instructions and by a late act of the Assembly, full lib-
erty of conscience was secured to persons of all persuasions. Papists
excepted. Settlers were to be amply protected in their new homes,
for forts garrisoned with royal troops had already been established
in close proximity to the lands proposed to be settled.

It is a little singular that the interest which these proclama-
tions aroused in New England, and the important migration which
accordingly soon followed, should have left so little trace in printed
records of the colonies from which the settlers went. Miss Caulkias '
history of New London, however, says: "The clearing of Nova
Scotia of the French opened the way for the introduction of English
«olonists. Between this period (1760) and the Revolution, the
tide of immigration set thitherward from New England, and par-
ticularly from Connecticut. Menis, Amherst, Dublin, and other
towns in the province, received a large proportion of their first
planters from New London county". The same author's history of
Norwich says of 1760: "Nova Scotia was then open to immigrants,
and speculation was busy with its lands. Farms and townships
-were thrown into the market, and adventurers were eager to take
possession of the vacated seats of the exiled Acadians. The provin-
cial government caused these lands to be distributed into towns
and sections, and lots were offered to actual settlers on easy terms.
The inhabitants of the eastern part of Connecticut, and several citi-
zens of Norwich, in particular, entered largely into these purchases.

62 KING'S COUNTY

as they did also into the purchase made at the same period, of
land on the Delaware River. The proprietors held their meetings
at the town-house, in Norwich, and many persons of even small
means were induced to become subscribers, in the expectation of
bettering their fortunes. The townships of Dublin, Horton,
Falmouth, Cornwallis, and Amherst were settled in part by Con-
necticut emigrants. Sloops were sent from Norwich and New Lon-
don with provisions and passengers. One of these in a single trip
conveyed 137 settlers from New London county. The second Capt.
Robert Denison (Miss Caulkin's ancestor) was among the emi-
grants". Maey's History of Nantucket also has a slight notice of
the migration: "It would seem by the preceding account of the
whale fisheries", it says, "that the (Nantucket) people were in-
dustrious and doing well and that business was in a flourishing
state. No one would suppose that under the circumstances any of
the inhabitants could feel an inclination to emigrate with their
families to other places; yet some, believing that they would im-
prove their condition, removed to Nova Scotia, some to Kennebeck,
some to New Garden, in the state of South Carolina, etc ' '.

The interest in Nova Scotia aroused by the Council's proclam-
ations, and by the knowledge New England people had in other
ways gained of the vacant lands there, was indeed widespread and
great. In certain parts of Massachusetts this interest centred
more strongly in the southern part of Nova Scotia, the Atlantic
seaboard towns, to which soon a multitude of Massachusetts set-
tlers removed. In eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island interest
was strongest in the Minas district, the townships of Horton and
Cornwallis, and the lands that lay farther east, on both sides of
the Avon river. So great was this interest that in April, 1759, a
large number of for the most part well-to-do persons in Connecti-
cut and Rhode Island, who had partly determined to settle near
Minas Basin, sent five agents to the province to inspect this part of
the Acadian country and report. These agents were. Major Robert
Denison, Messrs. Jonathan Harris, Joseph Otis, and Amos Fuller
of Connecticut, and Mr. John Hicks of Rhode Island, worthy

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 63

gentlemen and prominent persons in the several towns where they
belonged. Coming to Halifax, the agents by invitation of Governor
Lawrence attended a meeting of the Council, at which, besides the
Governor, Messrs. Jonathan Belcher, Benjamin Green, John Col-
lier, and Charles Morris were present. The conditions under which
settlement of the Minas lands would be made were carefully dis-
cussed, and the conference proved satisfactory to the agents. From
the Council these gentlemen received assurance that the vessels be-
longing to the province would be put at the service of the people
they represented, to bring them, with their stock and furniture, to
Nova Scotia; that arms for a small number would be furnished j
that the settlers would not be subject to impressment; and that
since the people in whose behalf they came were the first appli-
cants for land, the poorer ones among them should receive govern-
ment aid.

That the agents might satisfy themselves thoroughly regarding
the Minas lands, the Council soon sent them in an armed vessel, with
an officer of artillery and eight soldiers, to visit the places along
the Bay of Fundy proposed for settlement. Mr. Morris, who was
not only a member of the Council, but was also chief land-surveyor
for the province, himself from New England, accompanied the party
to give information, and if necessary to lay out townships. Around
the southern coast of Nova Scotia the party sailed, and no doubt
first calling at Annapolis Royal, proceeded up the Bay of Fundy to
Grand Pre and Piziquid, at each of which places they disembarked
and spent some time. It was now late in April or early in May,
the orchards were in their earliest budding, the dykes were begin-
ning to grow green, the rich uplands were waiting for the plow,
and here and there was still standing some lonely barn, or perhaps
house, that had escaped burning at the sad time when its owner
was taken away.

"With their tour of inspection the agents were so well pleased
that when they again reached Halifax the four Connecticut men,
who represented three hundred and thirty of their fellow country-
men, at once entered into an agreement with the Council to set-

64 KING'S COUNTY

tie a township at Minas, "joining on the river Gaspereau, and in-
cluding the great marshes, so called, "which township was to
consist of a hundred thousand acres, to be settled by two hundred
families, the grants to be in fee simple, subject to the proposed
quit-rent. For the people's defense, block houses were to be built
and garrisoned and arms and ammunition given, and fifty families
of the number were to have from government an allowance of
corn of one bushel a month for each person, or a full equivalent in
other grain. The settlers, with their moveables and stock, were
also to be transported from New England at the government's
expense.

Another township, Canard, consisting also of a hundred thou-
sand acres, on the north side of the Grand Habitant, was to be set-
tled by a hundred and fifty families. Two of the agents, Mr. Amos
Fuller of Connecticut, and the Rhode Island agent, Mr. John Hicks,
requested the governor to reserve lands for them and their consti-
tuents for a third township, on the north side of the Avon river,
they promising to settle there fifty families in 1759, and fifty more
in 1760, on the same terms as had been stipulated in the cases of
Minas and Canard. At this meeting, which took place May 21,
1759, grants of the two townships of Horton and Cornwallis (these
names being probably determined on at the meeting) were ordered
to pass the great seal of the province, and in June the draft of
a grant of the township of Granville, on the north side of the An-
napolis river, was also approved. A temporary check, however,
was now given to the formation of new settlements, by the fact
that a party of French and Indians had fired on the members of
a committee which were inspecting the lands near Cape Sable, that
another hostile band had appeared before the fort at Piziquid, that
five persons had been murdered on the east side of Halifax har-
bour, and that the enemy had frequently appeared in the environs
of Lunenburg and Fort Sackville.

On the nineteenth of July, a fresh committee of four
Connecticut men, Messrs. Bliss Willoughby, Benjamin Kimball,
Edward Mott, and Samuel Starr, appeared before the Council at

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 65

Halifax and stated that they desired to settle a township at Chig-
necto. To their desire, also, the Council quickly acceded, and a
vessel was allowed them so that they might go to the Cumberland
shore. On the 24th of July, on behalf of fifty-two other applicants
it was resolved to erect a township a Cobequid, to be called Onslow,
and also to grant land in Annapolis to a company of New Eng-
landers, numbering a hundred and twelve.

Until January, 1757, the Governor and Council ruled alone in
Nova Scotia, at that time, after long debate, it was decided that a
Eepresentative Assembly should be created, and that there should
be elected for the province at large, until counties should be formed,
twelve members, besides four for the township of Halifax, two for
the township of Lunenburg and one each for the townships of
Dartmouth, Lawrencetown (both in Halifax County), Annapolis
Royal, and Cumberland. The bounds of these townships were
described, and it was resolved that when twenty-five qualified
electors should be settled at Piziquid, Minas, Cobequid, or any other
district that might in the future be erected into a township, any
one of these places should be entitled to send one representative
to the Assembly and should likewise have the right to vote in the
election of representatives for the province at large. Members and
voters must not be "Popish recusants", nor be under the age of
twenty-one years, and each must have a freehold estate in the
district he represented or voted for. The first Assembly met in
Halifax on Monday, October 2, 1758, when nineteen members — six
'' esquires", and thirteen "gentlemen", were sworn in. At a meet-
ing of the Council in August, 1759, soon after the dissolution of the
second session of the first Assembly, the Council fixed the repre-
sentation of the township of Halifax at four members, and of
Lunenburg, Annapolis, Horton, and Cumberland, at two each. For
the newly formed counties of Halifax, Lunenburg, Annapolis,
King's, and Cumberland, there were to be two each.

The first grants of land to intending settlers in Horton and
ComwalUs were completed and ordered to pass the seal of the
province, the 21st of May, 1759. In each township, there were a

66 KING'S COUNTY

hundred thousand acres, in Horton the land to be distributed among
200 families, in Cornwallis among 150 families. After most
of the New England people had come to the province, on ac-
count of many deficiencies in the grants the government
advised the committees appointed to act for the grantees to sur-
render them, and accordingly on the 29th of May, 1761, a new
grant of the township of Horton, and oh the 21st of July, a grant
of Cornwallis, was made. The toAvnship of Falmouth, "between
the river Pisiquid and the town of Horton", was also created and
a grant of 50,000 acres was given there, the 21st of July, 1759.
Falmouth lay on both sides of the river Piziquid and the two divi-
sions of it were called respectively. East and West Falmouth. Late
in 1761, perhaps, the division known as East Falmouth was made
a separate township, and in honour of Lord Newport, a friend of
Hon. Jonathan Belcher (who was at this time lieutenant-governor)
was named Newport, when the earlier name West Falmouth dis-
appeared. The township of Windsor was created in 1764. Writers
on the establishment of the early New England colonies say that of
the two names, town and tovmsMp, given to the territories within
the limits of grants or purchases, or to considerable settlements,
the name township soon ceased to be as common a designation as
town. In Nova Scotia, however, the name township remained in
common use until the merging of the original townships in muni-
cipalities, in 1879.

The chief reason for the return of the first large grants in
Cornwallis and Horton and the issuing of new ones was probably
that many of the persons to whom the first grants were given.when
they actually faced the prospect of removal from their old homes
in Connecticut gave up the idea of coming and announced their
relinquishment of their grants. On the other hand, many new
men caught the enthusiasm for removal to Nova Scotia, where
lands were given away so freely, and announced their intention
of coming in the others' stead. Accordingly, the committees for
distributing the lands, the Cornwallis committee, consisting of
Messrs. EUakim Tupper, Stephen West, and Jonathan Newcomb,

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 67

were advised, as we have said, to return the old grants, and request
new ones bearing more nearly the names of actual settlers in the
county.

Full information concerning the sailing from Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, of the Nova Scotia planters, it
has never been possible to obtain. As early as May 11, 1760,
Governor Lawrence reports that forty families have already ar-
rived to settle in the direction of Annapolis, Minas, and Piziquid,
and that transports are expected soon from Connecticut bearing
others still. In May of the same year, the sloop Sally, Jonathan
Lovett, master, brought from Newport, Rhode Island, to Falmouth,
thirty-five persons, and the sloop Lydia, Samuel Toby, master,
twenty-three more. Haliburton's pages record the tradition that
a large number of settlers for Cornwallis sailed together in a fleet
of twenty-two vessels, convoyed by a brig of war, mounting sixteen
guns, commanded by Captain Pigot, and that the vessels reached
Town Plot on the fourth of June, 1760. The first of June there
came to Piziquid from New London, a certain Captain Rogers with
six transports, bringing inhabitants principally for the township
of Horton. The people who came in these ships had been at sea
twenty-one days and had had great lack of provender and hay for
their stock. At New London, when they left, many others who had
hoped to sail with them had been left behind for want of accom-
modation. From Piziquid, these planters drove their stock over
land to Minas. Of one of the vessels that brought settlers to Corn-
wallis, we know the name; Elizabeth Seaborn "Wolfe Woodworth,
daughter of Silas and Sarah (English) "Woodworth, had been born
on the passage from New London, May 21, 1760 on the ship Wolfe.
Of the birth of another child on the passage from New London,
we have also authentic record; this was Betty, daughter of Capt.
Peter and Rhoda (Schofield) "Wickwire, who was born "in the
harbour of Horton" on Sunday, June 7, 1760.

The chief places of disembarkation for the settlers in Corn-
wallis and Horton respectively, were Town Plot on the Cornwallis
side of the Grand Habitant river, and Horton Landing on the

68 KING'S COUNTY

Horton side. At Town Plot the bold bank gave a natural quay
for the small vessels in early days in use on these shores, and
Horton Landing had been the chief place of anchorage for ves-
sels coming to Grand Pre through the whole French period in
Acadia. As soon as there were organized township governments
in the county a public ferry was established at Town Plot in
CornwalUs, to a point almost exactly opposite, on the Horton side.
From there a road was made over marsh and dyked land to what
is now the village of Wolfville. This ferry and the road to Wolf-
ville were in use until 1834, when the bridge at Terry's Creek, now
Port Williams, was constructed. For the first few weeks or months
after they came, the settlers must have lived chiefly in tents, for
«ven the smallest houses could not be constructed in a day. The
materials for probably a considerable number of the first houses
were brought from New England ready to be put together.
This was the case with Elkanah Morton's house, and it was true
also of the ferry house, which was one of the first buildings erected,
and which stood at Cornwallis Town Plot until 1905.

An interesting side-light is thrown on the settlement of the
New England people in Falmouth by an account which has been
handed down in the Haliburton family of the coming to that town
of William and Susannah (Otis) Haliburton, and of their life near
Fort Edward during the first months after they came. Landing
at Halifax, probably from Boston, the young husband on horseback
and his wife on a pillion behind him made the long journey to
Newport over the rough forest road, and for eighteen months after
they reached Falmouth, with their two Negro servants from the
household of Mrs. Haliburton 's father, Ephraim Otis of Scituate,
lived in tents. At last, however, they built a good two-story frame
house, the foundations and posts of which were logs, the outside
being clapboarded. They had brought with them ' ' eighteen months '
provisions, tents, furniture, spinning wheels, a loom, and farming
implements", to serve them on their plantation; but after en-
during the hardships and trials of farm life as long as they could,
the couple gave farming up and moved into the village of Windsor,

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 69

■where Mr. Haliburton entered on the more congenial study of law.

Of the agents who came to Nova Scotia before the migration,
on behalf of the intending planters, Col. Robert Denison, born in
New London in 1697, was a captain in General Eoger Wolcott's
brigade at Louisburg in 1758 and soon won reputation for gallant
behaviour in that notable siege. He settled in Horton, and as we
shall hereafter see, founded an important family in that town.
Jonathan Harris, born in New London, June 15, 1705, whose father-
in-law was Hon. Judge Joseph Otis of Scituate, Mass., was also
a man of much prominence in eastern Connecticut. He did not
himself settle in King's County, but his brother Lebbeus and his
son James did. Judge Joseph Otis, though he had been a judge
of the Court of Common Pleas for Plymouth County, Mass., ancj
a representative in Massachusetts to the General Court, was a large
land-owner in New London, Colchester, Pomfret, and other Con-
necticut towns. He also remained in New England. Benjamin
Kimball was probably a son of Joseph Kimball of Preston, Conn.,
and if so was born April 15, 1722. "Whether Nova Scotia did not
please him or not we do not know, but in 1768 he bought land in
Plaiafield, New Hampshire and settled there. Bliss "VVilloughby
■was a son of Joseph Willoughby of New London and his wife,
Thankful (Bliss), and a brother of Dr. Samuel "Willoughby who
became a grantee in Cornwallis. He too went back to New En^
•land and remained. Samuel Starr, born in Norwich, Conn., Sept.
2, 1728, was a son of Samuel and Anne (Bushnell) Starr, and a
great-great-great-grandson of Dr. Comfort Starr, who came to
America from the town of Ashford in Kent. He became one of the
most important King's County planters and founded in Cornwallis
a family whose influence from first to last has been very great.

Of the planters themselves who came to Cornwallis and Horton,
by far the larger number were members of representative families
in the eastern comities of Connecticut. A few were from Massa-
chusetts and Ehode Island, but the original homes of most were
those beautiful old towns comprised within the boundaries of the
four Connecticut counties. New London and "Windham, Middlesex

70 KING'S COUNTY

and Tolland,— the towns of New London, Lebanon, Colchester,
Lyme, Norwich, Killingworth, Hebron, Saybrook, Stonington, Tol-
land, Windham, and Windsor, the last, however, lying a little farther
west in the county of Hartford. If any one will take the trouble
to examine the admirable histories of New London and Norwich,
from both of which we have already quoted in this chapter, or the
now rapidly increasing later town and family histories of eastern
Connecticut, he will see how important the families were from
•whom are descended the people who have inhabited and still largely
inhabit the county whose annals this volume is written to preserve.
In the North Parish of New London, now called Montville,
in the noted old town of Lebanon, in Norwich, the beautiful "rose
of New England", the most influential families in the 18th century
were families, branches of which the later genealogical sketches in
this book will be found to enshrine. Prom Lebanon a larger num-
ber migrated than from any other town. Of this interesting locality,
the author of the Strong Genealogy says with pardonable enthusi-
asm: "Lebanon, Connecticut, has had a remarkable history. No
town in the whole country has compared with it in the number
of leading professional men it has furnished to the nation. The
■first settlers, who went there from 1695 onwards were of superior
stock, the very best intellectual and religious material for 'a new
plantation' that Northampton, Norwich, etc., could furnish. An-
other fact is that the land of Lebanon was and is of a very superior
quality, but most of all must be taken into account the grand school
privileges of Lebanon in its early history. In 1700, the town ap-
propriated two hundred acres of land for a school, and many of
the proprietors gave of their own lands also for the same purpose,
Eev. Joseph Parsons giving five acres of his land. In 1740, a gram-
mar school was established by a vote of the town and it became a
school of great celebrity, having pupils from nine of the thirteen
colonies which afterward became the first states of the union, and
sending large numbers of them in successive years to Harvard and
Yale. Here Nathan Tisdale, 'Master Tisdale', as he has always been
called, did a great work for his generation. He was bom in Leban-

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 71

on, Sept. 19, 1732, graduated at Harvard in 1749, at the age of
seventeen, and had charge of the grammar school from that time
till his death in 1786. Such men as Jeremiah Mason, Zephaniah
Swift, Col. John Trumbull, Governor John Trumbull, Eev. Dr.
Lyman, Judge Baldwin, and a host of others, were his pupils".

In a certain "Rate List" in Lebanon for levying the minister's
salary drawn up in 1741, we find the familiar names, not only of
"Deacon John Newcomb" and "Deacon Eliakim Tupper", but of
Robert Avery, Moses Dewey, John English, Amos and Noah Fuller,
Eddy Newcomb, John and Samuel Porter, and Benjamin Wood-
worth. Besides these we find persons of the names of Bill, Brewster,
Harris, Hutchinson, Lee, Parker, Pineo, and Post. From the North
Parish of New London, a very large number of the grantees, but
precisely how many we do not know, also came. Adjoining the
Connecticut counties we have mentioned, on the east lie the coun-
ties of Washington and Newport in Rhode Island, and on the west
the counties of Bristol and Plymouth in Massachusetts, and through
all these southern New England counties enthusiastic interest in
the proclamation concerning Nova Scotia seems to have spread.
Accordingly, we have among our planters, men Whose homes had
been in Newport, Tiverton, South Kingston, Plymouth, Swansea,
Nantucket, and other well known Rhode Island and Massachusettis
towns.

In the following lists of grantees will be found the names of
the chief persons who founded the more prominent families in the
two earliest settled townships of the county, the townships of Corn-
wallis and Horton, but to discover with certainty the exact locality
from which every one of them directly came would require more
research into New England local and family history than at present
we can possibly make. It is safe to say, however, that of the whole
list of King's County's earliest English planters, nine tenths, at
least, were directly from conspicuous eastern Connecticut towns.
Many of the families that settled in Horton and Cornwallis had
intermarried in Connecticut, and to untangle the relationships that
existed among them when they came to the county would be

72 KING'S COUNTY

a diflScult, though very interesting task. So interrelated were the
Horton families, for example, in Connecticut, that ia tracing their
history we feel as if we were tracing the relationships not of many
families to each other, but of one great family among its various
branches. In the latter part of this volume brief genealogical
sketches of many of these related families will be found, but it
would take a lifetime of research to compile anything like com-
plete genealogies of the families of all the grantees. Such work
must be left to the individual genealogists of the families them-
selves. The whole New England migration to Nova Scotia in
1760- '61, bringing hither, as we have said, people from many other
than eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island towns, and numbering
in all some six or seven thousand souls, has been ably treated in
newspaper print by Dr. Benjamin Rand, who, it is hoped, wiU
sometime publish the results of his investigation in more permanent
form.

HORTON GRANTEES

First effective grant of 65,750 acres, given May 29, 1761, registered
Jime 13, 1761. Committee of and for the grantees : William "Welch,
Lebbeus Harris, Samuel Reid. Each full share consisted of 500
acres.

Names are spelled here as in the original grants :

Shares Shares

Atwell John

1

Breynton Rev. John

2

Avery Robert

11/2

Brown Darius

1

Bacon Jacob

1

Brown Elisha

Vz

Bacon Jacob, Jr.

1/2

Browning Else

1

Beckwith Benjamin, Jr.

1/2

Burnham Jacob

1

Bennett Caleb

IV2

Carr William

Vz

Bennett Zadok

1

Chappell Jonathan

1

Benjamin Obadiah

1

Clark Moses

1

Bishop John

1

Clark Samuel

1

Bishop John, Jr.

1

Coats Bulah

Vi

Bishop Peter

1

Colwell John

Vi

Bishop Timothy

V2

Comstock Jeremiah

1

Bishop William

1/2

Comstock Rufus

1

Blackman Jonathan

1

Conniver Samuel

Va

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 73

Cooley ■William

1

Larrabee Thomas

1

Copp Samuel

V2

Lockert James

1

Crane Silas

IV2

Lockert John

1/2

Crane Silas, Jr.

1/2

Lothrop Elisha, Esq.

1%

Davis John

11/2 .

Lothrop Elijah

V2

Davison Andrew

iy2

Lothrop Isaac

1/2

Denison Col Eobert

11/2

Lothrop Thaddeus

V2

Denison Samuel

1/2

Lyon Amariah

1

Dickson Major Charles

11/2

Markham James

V2

Dickson Thomas

1

Martin Brotherton

11/2

Dickson William

1

Mather Joseph

11/2

Dodge Daniel

1

Miner Christopher

1/2

Emmerson Stephen

1

Miner Darius

1

Forsyth Gilbert

11/2

Miner Martha

%

Fuller Amos

1V2

Miner Sylvanus

11/2

Fuller Nathan

1V2

Miner Thomas

%

Fuller Nathan, Jr.

1/2

Mitchell Michael

V2

Fuller Noah

11/2

Morris Charles, Jr.

1

Godfrey David

1

Murray Patrick

V2

Graves Ephraim

1/2

Nichols Elisha

V2

Graves Jonathan

1

Palmeter Elnathan

1%

Griffin Samuel

1

Peabody Parker

V2

Hackett Joseph

1

Peck Benjamin, Jr.

V2

Hackett Joseph, Jr.

1/2

Prentice James

1/2

Hackley Marshall

1

Prentice Oliver

V2

Hackley Peter

V2

Kandall Anna

1

Hamilton John

V2

Randall Charles

1

Hamilton Jonathan

11/2

Randall John

V2

Harding Abraham

11/2

Ransom Stephen

1

Harding Israel

1

Rathbon Amos

1

Harding Lemuel

1

Reid James

V2

Harding Thomas

1/2

Reid Mary

1/2

Harris Asa

11/2

Reid Samuel

IV2

Harris Daniel

1/2

Reid Samuel, Jr.

1/2

Harris Ephraim

11/2

Reid William

V2

Harris Ephraim, Jr.

V2

Rich Cornelius

iy2

Harris Gilbert

1

Rogers Rowland

1

Harris Lebbeus

11/2

Seovel Arthur

V2

Harris Lebbeus, Jr.

1/2

Sears Richard

V2

Hatch Patience

1

Southworth William

1/2

Higgins Sylvanus

1

Spencer Thomas

1

Huntley Jabesh

1

Stark Obadiah

iy3

Johnson Thomas

1

Stocking George, Jr.

iy2

Jordan Jedediah

1

Strickland Christopher

1

Kenney Nathan

1

Strickland Samuel

iy2

Laggat Thomas

1

Stuart Joshua

y2

74

KING'S COUNTY

Welch "William, Esq. IV2

Whipple Daniel i/^

Whitney John 1

Whitney John, Jr. Vz

Wickwire James 1

Wickwire Zebadiah 1

Williams Jedediah 1
Winter (Witter) Samuel 1

Woodworth Benjamin 1

For a glebe 600 acres, for a school 400 acres. The whole num-
ber of shares to be granted in Horton was ISl^^. Distribution of
shares that remained after the above grants were given, will be
mentioned farther on.

Sutherland Theophilus

1

Taggart John

1

Townsend Ezra

1/2

Tubbs Lebbeus

1

Tubbs Samuel

1

Turner John

1

Webb James

1

Welch James

V2

Welch Joshua

V/2

Welch Joshua, Jr.

Vz

CORNWALLIS GRANTEES

First effective grant, given July 21, 1761, committee of and for the
grantees: Eliakim Tupper, Stephen West, Jonathan Newcomb.
Each full share consisted of 666 ^g acres.

Shares

Shares

Akley Lawrence

1

Huntington Ezekiel

1

Anderson Perez

y2

Johnson James

y2

Bartlett John

1

Johnson Lawrence

(heirs

Beckwith John

1

of)

1

Beckwith John, Jr.

1/2

Kilbourn Benjamin

1

Bentley David

1

Kinsman Benjamin

1

Best William

11/2

Lummis Ephraim

1

Bill Amos, Esq.

11/2

Morris Francis

1

Bill Ebenezer

11/2

Morris Hezekiah

1

Bill Edward

1

Morton Elkanah

lya

Boardman Ichabod

1

Newcomb Benjamin

1

Brewster Samuel

1

Newcomb Eddy

iy2

Burbidge John

iy2

Newcomb John, Jr.

iy2

Canada William

1

Newcomb William

1

Caulkin Ezekiel

1

Parish Solomon

y2

Chappell Jabish, Jr.

1/2

Parker David

1

iChappell Mary

1/2

Parker Elisha

ya

Cogswell Hezekiah

iy2

Parker Eobert

1

Dean John

1

Porter Elisha

1

Downer Ezra

y2

Porter John

1

English Abigail

1

Porter Samuel

iy2

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 75

Pratt Ethan 1

Eockwell Jonathan 1

Eogers Jeremiah 1

Starr Samuel IV^

Steadman John 1^^

Stiles Nathan 1

Strong Stephen 1%

Terry John 1

Thorpe Oliver %
Tupper Eliakim (heirs of) 1^2

Tupper Elias 1

Tupper William 1

Webster Abraham 1

West Stephen II/2

West William 114

Wheaton Caleb 1

Wickwire Peter 1%

Willoughby Samuel 1^
Wood Jonathan Yz

Woodworth Amasa 1

Woodworth Benjamin 1

Woodworth Silas lYz

Woodworth Thomas 1

Woodworth William 1

For a glebe 600 acres ; for a school 400 acres.

COBNWALLIS GRANTEES

Second grant of 38,917 acres, given December 31, 1764.

Shares Shares

Barnaby Stephen
Barnaby Timothy
Beckwith Samuel
Bigelow Isaac
Bigelow Isaac, Jr.
Blaekmore Branch
Bliss Nathaniel
Borden John
Borden Samuel
Burbidge Elias
Burgess Seth
Chase Jethro
Chase Joseph
Chase Stephen, Jr.
Clerk Asa
Coats Hannah
Cocks John
Cone Reuben
Corigdon Benjamin
Congdon James
Congdon Joseph
Curtis Nathaniel
Dewey Moses
Eales Joshua
Eaton David

1

Fox James

1

11/2

Gillett Caleb

1

1V2

Gore Moses

iy2

1V2

Hammond Archelaus

1V2

1

Hatch Nathaniel (heirs (

oi) 1

1

Herrington Stephen, Jr.

1

1

Huntington, Caleb, Jr.

1

1

Huntley Daniel

1

1

Loomer Stephen

1

1

Lord Barnabas TuthiU.

1

1

Lowden John

Wz

1

Morton Elkanah

1

1

Newcomb Benjamin

1

1

Newcomb Simeon

1

1

Parrish Joel

1

1

Pineo Peter

1

iy2

Porter Simeon

1

1

Post Stephen

1

1

Proctor William

1

1

Rand Caleb

1

1

Rand John

1

1

Rand Jonathan

1

1

Rand Thomas

1

1

Ratchford Thomas

1

1

Rogers Stephen

1

76 KING'S COUNTY

Rust Jehiel

Tupper Eliakim

Sheffield Amos

Wells Judah

Starr David

West Jabez

Stark Zephaniah

Wickwire Peter, Jr.

Strong Stephen

Wood John

Sweet John

Woodruff Jonathan

The full text of the first effective grant in Cornvrallis is as
follows :

"To all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting: Whereas Eliakim
Tupper, Stephen West and Jonathan Newcomb, a committee of the township of
Cornwallis within King's County in this province, in behalf of themselves and
other proprietors in the said Township, apprehending and being advised that
the grant for the said Township heretofore made to them and their associates
would for many deficiencies be insufficient to secure to them their property
therein, and therefore have in behalf of themselves and their associates surren-
dered the said grant and have requested me that a new grant of the said premises
might be made out for the move fully assuring to them and their associates their
right and shares therein. Now Know ye that I, Jonathan Belcher, Esquire, Presi-
dent of his Majesty's Council and Commander in chief of his Majesty's Province
of Nova Scotia for the time being, by virtue of the power and authority to me
given by his present Majesty King George the third under the Great Seal of Great
Britain have erected, and do by these presents by and with the advice and coun-
sel of his Majesty's Council for the said province erect into a township a tract of
land situate, lying, and being within the Basin of Minas, being the district com-
monly called Canard and is abutted and bounded beginning at the River Habi-
tant and running south sixty degrees west, measuring eight hundred and twenty
chains; thence north thirty degrees west to the Bay of Fundy, measuring eight
hundred chains; thence on the said Bay according to the course of the Bay of
Fundy to Cape Fondu; thence on the entrance of the Basin of Minas and by the
said basin to the river Habitant, and the River Habitant on the south part to the
boundaries first mentioned according to the plan annexed containing in the
whole one hundred thousand acres more or less according to a plan and survey of
the same to be herewith registered; which township is now called and hereafter to
be known by the name of the Township of Cornwallis in the said province.

"And also that I, by virtue of the power and authority in and by with the
advice and consent aforesaid have given granted and confirmed and do by these
presents give, grant and confirm unto the several persons hereinafter named,
sixty-nine and five-eighths shares or rights, whereof the said township
is to consist, with all and with all manner of mines unopened, excepting
mines of gold and silver, precious stones and lapis lazuli, in and upon
the said tract of land or township situate as aforesaid, viz., to the heirs of Eliakim
Tupper, to Stephen West, John Newcomb, Jr., Peter Wickwire, Edde Newcomb,
Samuel Starr, Ebenezer Bill, Amos Bill, Esq., Hezekiah Cogshall (Cogswell),
Samuel Porter, William West, John Steadman, Elkanah Morton, SUas Wood-

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 77

•worth, and Dr. Samuel Willowby, one share and one half each; unto Stephen
Strong one share and one eighth; unto Nathan Stiles, Ethan Pratt.John Beckwith
Ephraim Lummis, John Bartlett, William Woodworth, Abraham Webster>
Edward Bill, John Porter, Elisha Porter, Samuel Brewster, Jonathan Rockwell,
Caleb Wheiton, Hezekiah Morris, Francis Morris, John Dean, Benjamin New-
comb, Elias Tupper, Jonathan Morecomb, and the heirs of Lawrence Johnson,
Ichabod Boardman, Benjamin Kilbourne, Thomas Woodworth, William Tupper
Ezekiel Caulkin, Benjamin Kinsman, Abigail English, Ezekiel Huntington
David Bentley, William Canada, Robert Parker, David Parker, Amasa Wood-
worth, Lawrence Akley, Jeremiah Rogers, William Newcomb, Benjamin Wood-
worth, and John Terry, one share each, and unto Jonathan Wood, Peres Anderson
Solomon Parish, Ezra Downer, Mary Chappel, Elisha Parker, John Beckwith, Jr.,
Oliver Thorpe, James Johnson, and Jabish Chappel, Jr., one half share each;
unto WilUam Best, and John Burbidge item one share and a haU to each; to the
first minister one share ; for the glebe land six hundred acres, and for the school
four hundred acres, making together two shares for the use of the church and a
school forever, saving always the previous right of any other person or persons
to the said tract of land or township or any part thereof, to Have and to Hold
the said granted premises in the said respective shares to each and every or the
said Grantees in the manner hereinbefore described, with all privileges, profits,
commodities and appurtenances thereunto belonging unto the said [names of
grantees given above], each share and right of said granted premises to consist
of six hundred and sixty-six acres and two thirds of an acre, and to be hereafter
divided, one or more lots to each share as shall be agreed upon by the major part
of the said grantees, and in case the major part of the said grantees shall un-
reasonably refuse to divide the said granted premises, the Governor, Lieutenant
Governor, or Commander-in-chief for the time being, shall direct a partition to
be made by such person or persons as he shall appoint, and such partition shall
be binding on each and every of the said grantees; provided always that to each
share and right there shall be allotted a full and equal proportion as one share
or right is to one hundred and fifty shares or rights of all the cleared or improved
lands comprehended within the said Township; yielding and paying by the said
grantees, their heirs and assigns, which by the acceptation hereof each of the
said grantees binds and obliges himself, his heirs, executors, and assigns, to pay
to his Majesty King George the third. His heirs and successors, or to the Com-
mander-in-chief of the said Province for the time being or to any person law-
fully authorized to receive the same, for His Majesty's use a free yearly quit rent
of one shilling sterling money on Michaelmas day for every fifty acres so granted
and so in proportion for a greater or lesser quantity of land granted, the first
year's payment of the same to be made on Michaelmas day next after the expira-
tion of ten years from the date hereof and so to continue payable yearly here-
after forever. But in case three years quit rent shall at any time be behind and
unpaid and no distress to be found on the premises, then this grant to the grantee
so failing shall be null and void.

"And whereas the selling or alienating the shares or rights of the said town-
ship to any persons except Protestant settlers and inhabitants within this prov-

78 KING'S COUNTY

ince may be very prejudicial to and retard the settling of the said township, in
case any of the said grantees shall within ten years from the date hereof alienate
or grant the premises or any part thereof except by will, without license from
the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Commander-in-chief for the time being
under the seal of the said Province, for which license no fee or reward shall be
paid, then this grant to him so alienating or granting the premises or any part
thereof except by will shall be null and void. And moreover the grant hereby
made is upon express condition and each of the said grantees obliges and binds
himself his heirs and assigns, to plant, cultivate, improve or enclose one third
part of the land hereby granted, within ten years; one other third part within
thirty years from the date of this grant, or otherwise to forfeit his right to such
land as shall not actually be under improvement and cultivation at the time
forfeiture shall be incurred. And each of the said grantees does likewise hereby
bind himself his heirs and assigns, to plant within ten years from the date hereof
two acres of the said land with hemp, and to keep up the same or a like quantity
of acres planted during the successive years. In witness whereof I have signed
these presents and caused the seal of the Province to be thereunto affixed at
Halifax in the said province this twenty-first day of July in the first year of the
reign of our sovereign Lord George the third, by the Grace of God of Great Brit-
ain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth, and in the
year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and sixty one.

"By order of the Commander in-chief with the advice and consent of his
Majesty's Council.

(Sd) Richard Bulkeley."

The distribution of lands to the New England planters was
made in a thoroughly systematic and careful way. In the first dis-
tribution of lands in Norwich, Connecticut, the home before they
came to Nova Scotia of some of the most important of these plant-
ers, "the home-lots comprised each a block of several acres, and
were in general river lands, favorable for mowing, pasture, and
tillage. Each homestead had a tract of pasture land included in it,
or laid out as near to it as was convenient. Near the centre of the
Town Plot an open space was left for public buildings and military
parades. This was soon known as the 'Green' or 'Plain'. Here
stood the first meeting-house, toward the south side, with the open
Common around it, and a steep pitch to the river". In the King's
County, Nova Scotia, townships, a somewhat similar distribution
of lands was made. In each township lot layers were appointed,
in Cornwallis, Samuel Starr being one, and the lots were all num-

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 79

bered and drawn for individually. Each full share, as we have seen,
comprised 666 ^/^ acres, and the various sorts of land were appor-
tioned in the following way. In Cornwallis a Town Plot, containing
781^ acres, was laid off, and each grantee of a full share was given a
half acre lot in this reservation. In the centre of the Town Plot a
square of four lots, or two acres, was left unoccupied, and roads
through the rest, sixty-six feet wide, were cut at right angles.
For the settlers generally a hundred and fifty lots were available,
one lot besides these being set apart for a school, one as glebe land,
and one for the first settled minister of the town, whatever his denom-
ination might be. Secondly, a hundred and fifty-three ten acre
lots were established, these comprising all the land between the
Cornwallis or Grand Habitant river and the river Canard, from
Starr's Point to the Lockwood farm at Port Williams, and the
Old Masters' farm on Church Street. Thirdly, a hundred and
fifty-three farm lots were laid out, these covering almost all the
lands that had been cleared by the French. Fourthly, the estimated
three thousand acres of dyked marsh was similarly divided. Later,
wood lots of several hundred acres each were surveyed on the north
and west and were apportioned to the settlers, each man therefore
receiving as far as possible an equitable division of the cultivable
or otherwise valuable lands. Besides the lands apportioned to
individual settlers, three Parades were set apart, one at Town Plot,
one at Chipman's Corner, and one at Canard, where the Baptist
Church stands.

In Horton a town was laid out, fronting on what is now Horton
Landing, and covering a hundred and forty-nine and a half acres,
exclusive of the Parade Ground. The plan, which may be seen
in the Crown Land Office in Halifax, shows the town to have been
of rectangular form, divided by streets at right angles, making
squares of ten acres each, with the three Parade Grounds equi-
distant from each other. Almost every lot measured two hundred
and fifty feet, and had the intention of its projectors been carried
out, says one writer, "a very pretty toAvn would have arisen there.
From various causes, however, the town grew only in a limited

80 KING'S COUNTY

way, and now some of the ten acre sections are in the hands of
private persons". As in Cornwallis, the land was divided into three
sections, and the holders of town lots also held land in these three
divisions. The lots were compared, the Elderkin lot in "WolfviUe
being valued at two hundred and eighty pounds and taken as a
standard. When other lots, according to this standard lacked in
quality, they were added to in quantity, thus an extra piece of dyke
would often be thrown in to atone for the comparative poverty of
a piece of upland. In illustration of this plan of equalization we
have the following document, dated October 18, 1790: "At a meet-
ing of the present committee for making exchange of lands, and
making of compensation for roads, we do mutually agree to ex-
change a certain road with James Miner and Sylvanus Miner, to
say that they are to have the dyke road that runs south and adjoins
their dyke lands, beginning at the east end of their lands opposite
to Josiah Bennett's farm, and to extend to Discharge dyke, in con-
sequence of which we are to have, for the proprietors of Grand Pre,
a road to extend to the cross road to the north side of said Dis-
charge creek to said Discharge dyke.

(Signed)

Lebbeus Harris
John Bishop
Jonathan Crane."

Of the exact method of distributing the Cornwallis lands we
have an interesting account by a native of the county, Mr. Eobie
L. Eeid. "Soon after the people came", says Mr. Eeid, "surveyors
were appointed to measure the ground, and lot layers to 'qualify'
the land, that is, to see that all the lots contained an equitable
quantity — quality and size being considered together. If the land
was poor, more was given for a certain number of acres than if the
quality was first rate — ^medium worth being considered standard.
The first work of the surveyors was to lay out the Town Plot in half-
acre lots, one of which was given to each man, irrespective of the
number of shares he held. The other divisions were given in the

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 81

proportion that the number of shares one held bore to the number of
shares in the township. The dyke lands were laid off and qualified
at the rate of six acres to each share. A quantity of marsh and
broken dyke (as the land was called that lay inside of certain
French dykes which were out of repair), and a lot on the Grand
Dyke, were also given to each share. The best upland was then
divided, part into ten acre lots, and part into fifty-four acre lots.
These were called the 'first division farm lots', and one of each was
given to each share. These lots being laid out by order of the Pro-
prietors' meeting, to prevent disputes were drawn by lot, or
'draughted', as the old records say.

"The remainder of the land was afterward divided as follows:
First, the two hundred acre division was apportioned by the town
officers to each share, this was called the 'second division of farm
lots'. Afterward, a three hundred acre division was apportioned
in like manner, and called the 'third division of farm lots'. These
last two divisions were not actually laid off on the ground by the
town officers as the first division of farm lots had been, but a man
having a proprietor's right in either of these divisions took the
township surveyor and two lot layers and laid out his land wherever
he could find any unappropriated land. This in the language of
the times was called 'pitching it'. The term 'pitch' was applied
to the right to the land, the manner of locating it, and also the land
itself, so that a man who purchased land from one of the old pro-
prietors was not said to buy a right to lay out land, but was said
to buy a 'pitch'. What may seem strange to the people of this day,
after the laying out of the forty-four acre divisions, the lands on
the North Mountain in Cornwallis were accounted of most value,
and were first laid out. This was because they were mistakenly
considered better than the valley lands for raising wheat.

""We have also the peculiarity in the laying out of the North
Mountain lands, that the base line which runs through the centre
of the North Mountain table land, and over which runs what is
now known as the 'Base line road', is straight, while in some cases,
at least, the side-lines are that torment of surveyors the conch-

82 KING'S COUNTY

shell line. In running the latter, the points for division were made
on the base-line, and at corresponding points on the Bay, and at
the front of the mountain, and then the line was 'blazed' through
the forest by following from point to point the sound of a conch-
shell, used as a horn. This, however, was not done in all cases, as
some of the lines are well run. The last 'pitch' was taken on the
John Arnold Hammond grant by the Hon. Samuel Chipman, who
pitched land on Cape Blomidon in December, 1873. The chief
surveyor in the county for many years, and a good one he was,
was William Tupper. The last surveyor appointed, was Edward
Armstrong of Church Street. The last of the King's County lot
layers was Bayard Borden of Belcher Street".

In not a few instances grantees entered into possession of their
land as much as three years before formally receiving their grants.
David Eaton, for example, was in Comwallis before August 15,
1761, but his grant was not issued by the Council until December
31, 1764. It is clear, therefore, that the committees for the distri-
bution of lands had authority to induct settlers into their lands be-
fore the Council had a chance, or cared, to act on their applications.
Of lands set off for public use besides the chiirch and school
lands, and Parades, were, of course, burial grounds. For burial
places, in Cornwallis at least, the planters seem as much as possible
to have chosen the French cemeteries. The first burial place at
Town Plot, where the Starrs and a few other families buried, and
the Congregationalist-Presbyterian churchyard at Chipman 's Cor-
ner, were both originally French churchyards. With regard to
burial places, it may be said that the early New England custom of
burying in lonely places on farms does not seem anywhere
in Nova Scotia to have prevailed. The share of land in
Cornwallis set apart for the first minister was obtained, as we
shall hereafter see, by the Eev. Benaiah Phelps. With his retire-
ment from the pastorate of the Congregationalist church, this land,
which he sold for his own benefit, became forever alienated from
the use of the town.

For the expense of surveying his land, and obtaining his grant

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 83

or deed, as also for the amount of his quit-rent to the government,
each grantee, of course, was responsible. In the 100,000 acres in
Cornwallis designed for a hundred and fifty families, only a hun-
dred and twenty-eight families at first shared. Some of the extra
lots were given to Halifax men who had been for a few years ia
the province, and who had influence with the government, as for-
example, Messrs. John Burbidge and William Best, who settled,
in the county, and Hon. Jonathan Belcher, John Duport, Jr., Robert
Duport, and Joseph Gorham, who never did. In the 100,000 acres
in Horton, designed for two hundred families, at first only a hun-
dred and fifty-four families shared. Some of the remaining lots,
here, also, were given to Halifax men who never settled on them^
as for example, William Porster and Joseph Gerrish Gray. For
the most part, however, in both townships the lots that remained
after the first division were given to men who became residents
of the townships. In the preceding lists of grantees are many
names that have never been much known, if known at all, in the
county. In not a few of these cases the grantees either never
came, or if they did soon went away. The lands of the New Eng-
land men who failed to come to the county were generally es-
cheated and in time given to others, but some of the grantees who
entered into possession of their lands, before many years sold their
properties and returned to their early homes. Among such were,
Abraham, Lemuel, and Thomas Harding, who probably returned
to Connecticut; and Archelaus Hammond, Jonathan Longfellow,
Jonathan Woodruff, and Jabez West, who removed to Machias,
Maine.

A tradition remains in the county that the first committee
sent from Connecticut to view the Acadian lands were inclined to
choose for themselves and the people who had sent them, homes in
the township of Cornwallis. The second committee, who followed
closely on the heels of the first, also liked Cornwallis best. By
expatiating "long and earnestly", however, on the value of the
Grand Pre dyke, the second committee managed cleverly to get the
first to fix on Horton for themselves; in this way, the second suc-
ceeded in making their own settlement in the township they greatly

84 KING'S COUNTY

preferred. In some cases individual settlers were allowed to choose
their own lots, and we may be sure that these privileged ones
did not select the least desirable lands. That all the grantees
should at first have been perfectly satisfied with the allotments
made them is too much to expect, as a matter of fact there was,
sooner or later, considerable dissatisfaction with the distribution
of lands. As a result of this not a few transfers or changes in time
came to be made.

In the large grants in Cornwallis and Horton, as in all later
grants in King's and other counties of the province, the govern-
ment reserved for itself mines of gold, silver, precious stones, and
lapis lazuli. In some grants coal, too, was reserved, but this was
not the case in King's. An example of the early transfers of lands
that the government permitted to be made is found in the aliena-
tion. May 13, 1768, of the grant in Horton of Moses Clark, to Syl-
vanus Miner, Jr., Thomas Miner, and James Miner. For the
knowledge of still other transfers we are again indebted to Mr.
Eobie Reid. Captain Jonathan Morecomb, Mr. Reid tells us, sold
his share to John Burbidge and William Best in 1764 ; Ezra Downer
sold his half share to Dr. Samuel Willoughby; James Mather sold
his iy2 shares to Col. Jonathan Sherman in October, 1770. John
Arnold Hammond (from Newport, R. I.) came to Cornwallis and
looked at his land, but did not care to settle on it. Accordingly,
he sold part of it to Robert Stephens of Newport and others,
Stephens giving for his purchase eight hundred "Spanish milled
dollars". Finally Stephens sold his land to Hon. Samuel Chipman
for a horse. Branch Blackmore settled in Cornwallis, but eventual-
ly sold part of his land to Judah Wells. In the transfer he describes
his land as lying by a road leading to "Stephen Chase's mills".
Major William Canada, one of the first Cornwallis grantees, took
up his land at what was named after him "Canada Creek", Sam-
uel Brewster "gave his name to the Brewster Plains, in Centreville.
Part of his lands were taken on Bear Brook, in Woodville, a little
above where William Killam's mill now is. Archelaus Hammond
in 1771 gave his share and a half to his father-in-law, Simon New-

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 85

comb, and went away. Brereton Pojmton, the two Duports, Major
Gorham, and others, were Halifax men of position who obtained
shares for speculation, without any idea of settlement in the county".

In an article on the origins of settlements in New Brunswick,
in the Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Canada, Vol. 10 (1904)
Professor "W. F. Ganong speaks of a movement, from about 1790
to 1810, of settlers "from Horton, Cornwallis, and elsewhere in
Nova Scotia", to the following places in New Brunswick: — ^Harvey,
part of Hopewell (including Albert, Riverside, Hopewell Hill, and
Hopewell Cape), and Alma. This immigration, says Professor
Ganong, originated in large part the settlement of the older parts
of the parishes mentioned, including Shepody River, Germantown,
New Horton, and the coast from Cape Enrage through Little Roeher
and "Waterside, to Alma village. The names of some of the King's
County people in this migration were : Bishop, Copp, Forsyth, Reid.
[The migration was probably a little earlier than Professor Ganong
makes it; a descendent of the Reid family of New Horton, N. B.,
says that Duncan Reid went in 1783] .

Grants given in Horton subsequent to the large Grant of 1761 :

Acres

Edward Hughes

1,000

July 3, 1761

Joseph Gray

500

July 21, 1761

"William Forster

1,000

March 4, 1762

James Kennedy

1,000

March 5, 1762

Alexander Hay

1,000

April 7, 1763

Richard Best

500

June 8, 1763

Henry Burbidge

500

June 8, 1763

Isaac Desehamps et al

1,000

June 30, 1763

Lieut. Alex. Munroe

500

July 9, 1763

John Eagell

500

Aug. 24, 1763

Charles Dickson, Jr.

250

Sept. 6, 1763

John Allen

500

Sept. 6, 1763

Thomas Lee

500

Sept. 6, 1763

Capt. James "Wall et al

1,500

Sept. 17, 1763

John Clark

500

Sept. 17, 1763

Benjamin Peck, Sr.

750

Jany. 10, 1764

James Anderson

500

Feb'y. 4, 1764

John Copp

750

Peb'y. 4, 1764

Joseph Elderkin

750

Feb'y. 4, 1764

86

KING'S COUNTY

Jacob Brown
Daniel Dixon
Timothy Goodwin
Patrick Murray
Simeon DeWolf
Jehiel DeWolf
Nathan DeWolf
Andrew Marsters
Daniel Hovey
James Billings et al
Joseph Woodworth
Jonathan Darrow
William Nesbitt
Joseph Gerrish Gray
Benjamin Beckwith et al
James Murdoch
John Turner
Elizabeth Buel et al
Benjamin Beckwith
Israel Harding
Lebbeus Harris

21, 1761, and December 31, 1764

John Duport, Jr.

Robert Duport

John Arnold Hammond

Handley Chipman et al

John Best

John Best

Jonathan Parker

Timothy Hatch

Caleb Wheaton

Elisha Freeman

Eobert Thompson

Jonathan Longfellow

Abel Burbidge

Joseph Gorham

James Mather, Brereton Poyn-

ton, Benjamin Comte, and

Andrew Belcher, Jr.,
Benajah Phelps
Hon. Jonathan Belcher
Nathan Longfellow
John Chipman
Benjamin Belcher

500

Feb'y. 4, 1764

250

Feb'y. 4, 1764

500

July 19, 1764

250

July 19, 1764

500

Aug. 29, 1764

500

Aug. 29, 1764

500

Aug. 29, 1764

500

Aug. 29, 1764

750

Nov. 30, 1764

1,000

Nov. 30, 1764

6,250

Oct. 31, 1765

500

Feb'y. 19, 1766

500

Aug. 3, 1767

250

Sept. 30, 1767

5,000

April 8, 1768

500

Sept. 26, 1769

250

Sept. 28, 1770

2,250

Nov. 5, 1777

750

Oct. 28, 1779

950

March 29, 1784

500

July 21, 1785

besides the

large grants of July

500

Oct. 27, 1761

500

Oct. 27, 1761

500

Jan. 8, 1763

1,000

Jan. 8, 1763

750

April 8, 1763

750

April 28, 1763

500

April 28, 1763

500

July 29, 1763

250

Sept. 6, 1763

750

Sept. 17, 1763

500

Oct. 12, 1763

750

Feb. 4, 1764

500

Oct. 12, 1764

606

Sept. 13, 1767

2,250

April 14, 1768

666

Sept. 26, 1769

1,16673

Jnlr 21), 1771

666

April 8, 1773

500

July 4, 1781

6OOI/2

1797

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 87

It was originally intended to give at this point a list of the
names of persons buying or selling land in Cornwallis or Horton
for twenty years after the planters came. The list is a long one,
but to the names of the original planters or their sons so few new
names are added that it does not seem desirable to take room to
introduce it here. In this time, many of the persons who did not
settle on their lands, or who did not care to remain, disposed of
their properties, but the buyers seem to have belonged chiefly to
the families who did settle here, rather than to persons outside
the original emigration.

Earlier New England homes of some of the King's County
people :

CONNECTICUT

Bolton

Canterbury

Colchester

Danbury

East Haddam

Fairfield

Greenwich

Groton

Guilford

Hebron

Killingworth

Lebanon

Lyme

Middle Haddam
New London (chiefly the north
parish, now Montville)

Bishop
Parish

Bigelow, Clark, Dodge, Gil-
lette, Harris (probably), Ran-
dall, Ransom, Rathbun, Skin-
ner, "Wells
Benedict
Cone, Fuller
Godfrey

Lockwood, Randall
Ratchford (perhaps)
Turner
Phelps
DeWolf

Avery, Barnaby, Bill, Bliss,
Brewster, Calkin, Cogswell,
Crane, Dewey, English, Fitch,
Fuller, Huntington, Loomer,
Newcomb, Pineo, Strong, Ter-
ry, Tupper, Webster, "Wood-
worth

Beckwith, Butler, De"Wolf,
Lord, Mather, Pierson, Reid
Stocking

Benjamin, Bishop, Comstock,
Congdon, Denison, Fox (prob-
ably), Hamilton, Harris, Turn-
er, "Wickwire, Willoughby

88

KING'S COUNTY

Norwich

Beckwith, Bentley, Elderkin,

Farnham, Gore, Starr, Welch,

Witter (probably)

Preston

Davidson, Randall

Saybrook

DeWolf, Parker, Post

Stonington

Miner

ToUand

Eaton (earlier from Mass.),

West

Wallingford

Fitch

"Windham

Brown, Cleveland

"Windsor

Rockwell

MASSACHUSETTS

Boston

Brown, Pingree

Cambridge (possibly) Prescott

Dartmouth

Morton, Burgess

Ipswich

Kinsman

Manchester

Masters

Martha's Vineyard Eand

Nantucket

Coffin

Pljonouth

Blackmore

Swansea

Chase

Sandwich

Tupper

"Westfield

Dickson

Worcester

Farnsworth

RHODE ISLAND

Newport

Chipman (earlier Mass.), Gil-

pin, Sanford

North Kingston

Harrington

South Kingston

Sherman, Steadman

Tiverton

Borden, Sheffield (probably)

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Alstead

Baxter

Greenland

W hidden (probably)

Nottingham

Longfellow

Peterborough

Blanchard

MAINE

Portland

Cox

Vassalborough

Bragg

COMING OF NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS 89

From New York state have been the following families: Ges-
ner, Inglis, Moore, Seaman. Prom New Jersey, Van Buskirk. From
England came the founders of the following families : Belcher, Best,
Bligh, Burbidge, Coldwell, Coleman, North, Pudsey, Koscoe,
Tewens. From Scotland, McKittrick, Sutherland. From Ireland:
Allison, Caldwell, Dickie, Laird, Manning, Patterson. From
Wales, Twining. A few families had long been connected with Hali-
fax before they sent representatives to King's County. Such were:
Avery, Crawley, DeBlois, Johnstone, Kidston, Pryor, Pyke, Stairs,
Thome, Tobin, Young.

CHAPTER VI
THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD

The third of the three historic townships of the present King's
County is Aylesford, which lies to the west of Cornwallis and
Horton, and borders on Wilmot township, in the County of An-
napolis. For some time after the New England planters came to
the county they were too much interested in the rich lands about
Minas Basin and the rivers flowing into the basin and to give them-
selves much concern about the territory lying farther west. As
early as 1770, however. Major Charles Dickson, whose name is men-
tioned in the large Horton grant, received a grant of 3,000 acres
in Aylesford, his grant being one of the earliest recorded on the
existing Aylesford plan. In 1771, Capt. John Terry, a Cornwallis
grantee, received in Aylesford a grant of similar size, and these
grants were followed in 1774 and later years by larger or smaller
grants to other Cornwallis or Horton men.

The general distribution of Aylesford lands, however, did not
begin until the tide of Loyalist emigration that swept into the
province at the close of the Kevolutionary "War made necessary
the opening of many new regions to permanent settlement. From
September, 1782, to December, 1783, the Loyalists came from New
York in such numbers that the government was busy day and night
making provision for their settlement. In furnishing lands for
these exiles, the township of Aylesford, like the townships farther
west, in Annapolis, Shelburne, and Digby counties, had an im-
portant share. Among the grantees whose names stand on the
Aylesford plan will be found not a few who are conspicuously
known in the annals of the Eevolution on the unpopular side.

The special enactment of the legislature by which Aylesford
was erected into a township, if there was such enactment, has not

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 91

been discovered. In the third volume of his Documentary History
of Nova Scotia, writing of the year 1786, Beamish Murdoch says:
"A part of Wilmot was now set off as a separate township and
named Aylesford, and a parish was set off at Parrsborough". Up
to and beyond this period, the erection of counties and the settle-
ment of their boundaries, and the creation of townships and parishes,
seems to have belonged exclusively to the Executive Council. A
careful examination, however, of the Minute Books of the Council
for a considerable number of years has failed to show any such
action regarding Aylesford as that here mentioned so casually by
Murdoch. The Minute Book of the Council for the year 1786 shows
that July 20th of that year a memorial was presented by Lt. Col.
Elisha Lawrence, "in behalf of the inhabitants of Parrsborough,
requesting that part of that township be erected into a parish",
and that the following December this was done, but no mention
whatever is made of the creation of the township of Aylesford.
That the name Aylesford, however (given possibly after the fourth
Earl of Aylesford, Lord of the Bedchamber to George III, who re-
signed that office in 1783), was about this time somehow fastened
to the western part of King's is very clear. It will be remembered
that the original boundary between King's and Annapolis was estab-
lished in 1759, the township of Wilmot, however (named after Gov-
ernor Montague "Wilmot), which adjoins Aylesford, was not erected
until five years later. Of this event, which took place in the first
year of Wilmot 's governorship, Mr. Murdoch has the following
notice: In 1764, "Wilmot township in the Coimty of Annapolis
was ordered to be surveyed and laid out". In the Calnek-Savary
History of Annapolis, page 226, the author says: "This portion of
the county (Wilmot) was not settled quite so early as some other
parts. It was not ordered to be laid out until 1764, or four years
after the arrival of the Charming Molly with the first immigrants
at Annapolis. It received its name from Governor Wilmot, and
comprised within the orignal boundaries a large part of the present
township of Aylesford".

That Wilmot township, in the popular imderstanding at first

92 KING'S COUNTY

extended much within the present limit of King's, is perfectly clear,
and whether the boundary between it and Aylesford in King's, until
at least the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, was ever
exactly defined, may indeed be strongly questioned. In 1770 Walter
Wilkins, received a thousand acres, and in 1771, as we have seen,
Capt. John Terry three thousand, in "the township of Wilmot",
but these tracts are now to be seen on the Aylesford plan. In 1783
Brotherton Martin received two thousand acres, in 1784 John
Huston a thousand, and 1785 the Morrison family a thousand, all
of which are now in Aylesford. These were originally described,
however, as "in "Wilmot", John Huston's being "in Wilmot, in
the county of King's". In 1786 William Brenton and Dr. John
Halliburton received land in "Upper Wilmot, in King's", but in
1790 Bishop Charles Inglis and the Van Cortlandt family had grants
"in the township of Aylesford, in King's County". In 1795 Eev.
John Inglis also had a grant "in Aylesford in King's County",
and January 31, 1797, Andrew Denison a grant of a thousand acres
"in the township of Wilmot, now called Aylesford". In 1797 the
Barclay family's grant is described as in the township of Ayles-
ford, in King's County, but in 1802 grants to the Grassie and
Ritchie families and to John Harris are described as "in the town-
ship of Aylesford, within the County of Annapolis". Another
grant of five thousand acres, given in 1810, is said to be "situated
on the South Mountain, so called, in the township of Aylesford, in
the county of Annapolis". Our conclusion, therefore, necessarily
is that long after the township of Aylesford was more or less
formally created, the boundary between it and Wilmot was quite
unsettled, and that whether an exact spot was in one tovraship or
the other was often entirely uncertain in the public mind.

In 1788 "Seven Mile River" is called the western boundary of
Aylesford, and the distance between the eastern and western
boundaries is given as exactly ten miles. In the Report of the S. P.
G. for 1789-90, Wilmot is described as forty miles distant from
Cornwallis and as "twenty miles long, the township of Aylesford
intervening, which is sixteen miles long". In the former township.

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 93

it is reported, there are upwards of six hundred inhabitants, in the
latter three hundred, and in both townships the population is said
to be increasing. In 1803 the Rev. John Inglis, missionary at Ayles-
ford, writes the Society that the township of Aylesford forms a
square of ten miles, distant from Halifax ninety miles, and from
Annapolis Royal thirty-eight miles. The township's population,
he writes, comprises forty-two families. In 1828 Aylesford had a
population of 1,054; in 1833 it had 1,382.

The following list of early grantees in Upper Aylesford is
taken from a plan in the Crown Land Office in Halifax. The list
is probably not complete, but it undoubtedly comprises the chief
names of the earliest owners of land ia the township,

AYLESFORD GRANTEES

ACRES I

Barclay Beverly Robinson 1,000 May 1, 1797
Barclay DeLaneey 1,000 May 1, 1797
Barclay Henry 1,000 May 1, 1797
Barclay Thomas 1,000 May 1, 1797
Barclay Thomas, Jr. 1,000 May 1, 1797
Bayard Ethelinda 4,730 Feb'y 22, 1803
Bayard Louisa 4,730 Feb'y 22, 1803
Bayard Maria 4,730 Feb'y 22, 1803
Bayard Robert 4,730 Feb'y 22, 1803
Bayard Samuel Vetch 4,730 Feb'y 22, 1803
Beekwith Andrew (heirs of) 486 Aug. 30, 1783
Beckwith Benjamin 470 Aug. 30, 1783
Benedict Jabez 300 Nov., 1790
Bowlby John Charles (and Fran-
cis Hutchinson) 300 Jan'y 3, 1788
Bowen Nathan 403 Dec. 10, 1774
BowenNoah 400 Nov. 18, 1774
Brenton William and John Halli-
burton 856 July 20, 1786
Brenton "William and John Halli-
burton 150 July 20, 1786
Brown Darius 400 Dec. 10, 1774
Brown Ezekiel 402 Dec. 10, 1774
Brown Samuel 300 March 23, 1810
Brown Samuel 100
Burden Elisha 450 Oct. 8, 1812

94

KING'S COUNTY

ACRES

Chandler John

1,000

Dec. 20, 1787

Cleveland Lemuel

1,379

Aug. 30, 1783

Crane Joseph

200

A-iril 6, 1814

Dickson Charles

3,000

1700

(This grant renewed to his heirs Oct. 23,

1779)

Farnsworth Daniel

250

March 23, 1810

Fowler Capt. John

200

Nov., 1770

Grassie George

646

June 1, 1802

Grassie George, Jr.

646

June 1, 1802

Grassie John Alex. William 646

June 1, 1802

Graves Elias

400

March 23, 1810

Harcourt John

100

March 23, 1810

Halliburton John (and William

Brenton)

856

July 20, 1786

Halliburton John (and William

Brenton)

150

July 20, 1786

Harris James

250

May 5, 1814

Harris John

504

June 1, 1802

Hinds Benjamin

500

Oct. 14, 1774

Huston John

1,000

Nov, 5, 1784

Hutchinson Francis (and

John

Charles Bowlby)

300

Jan'y 3, 1788

Inglis Bishop Charles

967

Dec. 31, 1790

Inglis Bishop Charles

162

(date not known)

Inglis Rev. John

200

June 29, 1795

Kinne Jeremiah

400

Oct. 8, 1812

Magee Henry

500

Feb'y 16, 1786

Martin Brotherton

2,000

June 7, 1783

Miller William

200

March 23, 1810

(This is

probably correct.)

Morden James

5,000

Sept. 10, 1783

Morrison Archibald

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison Elizabeth

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison George

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison Hugh

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison James

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison John

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison Margaret

1,000

July 7, 1785

Morrison Robert

1,000

July 7, 1785

George and Hugh Morrison also have 1,000 acres, Feb'y 15,
1787 ; John Morrison has 1,000 acres, July 14, 1778.

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD

95

ACHES

Ormsby Matthew

300

Feb'y. 16, 1786

Orpin George

450

March 23, 1810

Orpin Joseph

500

March 23, 1810

Palmer Benjamin

500

March 23, 1810

Palmer Elijah M.

100

March 23, 1810

Palmer Enoch Lewis

200

March 23, 1810

Palmer George

127

March 23, 1810

Palmer George B.

50

March 23, 1810

Palmer Lewis

300

March 23, 1810

Parker William

500

March 23, 1810

Philip Martha

500

Dec. 20, 1787

Phipps David et aZ

5,000

Oct. 28, 1783 ,

Pierce Henry \
Pierce William |

200

Feb'y. 16, 1786

Piere Lewis

250

March 23, 1810

Piere Lewis

100

Potter Henry

1,000

April 6, 1768

(Confirmed July 11, 1778.)

Ritchie Alicia Maria

646

June 1, 1802

Ritchie Thomas

646

June 1, 1802

Robertson Daniel

100

March 23, 1810

Robertson John

100

March 23, 1810

Robertson William Henry

200

March 23, 1810

Shaffro George

500

Dec. 22, 1780

(He had entered into possession in 1768)

Skinner John

500

Spinney Joseph

249

Aug. 30, 1783

Terry Capt. John

3,000

Dec. 22, 1771

Van Buskirk Garrett

250

May 5, 1814

Van Buskirk Henry

250

May 5, 1314

Van Buskirk John

250

May 5, 1814

Van Buskirk Lawrence, Jr,

250

May 5, 1814

Van Buskirk Lawrence, Jr,

200

May 23, 1810

Van Buskirk Samuel

800

March 23, 1810

Van Buskirk William

250

May 5, 3814

Also, to John Van Buskirk and others, 5,000 acres, March 23,
1810, and to Henry Van Buskirk 's children, 300 acres.
Van Cortlandt Arthur Auch-

muty

50

Dec.

31,

1790

Van Cortlandt Catherine

50

Dec.

31,

1790

Van Cortlandt Charlotte

50

Dec.

31,

1790

Van Cortlandt Elizabeth

50

Dec.

31,

1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

500

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

500

1

Dec. 31, 1790

1,050

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

50

Dec. 31, 1790

500

Sept. 3, 1784

250

Peb'y. 16, 1786

500

July 6, 1784

1,000

Oct. 20, 1770

200

96 KING'S COUNTY

Van Cortlandt Gertrude
Van Cortlandt Henry Clinton
Van Cortlandt Jacob Ogden
Van Cortlandt Margaret
Van Cortlandt Mary Ricketts
Van Cortlandt Ensign Philip
Van Cortlandt Major Philip and

wife
Van Cortlandt Sarah
Van Cortlandt Sophia Sawyer
Van Cortlandt Stephen
"West John
West John
Wilkins James
Wilkins Walter
Wilson Elizabeth's children

Other early grantees, with dates of grants not ascertained, were :
Richard Banks, Thomas Chittick, Bernard McDade; Alexander,
Dawson, James, John, and Thomas, Patterson; James Pierce,
William Pierce, Jr., and Samuel Randall. These men had grants
varying in size from 77 to 366 acres.

March 23, 1810, a grant to which we have before referred,
containing over five thousand acres, "situated on the South Moun-
tain, so called, in the Township of Aylesford, County of Annapolis",
was given as follows: To John Van Buskirk, 400 acres; Lewis
Palmer, 300 ; Samuel Van Buskirk, 300 ; Lewis Piere, 250 ; Lawrence
Van Buskirk, Jr., 200; William Miller, 200; Daniel Robertson, 100;
William Parker, 500; John Harcourt, 100; Samuel Brown, 200;
George Orpin, 450; Elias Graves, 400; William Henry Robertson,
200; Elijah M. Palmer, 100; John Robertson, 100; Benjamin
Palmer, 500; Daniel Famsworth, 250; Joseph Orpin, 500; and "to
the Rev. John Inglis, D. D., Rector of St. Mary's Parish, and
Alexander Walker and Henry Van Buskirk, Esq., church wardens
and trustees of the parish, 100 in part of a glebe, and 100 in part
of a school".

Until 1835, what is known as Lower Aylesford remained almost
unsettled. About this date the government began to sell land here

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 97

also, the price commonly being £10. 18. 9, a hundred acres. On
the plan of Lower Aylesford, in the Crown Land Office, will ac-
cordingly be found a large number of names of persons who have
purchased land in this region, many of them not residents of the
•county and having no connection with it except the owning of these
tracts. Since 1854 no free grants worthy of mention, if any at all,
have been made in Upper Aylesford, but in Lower Aylesford the
government is selling land in small quantities still. The largest of
these sales have reached 1,400 or 1,500 acres, the smallest as few
as 25 acres.

Of the early Aylesford grantees the government simply exacted
promise of settlement, or of cultivation of a certain portion of the
grant, within a reasonable time. Li the case of Henry Potter,
for example, who received his grant in 1778, the nominal quit-rent
of one farthing per acre for ever was exacted. Of William Brenton
and John Halliburton, who received their united grant in 1786,
the government demanded that they should within three years, for
every fifty acres of "plantable land", clear and drain three acres
of swampy or sunken ground, or drain three acres of marsh, if any
such were contained in their grant, or erect on some part of their
land one good dwelling house, to be at least twenty feet in length
and sixteen feet in breadth, and to put on their land "the like
number of neat cattle for every fifty acres, etc ' '.

Prom the foregoing account it will be seen that the first grant-
ing of lands in Aylesford gave no enormous blocks for wide dis-
tribution, as was the ease in Cornwallis and Horton. In Aylesford,
the lands were given in single tracts, varying in amount from one
hundred to seven thousand acres, few individuals, however, receiv-
ing more than five or six hundred. In some of the larger grants
several members of the same family participated, but to a few in-
dividuals, grants much larger than any single grant given in Corn-
wallis or Horton were allowed. Charles Dickson, of Horton, for
instance, as we have seen, in 1770 received in Aylesford a grant of
three thousand acres, and James Morden in 1783 one of five
thousand.

98 KING'S COUNTY

Between 1820 and 1833, transfers of land were made in Aylea-
f ord among persons of the following names : Allan, Banks, Barclay,
Beckwith, Black, Bowlby, Brennan, Butler, Cassidy, Charlton, Chip-
man, Cole, Condon, Crane, Crocker, Crowly, DeWolf, Dolan,
Dugan, Edson, Elliott, ElUs, Falconer, Farnsworth, Fisher, Fos-
ter, Eraser, Gates, Gilpin, Graves, Grogan, Halliburton, Harris, Hill,
Hinds, Illsley, Inglis, Jackson, Jaques, Keaton, King, Kinne, Leaver,
Lovett, Magee, Marshall, McKay, McNaught, Miller, Morden, Mor-
gan, Morris, Morrison, Morton, Mudge, Neily, Nichols, Ogilvie,
Orpin, Owen, Palmer, Parker, Patterson, Perkins, Pierce, Prawl,
Quin, Randall, Reid, Rich, Ritchie, Roach, Ryarson, Ruggles, Saun-
ders, Smith, Solomon, Spinney, Stewart, Trainer, Truesdale, Tupper,
Van Buskirk, Vroom, Walker, Walsh, Ward, Warner, Welton, West,
Willett, Wilson, Woodbury. Among these transfers are the fol-
lowing : From Rev. John Inglis to John Ogilvie, Oct. 12, 1820 ; from
Henry Van Buskirk to Rev. Edwin Gilpin, Jan'y. D, 1827; from
Rev. John Inglis to William Pearce, July 15, 1830 ; from Rev. Edwin
Gilpin to Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen, Feb'y- 19, 1833; from George
Foreman Morden, of Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the city of West-
minster, London, Esq., a captain in H. M. Army and John Edward
Buller of the Inner Temple, in the County of Middlesex, gentle-
man, to John Butler Butler, Esq., Commissary general of H. M.
Forces, now residing at Bouverie Sheet, Fleet Street, London, May
28 and 29, and June 1, 1833. The land conveyed in this last trans-
fer was originally owned by James Morden, Esq., and by him was
willed to his wife, James Spry Heaton, and Alexander Thomson.

The earliest book of Aylesford Records, in the county Registry
of Deeds bears on the fly leaf the date 1819. The first entry
in this book is as follows: "To all People to whom these presents
shall come. Greeting— -Know ye that I, Alexander Walker and Atiti
Walker, my wife, of the Township of Aylesford, County of King's
and Province of Nova Scotia, Esquire. For and in Consideration
of the sum of 50 pounds of Good and Lawful Money of this province
to me in hand paid by Francis Ryarson, of the Township of Clem-

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 99

ents and County of Annapolis, Gentleman, the Eeceipt whereof we
do hereby acknowledge, Have Granted, Bargained, Sold, Aliened,
and Confirmed unto the said Francis Eyarson, His Heirs and Exe-
cutors, Administrators and Assigns forever, a certain tract or par-
cel of land bounded as follows, etc". The instrument is signed by
Alexander and Ann Walker, and witnessed by Catherine D. Walker
and Daniel Robinson. The date is Sept. 29, 1819.

Of the settlement of the townships of Wilmot and Aylesford,
the Rev. Dr. Edward Manning Saunders of Halifax has written
somewhat at length, and from an interesting paper of his, yet un-
published, we are permitted to quote. Dr. Saunders says: "The
settlement of that part of the Annapolis Valley included in Ayles-
ford and Wilmot (or from Kentville to Paradise) did not begin
until some years after 1760. That was because being beyond the
flow of the tides it afforded no chance for village life, and because
lying as it did, so far in the interior, the English settlers feared
to enter it on account of the Indians. At last, however, a few fam-
ilies penetrated it from the west, some of them even pushing up from
western Wilmot into the County of King's. Then began an inter-
mittent stream of emigration from the east, which flowed as far
west as the east side of Caribou Bog and there met the western
stream. At Berwick have ever since been found names which
originally belonged to both the east and the west, — ^Parkers and
Shaws from Annapolis; and Skinners, Huntingtons, Lyons', and
Loomers', who had originally settled farther east in King's. The
greatest accession to the population, however, came at the time of
the American Revolution. This influx began in 1776 and did not
cease till 1784 or '85. Some of the people who came at this time
were army officers of various ranks, who had served on the British
side, and who at the close of the war retired to spend the rest of
their days in this quiet valley. Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, Col.
James Eager, and Brigadier General Ruggles, settled in Wilmot.
The Van Buskirks settled in both Wilmot and Aylesford. Henry
Van Buskirk pitched his tent near where the Anglican Church of
Upper Aylesford now stands. He was the squire and the merchant

100 KING'S COUNTY

for a large section of the country around him. After 1795 he had
for his neighbor in summer Bishop Charles Inglis. "William Rhodes,
from Philadelphia, married a daughter of Alden Bass of Nictaux,
he too lived near St. Mary's Church in Upper Aylesford. His father
was a German from Leipsic. He had a large family of daughters,
and but one son, William, the latter an enterprising man who had
the esteem of the whole community.

"With the officers of the Revolution came a large number of
soldiers, who settled in various parts of the two townships. Hand-
ley Mountain, in Annapolis County, was chiefly settled by them.
It is doubtful if any part of the wilderness of America of equal
size was ever settled with people varying as much in race, religion,
culture and social standing. First there were the stern, unbending
Puritans of New England, then followed the Loyalists, devoted
adherents of monarchy and the established church. Many of the
settlers were rude and boisterous, but men and women of the finest
culture were scattered among them; English, American, Scotch,
Irish, German, and Dutch were intermixed by marriage or lived
side by side, in every neighborhood. The earliest settlers were of
the adventurous element among the Puritans, who sold out their
uplands and marshes further west in Annapolis and pushed on
eastward into the wilderness. The first of these who came took
up lands so as to build their log houses near the river. This gave
them the advantage of the meadow lands for hay, and the open
plains for the cultivation of other crops. It made it also convenient
for them to fish in the river, as well as to shoot game in the woods
to the south. Later comers took up lands on the mountain slopes,
which when the forest was cleared, yielded good crops of wheat,
followed by good crops of grass. Indeed, the soil produced in
abundance all kinds of grains and vegetables.

"By the settlers' hands the primeval forest vanished and home-
steads appeared in its place. The people's dwellings were rude,
but there was plenty of fuel to keep them warm. At first their
lands did not produce enough to meet their wants; to supply this
deficiency ship-timber, masts, oars, staves, shingles, deals, and

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 101

boards were taken from the forests along the Annapolis River in
Aylesford and Wilmot and rafted either to Bridgetown or to An-
napolis, for shipment to other places in America, to the West Indies,
or to Europe. Partial but substantial supplies for the table came
from the salmon and shad in the river, and the moose and caribou
in the woods. From the first, in imitation of the French, the farm-
ers not only raised a great variety of vegetables and cereals, but
they planted apple, cherry, and plum trees, which in the rich virgin
soil soon came to maturity.

"A look into the homes on the plains and mountain slopes,
all the way from Kentville to Paradise, on a winter's night, when a
howling snow storm was sweeping over the country, reveals a picture
of domestic life long since passed away. There were the great fire-
places piled up with logs, supplied by the big strong boys. Around
sat the grandfathers and grandmothers, the fathers and mothers.
and the young men and women, of the families. The women were
busy knitting or sewing, not one was idle. The boys were making
splint brooms or twine rabbit snares. The lights and shadows were
dancing on the log-walls, rough board floors, and rude ceilings.
There was an occasional roar in the chimney in response to a fresh
blast of wind from outside". Stories were often told by these fire-
sides of ghost-lights seen dancing about haunted places where
people were buried, of the remarkable power of the mineral rod in
revealing where gold had been hidden, of ghosts stopping the work
of men digging for Spanish doubloons, buried by notable pirates ; of
witch malevolence, and most terrible of all, of Indian murders and
scalpings. Such relations indeed, were not uncommon in the other
townships of King's besides Aylesford.

The Aylesford and Wilmot people had their diversions tooi,
notably their land clearings, when "twenty strong men with a full
supply of Jamaica rum would make the heavy black logs roll about
merrily, and mount each other in great piles ready for the blazing
torch. Habitual drunkenness, however, was neither common nor
respectable." The people, indeed, were generally not only indus-
trious but moral, and were peculiarly open to the influences of educa-

102 KING'S COUNTY

tion and religion. In Aylesford and in Wilmot the Society for thfl
Propagation of the Gospel early established schools, but as few of
the children of these scattered townships were able to attend these
schools, the people themselves often engaged disbanded soldiers to
teach their families. These pedagogues, says Dr. Saunders, were
often very ill-fitted to teach, but they were not an unmixed evil
to the communities where they came. "They often drank, but they
boarded round and made the firesides lively, and they kept the desire
for education alive". Travelling in these townships was for a long
time chiefly on horseback, people often riding double^ as was common
in other parts of America. About the houses where people met for
religious worship on Sundays horses always stood saddled waiting
to take their owners home when service was done.

Of the conspicuous Loyalist families whose names appear in the
list of grantees we have given, something must here be said. The Bar-
clay family, from New York, never lived in Aylesford, but for a time
did live in Wilmot. On the north wall of the chancel of St. Paul's
Chapel, Broadway, New York, rests a tablet of white marble, set on
another of black. It is surmounted by the arms of the Barclays of
Urie, Scotland, and was erected in memory of Colonel Thoma.s
Barclay (son of the Eev. Henry Barclay, D. D., Rector of Trinity
Church, New York), born in New York, Oct. 12, 1753. In the
history of Annapolis county, and in the Sabines' Loyalists will be
found interesting sketches of Col. Barclay. Graduating at Columbia
(King's) College, and for a while studying law in the ofSce of John
Jay, at the outbreak of the Revolution he joined the British forces
under Sir William Howe, as a captain in the Loyal American Regi-
ment. Promoted by Sir Henry Clinton to the rank of Major he
served through the war, and in 1783, his estate confiscated, wilh his
family he fled to Nova Scotia. In Annapolis he took up the practice
of law, and until 1799, when he was appointed British Consul at
New York, he was closely identified with the political interests of
his adopted province. In Nova Scotia he was a member and speaker
of the House of Assembly, was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Royal Nova
Scotia Regiment; during the war of 1812 was "Commissary for the

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 103

care and exchange of prisoners of war", and later was England's
Commissioner with Mr. Holmes, of the United States, to settle the
boundary between the two governments in Passamaquoddy Bay.
His wife was Susanna, ninth child of Peter DeLancey ol; Kosehill,
West Farms, New York, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Cad-
wallader Golden. His sister, Cornelia was first the wife of Lieut.-Col.
Stephen DeLancey (eldest son of Brigadier-General Samuel Oliver
DeLancey), secondly, of Sir Hudson Lowe, K. C. B. His sister Anna
Dorothea was the wife of Col. Beverly Robinson, who after the war
settled permanently in St. John, N. B. In the History of Annapolis
will be found a letter from Col. Barclay to the Governor of Nova
Scotia, Lord Dalhousie, protesting against the escheat that had been
threatened of his and his family's lands in Aylesford, on account of
his failure to settle on or improve them. His excuse for not doing
so is that he had been occupied for years wiil) important foreign
business for the crown. Of Col. Barclay's sons, Henry DeLancey,
Beverly Robinson, George Cornwell, Anthony, and probably Thomas
Edmund, were students at King's College, "Windsor. Anthony Bar-
clay, who like his father was long British Consul at New York,
matriculated at King's, Windsor, in 1805, took his degree of B. A. in
1809, and was made an hororary D. C. L. in 1827, CoL DeLancey
Barclay was an officer in the British army, was at the Battle of
Waterloo, and for some years was an aide-de-camp to King
George IV.

The Bayard family, of mingled Huguenot and Dutch ancestry,
whose grant of 4,730 acres in Aylesford was almost as large as that
of the Barclays, settled permanently in Wilmot. The head of this
family was Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, a son of Stephen and Alida
(Vetch) Bayard, of New York, and a grandson on his mother's side,
of Col. Samuel Vetch, the first English governor (appointed also thirl
governor) of Nova Scotia. Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard married, April
24, 1778, Catherine Van Home, and had children : William, born at
Halifax, N. S., Feb. 14, 1779 ; Elizabeth, born in New York, Dec. 1,
1780; Catharine, born Oct. 13, 1782; Stephen, born in Cornwallis,
Oct. 26, 1785, married Elizabeth Anne De Lancey; Robert, born at

104 KING'S COUNTY

Wilmot, March 1, 1788; Samuel, born at "Wilmot, March 1, 1790 j
Prances, born July 25, 1793 ; Ethelinda ; Eliza, married to George L.
Cooper; Louisa; and Sarah. Col. Bayard's son Robert, born in 1788,
was a physician. He entered King's College, Windsor, in 1803, but
seems not to have graduated. He became a physician, practised for
some years in Kentville, but finally removed to St. John, N. B.,
where he probably died. In 1871, when he was 83, the degree of
D. C. L. was conferred on him by King's.

William Brenton was a brother-in-law of Dr. John Halliburton
and an uncle of Sir Brenton Halliburton, Nova Scotia's eighth Chief
Justice. He was a son of the Hon. Jahleel and his second wife, Mary
(Neargrass) (Scott) Brenton, of Newport, R. I., where he was bom
Jan. 4, 1750, and was a brother not only of Mrs. John Halliburton,
but of the first wife of Hon. Joseph Gerrish of Halifax, and a half
brother of Hon. Judge James Brenton, M. L. C, of the Nova Scotia
Supreme Bench, who died at Halifax, in 1806, or early in 1807.
William Brenton, the Aylesford grantee, married in Newport, R. I.,
Feb. 24, 1779, Frances, daughter of Benjamin and Mary Wickham,.
and Sabine says that two of his sons were in the Royal navy.

John Chandler was probably the Hon. John Chandler, a
notable Loyalist of Worcester, Mass., "one of the six inhabitants of
Worcester who were included in the act of banishment forbidding^
the return of former citizens of the state who had joined the enemy".
He was born Feb. 26, 1720-1, in New London, Conn., married first,,
March 4, 1740-1, Dorothy Paine of Worcester, secondly, June 11,
1746, Mary Church, of Bristol, R. I., and had in all fourteen children.
He had a large and valuable estate in Worcester, and was a very
prominent person there. He died in London, Sept. 26, 1800, and was
buried in Islington. He was nearly related to the Chandlers of New
Brunswick.

Lemuel Cleveland, Jr., son of Lemuel Cleveland, formerly of
New London, Conn, (who probably settled in New Brunswick), and
his wife Lydia (Woodward), was born about 1750, and died after
1800. He married a Miss Sabeans, but probably left no family He

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 105

and his wife lived in "Wilmot, and he willed his property, it is said,
to Lemuel Cleveland Banks, of Nictaux.

Captain John Fowler was undoubtedly a Loyalist from West-
chester, N. Y., but precisely what his relationship was to Jonatlian
Fowler, born in East Chester, N. Y., Sept. 13, 1713, who "went to
Nova Scotia with Samuel Sneden and other" in 1783, and for a
little while lived in Digby, we do not know. From Jonathan's sons,
it is said, are descended the Fowlers of Digby and Annapolis
counties, some of whom have been known also in King's County.
Jonathan, himself died Feb. 9, 1784, and was buried in St. Paul's
Churchyard, East Chester. His wife, whom he married in 1840, was?
!Anne Seymour, born in 1720, died Sept. 11, 1803.

Of the Halliburton and Inglis families we shall give an account
in the Family Sketches. The Van Buskirk family, who settled in
Aylesford and have always been prominently identified with that
township 's progress, were New Jersey Loyalists, their descent being
mingled Danish and Dutch. John Van Buskirk (Laurens, Andres-
sen), married Theodosia , had a family, and died in 1783. Of his

children, Lawrence, born in 1729, in Hackensack, Bergen County,
New Jersey, had an estate in New Jersey and owned slaves. Pro-
testing against the Revolution, he became a captain in the King's
Orange Rangers, and in 1783 fled to St. John, N. B. Soon after, he
removed, so it is said, to Kentville, from there going to Aylesford, in
which township he purchased a farm of Daniel Bowen. He married
his first cousin, Jannetje Van Buskirk, daughter of his uncle Abra-
ham, who died in Shelburne, N. S., in 1791. He himself
died in Shelburne (according to Sabine), in 1803. His prop-
erty in New Jersey, which was confiscated, was worth £2,400.
Abraham Van Buskirk, son of John and Theodosia, a brother of
Lawrence, born about 1740, also became a Revolutionary officer. He
was colonel of the Fourth Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, and
was second in command to Brigadier-General Arnold at Saratoga.
He settled at Shelburne in 1784, and was the first mayor of that
town.

Of the Van-Cortlandt family, Philip Van-Cortlandt, son of

106 KING'S COUNTY

Stephen (who died in 1756), and his wife Mary (Ricketts), born in
1739, was the representative of the family and owner of the Manor
of Cortlandt, in Westchester, N, Y. Among the Loyalist families
who accepted the hospitality of Nova Scotia none can more properly
lay claim to aristocratic lineage than the Van Cortlandts. They
were, it is said, of noble Dutch origin, their ancestor coming to New
York in 1629, as secretary to the first governor sent out by the
States' General. From the New Netherlands government the family
received two manors, Yonkers and Cortlandt, but in the Revolution,
Philip Van Cortlandt, adhering to the Crown, and as "an officer in
the volunteers being frequently engaged against the Whigs", shared
the fate of so many other Loyalists and had his estates confiscated,
"as well in possession as in reversion". In the act of confiscation
his claim as the representative of Cortlandt Manor was, of course, •
included. Prom New York he came to Nova Scotia, but from this
province went to England, where he died in 1814. His wife, Cathar-
ine, a daughter of Jacob Ogden, died also in England in 1828.
He had in all, born, twenty-three children, but in the foregoing list
of Aylesford grantees, we have the names probably of all who were
living in 1790. Of his sons, Sabine says that Arthur Auchmuty was
captain in the 45th Regiment, and died at Madras. Henry Clinton
was a major in the 31st Regiment, and in 1835 was living in the East
Indies ; Jacob Ogden was a captain in some regiment and was killed
in Spain in 1811 ; Philip, Jr., born in 1766, twin with Stephen, was
an ensign in the 3rd Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers in the Revo-
lution. Of his daughters, Gertrude was married to Vice- Admiral
Sir Edward Buller, Bart. Whether the Van Cortlandt family's
large grant in Aylesford was escheated we have not inquired, from
the absence of the Van Cortlandt name in the record of early trans-
fers of land in the township it would seem as if it could not have
been sold by its original owners.

The complete history of the Loyalist migration to Nova
Scotia between 1776 and 1784 remains yet to be written. In 1776
Howe's fleet brought almost the whole of the pre-Revolutionary
aristocracy of Boston to the town of Halifax, and at the close of the

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 107

war, as we have said, such multitudes from New York, New Jersey,
and colonies farther south, landed at the ports of Shelburne and
Annapolis Eoyal, that the problem of how to locate them became
almost too difficult for the the government to solve. "Every habita-
tion is crowded with them (the Loyalists)", writes the Eev. Jacob
Bailey, at Annapolis, in 1782, ' ' and many are unable to procure any
lodgings. Many of these distressed people left large possessions in
the rebellious colonies, and their suffering on account of their loy-
alty, and their present uncertain and destitute condition, render
them very affecting objects'of compassion". "Since the commence-
ment of this week", he again writes, in October, 1783, "there have
arrived at Annapolis five ships, eight brigs, and four sloops, besides
schooners, with near a thousand people from (New) York. They
must be turned on shore without any shelter in this rugged season".
In November, he writes: "Fifteen hundred fugitive Loyalists are
just landed here from York in affecting circumstances, fatigued
with a long and stormy passage, sickly and destitute of shelter from
advances of winter. * * * For six months past these wretched
outcasts of America and Britain have been landing at Annapolis and
various other parts of this province". About the same time, he
writes the Secretary of the S. P. G. : " Since my last, of August 15th,
above seventeen hundred persons have arrived at Annapolis, besides
the Fifty-seventh Eegiment, in consequence of which my habitation
is crowded. The church has been fitted for the reception of several
hundreds, and multitudes are still without shelter in this rigorous
and stormy season. Near four hundred of these miserable exiles
have perished in a violent storm, and I am persuaded that disease,
disappointment, poverty, and chagrin will finish the course of many
more before the return of another spring. So much attention is
required in settling these strangers that nothing of a pub lick nature
can be pursued to effect". From records like these we are able to
gain some true idea of the unhappy conditions under which the Loy-
alists who received land in Aylesford entered the province.

Memoranda in the Register of St. Mary's Parish, Aylesford,
give the inhabitants in the township, in January, 1802, as 42 families,

108 KING'S COUNTY

comprising 63 men, 62 women, 137 children, and 3 negroes. In 1828.
as 172 families, comprising 560 males, 495 females, — in all 1,055 souls.
In 1833 (census taken by the Rev. Henry L. Owen), as 214 families,
comprising 694 males, 688 females,— in all 1,382 souls. la 1851
(census taken by W. Miller), 1,954 souls. In this last total number,
880 are given as Baptists, 364 as Methodists, 333 as of the Church of
England, 275 as Roman Catholics, 74 as Presbyterians, 8 as of the
Free Church, 2 as Universalists, 18 not specified or not known. At
this period, Aylesford had 10 day schools, with 274 children in atten-
dance. The area of the township is given as 280 square miles.

In a sketch of the History of Aylesford township, the village of
Morden, on the shore of the Bay of Pundy, demands especial notice.
This hamlet, which until recent times was called "Prench Cross", was
the scene of one of the saddest episodes in the history of the deporta-
tion of the Acadians from King's County. At the time of the expul-
sion, as we have seen, no inconsiderable number of the Prench fled
to the woods and so escaped the edict of exile that had been passed
upon them. A newspaper article which we shall presently repro-
duce, describes in detail the escape of a group of the Miuas Acadians
to Aylesford, and the terrible sufferings they endured in the winter
they spent there, — sufferings, indeed, that ended in death for many
of them in the lonely Aylesford woods. "When Spring came, those
who survived went in canoes up the Bay of Pundy, probably to
Cumberland, perhaps, however, crossing, to New Brunswick, but
before they went, to mark the graves of their dead, they erected a
wooden cross on a bluff near the present village of Morden.

In the year 1815, says the late John E. Orpin, "I first came
across the North Mountain from the valley, with my brothers, to
this place, for the purpose of fishing. I saw on the point a cross
about seven feet high, which was called by everybody the Prench
Cross. It was a matter of common knowledge that a group of
Acadians, driven from Annapolis Royal in the fall of 1755, came up
the valley to Aylesford and encamped there for a month or so, then
crossed the mountain to this place and encamped here until spring,
when they went to Port Cumberland. During the winter, many died.

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 109

it is said, of fever and starvation, and were buried here. Later, their
comrades erected the cross to mark their graves. I have seen the
cross since 1815, dozens of times ; in 1820 it still stood, but after that
year I was absent for several years, and when I came back it was
gone. It stood close by the shore, on the extreme point, but the
waves have washed the spot bare, and the place where it stood is now
in a ledge of rocks, a few feet out from the shore ' '. On the 31st of
August, 1887, we learn, another cross made by John Orpin, painted
by George H. Fall, and lettered by Thomas Jones, was publicly
erected as nearly as possible on the spot where the older cross stood.
Mr. Orpin, the maker of the new cross, was at this time eighty-one
years old. In his account we are told that the Aylesford Acadians
who erected the cross came from Annapolis Royal ; in the newspaper
account which here follows it is stated that they came from Minas;
which tradition is right we do not know.

In the Halifax Herald of January 25, 1889, a writer whose name
is unknown to us has given what he calls "a thrilling chapter of
Nova Scotia history". His account of the "Black Winter Among the
Acadians at French Cross" is so graphic that we reproduce it here
entire. "As is well known", says the writer, "the southern shore of
the Bay of Fundy is overlooked by a frowning, beetling cliff, extend-
ing all the way from Cape Split to Digby Neck. Against this wall
of solid trap, from time immemorial, the thundering waves, like bat-
tering-rams, have hurled themselves in vain. At certain points, how-
ever, there are breaks in this high bluff, making access to the Bay
easy, and affording harbours for vessels. One of these places is found
opposite the Aylesford St. Mary's Church. The ancients called it
the 'French Cross', the moderns call it 'Morden'.

"Long before either English or French speech was heard along
the shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Miemacs had their highways of
travel over land and water, as well established and as well known as
are the railways, coach roads, and steamer routes, of the present day.
The country around the head of the Bay, all the way from the
Petitcodiac to Advocate, was favourite ground for the savages of

110 KING'S COUNTY

olden times. Equally desirable was the district along the banks of
the Annapolis river. The abundance of fish, fowl, and wild beasts
made these parts of the country desirable dwelling places for the red
men. And there was necessarily much travelling from place to place.
In choosing their highways the Indians, like the modern railway
men, looked for routes securing the greatest possible advantage.
Prom any point at the head of the Bay, outside of Minas Basin,
canoes would soon glide across to French Cross. An easy portage of
about four miles would bring them to the Annapolis river, near
where St. Mary's Church in Aylesford now stands. Here the canoes
would be launched, and down the river to Digby it was mere music
and poetry to travel. The gentle current would bear them along
the sinuosities of the river, where there were always mink, otter,
beaver, rabbits, partridges, ducks and geese for their swift-winged
arrows and their traps and snares ; and salmon and shad in plenty for
their deft spears. High pleasure and glorious sport it was for the
red men to drift down this stream, and not less was the fun to their
papooses and squaws. Silently they would float along, surprising
game at every turn of the stream. As soon as the French came into
possession of the lands at Annapolis, and around the head of the
Bay, and had made friends with the Micmacs, they naturally
adopted the Indian routes by land and water.

"In the early autumn of 1755 a canoe, well manned with
Indians, might have been seen gliding up the Cornwallis river, and
then being taken rapidly over the portage between Berwick and the
Caribou bog. Here being again launched, it swept along the Anna-
polis river, impelled both by the current and the Indians' paddles.
Its occupants stopped neither to shoot fowl nor to spear fish. On
and on they went till they arrived at the point a little above the
Paradise railway station. Here they came upon the eastern end of
the Acadian settlement. They were the bearers of startling news.
Gloom was on their faces, and alarm in their actions and words. The
intelligence they gave brought consternation to the hearts of the
Aeadians, for the latter now learned from their Micmac friends that
their compatriots at Grand Pre and Canard were prisoners in the

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 111

Grand Pre parish church, and surrounded by armed red coats ; and
that ships were anchored at the mouth of the Gaspereau, ready to
bear them away from their homes to lands strange and unknown.

"The news flew down the river and over the marshes on the-
wings of the wind, and spread on either side till it reached the home
of every habitant. The hearts of the people quailed before an
impending calamity so dire, a fate so terrible. In Upper Granville,
that is from below Bridgetown to Paradise, a meeting of the people
was hastily called. Of course, the pressing, burning question was,,
what under the circumstances should be done. Already their
priests and delegates were prisoners in Halifax, and they were face
to face with the black sequel. Some said: 'Make no resistance,,
surrender to the English and trust Providence'. Others said, 'Nay;
of all evils before us this is the worst to choose ! ' The result was a
permanent division of opinion. About sixty resolved on instant
flight up the river. But the risk was too great to travel either by-
stream, or by the old French road. In either course they might
meet the English soldiers. Their route must be north of the river,,
north of the road.

"Loading themselves to the full measure of their burden
bearing powers with provisions and camp life conveniences, they
took a wailing farewell of their companions, who had resolved to-
remain, and started on their wearisome journey. Slowly and
cautiously they moved up the country, till they came to a point about
a mile east of Kingston railway station. There these fugitive men,
women, and children encamped. Their Micmac friends acted as
pickets and spies. On these sand dunes they heard from time ta
time of the progress of the deportation at Annapolis, Grand Pre
and Cumberland. Their bread lasted but a short time, and this
forced them to a diet of berries, fish, and venison. Dysentery, com-
mon at that season, broke out among them. Death began its work. Na
priest was there to minister to the soul, no physician to care for
the body. Fear aggravated the malady. With sad hearts they dug
their friends ' graves in the soft sands of the Aylesf ord plains. "With
an agony such as only these social, simple-hearted Acadians were

112 KING'S COUNTY

•capable of, they buried their dead in these graves, and their wailings
xesounded among the trim, straight trunks of the ancient pines.

"All Aylesford has heard of the 'French Burying Ground'. In
it the money diggers have found bones, but no money. The mineral
rods in the hands of the experts have pointed unerringly to the
■chest of gold. Digging must be done in the night. Spectres and
.ghosts were ever on guard, and at any moment might be encoun-
tered. Again and again these supernatural visitors have appeared,
.striking terror into the hearts of the gold-seekers. More than once
the crow-bar, thrust deep into the soft soil, has struck the iron
-chest containing the gold; but incautious lips have uttered some
sudden exclamation, and away has gone the enchanted chest to
another place, driven through the sand by the might of the presiding
:ghost. Baffled and chagrined by their own folly, the diggers have
"then gone home empty-handed, denoimcing their impulsive comrade,
and resolved to be more cautious the next time. Not a man of three
score years in all Aylesford, but remembers these adventures of
olden times.

"The tragedy of the expulsion dragged its ci'uel length along
through the autumn and into the early winter. The intelligence
brought to the camp by the faithful Micmacs convinced the Acadians
that they were so hemmed in by dangers that their safest course was
to take the trail to French Cross and remain there until spring, and
-then cross the Bay and wander on to Quebec. This plan, desperate
though it was, was executed. Under the shadow of the primeval
forest, close by the shore, where a brook still empties itself into the
waters of the Bay, about six miles from their camp in the valley
-they erected their rude winter huts. Before leaving the plains they
bedewed with tears the graves of their companions, and then wearily
made their way over the level, wooded country, up the slopes of the
moimtain, and down to the shore of the Bay. From the place
chosen for their winter home they could see across to the opposite
shore. The English vessels were continually passing up and down
the Bay, and even should they get safely to the other side it would
not be possible for them to go to Quebec, for not only grim forests,

THE TOWNSHIP OF AYLESFORD 113

but deep snows would effectually bar their way. Until spring, there-
fore, they must stay there as contentedly as they could. During all
this bitter experience their Micmac friends stood faithfully by them.
Though there were many moose and caribou in the woods it was not
always easy to capture them, yet they managed to get a good deal of
venison, and to vary their diet they found an almost inexhaustible
quantity of mussels clinging to the rocks.

"The winter passed slowly away. Above them, through the
rigid, leafless branches of the giant forest, howled the storm. But
around their huts were always the sympathetic spruce and fir trees,
kindly and green. In December, they saw the last of the transports
pass down the Bay, bearing away their compatriots to unknown
shores. As they gazed upon them, appearing, passing, and disap-
pearing in the west, borne on to shores and destiny all unknown,
they envied them their lot. The last tidings brought them late in the
autumn was that all the Acadian homes had been burned. No hope
or shelter appeared in that direction, so there they remained, the
winter through, in their huts by the sea. Disease dogged their steps,
from the sand dunes to their cold camps on the shore. Death
•claimed more victims. The weak among them, both old and young,
succumbed, and another cemetery was made. Close by the shore,
opposite their camps, was an open space, green till covered by the
snow. There they dug more graves for their fallen companions.

"At length spring came. Indians helped them flay the birches
and construct enough canoes to take the survivors to the New
Brunswick shores. "When all was ready the fugitives loaded their
tianoes, wept over the graves of their dead, took a farewell look at
their rude huts and the heaps of bones of moose, partridges, and
-caribou, and the shells of mussels, and committed themselves to the
tender mercies of the Bay of Fundy, whose calms and storms they
had watched through all that black winter. As the shore receded
from their gaze their tear-dimmed eyes rested upon one object which
stirred their deepest feelings. It was the wooden cross they had
•erected to protect the graves of their dead brothers, sisters, fathers,
imothers, and children. No priest had been present to absolve the

114 KING'S COUNTY

dying or to say solemn service for the dead, but they left this symbol
of their religion to hold their sepulchres sacred in the eyes of all
who might visit the place in after years.

"On the opposite side of the Bay they foimd some of their
countrymen, who, like themselves, had endured the sufferings of
camp life throughout that rigorous winter with Micmac friends.
Patience, fortitude, and hope, characteristic of the Acadian, did not
forsake them. They knew their homes were in ashes, but a blind
belief possessed them that they should return to them, and again sea
in spring their green fields, bursting forests, and blossoming apple
trees; again hear the sweet call of their church bells to mass and
vespers ; and again around their bright fires, drink their cider, smoke
their pipes, and enjoy life as they had done in bygone days".

Aylesford Township officials appointed by the Court of Sessions
October 16, 1812, were: Overseers of the Poor: James Harris,
Nathan Randall, Jonathan Smith. Surveyers of Highways : James
Harris, Nathan Randall, Nicholas Beckwith, George Orpin, Timothy
Landrus, Sr. Assessors: Jonathan Smith, William Parker, John
Dugan. Pound Keeper: John Patterson. Constables: William
Greaves, Samuel Van Buskirk. Hog Reaves: Matthew Reason,
Moses Banks, Jonathan Smith, Richard NicoUs. Collector of Rates :
James Patterson. Surveyors of Bricks: William Parker, William
Randall. Surveyors of Lumber: Samuel Randall, Edward Morgan.
Fence Viewers: Blias Graves, Francis Tupper, Joseph Spinney.
Town Clerk: Robert Kerr. January 2, 1813, the Aylesford town
meeting nominated Henry U. Van Buskirk, James and John Patter-
son, Alexander Jaques, and Nathan and Samuel Randall, as trustees
of schools for Aylesford. For the encouragement of a school a hun-
dred and four pounds had recently been raised by general subscrip-
tion, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel giving sixteen
pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence, as its contribution to the
fund.

CHAPTEE YII
THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH

Until 1840 the township of Parrsborough, in Cumberland coun-
ty, was included in the County of King's. Like Aylesford, however,
it never had the privilege accorded to Cornwallis and Horton of
sending representatives to the legislature, and as in the case of
Aylesford, we are not sure when it was formally established as
a township. "The township of Parrsborough", writes Haliburton
in 1829, "was named after the late Governor Parr (the 12th Eng-
lish governor of Nova Scotia), and though situated on the eastern
side of the Bason of Minas, is appended to King's County. There
is a small village bearing the name of the township nearly opposite
the extreme point of the Cornwallis mountain, from whence the
packets run to Horton and Windsor twice a week, and occasionally
oftener. The distance between this place and Windsor is thirty-
five miles. The village is overlooked by a bold bluff, two hundred
and fifty feet high, called Partridge Island, which, resisting the
tides of the Bay of Pundy, affords shelter in the summer months
to vessels employed in this internal navigation. Near the junction
of this township with Colchester, is a beautiful group of islands,
five in number, and generally known as the Five Islands. They rise
abruptly from the sea and present a very picturesque appearance.
About two miles from the village is the Parish Church. From
this place to Francklin Manor, the lands on both sides of the
road to Cumberland were, in the year 1774, subdivided into farm
lots and offered for sale at the rate of sixpence per acre, but at
that period, such was the low estimation in which the country was
held that not a single sale could be effected. In 1783 and at sub-
sequent periods they were again divided into sixty farm lots of
two hundred and fifty acres each, and were granted to such fam-

116 KING'S COUNTY

ilies as were inclined to accept of them. Besides this settlement
there are several others in Parrsborough, that are in a thriving and
prosperous condition. The inhabitants experience much inconven-
ience from the intervention of the Bason of Minas, between Parrs-
borough and Kentville, where the public offices are held".

The original boundaries of King's, as we have seen, like those
of Annapolis, Halifax, and Cumberland, were very wide, and even
as late as 1784 what still remained to it of the country north of
the Basin of Minas was increased by a tract extending from Cape
Dore to Chignecto, northward, one boundary of which was "Franck-
lin Manor", a large domain owned by the Hon. Michael Francklin,
lieutenant-governor of the province from 1766 until probably 1776.
The 27th of March, 1840, an act was passed by the legislature "to
divide the township of Parrsborough, and to annex parts thereof
to the counties of Colchester and Cumberland". The act reads:
"Whereas great inconvenience is felt by the inhabitants of Parrs-
borough in being annexed to the County of King's, as they are
cut off from all connection with their county during the winter
months, leaving them in a great measure without protection of
law, for remedy thereof: Be it enacted by the Lieut. Governor,
Council, and Assembly, that from and after the passing of this act,
all that part of King's County lying on the north side of the
Basin of Minas, and known as the Township of Parrsborough, shall
l)e and the same is hereby annexed to the counties of Cumberland
and Colchester, as follows : — All that part of the Township of Parrs-
borough lying to the west of Harrington's Kiver in the Five Islands,
to the county of Cumberland, and the remaining part of said Town-
ship lying east of Harrington's River, aforesaid, to the County of
Colchester". In a later part of the act it is specified that all Jus-
tices of the Peace and other county officers then in office, should
have the same power and authority while their commissions lasted,
in the new counties as in the old. The portion of Parrsborough
annexed to Cumberland was to remain, as it still is, a distinct and
separate township of Cumberland.

Within the limits of the original township of Parrsborough,

THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 117

no doubt a considerable number of Acadian French had their
homes. About ten years after the removal of the French the gov-
ernment began to, grant land in Parrsborough as it had earlier done
in Cornwallis and Horton, to English speaking settlers, one of the
earliest grants, it is said, being 2,000 acres, — ^half to John Avery,
and a quarter each to John Bacon, Jr. and Jacob Lockhart. The
first of these early grantees, by deed bearing date April 8, 1777,
transferred his land to Asa and Abijah Scott of Fort Sackville,
in Halifax County, and Jacob Hurd. In time the ownership of the
Scotts in this Parrsborough land passed to James Ratchford, who
gave for it the not excessive sum of five hundred and fifty pounds.
A grant that may perhaps be even slightly earlier than this, has
the date of April 28, 1763. The amount comprised in this latter
tract was also 2,000 acres, and the grantees were, Abel and Michael
Michener, Matthew Shepherd, and "William and George Forbes.
The land thus granted is said to be "at Advocate Harbour, near
Cape Dore, in the County of King's". Another grant, dating from
1784, was 587 acres to Rev. Thomas Shreve. This was "on the
east side of the road leading from Partridge Island towards Cum-
berland, and east side Chignecto River in King's". A large grant
of 8,900 acres was made, under the seal of Governor Parr, October
15, 1784, to Thomas Pottinson, Lieut. Francis Fraser, Capt. Joseph
Vought, Christopher Vought, Thomas ' Yelverton, Ensign Francis
Finney, Lieut. Thomas J. Pritchard, Capt. Samuel Lindsay, Lieut.
John "Wightman, Capt. John Hetfield, Adjutant Alexander Clark,
Capt. Alexander McDonald, Capt. James Raymond, and Lieut.
Eleazer Taylor.

As will at once be imagined, these grantees were chiefly, per-
haps indeed all, officers who had fought in the American Revolu-
tion on the losing side. Another grant was to Thomas Parr, Es-
quire, John Parr, Jr., William Parr, and Harriet Parr, "in severalty
imto each of them and unto each and every of their several and
respective heirs and assigns". The grant comprised "several
plantations of land comprehended within a tract of 2,800 acres,
situate and being within the Township of Parrsborough", Thomas

118 KING'S COUNTY

Parr receiving Lot no. 57, John Parr, Jr. Lot 58, William Parr
Lot 59, Harriet Parr Lot 60. Each of the lots contained seven hun-
dred acres, and the "consideration" given was two shillings for
every hundred acres. The grant bears date August 8, 1795. The
same date. Governor Parr granted 21,380 acres to a large number
of men, most of whom were Loyalist Refugees, new to the province,
one or two, however, being men who had previously lived in other
townships of King's. The names on this grant are: Lieut. Col.
Blisha Lawrence, Major Isaac Kipp, Lieut. John Eeid, Capt. John
Longstreet, Lieut. Adolphus French, Quartermaster John Nowlan,
Sarah Bessionet, Capt. Edmund Ward, Lieut. Elijah Fowler, Lieut.
Asher Dunham, Letitia Barnston, Lieut. Robert Spicer, William
Taylor, Esq., Lieut. Patrick Henry, Richard Walker, Esq., Lieut.
Moses Ward, Capt. James Stewart, Rebecca Cloud, Capt. Finley
Brown, Lieut. John Monroe, Lieut. Luther Hathaway, Major John
Vandyke, Capt. Samuel Wilson, Lieut. Thomas Loudon, John
Bowsley, Charles Bowsley, Edmund Butler, Lieut. William Reid,
James Ratchford, Thomas Moore, James Mitchell, Thomas Harriott,
William Dumaine, Col. Edward Cole, John Smith, William
Thompson.

It is recorded in the Crown Land Office that the rights of John
Longstreet, Adolphus French, Sarah Bessionet, Letitia Barnston,
William Taylor, Richard Walker, Moses Ward, Thomas Loudon,
John Bowsley, and Charles Bowsley, were excheated May 14, 1814.
How many of the others of these grantees actually settled on their
lands we do not know. A few, however, were later conspicuously
identified with the history of the township, notably Col. Elisha
Lawrence, James Ratchford, and Thomas William Moore.

In a grant bearing date August 18, 1785, many Scotch names
occur. The list is as follows: John Campbell, Donald McKay,
Thomas Smith, John McPherson, Alexander McLean, John McGil-
veroy, Lieut. Robert Clarke, Peter Rogers, James Dick, John
Mathieson, John Irwin, Robert Buchan, Angus McLeod, Thomas
Martin, Andrew Anderson, Michael Wilson, John Carry, William
McKegan, John Jardine, John McMillan, Timothy Hammond, John

THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 119

McLeod, John Cunningham, Patrick Murphy, Daniel Campbell,
Alexander McDonald, William Cummins, Peter Morrison, Charles
McLoughlin, David Young, Charles McKinnon, Norman McKenzie,
Neil McLean, James Smith, Jonathan Crow, Henry St. Clair, Peter
Nicholson, William Campbell, Charles McGregor, Donald Mclver,
and several others. The antecedents of these men we do not know,
but William Campbell is probably the William Campbell who was
appointed a JTistice of the Peace in King's County a few years after
the date of this grant, and it is probably he who as early as 1814
was Judge of Probate for the county and was living in Cornwallis,
The 6th of April, 1814, another grant in Parrsborough, consisting
of 1,700 acres, was given to James Noble Shannon, Esq., James
Noble Shannon, Jr., Elijah Kenwood, and Silas H. Crane. The
number of acres to each of the first three of these men was five
hundred, to Silas H. Crane the number was but two hundred.
Among others who received grants from Governor Parr, were Lieut,
John Connolly, who received 1,000 acres, and Capt. D. Meyern, who
received 700. The first of these grants bears date July 21, 1785, the
second, June 7, 1787.

At a meeting of the Executive Council in Halifax, July 20, 1786,
a memorial was presented from Lt.-Col. Elisha Lawrence, "in be-
half of the inhabitants of Parrsborough, requesting that part of
the township be erected into a parish, whereon it was resolved that
the following tract be for that purpose. Beginning at Swan Cove,
about two miles to the eastward of Chignecto River, thence to
run north ten miles, then westerly to Parrsborough, and then
bounded on the north and west by said Parrsborough, and on the
south by Minas Gut and Basin, comprehending the public land on
the east side of Chignecto River and all the lots on both sides
the road leading from thence to Francklin Manor". At a meet-
ing of the Council, December 21, 1786, it was resolved that the
Parish of Parrsborough should be limited and bounded as above.

June 18, 1798, the inhabitants of the township of Parrsborough
assembled "to choose persons to receive voluntary contributions for
the support of the King's Government and for carrying on the

120 KING'S COUNTY

present just and necessary war". The persons chosen were: Capt.
James Ratchford, Capt. Samuel Wilson, and Bleazer Taylor, Esq.
The people who subscribed were: Rev. Thomas Shreve, Samuel
Wilson, John Smith, James Noble Shannon, Eleazer Taylor, Will-
iam Skidmore, Jesse Lewis, Charles Praser, William Conroy, Fran-
cis Phinney, James Ratchford, Jonathan Vickery, Jonathan Vickery,
Jr., Mary Crane, widow; James Jinks, Jr., William Teate, John
Vickery, Andrew Thompson, Jonathan Davison, Denis Lefurfy,
Robert Kerr, Walter Shey, James Fordyce, Thomas William Moore,
F. York, James Holt, John Fordyce, Nicholas Willigar. Shortly
after the raising of these loyal contributions, August 1, 1798, Nel-
son defeated the French in the Battle of the Nile. At this event
there was great rejoicing in Nova Scotia; in Halifax salutes were
fired and the town was illuminated; in Lunenburg a similar dem-
onstration was made.

A name that occurs often in the records of Parrsborough, and
that has had one previous mention in this history, is that of James
Noble Shannon, who was long the leading merchant of Partridge
Island, where he had his store and his house. Mr. Shannon, who
was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in September, 1751, was
one of the five sons of Cutt or Cutts Shannon, a leading lawyer of
Portsmouth, and his wife Mary, daughter of Lt. Governor George
Yaughn, his great grandfather being being a brother, it is said;
of Sir William Shannon, once Mayor of the city of Dublin. James
Noble, who was named for an uncle by marriage, James Noble
of Boston, was brought up in Boston and educated there. When
he reached manhood he went into the lumber business in Machias,
Maine, but at the outbreak of the Revolution he removed to Horton,
King's County, where he married Chloe, bom Sept. 24, 1745, elder
daughter of Silas and Lucy (Waterman) Crane, formerly of Con-
necticut, a sister of Col. Jonathan Crane, long one of Horton 's most
prominent men. Settling finally in Parrsborough, where as we
have seen, together with his brother-in-law, Silas H. Crane, he
received a grant of land in 1814, he soon built up an important
business, his partner in which, after a while, was Mr. James Ratch-

THE TOWNSHIP OF PARRSBOROUGH 121

ford, a young Comwallis man. Mr. Shannon had no children, so
he adopted a nephew, James Noble Shannon, father of the late
Hon. Judge Samuel Leonard Shannon, of the Nova Scotia Su-
preme Bench. James Noble Shannon died at Parrsborough, Nov.
7, 1822, and is buried in a picturesque spot in sight of Minas Basin,
It is recorded that in June, 1780, the lieutenant of a privateer from
Machias, with seven other men landed at Partridge Island and be-
gan to rob Mr. Shannon's store. Lieutenant Wheaton was in charge
of a small force of regulars, who were stationed at the block house
on Block-House Hill, and with five of his men he routed the enemy,
killing the Machias lieutenant and two of his men, and making
prisoners of the rest.

A sketch of the Ratchford family will be found in the Family
Sketches in this book. "The history of Parrsborough", a news-
paper writer says, "was for half a century and more the history of
the Ratchford family. There was a time when the half-pay offi-
cers, whose descendants formed the bulk of Parrsborough 's popu-
lation, were wont to fire a cannon when anything in particular
happened to a Ratchford". A sketch of the King's County Moore
family, originating in Parrsborough with the Loyalist Thomas Will-
iam Moorie, will also be found in the Family Sketches in this book.

In 1797, Theophrastus' Almanac announces for the information
of travellers between Windsor and Parrsborough, that "the Parrs-
borough packet sails regularly between Windsor and Parrsborough
twice in every week, and occasionally three times, but is always at
Windsor every Tuesday in the summer season (wind and weather
permitting), so as to sail from thence to Parrsborough the first high
water that happens at or after twelve o'clock of that day. The
passage money for each person is five shillings and sixpence per
head. The vessel is forty-two tons burthen and has good accom-
modations for passengers ; and likewise for taking over horses, neat
cattle, and sheep, etc". In a similar advertisement in some other
almanac in 1803, the passage money for each person is stated to be
five shillings, and the freight for horses and cattle seven and six-
pence a head.

122 KING'S COUNTY

The census of Parrsborough in 1822 is said to have given the
tovm 223 families, comprising 336 men, 293 women, 368 boys, and
290 girls, in all 1,287 persons. April 19,1884, an act was passed by
the legislature to incorporate Parrsborough town.

CHAPTER YIII
KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN

For some years after the New England planters came to the
county the social and business centre of the township of Horton was
the Horton Town Plot. As late as 1800, however, near this centre
there were only about twenty houses and one or two stores, though
some of the leading families of the township from the first had
resided there. Prom the earliest settlement, what is now "Wolfville
had a considerable number of houses, and by the beginning of the
19th century a few more had been added. As the population of
Horton multiplied west, and as the business increased, Wolfville
became more important than the "Lower Horton" village, but by
the end of the first quarter of the century, a more important hamlet
still was Kentville, the present shire town. The hamlet was first
known as "Horton Corner", and Sept. 16, 1766, the first deed of
land, it is said, was given there by Jonathan Darrow, to James Fillis
and Joseph Pierce. If this is true, Jonathan Darrow 's grant of five
hundred acres, given Feb. 19, 1766, may very well have included
part, at least, of the site of the present Kentville town. Nor is it at
all unlikely that the house James Fillis erected on his land purchased
from Darrow, was the first permanent dwelling erected in what is
now the centre of the town.

About 1798 a Loyalist, Henry Magee, who had received land in
Aylesford in 1786, built a grist mill on the Kentville brook, probably
on the exact site of the mill afterwards owned by Mr. William
Redden. Magee built also a house, which was later owned by the
Allisons, and at some point near opened a shop for general trade.

In 1800, Horton Corner comprised fourteen houses and Magee 's
store. About 1812 Sheriff George Chipman built the house that was
afterwards for a long time the home of Mr. James Edward DeWolfe

124 KING'S COUNTY

and his family, and some distance further up the main street Patrick
Fuller opened a general store. When the first bridge over the Kent-
ville brook was constructed we do not know, but there must have
been a rough one made very soon after the New England planters
came to Horton.

In June, 1794, his Royal Highness Prince Edward, Duke of
Kent, then commanding on the North American Station and residing
at Halifax, made a journey on horseback through the valley, from
Annapolis Royal going by vessel to St. John, New Brunswick.
At that time Wolfville was the leading place in Horton, and
Prince Edward was entertained there at the house of Judge Elisha
DeWolf . The visit of this illustrious person to the county was never
forgotten by the Horton people, and thirty-two years later, in 1826,
at a meeting of the principal inhabitants of Horton Corner, tlie name
"Kentville" was given to the budding town. In the l^ova Bcotian
newspaper of April 19, 1826, is the following notice of this change t
"The inhabitants of Horton Corner having lately held a public
meeting, at which George Chipman, Esq., presided, have resolved
that their growing village should in the future be called Kentville, in
honour of His late Royal Highness, the Duke of Kent, one of the earli-
est and best friends of Nova Scotia. They have it in intention to rrett
a public school-house, with sufficient room for the introduction of the
Madras system, as well as for a Grammar School; and as a further
proof of the spirit of improvement which animates them, they have
it likewise in contemplation to establish a public library". Three
years later the court-house and jail were planted at Kentville, and
thenceforth all the chief county business was transacted there.

The first court-house and jail were, of course, situated at Horton
town, near the present Horton landing, but probably very early in
the 19th century these buildings were burned, and for some years,
the courts were held in the Baptist Meeting-House at "Wolfville. For
a jail presumably some neighboring dwelling house was used. In
1784 the township of Aylesford became more settled, and for the
inhabitants of that region, Wolfville, as the seat of the county offices
and as a place for holding the courts was, of course, inconveniently

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 125

far to the east. It was not until 1829, however, as we have said,
that a court-house and jail were built at Kentville. In that year a
two-story structure, containing both court-house and jail was built,
its location being perhaps on the present railway track, or a little
to the north of that, on CornwaUis Street. In 1849 this double
building was burned, but in the record of the acts of legislature
for that year we learn that it had an insurance on it of five hundred
pounds. To this amount the legislature added five hundred more,
and immediately two separate buildings were put up, which did duty
until 1903. In that year, a red brick Municipal Building, including
a court-house, was built, the first use of the court-house being by the
Municipal Council at its meeting in January, 1904. At the present
time, however, the court-house of 1850 still stands. In 1907 a new,
larger jail was erected, the old one having long been inadequate to
the county's needs.

"Kentville owes its location", says a recent writer, "to the
enormous sand bank (removed about twenty-five years ago), which
here narrowed the river and made a convenient place for a ford at
low tide, and later for a bridge. Thus, naturally, a village sprang up
here. The two main streets of the present town. Main and Corn-
waUis Streets, as we have already seen, were roads made by the
Acadian French, but the two streets that complete the Kentville
^'Square", the streets called Church Street and "Webster Street, were
laid out by Dr. William Bennett Webster, probably the most enter-
prising and far-seeing man the village in its early history had. It is
said that when Dr. Webster extended the road now Church Street
over the steep sand bank, we have referred to, he received from the
people of the town generally little praise and much ridicule, but the
present usefulness of the road is a complete justification of his wise
foresight.

In the first two decades of the 19th century the following were
the chief houses in and near the present town. ' On the "Roy farm",
between Kentville and New Minas, which was originally the grant
of Eli Perkins, stood the Perkins grantee house. Half a mile to tlie
west, on the high road, stood the Benjamin Peck House, afterward

126 KING'S COUNTY

enlarged or completely rebuilt, by Capt. Joseph Barss, who married
Olivia, daughter of Judge Blisha DeWolf. A few rods further west
still, on a knoll from which a charming view of the dykes could be
had, stood the grantee house of Benjamin Peck's younger brother,
Cyrus Peck. The next house westward, standing almost but not
quite on the site of the large building later erected by Mr. William
Eedden and known as the "Riviere House", was owned by Moses
Stevens, who finally removed to Gaspereau. On the site of the
Colonial house, built about 1840 by Mr. Caleb Handley Rand and
now owned by Col. Wentworth Baton Roscoe, stood the house owned
and first occupied by Henry Magee, in which at that time lived Mrs.
Joseph Allison. In a small house on the south side of the road, after-
ward bought and added to by Hon. James Delap Harris, for years his
i'esidence, and after he moved across the road to the "Wbidden
House" the home of his son, William Harris, Q. C, lived Robert
Westcott, a blacksmith. In the house inherited by Deaconess Alice
E. Webster from her father, the late Mr. Henry Bentley Webster,
lived Dr. Isaac Webster, Kentville's first physician. About four
rods back of the "Red Store" diagonally, stood a gambrel -roofed
house, probably first owned by James Pillis, and it would seem kept
by him as an inn. In that house, at the period of which we Avrite,
lived Mrs. Dennis Angus, a widow, whose husband had once been
High Sheriff of Halifax County. Almost on the site of the house
which Mr. Benjamin H. Calkin afterward owned, stood the old Fitch
or Bragg or Denison house, with a blacksmith shop near. In ISIS
the house was occupied by Mr. Handley Chipman. Next came Mr.
Silas Masters' house, a little above the present Baptist Church, for
many years now the property of his son, Mr. Charles Masters. In a
log house where Mr. Herbert Denison 's house stands lived Thomas
and Samuel Tupper. Of these men, Thomas later moved to Ayles-
ford, and Samuel to Cold Brook, to a farm in recent times owned by
Thomas Grifiin. Their home and farm in Kentville the Tuppers
sold to Major Timothy Barnaby, who later re-sold it to Mr. Samuel
Denison. The "Coloned Moore place" had previously been owned
by Col. Henry Gesner of Comwallis, but from him had passed to

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 127

James Prentice Harris, the latter selling it to Col. Moore, who there-
after occupied it.

On the place once owned by Mr. Charles Smith, now in the pos-
session of Frederick Mitchell, lived George Harrington, father of
William and Kobert Harrington. At Cold Brook was what is known
as the "Davidson Place", now the property of Mr. Peter Innes, but
who occupied it at the period in question no one remembers. In 1813
Patrick Puller purchased a building already standing, which as we
have said, he opened as a store, the location of it being near the
eastern corner of Main and Church Streets. This store occupied
almost, if not quite, the site of the small cottage afterward known
as the "DeWolf House", which stood a little to the west of the
James Neary house. Close beside it, probably to the east, stood
another store, kept by William Hunt. This gentleman who married
Jane, daughter of John Barnaby and his wife Rebecca (Chipman),
and niece of Hon. Samuel Chipman, while he was in Kentviile
studied medicine with Dr. Robert Bayard, and when he had obtained
his profession removed to St. John, New Brunswick, and practised
there. Before he left Kentviile he built the house in the grove
afterward owned and occupied by Dr. William Bennett Webster.
Some time after 1813 Dr. Isaac Webster removed the Fillis house and
built in its stead a Masonic Hall, half of which, however, was never
roofed in. This hall, which was the first public hall erected in Kent-
viile, was after three or four years taken down. It stood almost if
not quite on the site of the Bragg Inn, this site being later occupied
by the "Victoria House". At this time George Chipman was High
Sheriff, and he of course lived in the house he had recently built.
Until 1812, or thereabouts, when he built his new house. Sheriff
Chipman lived in the jail building; after he moved from that build-
ing his brother Charles, who was then Deputy Sheriff, resided there
instead. At some period during Dr. Robert Bayard's residence in
Kentviile he built the house that Mr. Stephen Harrington Moore,
Q. C, afterward for many years owned and occupied, and where he
died. Exactly how many years Dr. Bayard lived in the house we do
not know.

128 KING'S COUNTY

A probably complete list of the residents of the village and its
suburbs in 1825 is the following: Beginning east, on the "Leander
Bishop Hill", in the long, low (probably grantee) house, which for
many years stood there, lived a shoemaker named Hopkins, an
Irishman, he being succeeded by another Irishman named Mitchell.
In the Eli Perkins house lived an estimable Scotchman, Mr. Georgo
Roy. On the Elderkin Farm lived the mother of Silas Elderkin, by
her second marriage the mother also of James Burbidge. In the
Benjamin Peck house lived Capt. Joseph Barss. In the Cyrus Peck
house lived Mr. Peck's widow. In the house afterward owned by
Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge, and still owned by his family, lived the
builder of the house, Mr. George Terry. In a house which stood on
the site of the later built "Riviere House", lived a Mr. Benjamin, a
miller. The house, however, and the grist mill which had been
owned by Henry Magee, and Magee's dwelling, were all owned by
Moses Stevens, who later married Cyrus Peck's widow. In the
Magee house lived Mrs. Joseph Allison, her husband then being
dead. Later Mrs. Allison occupied half the house, her son Leonard
occupying the other half. In the house he had built lived Sheriff
George Chipman. In the house later owned by Hon. James Delap
Harris, lived Robert Westcott, "Where the late Mr. Benjamin H.
Calkin's first dwelling stood, was the Samuel Dennison house, then
occupied by Samuel Dennison 's daughter, Mrs. Carr, and by one or
two other families. In the "James Neary house" lived the owner,
Mr. James Denison, a cousin of Samuel Denison, whose sister
Lavinia he had married. In the house afterward owned by Dr.
"William Bennett "Webster, lived "William Hunt, who, as we have
said, built the house. In the house he had built lived the then owner
Dr. Robert Bayard.

"Where Mr. "Winckworth Chipman afterward lived, lived John
Terry, who had brothers, George, Ephraim, Elkanah, etc. In the
next house west, lived Silas Masters, whose wife was a sister of
Caleb Handley Rand. "Where the house built by the late Judge
Oeorge A. Blanchard stands, stood a house occupied by Elijah
Phinney. "Where Herbert Denison lives, lived the present owner's

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 129

grandfather, Samuel Denison, Sr., whose wife was Polly Gallup. In
the next house beyond lived Col. William Charles Moore. On the
place afterward owned by Charles Smith, lived George Harrington.
On Cornwallis Street, in the jail building, lived Charles Chipman.
The chief men of Kentville were Col. Moore, Dr. Bayard, Dr. Isaac
"Webster, Sheriff Chipman, James and Samuel Denison, and the two
«arly successful Kentville merchants, James Delap Harris and Caleb
Handley Band. Of these men, the Denisons alone had been born in
Horton ; Dr. Bayard, a son of Col. Samuel Vetch Bayard, had come
to Kentville from Wilmot ; Col. Moore and his family, who lived first
in Parrsborough, in 1813 had moved from the "lower end of Saxon
Street", Cornwallis, to the Horton village; Sheriff Chipman, Dr.
Isaac Webster, and Messrs. Harris and Band, had also previously
lived in Cornwallis.

From reminiscences of the late James Ratchf ord, DeWolf, M. D.,
of Halifax, we learn that in or about 1830, the stores in Kentville
were James Edward DeWolf 's, Daniel Moore's, James Delap Harris',
and Caleb Handley Rand's, all of course general stores. The physi-
cians were Drs. Isaac Webster and E. P. Harding, the latter
of whom had come to KentviUe from Windsor. The barristers were
Stephen Harrington Moore, John Clarke Hall, Henry Bentley Web-
ster, John Whidden (for many years Clerk of the House of
Assembly), and William Harris, "all professional men of good
standing and a credit to the bar". The most attractive houses were
-those of Sheriff Campbell, who had succeeded Sheriff Chipman;
-Caleb Handley Rand, John Whidden, "whose Italian villa was aftei-
ward the home of Hon. James Delap Harris"; Dr. William Bennett
Webster, and Henry Bentley Webster, "whose houses were fronted
-by groves of shady maples"; and Stephen Harrington Moore, who
then owned the Dr. Robert Bayard house. At the extreme west of
■the town lived Col. William Charles Moore, and at the extreme east
Mrs. Joseph Barss.

In the Almanac for 1803, between Windsor, in Hants County,
and the eastern boundary of Aylesford, we find the following
""houses of entertainment" or inns: At Windsor, Andrews and

130 KING'S COUNTY

Halls; at Falmouth Ferry, Smith's; at Halifax River, Frame's; then
in succession: Bishop's; DeWolf's; Fillis'; Willoughby Farm;
Calkin's; and Marshall's, the distance between Andrews and Hall's
and Marshall's being given as thirty miles. At some later time, but
just when we do not know, Cyrus Peck opened his grantee house as
an inn. Mr. Peck was one of two brothers, of the well known Peck
family of Lyme, Connecticut, both brothers having places in what
is now the eastern end of Kentville. His first wife was Mary Eng-
lish, daughter of the widowed Cornwallis grantee, Mrs. Abigail
English, and a sister of Mrs. Samuel Willoughby. Mrs. Peck died in
1808, but her husband soon married again, and until his death in
1812 continued to keep the inn. For a while after his death the
house still remained open to strangers, but Angus', farther west^
near the corner where the Red Store is, and Bragg 's still farther
west, shared the honours with it. Finally, largely it is said through
the enterprise of the merchant, Caleb Handley Rand, the "Kentville
Hotel" was built, and the other inns went out of existence. On the
site of Mr. Peck's house, which as an inn was known as the "Royal
Oak", stands now the handsome residence of Mayor Harry Hamm
Wickwire. The old house was reached from the post road by a pic-
turesque flight of wooden steps, at the top shaded on one side by a
magnificent oak, on the other by a large willow. The house itself,
which Mr. Peck at some time after he built it must considerably
have enlarged, was destroyed by fire in 1881. Shortly after this Mr»
Wickwire purchased the hill on which it stood and there erected;
his house. In 1904 Mr. Frederick Wickwire bought the property
of which the hill was originally a part, and built the house in which
he lives. Precisely how early a stage-coach line was established
between Halifax and Kentville we do not know, but in 1829, it i»
said, Mr. John Whidden was instnunental in having the stage line
extended from Kentville westward to Annapolis Royal. Until the
stage-coach was supplanted by the railroad in 1869 the Kentville
Hotel was the headquarters of stage travel between Halifax and
Annapolis. Back of it, fronting on the Kentville brook, were the
great stables, in which the coach horses were stalled and baited, and

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 131

whence they were taken every day in summer to the brook for la
swim in the "deep hole".

The first Kentville school-house stood almost opposite the jail,
near what was later the entrance to the Lydiard place. It was
erected probably between 1826 and 1829, and was a very small
building. Long after the second school-house was built it was moved
to the northeast corner of Main and Church Streets, a little to the
west of the "DeWolf house", where it finally became a cobbler's
shop or a residence for very poor people. The second school-house
was also built on Cornwallis Street, but on the site of what lis now
Mr. James Seeley's store, in "Lovett Block". This building stood
until the present school-house was built on Academy Hill. To erect
the first school-house a company, composed of the leading men of
the village, was formed, and the subscriptions they made were sup-
plemented by a small grant from the government. In the very first
years of the use of this school-house it is said that men taught there
named Masters, Fisher, and Noble, after them coming in succession,
Charles Chipman, a Mr. McSweeney, and a Mr. Hall. Between 1835
and 1831, Andrew Black, a Scotchman and Presbyterian, taught
there "an excellent school". Exactly how long his incumbency
lasted we do not know, but he died at the Elderfcin place, wthere he
had a home with Mr. John Terry, shortly before 1831. At his
funeral the school children walked in procession, the little girts
dressed in white. Under his instruction, came most of the Kent-
ville boys of the time, among these William and Charles "WMdden,
John Chaloner Chipman, Robert and William Bayard (sons jof Dr.
Eobert Bayard), William Harris, and George Masters, Not only
Horton boys but many Cornwallis boys came to his sehool. Mr.
Black's immediate successor was Mr. Samuel Eirkpatrick, la very
estimable man, born in Antrim, Ireland, of North of Ireland Scotch
parentage, who in his youth had studied for the Presbyterian min-
istry. Early renouncing the Calvinistic creed, he taught sehool for a
•while in his native land, but in 1812 came to America. A Kttle earlier
than this his father had emigrated to Pennsylvania, leaving his
family behind him. When the wife with her children jsailed to join

132 KING'S COUNTY.

her husband, the ship on which the family had taken passage was
seized by an English privateer and brought to Halifax. For a while
Samuel Kirkpatrick taught school in Newport, Hants county, then
for some years he was master of the Kentville school. Like his pre-
decessor he boarded at or lived in the Blderkin house, east of ths
village. After him, for a short time, came a Mr. Desmond, an Eng-
lishman, who with his friend Alexander Tremaise had come to
King's county shortly before. Desmond did not teach long, but
gave way to Mr. Thomas Hardy, a Scotchman, who taught in Kent-
ville for twelve years. Mr. Hardy's daughter Jessie, became the
second wife of Hon. Samuel Chipman.

The next teacher was Mr. Robert Brine, of a Newfoundland
family, who had just graduated at King's College, Windsor, and
was studying for Orders. He taught in Kentville for three or four
years and his ordination to the diaconate occurred during that
time. He married Miss Rose "WoUenhaupt, a sister of Mrs. John
Blanchard, and after he left Kentville for many years had parishes
in the diocese. From May, 1847, until the spring of 1854, the teacher
of the school was William Eaton, second son of Ward Eaton, Esq., of
ComwalUs, who after his retirement from teaching settled per-
manently in Kentville. Mr. Eaton was appointed a Commissioner
in the Supreme Court of the Province, under the new school act
became the second Inspector of Schools for the county, and finally
on the incorporation of Kentville, the shire town's first Treasurer
and Clerk, FoUoAving him as teacher, came John R. Miller, and
next Dr. Stephen Dodge, who married Florence, second daughter of
Judge George Augustus Blanchard, and later till his death (Feb. 3,
1899) practised medicine in Halifax,

Dr. Dodge's successor was John Moser, a native of Lunenburg
county, and a graduate of Acadia, after whom came the Rev.
Alexander Romans, a clergyman of the Free Church of Scotland,
brother of Robert Romans of Halifax, who before coming to Kent-
ville had been Professor of Classics in Dalhoasie College. After
teaching for a certain length of time in the old Kentville school-
house, about 1860 Mr. Romans withdrew from the school and

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 133

founded a separate grammar school, to which a considerable number
of the best pupils in the town, both boys and girls, went. His new
school he kept in what was known as "Kedden's Hall", on the Mill
Brook road, the town school-house being occupied by David Stuart
Hamilton, B. A., an accomplished teacher, a graduate of King's
College of the Class of 1847, who on the 5th of August, 1863, married
Mrs. Josephine Collins (Hamilton), widow of John Rufus Eaton, and
went to New York City to live. At King's College Mr. Hamilton had
studied with Orders in view, and finally, in the diocese of Alabama he
was admitted to the Diaconate of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Before long, however, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he died. From a
now extinct college in the South, at some time in his career in the
United States he was created a Doctor of Civil Law. After Mr.
Hamilton, in 1863, came Bernard Parrell, and then Junia D.
Sprague.

For many years there were schools in the village exclusively
for girls or for little children. While Mr. Kirkpatrick was master of
the grammar school. Miss Rachel Martin, an aunt of William Leg-
gett, a local poet of Sussex Vale, New Brunswick, herself possessing
some poetical gift, kept a rather notable school for girls. She
taught first in Bragg 's Inn, then in a cottage afterward owned by
Mr. Winckworth Chipman, where she also lived. Most of the young
ladies of the village, the Misses Isabel Morton (afterward Mrs.
Wishart), Amelia Allison, Elizabeth Whidden, Susan and Minetta
Hamilton, Maria Bishop (Mrs. Edward Young), Julia Dennisou
(the first Mrs. Benjamin H. Calkin), Sarah Bragg (Mrs. Eaton Rock-
well), Eliza Dennison, Mary Carr, and others, were her pupils.
Before she left New Brunswick, Miss Martin had taught Latin to
boys in St. John, and in Kentville she had also a small class of boys.
.When she left Nova Scotia, she went to Fredericton, New Bruns-
wick, and there taught Latin and singing, and for a long time her-
self sang in the Anglican Church choir. She was a well bred woman
and had much influence on the minds and manners of the Kentville
young women. A strict churchwoman, she always opened her school
with collects from the Prayer-Book and with the hymn "Awake my

134 KING'S COUNTY

soul and with the sun". In the afternoon she closed it with the
hymn "Glory to Thee my God this night". She had the floor of her
school room chalked and her pupils were literally obliged to "toe
the mark". She has been described as wearing a black beaver bon-
net lined with pink satin, with long handsome plumes, and a veil
with' sprigs. A story is told of Miss Martin, relative to her poetical
gifts, that one winter morning she opened her school room and
fiMing no fire in it went across the road to Mr. James Denison's to
ask for some wood. At the Denisons' she found the handsome Miss
Maria Haliburton of "Windsor, a cousin of Judge Thomas Chandler
Haliburton, who had long wanted to meet "the clever poetess".
Returning to her school she wrote rapidly :

"Is it winter, said I, for the v/ind keenly blows,

Then what means the fine bloom of this beautiful rose ?

As I entered the room and had vision of thee.

Pair stranger, thought I, here's a subject for me;

If the critical gaze of the cold temale eye

Can that soul-kindling glance without feeling descry.

If female the beauty of female can see.

Glow with rapture my fancy here 's business for thee !

Then beautiful stranger there is no mistake,

If I were not a poetess one you could make.

That visage of sweetness, that soft summer smile,

Would melt the stern soul to smooth numbers like oil".

Miss Martin's residence in Kentville was probably due to the
fact that she was a first cousin once removed of James Denison, her
mother Abigail Denison (daughter of David Sherman Denison), born
in 1753, having, been married to Dr. John Martin, who is said to
ha^ve been a chaplain in the British army. The author of the Deni-
son Genealogy^ says that Miss Rachel Martin and her sister Mary
[(who was married to "William N. Leggett) were for some time
teachers in New York City. Rachel Martin, the writer adds, ia her
old age went to England and was presented to her Majesty, the late

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 135*

Queen Victoria, who kindly settled on her a pension of fifty pounds
a year for the rest of her life.

In the summer of 1831, after Miss Martin left Kentville, a Miss
St. George opened in the village a select school for girls. The aim
of this lady seems to have been to give her young ladies "accom-
plishments" rather than solid instruction. She taught in the old
school-house, but her school lasted only six months. Her pupils
were considered rather remarkable for their beauty, among them
being the Misses- Kate and Mary Cogswell, Nancy Allison, Mary
Miller Chipman, Marga,ret Ann Lovett, Caroline Barnaby, Margaret
Starratt, Rachel Harris, and Susan and Minetta Hamilton. In later
times Miss Catherine Gaul, from Rawdon, had a girls' school in the
old school-house, and after her. Miss Mary Campbell taught there a
school for small children. About 1856 Miss Esther Gould taught a
small school for girls ; later than that. Miss Bessie Torrey, and Miss
Bessie Swymmer, had schools.

The first place of worship of any denomination in Kentville
was a Methodist chapel, built in 1821 on the site of Alfred DeWolf 's
house, on the hill above the house built by SherifE Chipman. The
trustees of this chapel were Messrs. James and Samuel Denison, who
though of a Connecticut Congregationalist faanily, probably at this
time favoured the Wesleyan faith ; and Col. "William Charles Moore,
who was of the Anglican Church. Interest in Methodism among
Kentville people was one of the results of the preaching in Cornwallis
and Horton in 1782 of the noted pioneer Wesleyan preacher, the
Rev. William Black, and for a long time the only religious services
held in the village were conducted in this chapel by itinerant Wes-
leyan ministers. These services, however, as a rule, came only once
in two weeks, in the afternoon or evening, the ministers probably
living at Windsor and preaching at Grand Pre in the forenoon.
Occasionally, after he became pastor of the Wolfville Baptist
Church, "Father" Harding came and preached, but sometimes, as
when a Wesleyan Conference in some remote place took the min-
isters of that denomination away from their circuit, there would be
no religious service at all in KentviUe for several weeks; In> 1839j

136 KING'S COUNTY

soon after Acadia College was founded, the Rev. Edmund Albem
Crawley, one of the earliest professors in the college, came regularly
every other Sunday forenoon and preached in the Methodist chapel.
In his stead, however, sometimes came Messrs. George Armstrong,
Samuel Elder, Samuel Richardson, or some other Baptist student
for the ministry. About 1849 a new meeting-house was built under
the auspices of the Methodists, towards the west end of the village,
near the entrance to the road which leads up the Academy hill. It
was hoped by many that this structure would be a "Union" chapel,
but the Methodists preferred to keep it exclusively for their own use.
After the court-house and jail were burned, for a while the
old chapel on the hill was used for both court-house and
jail, the deputy sheriff, who was then George Clark, himself
living in it as well. The building and the site later
became the property of Mr. Henry Bentley Webster, and
he at his death willed it to his daughter, Mrs. Ina DeWolf, who
still owns the land. The chapel was burned about 1860.

The first services of the Anglican Church in Kentville were held
in the school-house, but precisely how early we cannot tell. The
Rev. John Storrs' ministry began in 1841, and it is possible that he
was the first incumbent of St. John's parish, Comwallis, who felt it
necessary to give the Kentville people services in their own village.
At whatever period services according to the Book of Common
Prayer did begin, it is certain that they were held more or less
regularly for some years preceding the building of St. James
Church. This church was erected between 1843 and 1846. It stood
on the west side of Church Street, a little back of the present
marble-working shop, but in 1882 the Rev. John Owen Ruggles,
M. A., Kentville 's then faithful Rector, with enormous labor had it
removed to the site it now occupies, and somewhat enlarged. On
its old, as on its present, site, its chancel was on the west, and like
most churches of the period in which it was built it had spacious
square pews on the wall side of the aisles and in the upper middle
part. Along the east end ran a gallery, in the centre of which was
the organ loft, which held a small pipe organ, and where the choir,

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 137

consisting of well known young men and women of the village, sang
the chants and hymns. Among the members of the early St. James'
choir were Mrs. "William Eaton, and her sister, Mrs. John Rufus
Eaton, Misses Margaret Lydiard and Lavinia Harris, and Mr. John
Blanehard, who was for many years the chief male singer in St.
Paul's Presbyterian choir. At the lower end of the church, on the
right of the entrance, was the small robing-room, and as the clergy^
man in preaching always wore the scholar's gown, it was the
invariable custom for him to leave the chancel during the singing
of the hymn before the sermon, walk down the long north aisle to
the robing-room, remove his surplice, and then attired in his black
gown return to the pulpit. On Sunday evenings, at least, during the
rectorship of Rev. Harry Leigh Tewens, it was not uncommon for
this clergyman to wear gloves when he preached.

At Christmas, St. James' Church was always tastefully
wreathed with hemlock, the boughs for which were drawn to the
door on ox or horse sleds, and taken into the church aisles. There,
amidst fragrant balsamy odours, several afternoons and evenings
before Christmas, a group of devoted parishioners, the young men
assisting the ladies in the heaviest part of the work, would assemble
to decorate the church. On Christmas morning, and on the Sxmday
following Christmas, the two hymns from the excellent but rather
scanty collection in use, that were always sung were the familiar
ones: "Hark the herald angels sing", and "While shepherds
watched their flocks by night". Until St. James' Church was built,
the Kentville people who were attached to the Anglican Church
were accustomed on Sunday mornings to drive to the parish church
of St. John's, at Cornwallis. Of families that did so, were the
Col. Moores, the George Chipmans, the Caleb Handley Rands, and
the James Delap Harrises. To the Presbyterian church at Chip-
man's Comer went the families of Dr. Isaac "Webster, and George
and John Terry, and to the Baptist church at Canard, the Silas
Masters' and the Charles Chipmans. The next church after St.
James to be erected in Kentville was St. Joseph's Roman Catholic
church, built no doubt in 1853. It was placed on the beautiful hiU

138 KING'S COUNTY

■where the present church stands, across the Cornwallis river. In
1860, St. Paul's Presbyterian church was built on Webster Street,
and last of aU, in 1874, the Baptist church, toward the west end of
the town.

As Halifax was the chief centre of social life for the province
at large, so the smaller shire towns were socially the most important
places in the various counties they represented. Of these toT\Tis
there was not a single one that had not a group of intelligent, well-
bred men and women, of more or less education as the case might,
be, but of refined instincts and cultivated tastes, and of such people
Eentville had a good share. At first social pre-eminence in Corn-
wallis and Horton lay with the chief families that lived about the
respective Town Plots, as the county's population increased west-
ward, however, social importance more and more focussed itself in
the shire town. Here as elsewhere through the county, there were
not a few, both of "Esquires", as Justices of the Peace, were tech-
nically called, and "Gentlemen", as other men of standing were
properly termed^ but in social distinction the village never quite
ranked with its neighbor, Windsor, the shire town of Hants.
Windsor in the course of its history had many important families
like the Butlers, Clarks, Cottnams, Cunninghams, Benjamin De-
Wolfs, Franklins, Prasers, Halibuxtons, HeadSj McHeffeys, Porters,
Nathaniel Eay Thomases, and others, who had aristocratic connec-
tions in Halifax, Boston, or the British Isles, while the Kentville
families' importance had been gained chiefly in King's County
itself. Early in the history of the town people began to give grace-
ful evening entertainments, at which cards and dancing formed the
chief amusements, these accompanied with excellent suppers,
for the people of King's County have always been noted for
living well. After the middle of the 19th century, every winter
saw a round of evening parties in Kentville, which in time extended
itself to Starr's Point and Caaining and the neighborhood between,
at which dancing was kept up till a very late hour, the suppers
being sumptuous and the wine and other stimulants as good as
could anywhere on the continent be found. At these entertain-

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 13&

ments the music for dancing was usually furnished by two or three
well known ladies, who were noted for the perfect time they kept,
and who graciously took turns at the piano the long evenings
through. Violinists, however, were sometimes hired to accompany
the pianos. Picnics at the Bay Shore were in summer very frequent,
people driving thither in single or double wagons. After the rail-
road through the valley began to be built more strangers than ever
before came to settle in and near the town, some of them young
English families who had come out to Nova Scotia to try farming,
or people who had been attracted by the reputation of the village for
beauty and for health-giving air. Thus by the last quarter of the 19th
century the society of Kentville became greatly enlarged.

For the loveliness of its walks and drives Kentville is famous,
and for the beauty of its shade-trees no village that we know can
surpass it. Prom time immemorial high tributes have been paid to
its charms by strangers who have come to visit it; In the Halifax
Herald of June 8, 1898, a traveller through the province eloquently
wrote: "Kentville has an individuality all her own, an individu-
ality as charming as the absence of sameness is in people. Had Mrs.
Hemans, who so poetically pictures ancient Rome as a queen sitting
OB seven hills, wisely elected to live until the present day and visit
Evangeline's Land, she would have pictured Kentville as the chief
lady of King's, sitting smilingly at the junction of seven roads,
"which like magic wands she stretches forth into the beautiful
country surrounding her, when lo ! the orchard fairies, the dairy
fairies, and other agricultural fairies, troop with their treasures
toward her hospitable gates. If you have passed through Kentville
in one of the comfortable Dominion Atlantic Railway cars you may
perhaps imagine you have seen the town, but you have had only a
glimpse of its attractions; its broad level streets, delightfully shaded
■with trees of oak and maple, its pretty residences, surrounded by
grounds that give evidence of the artistic taste of their owners in
landscape gardening, its five good churches, its commodious, well-
kept hotels, its ample-sized stores, its far famed orchards, all these
you cannot see from the windows of the car.

140 KING'S COUNTY

"Much as you may enjoy the town at close range you will want
to view it as a whole, and there are several vantage points from
which you can gratify this wish. From 'Chapel Hill' you see the
southern portion of the town, nestling gracefully in its little valley,
a cluster of new homes here being known as the 'Klondike', from
the rapid growth of the town in this direction. You watch the clear,
deep waters of the Cornwallis river flow silently through the green
meadows at your feet. Behind you are orchards, where the exquis-
its blossoms of the apple and pear, the drowsy murmur of the bees,
and the merry flitting to and fro of golden butterfly-wings, charm
you into silence. But you may leave Chapel Hill without saying
good-bye to the lovely, fragile fruit blossoms, for you will find them
in every part of the town. From the old Beech Hill road you have
the most far-reaching view of the Cornwallis valley to the west and
north of the town, a valley of verdant fields and thriving villages,
the dark green of pine, fir, and spruce groves forming a striking
contrast to the newly donned garb of the elm, oak and willow.
Beyond this ne'er-to-be-forgotten view lies the North Mountain,
which does not suffer the winds of heaven to visit too roughly the
cosy villages which lie along its sheltering base.

"One of the charms of Kentville is its central location, afford-
ing opportunity for many varied and delightful drives. East of a
little bridge which crosses Main Street, a road leads south over
Canaan heights, following a tiny, musical stream of water known
as Kentville Brook, its abrupt banks shaded with verdant, graceful
willows. After a drive of three miles on this road you leave the
queen's highway and a hundred or more yards to your left find
Moore's Falls, a delightfully romantic and picturesque spot, where
a goodly stream of water pours over a precipitous rock, thirty or
forty feet high. Tou can return to Kentville on the other side of
the brook, over Beech Hill road, and from a quite different
viewpoint behold the narrow silver stream winding through its
quaintly picturesque valley. North of the town, Cornwallis Street
becomes Cornwallis Road, and over this you must drive to enjoy

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 141

another magnificent view. Here you pass "Gallows Hill", so named
from the sad fact that a scaffold was once erected on it.

"Westward, about a mile from the centre of the town,
Main Street passes Sutherland's Lake, a waveless sheet of
water that dreamily reflects the wooded hills in which it
is enclosed. This pretty lake, over whose still surface you
may gently glide on a summer day, is on the estate of Mr.
Kenneth Sutherland, for some years Superintendent of the
Dominion Atlantic Railway. To the east of the town, Cornwallis
Street leads to Cornwallis, giving one many delightful glimpses of
the river and the dykes. Passing mention has already been made of
the gardens and orchards of Kentville, but the grounds of Messrs.
Melville G. DeWolf , James W. Ryan, and John Carroll, Town Clerk,
are so unique in their situation, are so skillfully cultivated, and
have such a delightful mingling of rare flowers, rustic bowers, fruit
trees, terraces, and hedges, that you will not be surprised to hear that
the owners of these properties not only 'walk in the garden in the
cool of the day', but also work there while the slothful man sleepeth".
Of the orchards of King's County in June we have elsewhere spoken.
When the writer from whom we have just quoted was in Kentville,
the country about the shire town was a succession of banks of
beautiful pink and white bloom and the air was perfumed with a
scent as delicious as the odours of Araby. The reference to Mr. Mel-
ville G. DeWolf 's garden was sure to be made, for that garden was
for many years the admiration of all strangers and the delight of
the townspeople themselves. Mr. DeWolf 's property is now owned
by St. James' Church, and the former owner, whose garden was so
long the pride of the town, is recently dead.

A drive he took from Kentville to the "Look Off" on the North
Mountain in 1894, the late Mr. Frank BoUes of Harvard College has
described in the following way. "We crossed the Grand Habitant
or Cornwallis river at Kentville, and then followed the general
direction of the shore of the basin until we had crossed in order,
the Canard, Habitant, and Pereau rivers, and gained the North
Mountain. Striking a ravine in its side, we ascended a well-made

142 KING'S COUNTY

road to the summit at a point called the 'Look Off'. I know of no
other hill or mountain which gives the reward that this one does in
proportion to the effort required to climb it. Many a rough "White
Mountain scramble up three thousand feet yields nothing like the
■view which this hill affords. The Nova Seotian glories in the fact
that from it he can see into seven counties, and can count pros-
perous farms by the score, and apple-trees by the hundred thousand..
From the shores of the basin westward, through the valley between
the North and South mountains, well-tilled farm lands reach
towards Annapolis as far as the eye can see. It is a patchwork of
which the Maritime Provinces are and may well be proud, that
quilted landscape, with grain and potatoes, orchard and hayfield,
feather-stitched in squares by zigzag pole fences. Were this the
the whole or the essence of the view from the Look Off it would not
be worth writing about, for farm lands by themselves, or with a
frame of rounded hills, are neither novel nor inspiring. That which
stirs in this view, is the mingling of Minas Basin, its blue water and
dim farther shores, with Grand Pre, and the other dike lands and
with the red bluffs of Pereau. The patchwork and hills serve
only as contrast, baek-ground, filling, to the pronounced feat-
ures of sparkling sea, bright green meadows cleft from the sea by
dikes, terra cotta sands and bluffs, and the forest-covered ridge
leading towards half-concealed Blomidon, the monarch of this gay
and sunlit realm. It was dreamlike to see the tide creeping in over
the shining red sand and ooze, and changing their vivid tints by
blending with them its own colours, to make tones strange both to
sea and land. The wide expanses of mud left bare by the tide told
in their own way the story of the Acadian dike builder".

By the beginning of the last decade but one of the 19th century,
Kentville as the shire town of the county, and the headquarters of
the Dominion Atlantic railway, had attained sufficient importance
to ask for incorporation. Accordingly, on the 7th of December,
1886, articles of incorporation were granted it, and on the 21st of
the following January the first annual meeting of the rate-payers
was held. The object announced in the proclamation for the meet-

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 143

ing, was "to receive a report on the accoxints and the condition of
the public services of the town ; to receive an approximate estimate
of the income and expenditures of the current year; to approve or
otherwise of a proposal to convert the temporary school loan of a
thousand dollars into a debenture loan of like amount, at a reduced
rate of interest, etc., etc". The first election of town officers was
held February 1, 1887, the result being that John Warren King
was elected Mayor, and James William Eyan, Robert Silas Masters^
William Eaton, Charles Frederick Cochran, Thomas Pennington
Calkin, and Kenneth Sutherland, Councillors. The first meeting of
the new Council was held, March 1, when Judge John Pryor Chip-
man was elected Recorder, and William Eaton, unanimously. Town
Clerk and Treasurer. His acceptance of the latter office removed
Mr. Eaton from the Council and his place on this board was filled
by the election of Charles Smith. The auditors elected were CoL
Leverett de Veber Chipman, and Arthur E. Calkin.

The successive Mayors of the Town since incorporation have
been:

John Warren King Charles Frederick Rockwell

Judge John Pryor Chipman William Yould

Henry Bentley Webster, M. D. Charles Frederick Rockwell

Brenton Halliburton Dodge, M. P. P. Col. Wentworth Baton Roscoe
James William Ryan Henry Bentley Webster, M. D.

Robert Silas Masters Harry Hamm Wickwire

On the death of William Eaton, Town Clerk and Treasurer, in
1893, Frank Herbert Eaton, D. C. L., was appointed in his father's
place. Dr. Eaton held office, performing the duties largely through
a secretary, until January 10, 1898, when the present incumbent,
Mr. John Carroll, was appointed. Before 1888 the only towns in
the Province incorporated, besides Halifax, were Dartmouth, Pic-
tou, Windsor, New Glasgow, Sydney, North Sydney, and Kentville.

Across the Cornwallis river from Kentville, on the main roads
that run north, for many years have stood some small scattered
houses, owned and occupied by people of the African race. Prom the

144 KING'S COUNTY

pine forest that originally covered the sandy country in this part of
Cornwallis, this Negro settlement got the name it has always borne,
the "Pine "Woods", or as now, "The Pines", A similar Negro settle-
ment, known from the name of the chief family that settled there as
the "Gibson Woods", lies five or six miles to the northwest of the
Pines. In the Pine Woods the chief families, originally, were
named Bear, Jones, Landsey, and Smith, while individual families
or persons bore the names Bell, Higgins, Lawrence, and Powell. In
the 18th century, as we shaU see, slavery existed in almost all the
chief Nova Scotia towns, the King's County towns being no excep-
tion to the rule. From slaves brought to the county by the early
planters, or purchased after they settled here, a few of the Pine
Woods and Gibson Woods Negroes have been descended, and from
slaves who escaped from their owners in Maryland or Virginia and
took passage on English war ships in Chesapeake Bay in 1814,
probably others have come. One of the most respectable and
respected of the Pine Woods coloured people of the 19th century
was Elisha Lawrence, and tradition says that he came to Halifax
on the Chesapeake after her encounter with the Shannon in 1813,
later finding his way to Cornwallis, where he spent the rest of his
life and died. Lawrence, perhaps alone of the Cornwallis Negroes,
was a loyal member of the Anglican Church, and for many years
his place in the south end of the gallery of St. James' Church, Kent-
ville, on Sundays, was never vacant. Long past the middle of the
19th century, two old coloured women, sisters, Dinah Powell and
Chloe Landsey, lived in the Pine Woods, both of them in their youth
having been slaves in the family of Mr. Benjamin Belcher. In
1783 Colonel Morse, commanding Royal Engineer in Nova Scotia,
under instructions from Colonel Winslow, made a tour of the
Nova Scotia settlements and in his census of the population of
King's County specified a hundred and seven "servants", who
were probably Negroes. Of these, thirty-eight were at Cornwallis
and Horton, and sixty-nine at Parrsborough. In the census of
1901, King's County is reported as having only two hundred and
•ten Negroes.

KENTVILLE, THE SHIRE TOWN 145

In the Pine Woods and at other spots near Kentville, for
many years, there were also small, picturesque Micmac encamp-
ments. In pointed, smoky, birch-bark covered wigwams, these
simple sons of the forest and their families lived. They made bas-
kets which they sold in the town, hunted in the woods, fished in
the lakes and streams, and were always glad to accept of broken
bread at the townspeople's doors. They were simple-minded,
harmless, gently-moving people, some of whom, like "old Madeline"
lived to the age of a hundred years, but most of whom died of
exposure and poor living at a much earlier age. Like all their race
in Nova Scotia they were nominally Roman Catholics, and on Sun-
days and Saints Days, went to mass at St. Joseph's, the women
wearing high bead-embroidered squaws' caps, or else men's tall
silk hats, the accompaniment of which was not infrequently a
blanket round the shoulders.

Of the origin of the beautiful "Oak Grove Cemetery", in the
extreme east end of Kentville, on what was once the property,
successively, of Messrs. Benjamin Peck, Sr., and Jr., a few words
must here be said. Whittier once wrote of the New England bury-
ing grounds :

"Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned.

But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying ground;

The dreariest spot in all the land

To death they set apart;
"With scanty grace from Nature's hand.

And none from that of art".

But such charge cannot be brought against the pioneer plant-
ers of King's County, and especially is it not true of the choice of
a burial spot for the village of Kentville, made by the second Mr.
Benjamin Peek. On the 8th of March, 1845, an act was passed by
the legislattire to provide for the supervision and management of this

146 KING'S COUNTY

earliest burying ground of the Kentville people. This act recites
that, July 1, 1817, when Benjamin Peck, the younger, late of Hor-
ton, with his wife Mary, deeded his farm to Joseph Barss, Jr., he
reserved half an acre for a public burying place, in the grove of
oaks, on the north side of the county road "where his honoured
father and mother and several other persons were biu'ied", this
public burying ground to be perfectly open and free to people of
all denominations forever. To Benjamin Peck, Jr., therefore, who
in, or shortly before, 1817, removed with his family from Horton
to the State of Ohio, we are indebted for the beautiful cemetery
where most of the Kentville dead are buried. The original half-
acre which Mr. Peck gave the town for a burial place has in course
of time been greatly added to, until now several acres are conse-
crated to the purpose for which the second English owner of the
land gave a piece of his farm. The first graves in the cemetery
have tombstones which are still well preserved. The graves they
mark are of Hannah Peck, who died Sept. 8, 1774, in the 6th year
of her age ; Anna Lee, wife of Benjamin Lee, who died April 21, 1795,
in the 29th year of her age; Hannah Best, wife of John Best, who
died May 6, 1798, in the 20th year of her age; Benjamin Peck {8r.),
who died October 24, 1801, in the 61st year of his age ; Sabra Peck,
who died October 3, 1801, in the 21st year of her age; Eliza,
third daughter of Benjamin and Mary Peck, who died December 17,
1803, aged 2 years and 8 months; Dan, second son of Benja-
min and Mary Peck, who died aged 2 days; Henry Magee,
a native of Ireland, a Loyalist from one of the revolting
Colonies, who died "firmly attached to his King and Country",
August 2, 1806, aged 67 years; Mary, wife of Cyrus Peck, who died
May 2, 1808, in the 49th year of her age ; Patrick Murray, who died
Dec. 10, 1808, in the 79th year of his age ; James C. Griffin, and his
son Thomas, drowned Sept. 13, 1810, the father in the 50th, and the
son in the 19th year of his age ; Cyrus Peck, who died April 13, 1812,
in the 66th year of his age; Hannah Peck, wife of Benjamin Peck,
who died July 10, 1816, in the 72nd year of her age ; Joseph Barss,
Jr., formerly of Liverpool, N. 8., who died August 3, 1824, in the
49th year of his age.

CHAPTER IX

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK, AND
OTHER PLACES

The second town in the county to receive incorporation, and
the only one in the province save Windsor and Halifax, that has
the dignity of being a college town is Wolfville, which lies a little
to the west of the wide expanse of dyke known as the Grand Pre»
To the original hamlet, on the main road from Horton Town Plot ta
Annapolis, which is now called Wolfville, the early planters with
not very good taste gave the disagreeable name "Mud Creek",
Over the creek from which the name came, which here leads up
from the Cornwallis river the people early constructed a bridge^
and this bridge, known as "Mud Creek", may properly be regarded
as the middle point of Wolfville town. By 1829 or '30 the name
"Mud Creek" became so objectionable to some of the inhabitants
that two young grand-daughters of Judge Elisha DeWolf, the
Misses Maria and Mary Starr Woodward, proposed to their uncle,
Elisha DeWolf, Jr., who was postmaster at the time, that it should
be changed to "WoKville", and through Mr. DeWolf, the Post-
master General of the province was appealed to. This functionary
at once acceded to the proposed change, and the upper Horton Post
OfSce Station was henceforth known as Wolfville. The yonnger of
the ladies who were instrumental in having the name changed was
afterward married to James Edward DeWolf of Kentville, and
became the mother of Alfred, Stanley, and Melville G. DeWolf.

The new name of the village was entirely appropriate, for along
the Wolfville main street lived a considerable group of families
bearing the DeWolf name. Of these were. Judge Elisha DeWolf,
the leading man of the village, an important land-owner, who built

148 KING'S COUNTY

the house now known as Kent Lodge, and who had the honour of
entertaining in his hospitable cottage, H. R. H. the Duke of Kent,
when he was journeying from Halifax to Annapolis ; Daniel DeWolf,
M. P. P., a remote cousin of Judge Blisha DeWolf and an almost
equally prominent man; Daniel's brother Oliver, and son Eobert
Dickson, DeWolf; Judge Elisha's sons, Hon. Thomas Andrew
Strange DeWolf, a member of the Executive Council of the
province, and Elisha DeWolf, Jr., M. P. P., postmaster for Wolf-
ville ; Stephen Brown and Joseph Brown DeWolf, sons of Edward,
older brother of Judge Elisha; and Charles DeWolf, Sr., of a third
DeWolf family in Horton, and his son, Israel. The houses of the
first residents of WoKville were built on both sides of the post
road, each house having its own garden and larger grounds. The
house known as "Kent Lodge", originally somewhat smaller than
it is now, was the house in which Judge Elisha DeWolf reared his
large family ; the dwelling toward the lower end of Wolfville after-
■ward for many years occupied by Dr. Lewis Johnstone, was the
house in which Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf lived; the
house in the upper part of the village, approached by a fine avenue
of trees, afterward owned by Professor D. Francis Higgins, was
built and occupied by Elisha DeWolf, Jr.

' ' Wolfville ' ', says a recent writer, ' ' is indeed a pleasant place. In
front lies the placid basin of Minas, ever changing as the incoming
and outgoing tides enlarge and narrow its area. On the right
stretches away to the eastward the great dyked marsh known as
the 'Old Dyke' or 'Grand Pre', and the new or Wickwire Dyke, the
first in part reclaimed from the sea by the French, the second
largely the work of their Anglo-Saxon successors. On the left may
be seen the winding Comwallis river, bordered by fertile fields
and productive orchards; while in the middle distance, ten miles
away, rises bold Blomidon, always majestic in his simple grandeur,
but varying in beauty as the lights and shadows alternate upon his
changeful brow. Sometimes he is capped with a fleecy cloud-cov-
ertftg, at others he stands out in bold relief, the guardian of the
inland waters; while as the seasons roll by, the soft blue tint of

WOLFVILLE, CANNING. BERWICK 149

Biimmer in whicli he arrays himself, gradually changes to the
sombre gray of winter. Beyond Blomidon, in the remote back-
ground, stretches the long range of the Cobequids, the highest land in
Nova Scotia. In the rear of WoLfville lies the Eidge, a spar of the
South Mountain, from the summit of which some of the loveliest
views in the province are obtained. On the north the view em-
braces Minas Basin, with all its beautiful surroundings, and the
luxuriant Cornwallis Valley, with its four tidal rivers, in the distance
looking like silver threads. On the south we can look down into the
famous Gaspereau Valley, lovely beyond words to describe. These
views remain a part of the mental outfit of Acadia University's
students, many of whom come back year after year to renew their
early association with these attractive scenes".

Back of Wolfville is the high ridge to which the writer we
have quoted from refers, called "Gaspereau Mountain", between
which and the South Mountain lies the lovely Gaspereau Valley.
Through this valley runs the gradually widening stream known as
the Gaspereau river, from the mouth of which in 1755 "Winslow's
vessels sailed, carrying into dreary exile the imfortunate Acadian
French. On the picturesque Wolfville hill-side, in full view of
Minas Basin and green-mantled Grand Pre, stand the buildings of
Acadia University, Horton Academy, and Acadia Seminary for
women, while on the streets, shaded by luxuriant maples, that now
at right angles intersect the long, sloping hill-side, are built the
tasteful villas of the well-to-do inhabitants of King's County's uni-
versity town.

Of the view from the hill above Wolfville, the late Mr. Frank
Bolles in 1894 wrote: "It was on the afternoon of the next day,
our second on the peninsula, that I saw Blomidon, at first from the
Kentville slopes, and again, after we had followed down the dash-
ing, dancing Gaspereau for several miles, from the heights above
Wolfville. The Gaspereau Valley had been charming, by reason
of its wooded hillsides, in parts holding the river closely between
dark banks of spruce and fir, but later giving it freer range through
well-tilled meadow and undulating fields. Evening, heralded by

150 KING'S COUNTY

rolling masses of dark clouds, seemed to be upon us, as our horses
slowly climbed the steep slope of the Gaspereau, back of "Wolfville.
Then it was that, gaining the edge of the northern slope, we sud-
denly saw the marvellous panorama of the Cornwallis Valley, North
Mountain, Blomidon, the Basin of Minas, the Acadian dike-lands, in-
cluding Grand Pre, and the mouth of the Gaspereau, spread before us
imder the sunset lights and the emphatic contrasts of speeding wind-
clouds. The tide was out, and miles of basin bottom lay red and
shining in the sunlight. The dike-lands were intensely green, the
sands or mud, all shades of terra eotta, the shallows strange tones of
purple, and the deeper waters varying shades of blue. Colour
ran riot in meadow, mud, and bay. Above and beyond
all, directly in front of us, miles away, at the extremity of a grand
sweep of shore which curved towards it from our left, was a dark
red blufif, crowned with evergreens. Its profile was commanding.
From the edge of its forest it fell one quarter of the way to the sea
in a line perfectly perpendicular. Then relenting a little, the line
sloped to the waves at a gentler angle, but one still too steep for
human foot to ascend. This was Blomidon, simple, majestic,
inspiring. The distant northern shore of the basin was plainly indi-
cated by a line of blue mountains, the Cobequid range, and we knew
that between us and its rugged coast-line, the mighty pent-up tides
of Fundy raced each day and night into the comparative calm of
Minas, and spread themselves there over the red sands and up to
the dikes which the Acadia peasants had built round about Grand
Pre".

Wolfville was incorporated in 1893, and its population in 1901
was 1,412. Its mayors, since incorporation have been: E. Perry
Bowles, M. D., 1893- '94; J. W. Bigelow, 1895- '96; George Thomson,

1897- '01; John Frederic Herbin, 1902- '03; DeWitt, M. D.,

1903- '05; W. M. Black, 1906- '09; Thomas L. Harvey, 1909 .

The hamlet that finally grew into the town of Canning, was first
called Apple-Tree Landing, from the fact that near what was after-
wards the ship-yard of Messrs. Bbenezer Bigelow, Sons & Co., where
the village centred, stood an old apple-tree that had lasted from the

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 151

Acadian time, the stump of which was visible until perhaps 1860.
Later, Canning was called Habitant Corner, but about 1830, a num-
ber of the most prominent men residing there, among whom were
John Wells, John Sheffield, John Palmeter, Judah Wells, David
Eaton, Jr., Nathan Woodworth, Benjamin Donaldson, Erastus
Pineo, and Geo. Pineo, met and formally changed the name to Can-
ning, in honour of either George Canning, statesman and orator,
Governor-General of India and Prime Minister, or his illustrious
son. Viscount Charles John Canning, who was also, during the In-
dian Mutiny of 1857, Governor-General of India.

The first householder at Apple-Tree Landing is said to have
been a man by the name of Stewart (the name has been written
Steward). If this information is correct, Stewart was also the first
ship-owner of Canning, he is reported to have owned a small ves-
sel and to have traded with her between Cornwallis and St.
John. At the time the name of the place was changed
to Canning, the chief houses in the settlement were : Benja-
min Donaldson's, afterwards owned by John 0. Pineo; John
Wells', on the opposite side of the street; the "Barlow
house", occupied by John Sheffield, who had a large general
store near; and William Woodworth 's, where afterward Stephen
Sheffield's house stood. Below the corner, near where Charles R.
Northup afterward lived, was Erastus Pineo 's house. Mr. Pineo,
it is said, "owned all the land east of Elias Burbidge's line, to the
street leading from the hay-scales to the North Mountain, and back
to the Heming farm. Where in recent times Edward Lockwood
lived, was the house of a Mr. Faulkner, who also at an early date
built vessels at Apple-Tree landing. Where afterward the late Mr.
John H. Clarke lived, was a house, usually rented, belonging to Levi
Woodworth, Sr., who also built the house in later years occupied
by Ebenezer Bigelow. Then came the Merriam or Haze (?)
House, on the river bank, south of the road, and next, the
house of Geo. D. Pineo, afterwards owned by Benjamin Baxter
Woodworth, — ^in recent years the oldest house in the town. The
principal merchants of the place were: Benjamin Donaldson, who

152 KINGS' COUNTY

had rather large interests in shipping and did considerable general
trade, and the firm of Sheffield & Wells, the partners in which were
John Sheffield and Judah Wells. Where the thickest part of the
town of Canning now is, however, was only the green river bank,
over which sheep and cattle peacefully grazed in summer, and
where the shad were divided when the boats brought the contents
pf the laden seines in.

The first vessel that left a Canning ship-yard is said to have
been built by Dr. William Baxter, and the next by a company, con-
sisting of Ebenezer Bigelow, Joseph Northup, Edward Lockwood,
and Edward Pineo. This vessel, which was considered for the
time a large one, was of about two hundred tons, and was named the
Sam Slick. A second vessel built for the same company, was named
the Isctbella. In 1847 a new ship-yard was started near the place
where David M. Dickie long lived, and in it a company, consisting
of Elias and Arnold Burbidge, and Charles R. Northup, built the
Elizabeth Hastings, brigantine, which the owners sold to Captain
Gault, of St, John. It is remembered that the purchaser of this ship
paid for her entirely in Mexican silver dollars, which he carried in
a bag. A store was built in Canning in 1850 by Edwin Dickie, and
another, called the "Blue Store", from the colour it was painted,
by Charles Dickie and his son David M. Dickie. After 1850, for six
years, stores and houses went up rapidly in the town.

The modern Canning owes its existence largely to the potato
industry of Cornwallis. In 1844, owing to a prevalent disease in
the potatoes of the New England States, the demand for Nova Scotia
potatoes in the New England market was so great that the price of
this vegetable rose to a dollar or a dollar and a quarter a bushel. A
great part of the shipping of the potatoes of the county, for the
Boston market, was done at Canning, and much of the money the
farmers received for their crop was spent in the Canning stores.
One writer on Canning's early history remembers when wagons
and carts from all parts of the township, loaded with potatoes,
filled the streets from morning till night, the vessels for their recep-
tion lying at the wharves "as many as eleven deep".

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 15S

Between 1839 and 1853 fourteen houses were erected in Can-
ning, seven stores were opened, and one hotel was built. About
1849 a factory was opened in the place for the manufacture of cut-
lery, the machinery of which was driven by steam. This steam
factory was the second steam-mill in the county, the first having
been put in operation at ' ' Steam-mill Village ' '. A little before July
15, 1866, the most destructive fire the county has ever had occurred
in Canning. "This fire tore its way in both directions, stopping only
at John Smith's house on the west, and the barque, Providence, then
in frames, on the east". Before daylight on the morning of the 16th
(Sunday), over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of
property had been destroyed, the whole business part of the town,
including ten stores, having been burned. Nothing daunted, how-
ever, the citizens soon recovered from the tremendous blow they had
had, and out of the ashes new buildings began rapidly to rise.
Before two years, with the exception of a few small gaps, the vil-
lage was again wholly rebuilt.

One of the most prominent merchants of Canning for many
years was John Leander Wickwire, Esq., son of Peter Wickwire,
and brother of William Nathan Wickwire, M. D., a leading medical
practitioner of Halifax. Mr. Wickwire was the father of the pres-
ent mayor of Kentville. The shipping firm to which he belonged
was known as "Sheffield & Wickwire". Another family of impor-
tance in Canning has long been the Eand family, in several
branches; and still another the family of the late Mr. John H.
Clarke. The most distinguished householder in Canning today is
the Dominion Minister of Militia, Sir Frederick Borden, K. C. M. G.,
who has conspicuous notice in other places in this book.

A brief description by Dr. Benjamin Kand, of Canning, as it
was in the earliest times, will give us a still clearer idea of how the
village began. Dr. Eand says: "The location is a natural one,
owing to the bend of the river where the waters run close to a high
bank. The earliest settlement was at the upper end of the present
village, where the road crossing the dyke meets the one running
east and west. Here were the oldest houses, the brick school-house,

154 KING'S COUNTY

and later the post-office, and stores. The bend in the river at this
place was called the 'Wash Bowl', and that at the lower end of the
present village, 'Apple-Tree Landing'. Between the "Wash Bowl and
Apple-Tree Landing the land was chiefly divided into two farms,
owned respectively by Messrs. Northup and Lockwood. The site of
the present village was used as a place for drying fish, and the road
wound close to the beach. Later the road was straightened and the
land used for fish drying was divided into lots, on which was erected
a row of stores".

A few miles east of Canning is the village of Kingsport, long the
King's County point of departure for the Parrsborough packets,
and now a favorite summer resort. In Kingsport, until 1878, stood
a fine old oak, the last of a sturdy grove, under whose shade it is
said the Micmacs in old days held councils of war, yearly feasts,
and religious dances, and celebrated solemn marriage rites. A
Kingsport newspaper correspondent in 1887 mourned the destruc-
tion of this old tree in the following lines :

"I mourn for the oak, the dear old oak.

That stood by the side of the lane.
For it sheltered me in my hours of glee.

From the heat and the wind and the rain.

"I mourn for the oak, the dear old oak.

Though his trunk be torn and rent.
He has stood the storm in his kindly form.

Till he 's bowed with years and bent.

"He stood like a Prince of the forest field.

Defying the woodsman's stroke,
But I saw the wield of the glittering steel.

That felled the brave old oak.

"Yes, I love the oak, the dear old oak.

For the years that have passed away,
When close to his feet crept lovers sweet.

To gather the flowers of May.

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 155

' ' 'Twas there they whispered their tales of love,

As they saw the daylight fade,
And plighted in youth their vows of truth,

Under his broad green shade ;

"And there, at the evening, twilight hour,

When lovers are wont to meet,
The night breeze hushed, and the old oak blushed,

To look on a scene so sweet.

"0, I'll praise the oak, the dear old oak,

For his constancy till death,
For the tales there told he did ne 'er unfold,

But their secrets died in his breast".

One of the more important places in the county is Berwick, in
the extreme western part of Cornwallis, in a district that used to
be called "Pleasant Valley". What is now the village of Berwick,
was first called "Currie's Corner", then "Congdon's Corner", then,
after 1835, when William Davison settled there, "Davison's Cor-
ner", The site of Berwick was cleared of woods about 1827-1830,
and in 1835 there were three houses there. Among the chief pioneer
settlers of the region were Benjamin Congdon, his half brother
Enoch Congdon, and Deacon Abel Parker, who bought his farm of
three hundred acres from Enoch Congdon, and April 4, 1827, re-
moved from Aylesford to his new home. Of Mr. Parker's farm
only one acre had then been touched by the plow, but the new owner
set vigorously to work to clear it, and eventually, he became a
prosperous man. At first, from his own small farm-house, with
walls of grooved and tongued boards and with shingled roof, he
could see in any direction only one other house, the house of Blizur
Woodworth.

In 1857, Baptist and Methodist churches were built at Berwick,
and somewhere about that time, at a public meeting of the citizens,
the present name of the place was given the growing village. The
pronunciation of the name, it was distinctly understood, was to be

156 KING'S COUNTY

not Berrick, as the English town of the same name is pronounced,
but Burrmck, and Burrwick the village has commonly been called
since. In the five years succeeding 1857, ten houses went up in
Berwick, and in 1866 a weekly newspaper, The Star, was estab-
lished there by James A. Halliday. Late in the 19th century, through
the influence of Mr. Abel Parker, a girls' school was founded at
Berwick, this gentleman giving the enterprise out of his own
pocket, a hundred pounds. In time, however, the school was re-
moved to "Wolfville, and from it has developed the present pros-
perous "Acadia Seminary". Of the village of Berwick and the sur-
rounding county, the Eev. D. 0. Parker once wrote: "It crowns
the highest land in the King's and Annapolis valley. The Com-
wallis river coming down the North Mountain flows through it to
the east, and the Annapolis river from the South Mountain, flows
west. The intervales, with their rich alluvial soil and lofty trees,
of ash and elm, and the uplands studded with clumps of thick
forest; the bracing winds of winter, the balmy breath of spring,
the genial warmth of summer, and the variegated glory of autumn,
were the attractions which must have influenced our fathers in the
early years of the present (19th) century to make these grand acres
their home".

In a preceding chapter we have given at some length the
earliest tradition of the Aylesford village of Morden or French
Cross. The present village was built chiefly between 1835 and 1868.
In 1820 there were there only one or two houses and a few fisher-
men's huts. The earliest permanent settlers seem to have been
named, Benedict, Cook, and Dodge. About 1835 the place began to
grow, and by 1868 it had become a considerable village. In 1854,
through the instrumentality and by the munificence of Col. Butler,
an Anglican Church building, called "Christ Church", was erected
there.

Hall's Harbour received its name from the following event:
About 1779 Samuel Hall, a native of King's County, who had left
the province and settled in New England, piloted a privateering
band of seventeen men from the revolted colonies, to this point.

WOLFVILLE, CANNING, BERWICK 157

The company, captained by a man named Gow, made several
marauding excursions into the valley, taking away cattle, and rob-
bing houses and stores. At last the militia were aroused to action,
and Abraham Newcomb, with about forty men, went to the har-
bour. Newcomb 's party found most of the robbers gone, three only
having been left to guard the vessels, and these they fired on. Shat-
tering the leg of one and wounding another under the arm, they
made both prisoners ; the third, however, escaped. From their two
prisoners the pursuing party learned that the main body of the
marauders had gone into the valley to rob Mr. Sherman's house and
store at the Cornwallis Town Plot. Returning as quickly as pos-
sible across the mountain, the pursuers found Sherman's house and
store pillaged and the robbers not there. Again the King's County
men took their way to the bay shore, but as they went to the east
side of the harbour and the robbers had gone to the west, the
marauders escaped. Hall himself went to Annapolis and it is prob-
able got safely back to the United States.

For a good while after this event Hall's Harbour served
chiefly as a fishing station for the valley people. From 1826, how-
ever, the place grew; in that year two families settled there and a
mill was built. About 1830 the first store was opened at the place
by Sylvanus "Whitney. In 1835 the first vessel was built there; it
registered perhaps five tons, and was called the Dove. In 1835 and
'36, the place added about a dozen houses and two stores.

In 1764, three or four families located at Scots Bay and began
the present settlement there, among them people of the name o^
Andrews and Loomer. Tradition has it that shortly before this a
vessel with some Scotch emigrants sailed up the Bay of Fundy, its
passengers intending to settle at Cape D 'Or. In a squall the vessel
was driven ashore at the present Scots Bay, where she lay stranded,
her passengers and crew, however, being saved. For some time
the shipwrecked people wandered helplessly about, but at last they
came on a solitary hunter. The man gave them food and led some of
them down the mountain, but these soon returned to their first land-
ing place. During the winter that followed, the Scotchmen made

158 KING'S COUNTY

frequent journeys into the valley for food, but what became of them
in the end we do not know. From these temporary residents the
place got its name Scots Bay. Early in the period which followed
the comiQg of the New England planters to Cornwallis and Horton,
shad fishing in a small way began to be carried on at Scots Bay.
About 1800, weirs were made there on a larger scale, and great
numbers of fish were caught. In perhaps 1835, a new seine was set
in place of the "great seine" of 1800, and shares were bought in it,
but only by the proprietors of the soil at Scots Bay itself. The chief
early settlers at Baxter's Harbour, which is ten miles west of Scots
Bay, was Dr. William Baxter, of whom we have elsewhere given a
conspicuous notice.

About 1770 representatives of the Bill and Rockwell families
settled at Billtown and began that village. In twenty years there
were about ten houses there, few of them less than two miles apart.
What is now Hamilton's Corner, in Cornwallis, was at first and for
a long time, known as "Jaw Bone Comer", or more simply "The
Whalebone". The reason for this name was that at a certain spot
near the corner where the four roads meet was a gate with gate-
posts made from a whale 's jaw-bone. Port Williams was settled by
Terrys and Lockwoods, and for many years, as we have elsewhere
said, was known as "Terry's Creek". The earliest settlers of Gas-
pereau were the family of Eliphalet Coldwell and families named
Benjamin, Martin, and Pierce. In time a considerable number of
Horton people of other names took farms there, and the Gas-
pereau settlement at last came to have a good deal of importance.

One of the most conspicuous estates in the county is "St.
EulaUe", the estate of Sir Robert Linton Weatherbe, Kt., at Wall-
brook, near Grand Pre, in Horton. It includes a portion of what
it is believed was once a French hamlet named "Melanson",
and is charmingly located. Sir Robert is an enthusiastic orchardist,
and he and Lady Weatherbe usually spent their summers on their
King's County farm.

CHAPTER X

COUNTY GOVERNMENT, PUBLIC

OFFICIALS

"When Governor Cornwallis came to Nova Scotia in 1749, one
of his earliest acts was the erection and commissioning of courts of
justice for the carrying out of the principles of English common
law. In pursuance of his orders from the crown he at once erected
three courts, a Court of General Sessions, a County Court, having
jurisdiction over the whole province, and a General Court or Court
of Assize and General Jail Delivery, in which the Governor and
Council for the time being, sat at judges. In 1752, the County
Court was abolished, and a Court of Common Pleas similar to the
Superior Courts of Common Pleas of New England erected in its
place. In 1754, Jonathan Belcher, Esq., was appointed the first
Chief Justice of the province, and the General Court was supplanted
by a Supreme Court, in which the Chief Justice was the sole judge.

After the coming of the New England planters, new counties
having been erected, courts of Common Pleas were multiplied and
judges for them appointed, the first judges for King's County being
Col. Eobert Denison, Henry Denny Denson, and Isaac Deschamps.
In 1829 Judge Haliburton wrote: "There is no separate Court of
Common Pleas for the Province, but there are courts in each county,
bearing the same appellation and resembling it in many of its
powers. These courts when first constituted had power to issue
both mesne and final process to any part of the Province, and had a
concurrent jurisdiction with the Supreme Court in all civil causes.
They were held in the several counties by Magistrates, or such other
persons as were best qualified to fill the situation of judges, but
there was no salary attached to the office, and fees, similar in their

160 KING'S COUNTY

nature, but smaller in amount than those received by the Judges of
the Supreme Court, were the only remuneration given them for
their trouble. As the King's bench was rising in reputation, from
the ability and learning of its Judges, these courts fell into disuse,
and few causes of difficulty or importance were tried in them. It
was even found necessary to limit their jurisdiction, and they were
restrained from issuing mesne process out of the county in which
they sat. The exigencies of the country requiring them to be put
into a more efficient state, a law was passed in 1824 for dividing the
Province iuto three districts or circuits and the Governor was em-
powered to appoint a professional man to each circuit, as first Jus-
tice of the several courts of Common Pleas within the District, and
also as President of the courts of sessions.

In 1774 an act of the Legislature was passed, first establishing
the circuits of the Supreme Court. This act authorized the holding
of courts at Horton, Annapolis, and Cumberland, the sittings to last
at each place not more than five days, and two judges always to be
present. At Halifax the terms were fourteen days, liberty, however,
being allowed for longer terms if the number of cases to be tried de-
manded an extension of time. In 1783 the Supreme Couft sat at Hor-
ton on Tuesday, May 3rd, and Tuesday,' Sept. 4 ; the Superior Court
sat at Horton on Tuesday, June 1, and Tuesday, Oct. 1 ; the Court
of Sessions also met at Horton June 1st and Oct. 1st. In 1797 the sit-
tings of the Supreme Court were held on the Monday next after the
third Thursday of May and of September. The Sessions of the Peace
were held on the first Tuesdays of June and October. In 1807 the
Supreme Court sat at Horton on the fourth Tuesday of September,
at Annapolis on the Tuesday following the sitting at Horton. The
Inferior Court sat at Horton on the second Tuesdays of April and
October. In 1828 the Supreme Court sat at Kentville on the first
Tuesdays of June and September. No less than eighteen or twenty
acts of the legislature relative to the times of holding the courts
in the province, were passed between 1760 and 1840.

In 1824 an act was passed changing the constitution of the
courts of Common Pleas, and dividing the province into three Judi-

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 161

cial Districts: the Eastern District, to comprise the county of
Sydney, the districts of Pictou and Colchester, and the county of
Cumberland; the Middle District, the counties of Hants, King's,
Lunenburg, and Queens; the Western District, the counties of
Annapolis and Shelburne. On the 17th of March, Jared IngersoU
Chipman of King's was appointed Chief Judge of the Court of
Common Pleas for the Eastern Division, William Henry Otis Hali-
burton for the Middle Division, and Thomas Ritchie for the Western
Division. The appointment of these judges and the amount of
salary promised them met with much opposition throughout the
province. In 1841, by an act of the legislature, the Inferior Courts
of Common Pleas were abolished and the administration of law
was generally improved.

With the advent of the New England planters to the county,
came the introduction of New England's time honoured institution,
the Town Meeting. ' ' The New England town meeting was and still
is", says Charles Francis Adams, "the political expressions of the
town", and many writers have spoken of the influence the institu-
tion has had in developing and conserving that spirit of indepen-
dence and sense of liberty which have been characteristic of the
New England colonies and colonies sprung from New England. In
aU the New England settlements in Nova Scotia, the Town Meeting
was from the first, in conjunction with the Court of Sessions, the
source of local government. The Court of Sessions was composed
of the magistrates or justices of the peace, the chairman of which
was the Gustos Botulorum, and its secretary, the Clerk of the Peace.
By this court, the constables, assessors, surveyors of highways,
school commissioners, pound keepers, fence viewers, and trustees
of school lands, were appointed. In the Town Meeting the rate-
payers met to discuss freely all local affairs, not the least impor-
tant matter under its jurisdiction being always the relief and sup-
port of the poor and the appointment of overseers and a clerk of
overseers for carrying out the provisions for the needy the Town
Meeting made.

From the Cornwallis Town Book, we learn that April 1, 1771,

162 KING'S COUNTY

the Town Meeting voted to raise twenty pounds for the support of
the poor in Cornwallis, and made choice of John Burbidge, Esq.,
Capt. Samuel Beckwith, Dr. Samuel Willoughby, Amos Bill, Esq.,
and Mr. Judah Wells, as assessors, to assess the amount voted on the
inhabitants. Nov. 1, 1790 (Capt. Judah Wells, moderator), it was
voted to raise seventy pounds for the poor's support. The assessors
appointed to raise this amount were, William Chipman Andrew
Newcomb, Lemuel Morton, John Allison, and John Beckwith;
Jacob Walton being appointed to serve as collector. April 4, 1791
(Capt. Blkanah Morton, moderator), it was voted that seventy
pounds be raised for the care of the poor, Messrs. William Chip-
man, Elkanah Morton, Stephen Harrington, James Burbidge, and
Samuel Starr, to be assessors; Mr. Benjamin Belcher to collect the
voted sum. At a meeting held Nov 7, 1791, it was voted that the
overseers should arrange with some doctor to take care of the needy
by the year, a hundred pounds being the sum then set apart for the
poor's support. At this meeting, Daniel Bowen, John Whidden
Jonathan Sherman, Jonathan Band, and William Webster, were
made assessors, John Beckwith being appointed to collect the voted
amount. For many years it was customary for certain rate-payers
to "bid off" one or more poor men, women, or children, for stipu-
lated sums to be paid weekly by the town. In these cases, where it
was possible, the rate-payers made the poor whom they bid off, use-
ful in their homes ; for such service, and for the sum they received,
giving the unfortunates, board, lodging, and clothes. Many persons
also, who became town charges were "farmed out" to men who
made their living wholly or in part by boarding them. In 1815, the
sum raised in Cornwallis for keeping the poor was two hundred
and forty pounds.

May 7, 1858, an act was passed by the legislature to incorpor-
ate a general Poor-House, the committee appointed to take the mat-
ter in charge and assess for the building being : John M. Caldwell,
Peter Wickwire, George W. Fisher, Levi W. Eaton, James Eaton,
Charles Dickie, James Bligh, Eobert W. Beckwith, John Boscoe,
and Holmes C. Masters. Another similar act was passed in 1867,

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 163

the committee then appointed being "William H. CMpman, James
Bligh, Leander Band, Thomas lUsley, and Elias Calkin. For many
years, now, Poor-Houses have existed in the three original townships,
of the county, and all the needy who become town charges are taken
care of in them. Up to 1790, and how much later we do not know,
the Town Meetings of Cornwallis were held in the Meeting-House,,
but after that they were held in some other convenient place. In
1839 an act was passed to enable the inhabitants of Cornwallis to
provide a public Town House for the holding of elections in that
township. For this building the toivnship was to be assessed in a
sum not to exceed two hundred pounds.

In 1879 the three townships of the county were united in a cen-
tral government, and the Town Meeting and Court of Sessions be-
came things of the past. In place of the three townships now arose
the Municipality of King's County, the sole governing body of
which is the Municipal Coimcil. Under this new system the county
is divided into fourteen wards, twelve of which elect one coun-
cillor each, and two, two councillors, for a term of two years. The
Council as a whole then elects a Warden, who corresponds to the
Custos Rotulorum, of the old Court of Sessions, and whatever other
officers it was the duty of the Court of Sessions to elect. Under the
Municipality's control thus came all the interests that formerly per-
tained to both the Town Meeting and the Court of Sessions. The
change of the county to a Municipality was affected at a meeting
held at the court house on Tuesday, January 13, 1879, pursuant to
a notice by the then Sheriff, John Marshall Caldwell. When the re-
turns from the respective returning officers of the several wards were
declared, the officers of the Municipality were found to be : Warden,
John W. Barss ; Clerk, Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman ; Treasurer,
Hon. Thomas Lewis Dodge. Councillors: Ward 1 — ^Leander Band
and Elijah C. West; Ward 2 — ^Dr. Charles Cottman Hamilton;
Ward 3 — James Roscoe; Ward 4— W. S. Sweet; Ward 5 — ^David
Berteaux; Ward 6 — James Lyons and Adolphus Bishop; Ward 7 —
Jehiel Davison ; Ward 8 — John W. Barss ; Ward 9 — John B. North ;
Ward 10 — James Patterson; Ward 11 — Michael Lonergan; Ward

164 KING'S COUNTY

12— Thomas E. Harris; Ward 13— C. P. Illsley; Ward 14r— Daniel B.
Parker.

It is said that one of the legal institutions of the county in very
early times was what was popularly known as "Sheepskin Court",
the function of which was to hear cases above the jurisdiction of
magistrates, but below that of the Supreme Court, and that over
this court for some time, while George Chipman was Sheriff, Col.
William Charles Moore presided. Precisely what the court was,
however, we do not know. To regulate all matters concerning the
dykes of the county, in both Horton and Cornwallis, separate
boards of Commissioners have always existed, their meetings being
held more or less frequently, as occasion has demanded.

Before 1761, two elections had been held in Nova Scotia for
choosing representatives to the popular Assembly of the province,
in the spring of 1761, another was held. It was in this third elec-
tion that Bang's County first took part, and the result of the voting
was that for the Township of ComwaUis, Dr. Samuel Willoughby
and Captain Stephen West were elected; for the Township of Hor-
ton, WiUiam Welch and Lebbeus Harris; and for the Township of
Falmouth, Col. Henry Denny Denson and Isaac Deschamps. For
the County were chosen. Col. Robert Denison, of Horton, and
Charles Morris, Jr. In the third Assembly, which lasted from 1761
to 1765, besides the King's County members, sat two members each
from the counties of Halifax, Lunenburg, and Annapolis, and two
■each from the towns of Halifax, Lunenburg, Annapolis, and Liver-
pool. The popular representatives in this third Assembly thus num-
bered twenty-four, a third of whom were from the County of King's.

In official reports of early Nova Scotia elections the title
Esquire is always carefully given persons chosen to serve in the
Assembly.

JUDGES OP THE INFEBIOE COURT OP COMMON PLEAS FOE KING's COUNTY,

1761, Eobert Denison, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps
1768, John Burbidge, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps,
Benjamin Gerrish

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 165

1783, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Lebbeus Harris, Dr.
Samuel Willoughby

1788, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Lebbeus Harris, John
[Whidden

1794, John Burbidge, John Chipman, John Whidden

1797, John Burbidge, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf, Gurden
Denison

1810, John Burbidge, "William Campbell, John Chipman, Gurden
Denison, Elisha DeWolf

1815, William Campbell, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Elisha
DeWolf, David Whidden

1821, William Campbell, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf, David
Whidden

. 1825, William Campbell, John Chipman, Elisha DeWolf,
Charles Ramage Prescott, David Whidden

1828, William Campbell, John Chipman, William Allen Chip-
man, Elisha DeWolf

1840, William Campbell, William Allen Chipman, James Delap
Harris

In the Books of the Council at Halifax no record can be found
of the appointment of High Sheriffs in King's County before 1782.
Earlier than that, however, to make arrests, serve processes, and do
the other necessary work of a sheriff there must have been locally
appointed sheriffs, and a tradition remains that the first sheriff of
the county was Jonathan Hamilton, the second Sherman Denison.
Jonathan Hamilton, one of the Horton grantees of 1761, died Feb.
24, 1778, and if his successor in the sheriff's office was a Denison,
the person must have been David Sherman Denison, bom in Con-
necticut in 1734, died in Horton in 1796

In 1778 an act was passed by the legislature, and in 1780 con-
firmed by the crown, empowering the Governor, Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor, or Commander-in-Chief, to appoint sheriffs in such counties
as needed them, and for King's, though we have found no record of
his appointment, we feel certain that the first appointee was Thomas

166 KINGS' COUNTY

Parrel. Of other county officials than sheriffs before 1812, owing to
the loss, which it is hoped is only temporary, of the records of the
Court of Sessions to that time, it is difficult to get a complete list

mOH SHERIFFS

Thomas Farrel Appointed Jan. 7, 1782

Daniel Dickson Appointed Dec. 13, 1782

Elisha DeWolf, Sr. Appointed Jan. 16, 1783

John Thomas Hill Appointed Dec. 17, 1792
[He died in 1800]

David Whidden, Sr. 1801—1809

[He married Oct. 6, 1794, Eunice, sister of Sheriff George
Chipman]

George Chipman 1809—1838

[He was born April 23, 1774, and died April 7, 1838]

William Charles Campbell 1838—1855

John Marshall Caldwell 1855—1881

[He was bom June 15, 1801; appointed Sheriff Dec. 12, 1855;
and died Nov. 6, 1881]

Stephen Belcher 1881—1905

Charles Frederick Rockwell 1905 —

[It will be noticed that David "Whidden and George Chipman
were brothers-in-law. During part, at least, of George Chipman 's
term of office, his older brother, Charles Chipman, bom July 9, 1772,
died about 1851, was Deputy Sheriff]

JUDGES OP PEOBATE

Isaac Deschamps 1768 — 1781

Handley Chipman 1781—1799

William Charles Campbell 1801—1836

Thomas B. Campbell 1837—1840

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 167

John Clarke Hall 1841—1853

■William H. Keating 1853—1856

[The dates given Mr. Keating 's incumbency are probably
correct]

George Augustus Blanchard 1856 — 1879

Stephen Harrington Moore 1880 — 1886

Edmund James Cogswell 1888 —

CLERKS OP THE PEACE

John Chipman David Whidden

John Wells Eev. William Chipman

Jared IngersoU Chipman William Henry Chipman

William Charles Campbell Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman

[This list is probably correct]

CUSTOS' EOTULORUM

Handley Chipman 1792—1799

John Chipman 1799—1836

WilUam Allen Chipman 1843—1846

Hon. John Morton 1848—1857

Hugh Logan Dickie 1858—1873

Samuel Chipman 1874—1879

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

1768, Joseph Bailey, John Burbidge, Handley Chipman, John
Day, Henry Denny Denson, Isaac Deschamps, EUward Ellis, George
Feath, Lebbeus Harris, Elisha Lothrop, Charles Morris, Jr., William
Nisbet, William Tonge, Samuel Willoughby

1783, William Best, John Bishop, Jr., John Burbidge, Handley
Chipman, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Lebbeus Harris, Charles
Morris, Joseph Pierce, Jonathan Sherman, John Whidden, Samuel
Willoughby. By 1788 the number had increased to seventeen. Jus-
tices appointed between these dates were: Daniel Bowen, Finley

168 KING'S COUNTY

Burn, Antil Gallop, Benjamin Hilton, Thomas William Moore, Ed-
ward Potts, John Vought. The names of William Best and Samuel
Willoughby had been dropped.

1792, Benjamin Belcher, John Bishop, Jr., Daniel Bowen, John
Burbidge, Colin Campbell, William Campbell, Handley Chipman,
John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha DeWolf,
John Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, Edward Potts, Thomas Ratch-
ford, Jonathan Sherman, Robert Walker, John Whidden

1797, John Allison, Benjamin Belcher, John Bishop, Sr., Daniel
Bowen, John Burbidge, Colin Campbell, William Campbell, Handley
Chipman, John Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha
DeWolf, John Fillis, John Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, John
Thomas Hill, James Kerr, Elkanah Morton, Edward Potts, Thomas
Ratchford, Jonathan Sherman, E. Taylor, Robert Walker, John
Whidden

1807, John Allison, John Bishop, Jr., Daniel Bowen, John Bur-
bidge, William Campbell, John Chipman, William Allen Chipman,
Jonathan Crane, Gurden Denison, Elisha DeWolf, John Fillis, John
Fraser, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, Stephen Harrington, James Kerr,
Elkanah Morton, Charles R. Prescott, James Ratchford, Jonathan
Sherman, E. Taylor, David Whidden

1815, James Allison, Samuel Bishop, William Campbell, Wil-
liam Chipman, WiUiam Allen Chipman, Jonathan Crane, Sherman
Denison, Daniel DeWolf, Elisha DeWolf, Simon Fitch, James S.
Fullerton, Stephen Harrington, James Harris, Rev. John Inglis,
D. D., James Kerr, Daniel Lockhart, Elkanah Morton, Rev. Robert
Norris, James Ratchford, James Noble Shannon, Alexander Walker,
John Wells, David Whidden, Samuel Wilson

1825, James Allison, Samuel Bishop, William Campbell, John
Chipman, William Chipman, William Chipman, Jr., William Allen
Chipman, Samuel Denison, Daniel DeWolf, Elisha DeWolf, Simon
Fitch, James S. Fullerton, Harris Harrington, James Harris, James
Delap Harris, James Kerr, Jesse Lewis, Daniel Lockhart, James
Ratchford, Alexander Walker, John Wells, David Whidden

1843, Mayhew Beckwith, Caleb R. Bill, Charles H. Brovm, Seth

COUNTY GOVERNMENT

169

Burgess, 'Williani C. Campbell, Samuel Chipman, William Allen
Chipman, James N. Crane, Jonathan Crane, Nathan Davison, Sher-
man Denison, Elisha DeWolf, Hugh L. Dickey, Simon Pitch, Harris
Harrington, James Harris, James Delap Harris, John P. Hutchinson,
"William Johnson, Daniel Lockhart, George Lockwood, Thomas
Lovett, John Lyons, Henry Magee, "William Miller, Hon. John Mor-
ton, Edward Palmer, Nathan Parker, Alexander Patterson, John
Patterson, 3rd, George D. Pineo, Caleb Handley Band, Samuel Sharp,
Fairfield Smith, Eichard Starr, John "Wells

PROTHONOTABIES

Samuel Denison

in

office in

1814

Samuel Leonard Allison

1821—1834

"William Henry Chipman

1835—1855

George Eaton Barnaby

1856 1869

Henry Lovett

— —

Charles Frederick Eockwell

—1905

Robert C Dickie

1905—

DEPUTY EEGISTEABS OP DEEDS

The Registers of Deeds begin as follows: Cornwallis in 1764;
Horton in 1766 ; Aylesf ord in 1820.

John Burbidge (for Cornwallis)
Nathan Dewolf (for Horton)
Benjamin Belcher
"William Campbell (for Cornwallis,

Aylesf ord)
James Ratchford (for Parrsborough)
Thomas B. Campbell
David M. Dickie
Frederick Brown
Annie M. Stuart

1768—1786
1768—
1789—1792
Horton and

170 KING'S COUNTY

TOWNSHIP CLKBKS

Cornwallis: "William Allen Chipman, Ward Eaton, James
Stanley Eaton

Horton: Samuel Denison, James P. Johnson, James Morse,
Gustavus Bishop

Parrsborough : James Ratchf ord, etc.

Aylesf ord : Robert Kerr, Parker Spurr, etc.

COLLECTORS OP CUSTOMS

Our knowledge of the county's various coUectorships of
customs, before 1824, is not very complete. It is said that Elisha
DeWolf was appointed excise officer for Horton (perhaps for the
county) in 1819. In 1824 Mr. DeWolf was acting as "Pro-collector"
for Horton, David Whidden of Cornwallis having been appointed
"Collector of Import and Excise," several years before. The title
of the office varies, it was sometimes ' ' Collector of Customs, ' ' some-
times "Collector of Colonial and Light Duties," sometimes "Col-
lector of Customs and Navigation Laws". In 1839 and '40, T. D.
Dickson was collector at Parrsborough, and in 1842 and '43 "William
Lovett served as "Seizing Officer." In 1850, besides David Whidden,
there was in this office as "Collector of Colonial Duties" on the Bay
Shore, west of Hall's Harbor, John Givan. At that date, Isaac
Hamilton, William North, W. H. Lovett and John Givan were
"Seizing Officers". About 1853 (at least before 1855), Edward
Lockwood succeeded David Whidden as Collector at Cornwallis,
Joseph Crane became Collector for Horton, Cornelius V. Rawding
for Canada Creek, and John Orpin for French Cross (Morden).
John Givan still continued Collector for the Bay Shore, west of
HaU's Harbor, and Isaac Hamilton, W. H. Lovett, and John Givan
remained Seizing Officers. Before 1858, an additional office of
"Surveyor of Shipping" was created, and Edward Lockwood re-
ceived the appointment to it. An additional Seizing Officer was
also appointed in the person of Abraham Ogilvie.

November 14, 1859, Ebenezer Rand became Collector for

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 171

Cornwallis, but from 1860 to 1863, Edward Lockwood was again
Collector. Sept. 29, 1863, Ebenezer Band was appointed Collector
for Cornwallis, and in the office he remained for twenty-five years-,
his resignation of the CoUectorship at Cornwallis and the Chief
Collectorship being offered, March 1, 1888. After the confederation
of the provinces a head Collector was appointed for each county,
and sub-collectors under him were appointed at the outposts. In
King's County, Ebenezer Eand became Chief Collector, Cornelius
V. Eawding, becoming Sub-Collector at Canada Creek, Robert
Famsworth at Morden, Edwin DeWolf at Horton, and Henry Morris
at Harborville. The Seizing Officers were Abraham Ogilvie, George
Lockwood, Elijah Rockwell, and Simon N, Porter, July 1,
1873, George Lockwood, whose first appointment as Seizing
Officer was on the 1st of July, 1860, became Sub-Collector at Port
Williams, and March 14, 187^, John Edwin Orpin, whose earliest
appointment as Seizing Officer was on the 1st of April, 1853, became
Sub-Collector at Morden. June 10, 1879, Stephen "W. Rawding
succeeded his father, Cornelius V. Rawding, as Sub-Collector at
Canada Creek. April 3, 1880, Joseph Benjamin Davison became
Sub-Collector at Wolfville. January 1, 1886, Charles Eugene Morris
succeeded his father, Henry Morris, as Sub-Collector at Harborville.
May 1, 1888, Frederick Clarence Rand succeeded his father, Ebenezer
Rand, as Collector at Cornwallis and -Head Collector for King's
County.

August 1, 1888, the Chief Collectorship was removed from Can-
ning to Kentville, the great increase in the imports of this town, as
a railway centre, making the change necessary. At this time,
Edward Harris was appointed Sub-Collector for Canning. Owing
to the increase of trade along the line of railway, and to its decline
at the shipping ports on the Bay of Fundy, other changes, also, soon
followed, Berwick, on the railway, was created an outport, and
July 15, 1894, Stephen Illsley was appointed its Sub-Collector.
Kingsport, likewise became an outport, and Nov. 1, 1897, Elijah C.
Borden was made its Sub-Collector. Aylesford Station became a
third outport, and January 1, 1900, J. Caldwell "West was made its

172 KING'S COUNTY

Sub-Collector. Feb. 1, 1896, Caleb Eand Bill succeeded Joseph B.
Davison as Sub-Collector at Wolfville; Sept. 4, 1897, Charles H.
Norwood succeeded Stephen lUsley at Berwick; Oct, 1, 1901, John
E. Bigelow succeeded Edward Harris at Canning ; and March 1, 1906,
John Rufus Starr succeeded George Lockwood at Port Williams.
Abram Ogilvie, whose first appointment as Preventive or Seizing
Officer bore date April 1, 1856, continued in that office till his death.
Likewise, also did Simon N. Porter, who was first appointed Decem-
ber 30, 1864. The latter was succeeded in his office by his son.
When the trade of the seaports passed to the growing towns along
the railway, in the valley, the customs officers at Morden, where
John Edwin Orpin was Sub-Collector for many years, and at Har-
borville, where Cornelius V. Rawding was likewise a veteran Sub-
Collector, were reduced, as in earlier days, to Seizing Officers.

In 1910 the Chief CoUectorship of the county is still held by
Frederick Clarence Rand.

POSTMASTERS

It is not easy to secure a complete list of the Postmasters of
the county from the beginning, but the following have acted in this
capacity at different times, some of them for a good many years.

Borden H. A. Canning

Borden Judah Lower Horton

Chase Albert Port Williams

Cox Joseph B. Kingsport
DeWolf Elisha, Jr. [Appointed in

1831] Wolfville

Eldridge James W. Long Island

Forsyth Enoch Port Williams

Parker John M. Berwick

Rand George V. Wolfville

Ratchford James Parrsborough

Van Buskirk H. Aylesford

Van Buskirk James Aylesford

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 173

Successive Postmasters at Kentville have been :
James Bragg 1830—1831

Daniel Moore 1831—1834

John P. Hutchinson 1834—1867, June 28th

James P. Cunningham [Appointed, but served a very short time]'
George E. Calkin 1867—1876

Walter Carruthers 1876—

Joseph Edwin Eaton — 1892

Joseph R. Lyons 1892 —

[Mr. Lyons is postmaster in 1910]

COEONORS

This office was first established about 1830.

1830, William Charles Moore ; Daniel DeWolf ; James Allison.

1843, James Allison ; John Fisher ; John E. Forsyth, M. D. ; Wil-
liam Charles Moore

1855, Jonathan Borden, M. D. ; John Fisher; Charles Cottnam
Hamilton, M. D. j Charles W. H. Harris ; Holmes Masters, M. D. ; A.
Van Buskirk

1867, Jonathan Borden, M. D. ; Gideon Cogswell; Stephen
Dodge, M. D. ; Gilbert Fowler; Charles Cottnam Hamilton, M. D.;
George Hamilton; Charles W. H. Harris, Henry Lovett, Holmes
Masters, M. D. ; Harris 0. McLatchy, M. D. ; James S. Miller, M. D. ;
Henri Shaw, M. D. ; William H. West

COMMISSIONEES POK TAKING SPECIAL BAIL

1788, Cornwallis, John Burbidge ; Horton, Nathan DeWoLf .
1792-1809, Cornwallis, John Burbidge ; Horton, Samuel Denison
1843, Thomas B. Campbell; WiUiam Henry Chipman; James
Delap Harris; Caleb Handley Rand.

OTHER OFFICERS..

1769- '70, Naval Officer for the Port of Windsor and the rivers
flowing into the Basin of Minas, Isaac Deschamps; County Treas-
urer, Nathan DeWolf.

174 KING'S COUNTY

BAEBISTERS AND ATTORNEYS IN KING's COUNTY

1843, John Clarke Hall, Stephen Harrington Moore, Jlenry
Bentley Webster, L. D. Morton, Elias Tupper, Charles W. H. Harris,
William C. Whidden, James Robert Prescott. [Court of Chancery :
Charles W. H. Harris, James Robert Prescott]

1860, George Augustus Blanchard, Charles W. H. Harris, Thomas
William Harris, Stephen Harrington Moore, James Robert Prescott,
Edward Allan Pyke, Henry Bentley Webster

1867, George A. Blanchard, Charles W. H. Harris, Thomas Wil-
liam Harris, Q. C; Stephen Harrington Moore, James Robert
Prescott, Edward Allan Pyke, Henry Bentley Webster

1876, George Augustus Blanchard, John Pryor Chipman, Ed-
mund J. Cogswell, Thomas William Harris, Q. C. ; Joseph J. Moore,
James Robert Prescott, Edward Allan Pyke, Benjamin Smith, Bar-
clay Webster, Douglas B. Woodworth

1908, Edward B. Cogswell, Sydney E. Crawley, A. E. Dunlop,
Howard G. Harris, George Johnson, Charles Archibald McLean,
Frederick A. Masters, Louis F. Newcomb, William F. Parker, Avard
B. Pineo, Frederick Clarence Rand, Col. Wentworth Eaton Roscoe,
Barry W. Roscoe, William P. Shaffner, Clifford A. Tufts, Barclay
Webster, K. C. ; Harry Hamm Wickwire

A few of the many lawyers the county has produced besides the
above, are: Jared IngersoU Chipman, James A. Denison, Brentoa
Halliburton Eaton, K. C. ; Harry Havelock Eaton, Robie Lewis Reid,
John Whidden, for many years Clerk of the House of Assembly, and
Joseph Whidden, also Clerk of the House.

Physicians in the county in 1876, were : Andrew DeWolf Barss,
George Bell, E. Perry Bowles, Henry Chipman, W. Gibson Clarke,
Albert DeWolf, James R. Fitch, J. Newman Fuller, William J. Ful-
lerton, Charles Cottnam Hamilton, Harris 0. McLatchy, F. Middle-
mas, James S. Miller, John A. Morse, George E. Outhit, Charles N.
Payzant, Henri Shaw, Mason ShefSeld, John Struthers, Henry Bent-
ley Webster, S. W. Woodworth. Of these physicians, all except one
received their medical education in the United States. Drs. Bell,

COUNTY GOVERNMENT 175

Chipman, Clarke, DeWolf, Middlemas, Morse, and "Woodworth at
Harvard; Drs. Fitch, Shaw, and "Webster at the College of Physi-
cians and Surgeons, New York ; Drs. Puller, FuUerton, Sheffield, and
Struthers at Bellevue, New York ; Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton at
the University of Pennsylvania; Drs. McLatchy, Outhit, and Pay-
zant at Jefferson, Medical College ; Dr. Miller at the Berkshire Medi-
cal College; Dr. Barss at the University of Edinburgh. Physicians
the county has produced besides the above have been, James R.
Avery (practised in Halifax) ; John Barnaby (practised in Queen '&
County, N. S.) ; "William Baxter, Edward Beckwith, John Leander
Bishop (practised in Philadelphia) ; Adolphus Borden (practised at
New Bedford, Mass.) ; Sir Frederick W. Borden, K. C. M. G.; Jona-
than Borden, Edward L. Brown, Barry Calkin (practises at Jamaica
Plain, Mass.) ; A. Chipman, (practised at Turk's Island) ; Reginald
Chipman (practises in Chelsea, Mass.) ; Silas Crane, Gurden Denison,
Joseph Denison (practised in Bridgeton, N. S.) ; Edward De"Wolf,
James Ratchford De"Wolf (long Medical Superintendent of the In-
sane Hospital at Dartmouth, N. S.) ; Stephen DeWolf (practised in
New York City) ; Robert Dickey, Somerville Dickey, Simon I'itch,
John E. Forsyth, "William Forsyth, John Fox (Surgeon R. N.) ; N.
Fuller, E. Harding (practised at Windsor) ; Charles W. Hamilton,
Charles Harris, J. W. Harris, Holmes Masters, Willis B. Moore
(practises in Kentville) ; Van E. Parker, E. F. Payzant, Obadiah
Pineo (Surgeon R. N.) ; Peter Pineo (practised in the United States) j
George Van Buskirk, J. Walton, Arthur Webster (practises in Edin-
burg:h) ; David Webster (practises in New York City) ; Frederick
Webster (practised in Yarmouth, N. S.) ; Isaac Webster, William B.
Webster, B. Welton, William N. Wickwire, (practised in Halifax);
Percy Woodworth, William S. Woodworth (both the latter prac-
tise in Kentville).

CHAPTEK XI

ROADS AND TRAVELLING, DYKE
BUILDING

In every country the building and proper care of roads and
bridges is one of the people's earliest and chief interests, and
in our account of the French occupation of King's County we have
endeavored to give some accurate idea of the earliest roads that
intersected the two townships of Horton and Comwallis in French
times. As early as 1701 Governor Brouillan says of the Minas
Acadians: "I proposed to these demi-republieans to make a road
for ten leagues across the woods to get to Port Royal. They have
engaged to execute this project as soon as harvest is over. They
can subsequently make a like one to Laheve". In 1749 Governor
Comwallis writes to the Duke of Bedford that the French inhab-
itants have cleared a road eighteen feet wide, all the way from
Minas to Halifax. Of the course of this road, between Grand Pre
and Kentville, we have the following tradition: "It ran nearer the
dykes and intervales of the Comwallis river than it does now.
From the numerous hills and thickets beside it, it was dangerous
to travel, accordingly when the New England planters came they
changed it to its present course". Of the earliest efforts of the
New England planters at road and bridge building we know very
little, though after 1812 we have abundant testimony ia the rec-
ords of the Court of Sessions to the People's activity in the matter.

In these records, which deal with all sorts of local affairs, the
trial and punishment of statutory offences, the assessment of taxes,
the building of dykes, the regulation of fisheries in bays and rivers,
legislation concerning the building and repair of roads and bridges,
occupies, probably, the largest space. In 1763 the Council voted
fifty pounds for mending the road between Granville and Horton,

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 177

and no doubt to the object for which it was granted the subsidy-
was applied. In 1775 Governor Legge repeats a request he had
previously made of the legislature, for a grant of five hundred
pounds to improve the roads of the province, and we presume the
money was given. If so, a certain proportion of it probably went for
the roads in King's Coxmty. In 1799, the Governor, Sir John W*mt-
worth, recommended to the Assembly the completion of the roads
to Annapolis and Pietou. In 1814 or '15 a new road was surveyed
by the government surveyor, Mr. Morris, from Halifax to Annapolis,
the whole distance to be a hundred miles. The expense of the
survey was a hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings.

The first bridge across the Cornwallis River at Port Williams
(Terry's Creek) was built at least as early as 1780. In 1818 an
act was passed by the legislature for "rebuilding and repairing"
this bridge. Whether it was the first bridge or a second that was
finally carried out by the tide, piers and all, we do not know, but
in 1825 an act was passed by the legislature, incorporating a com-
pany to build a new bridge. In 1827 the legislature voted towards
the enterprise the sum of seven hundred and fifty pounds. Five
years later the sum of eleven hundred and fifty pounds more was
granted for the same purpose. In 1834 another act of iacorpora-
tion, similar to the one of 1825, passed the legislature, the former
one being repealed. In 1835 the bridge was opened. The piers of
it, which are still standing, were constructed by Joseph Wiathrop,
who came from Hants Coimty to build them. The bridge was for
many years a toll-bridge, and sometime after the middle of the
century, John Lingley was toU-keeper.

March 19, 1842, an act was passed by the legislature to in-
corporate a pier or wharf near French Cross, in Aylesford, Amos
B. Patterson, Fairfield Smith, George Fitch, Jonathan Crane, Isaac
Orpin, Benjamin B. Sheflaeld, Elisha D. Harris, Alexander Patterson,
Thomas Welton, James L. Van Buskirk, William Morton, and Nel-
son Farnsworth, being the incorporators. Some time before this,
a hundred poimds had been granted by the government for the
erection of a breakwater at French Cross.

178 KING'S COUNTY

Among the letters of that remarkable man, the Eev. Jacob
Bailey, so well known in Loyalist annals as the "Frontier Mission-
ary" we have one to a private correspondent, which describes in
the writer's usual graphic way his journey over land in 1782 from
Cornwallis, where for some time he had been serving as mission-
ary, to Annapolis Eoyal, where he was to enter on a new field.
This letter is so valuable for the picture it gives of the hardships
of travel in King's County at this early time that we reproduce
part of it here. "We proposed", says Mr. Bailey, "to advance
towards Annapolis on Tuesday, the 24th of July, but an excessive
rain on Monday hindered our preparations, so that our departure
was delayed till Wednesday morning, when we observed the fol-
lowing order: A cart with two yoke of oxen, containing all our
worldly possessions, began the procession, guarded by a couple of
sprightly young fellows, who offered their services; a vehicle for
the reception of Mrs. Bailey and her children, drawn by two horses,
next appeared under the conduct of honest John [John McNamara,
born in Pownalborough in 1758, died in Annapolis Eoyal in 1798.
He was for many years a helper in Mr. Bailey's household, but
during the last years of his life was S. P. G. Schoolmaster and
Postmaster at Annapolis Eoyal]. Mrs. Burbidge, in her chaise,
with the above mentioned persons, set off about seven, accompanied
with near thirty people, of both sexes, on horseback, who attended
us with cheerful solemnity, to the distance of fourteen miles on our
journey. About eleven, we arrived at Marshall's, and with much
difficulty provided an early dinner for our large company.

"At one we parted with our friends. * • * The distressing
ceremony of parting beiug over, Mrs. Bailey was seated with her
little ones in the above mentioned machine, over which was
stretched a covering of canvas, as a defence both from the vivid
rays of the sun and the rain of heaven. We now entered a wilder-
ness of vast extent, without a single human habitation for the
space of eleven miles, the roads extremely rough, sheltered with
tall forests, encumbered with rocks and deformed with deep
sloughs ; and to render the scene still more disconsolate and dismal

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 179

the wind howled among the trees, thick volumes of clouds rollesd
from the western hemisphere, and the rumble of thunder announced
the horrors of an approaching tempest. We had still in company
six persons besides our own family, two of whom pushed forward
with Betsey Nye and reached a publick house before the rain. Mr.
Starr [David Starr, great-great-grandfather of the author of this
book, who with his family, had been devoted parishioners of Mr,
Bailey's] and your humble servant, left the carriages at the dista^se
of four miles from the dwelling of one Potter, lately removed from
Cornwallis, at which we arrived a little after sunset, just as the
heavy shower was beginning to descend".

After relating in detail the discomforts of the night, which
they spent at Mr. Potter's, Mr. Bailey says that at five the iie;xt
morning he and his party again started on their way. "At the
distance of a mile from our lodgings, I was invited to a christeAiag,
while the carriages proceeded. After the performance of this ex-
ercise I took my leave of Mr. Starr and rode over the sandy, bar-i
ren (Aylesford) plains till I overtook our company". The ima
Mr. Bailey calls "Marshall's" stood probably about two miles east
of Berwick, and the eleven miles he travelled from there covered
the distance from Water^aUe to St. Mary's Church, in Aylesford.
The (French) road he took, however, says Eev. Dr. Saunders, in
commenting on this letter, lay to the south of the present post road,
keeping the high land till it came to the head waters of the An-
napolis river, at this point a mere brook. After crossing the river
it kept on the south side till it reached a point opposite St. Mary's
Church. "From the north side of the river the high land extends
across the meadow so far that but a very short space of flat land
intervenes. Here the French built a bridge across the river and
made their road along the tongue of high land north, till it came
to where the present post road is. From this point on to Bridgetown)
it kept nearly the line of the present post road. This would give
the eleven miles of wilderness and just such roads as Mr. Baileys
describes. The large pine trees, flattened on one side and placed
side by side across the Annapolis Eiver, and used for bridges^ were

180 KING'S COUNTY

still to be seen as late as 1815. John Orpin, who was born in
1708, distinctly remembers the logs of these French bridges ' '.

Until after the 19th century opened, travelling in the county
was almost exclusively on horseback, the women often sitting on
pillions behind the men. Not infrequently as she rode, a woman
carried in the saddle one child before her and one behind. "When
the first carriage was introduced into the county we do not know,
but it is not at all unlikely that the chaise in which Mrs. Burbidge
accompanied the departing Cornwallis clergyman towards An-
napolis, may have been the first. About 1803, it is said, Mr. Benja-
min Belcher imported a wagon from Boston. The vehicle cost
fifty pounds, and was an object of the greatest interest to the
King's County people at large. This wagon has been called the
first one in the county, but from the preceding record it is clear
that it could not have been. It was not until 1823 that the first
wagon was brought into Kentville. In that year (if the date is
correct) a tin peddler from New England came to the village with
a white horse and a red wagon, bringing a load of tin-ware to sell.
When he had disposed of his merchandise he sold his horse and
wagon to Mr. James Delap Harris, and from miles around people
came to see the remarkable "turn-out". After that, two-wheeled
gigs and four-wheeled wagons gradually became common and horse-
back travelling steadily declined.

It must have been shortly before 1816 that a stage coach line
was established between Halifax and "Windsor, but it was not until
1829, as we have seen, that the line was extended through Kent-
ville to Annapolis. In 1816 Isaiah Smith drove the coach between
Halifax and "Windsor twice a week each way. In his advertise-
ment of his line in the Almanac he announces that the fare be-
tween these points is six dollars, and that the inside of his coach
accommodates six passengers. In 1855 the Royal "Western Stage
Coach is advertised in the Almanac to leave Halifax for "Windsor
and Kentville, every morning at seven o'clock; for "Windsor, Kent-
ville, Aylesford, Bridgetown, and Annapolis, on Tuesday, Thurs-
day, and Saturday mornings, at the same hour. From "Windsor the

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 181

coach leaves for Halifax every morning after the arrival of the
coach from Kentville ; for Kentville, and Annapolis, it leaves every
afternoon, after the arrival of the coach from Halifax. From An-
napolis it leaves for Kentville, Windsor, and Halifax, on Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday mornings at nine o'clock. The coach is
advertised to connect with the steamers running from Windsor and
Annapolis to St. John, New Brunswick, Portland, Me., and Bos-
ton. Extra coaches were dispatched on the arrival of steamers,
when the travel was especially heavy. The old stage-coach days
in the county stopped in the autumn of 1869. The shrill scream
of the engine as it tore across the silent Grand Pre, and over the
green dykes between Wolfville and Kentville, sounded the death
knell of Jehuism, — slow travelling, good fellowship, discomfort, pic-
turesqueness and all.

Writing in 1900 of the county as it was about the end of the
first quarter of the 19th century, the late Dr. James Eatchford De-
Wolf says: "Travelling through the country was a very different
matter then from the rapid transit of today. In 1828 the mail
for Halifax (carried on horseback) was due weekly, on Wednesday
at ten in the forenoon, it having been dispatched from Halifax on
Monday, at 2 P. M., more than forty-four hours before. Now there
are two mails daily, which come in one-tenth of the time. At that
time there were but two post-masters in what is now King's County,
and I believe there were none at all between Kentville and An-
napolis. In 1829 a stage coach commenced to run from Halifax
to Annapolis, three times a week in summer and twice a week in
winter. The time of leaving Halifax was five in the morning, from
May until August, six in the morning from September until Feb-
ruary, and at daylight from February until May. The fare from
Halifax to Annapolis was ten dollars, and the journey occupied
the best part of two days. The weight of baggage allowed was but
twenty pounds, all in excess of that being charged at the discre-
tion of the agent. Postage was then regulated by distance, single
letters must be on one piece of paper, but with no limit as to weight.
Envelopes were unknown, and stamps were not dreamed of".

182 KING'S COUNTY

"Previous to 1869", said Dr. Henry Chipman, some years ago,
to an audience in Lower Horton, "our railroad stopped at Wind-
sor. Before that travelling was done by private carriages, or
by the mail coach, which ran daily between Windsor and An-
ilapolis carrying Her Majesty's mail. Four and six horses were
driven. Fresh horses were 'hitched up' for the start at Kentville
and Windsor, and relays were kept at the half-way house on Hor-
ton Mountain. The drivers for many years were Harry Kilcup
and Walsh. Excellent whips they were, and when the roads were
good they drove like Jehu. Pleasant it was in fine summer weather
to sit beside the driver on the top of the coach and bowl away,
tip hill and down. When the roads were breaking up in the spring,
however, it was not so pleasant. When I was a student at King's
College, Windsor, I often travelled by coach, and I well remember
driving through Lower Horton when the wheels were sinking down
to the hubs and we passengers were obliged to turn to and help
pry them out with fence-poles. One cold December, when the roads
were hard and rough, a hind wheel smashed and down came the
coach. One of the inside passengers began to extricate himself by
tearing away the lining of the coach, when Walsh, addressing him
in anything but parliamentary language ordered him to stop and
Wait till he was let out. The passenger did not stop, and when
he climbed out, the driver saw that it was Dr. Charles Tupper,
now Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., a politician, high in authority then,
as now. It was wonderful to see how quickly Walsh changed his
tune".

The first act to incorporate a railway system in Nova Scotia
passed the legislature, March 31, 1853. This act proposed a trunk
railway from Halifax to the frontier of New Brunswick, with
branches extending eastward to Pictou Harbour, and westward to
Victoria Beach, or some other place in the county of Annapolis
having navigable communication with the Bay of Fundy. In 1865,
'66, and '67, acts were passed incorporating the Windsor and An-
napolis railway. In 1868 and '69, acts were passed authorizing the
appraising, assessing, and paying of damages in King's County for

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 189

the pt6p6Tty that had been taken by the railway. In 1869 the
road was opened from Windsor to Annapolis. In 1887 the Central
Valley Railway Company was incorporated, and in the fall of 1890
this road, from Kentville to Kingsport, was opened for travel and
freight. In 1892 it was sold to the Dominion Atlantic Railway
Coittpany, which owns and operates it still.

For many years until the preseiit, the Dominion Atlantic rail-
way has been under the efficient management of Mr. Percy Gifkins,
a resident of Kentville, he having succeeded the late Mr. Kenneth
Sutherland as manager. Mr. Sutherland's immediate predecessor
in the Management of the road was Mr. Peter Innes, at the present
time and for many years one of the most progressive agriculturists
and business men in King's Coimty. Mr. Innes was born in Thurso,
Scotland, in 1840, and was trained in railway management in the
head offices of the North British Railway Company, one of the
largest railway corporations in the British Isles. In 1871 he came
to Nova Scotia to organize the financial affairs of the Windsor and
Annapolis railway, and the following year, succeeded Mr. Vernon
Smith as general manager of the road. The railway was a con-
tractor's line, imperfectly constructed and poorly equipped, with
at that time a very scant and inadequate traffic, and for a number
of years his energies were taxed to the utmost to keep the line run-
ning, and to find money to maintain the track and provide suffi-
cient rolling stock. Later on, to complicate his difficulties, the
Dominion Government cancelled the contract under which the com-
pany had leased the Windsor branch and run their trains into
Halifax, and then followed two or three years of strenuous effort
on his part to keep the Windsor and Annapolis road open on its
own meagre earnings and to carry on litigation against the govern-
ment. Eventually the branch was restored and the government
was amerced in damages. Easier times followed, and Mr. Innes'
attention was thenceforth directed to the development of the traffic
a;nd the general improvement of the line. In 1889 he resigned the
managership on account of ill health, since when he has resided on
his latm at Coldbrook, devoting himself mainly to agricultural
pursuits.

184 KING'S COUNTY

In 1784 moiitMy packets between Falmouth, Hants County, and
New York, via Halifax, were first established, and it is unlikely
that any regular communication between Nova Scotia and the out-
side world existed before that time. For a long time after the in-
troduction of steamboats into the Bay of Fundy, small steamers
plied regularly between Windsor and St. John, New Brunswick,
but with the opening of the railway all steamers from New Bruns-
wick made Annapolis Eoyal their Nova Scotia terminal port.

As early as December, 1760, Hon. Jonathan Belcher, President
of the Council, appealed to the Lords of Trade to allow the New
England planters to have help from the Acadians that remained in
the province in rebuilding the partially destroyed dykes. "In the
month of August", writes Mr. Belcher, "the late Governor (Law-
rence) having returned from Liverpool, made a progress into these
settlements, where after having regulated several matters, the great
objects of his attention were the dykes, of which the breach made
in that of the river Canard, in the township of Cornwallis, as it was
the greatest, was his first care. For this purpose the inhabitants,
with their cattle and carriages, together with those hired from
Horton at their own expense, were joined with some of the provin-
cial troops and Acadians, who were best acquainted with works
of this kind, to make a collection of the necessary materials to re-
pair the breach. A considerable quantity was accordingly got
ready, when the innundation, usual at this time of the year, put a
stop to the work for this season. However, the materials are aU
secured against the next undertaking, and care was immediately
taken to protect as much of the dykes in this and the neighboring
townships as would inclose land sufScient to raise bread corn for
them the next year, except in Falmouth, where the upland is in
very good condition for that purpose. As the perfect establishment
of the settlements depends in a very great degree on the repairs
of the dykes, for the security of the marsh lands, from whence the
support of the inhabitants will become easy and plentiful, necessary
measures for effecting this great point have been fully considered,
and I humbly conceive that the dykes may be put into very good

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 185

condition, if with your Lordships' approbation one hundred of the
French inhabitants may be employed in different parts of the Prov-
ince to assist and instruct in their repairs, the new settlers having
come from a country in which such works are wanting".

In June, 1761, Mr. Belcher again earnestly petitioned the gov-
ernment that the new settlers might have help from the French,
and by 1765 the need of such assistance was felt by the planters
themselves to be so imperative that on their behalf Judge Isaac
Deschamps, at Windsor, drew up the following strong plea :

"To His Excellency, Montague Wilmot Esquire, Captain Gen-
eral and Governor in chief in and over His Majesty's Province of
Nova Scotia and its Dependencies, Colonel in His Majesty's ser-
vice and commanding the Troops in said Province. The Memorial
of the inhabitants of King's County Humbly Sheweth:

"That the french accadians who have hitherto been stationed
in this county, have been of great use as labourers in assisting the
carrying on our Business in agriculture and Improvements in gen-
eral, but particularly in the repairing and making Dykes, a work
which they are accustomed to and Experienced in, and we find that
without their further assistance many of us cannot Continue our Im-
provements, nor plough nor sowe our Lands nor finish the Dykeing
still required to secure our lands from salt water, and being con-
vinced from Experience that unless those Dyke Lands are enclosed
we cannot with certainty raise Bread for our Subsistence.

"Your Memorialists therefore Humbly Pray Your Excellency
will be pleased to take this matter of so much consequence to us
into Consideration, to Permit the accadians to remain with us the
Ensueing summer, and to continue to them the allowance of Pro-
visions as hitherto, which enables them to Labour at much lower
wages than if obliged to purchase Provisions, especially at the high
Price they now bear in the Country, and which will tend greatly
to the Encouragement and success of these infant settlements.

"And your Memorialists as in duty bound will ever pray, etc.
March 23rd, 1765.

186

KING'S COUNTY

John Burbidge
Saml. Willoughby
Samuel Beckwith
William Canady
Handley Chipman

Blisha Lothl-op
Silas Crane
Nathan DeWolf
Robert Dennison
William Welch

I. Deschamps
Moses Delesdernier

■ In behalf of the Inhabitants of Cornwallis

■ In behalf of the Inhabitants of Horton

W. Tonge

Henry Denny Denson
Joseph Bennett
Abel J. Michner
Joseph Wilson

Joseph Baley )

Benj. Sanford j

I In behalf of the Inhabitants of Windsor
In behalf of King's County

In behalf of the Township of Famouth

In behalf of the Township of Newport"

That this petition was successful is almost certain from the fact
that a considerable number of Acadians were still kept in the
county, who in 1768, as we learn from dispatches between the
home and provincial authorities, and from correspondence between
Lieut. Governor Francklin and Isaac Deschamps, took an unquali-
fied oath of allegiance to the British crown.

In continuing the important work of dyking the marshes, that
the Acadians had so long pursued, the New England planters fol-
lowed closely the methods of their predecessors. The French had
reclaimed many squares or oblong pieces of marsh by throwing
up dykes along the rivei* channels, and from the river, on two sides,
to the upland. In Cornwallis, however, the New England planters
not only built dykes beside the rivers, but before long threw up
substantial aboiteaus across the streams. "The first of these cross

ROADS, TRA^^LLING, DYKES 187

dykes we find", says Dr. Brechin, "is near Steam Mill Village, al-
though some claim that the Tobin Dyke on the Isaac Reid place
was built first. The second was at Upper Dyke Village, the third
was across the Middle Dyke, and the fourth ran from Hamilton's
Corner to Church Street. This last was evidently the masterpiece
of the new dyke builders; it is so scientifically constructed that
there can be no doubt that the builders of it were fairly skilled in
mechanical engineering. These dykes served a double purpose, to
keep out the tides and to be available as roads. In each of these
cross dykes, there can be no doubt, was an aboiteau or sluice. As
each successive dyke was built the old sluice was destroyed".

"The first dykes", writes Dr. Benjamin Band, "were made by
the construction of long ridges of sods, sufficiently high to keep out
the tides. The New England planters, however, shut out the riv-
ers by the constructions of aboiteaus. These were sluice-ways, with
gates swinging outward at the bottom of the channel, with a dyke
wide enough for a road, built above. After two or three years of
dyking, the salt would be freed from the marsh soil, and the al-
luvial deposit was so deep that it would for many successive years
yield two or three tons of hay to the acre, without fertilization, or
cultivation of any sort. In the autumn, a month or two after the
hay was gathered, the dyked lands would afford aftermath for the
grazing of cattle and horses. From the first, the King's County
dykes were built by common labour, and the dyked lands, while
belonging to individuals, were treated in many respects as a com-'
mon field. The management of the dykes naturally led to the crea-
tion of special officers unknown in New England, whose duties
were limited to this part of the planters' new possessions; such of-
ficers were Dyke Commissioners, Assizers, Branders, Dyke Drivers,
etc. Originally, of course, the dykes were mown and raked by
hand, todSy almost all the labour on them is done by machinery.
Putside the running dykes the salt hay was and still is piled upon
straddles. This coarse hay furnished inferior fodder for cattle,
and was largely used in winter to mix with fresh hay, and for bed-
ding in the stables and barns".

188 KING'S COUNTY

Concerning the exact location of some of the Cornwallis dykes,
Dr. Rand has elsewhere written: "On the Habitant river there was
probably a crossing of an early date at Sheffield's Mills. Here a
mill-dam was afterward built for saw and grist mills. Lower down,
at 'Randville', there were fords, but no aboiteaus. At one time an
aboiteau existed on the site of the present railway bridge across
the river. This was probably the first aboiteau made across the
Habitant. Later, an aboiteau was built near Borden's wharf, be-
tween Lower Canard and Habitant. The chief aboiteau of the river
has long been at the present crossing of the highway from Canard
to Canning. About three years ago a new aboiteau was built behiad
the Baptist meeting house in Canning. Fruitless attempts were
made to construct it a few rods further down, the failure being due
to the existence of a sandstone bottom on the north side of the
river. A large area of dyke land was lately reclaimed on the north
side of the river, a short distance above Kingsport. The tide, how-
ever, proved so powerful that a section of it had to be abandoned.
The dykes on the Habitant river are thus partly dependent on run-
ning dykes exclusively, and partly on running dykes in conjunc-
tion with aboiteaus. The Cornwallis river has always had running
dykes on each side. From Wolfville to Kentville an aboiteau, how-
ever, is now proposed at the old French ford at Starr's Point. The
Pereau river has never had but one aboiteau".

The chief dykes of the county are known as the "Wellington,
Grand, and Union dykes, in Cornwallis, and the Grand Pre and
"Wickwire dykes, in Horton, The building of the first of these was
the greatest dyke building enterprise the county has ever known.
This famous dyke was begun in 1817 and was finished in 1825.
The people of Cornwallis, says Murdoch, "at an expense of about
ten thousand pounds had built a new (the "Wellington) Dyke, en-
closing more than a thousand acres of marsh redeemed from the
sea. They had been five years on the work and it was nearly com-
pleted, when in August, 1822, the sea broke in and destroyed it.
They were in the habit of working at it all night, but on this occa-
sion the workmen, in consequence of the great fatigue they had

ROADS, TRAVELLING, DYKES 189

undergone, a few hours before the event occurred had retired".
Undismayed by the calamity they promptly went to work again and
restored the dyke. "I subsequently saw it", continues Murdoch,
"under a crop of grain, covering apparently the whole extent of
the marsh". The expense of the dyke is said to have been not
less than £20,708. When the work was done the event was cele-
brated with much festivity. In 1823 eight hxmdred pounds was
voted by the legislature toward building the dyke.

In 1830- '31 the legislature appointed Commissioners to report on
the advantages which might accrue to the proprietors of the Grand
Dyke and Union Dyke in Cornwallis, by the building of the "Welling-
ton Dyke. Between 1836 and 1862 several acts were passed by the
legislature, relative to the New or "Wickwire Dyke, in Horton. Of the
Great Horton Dyke, the Grand Pre, Dr. Henry Chipman says : ' ' Our
dyke is a monument to the skill, industry, enterprise, and thorough-
ness of the Acadian farmers. But once during the two centuries
since they built it, has the 'turbulent tide' made a breach in the work
and flooded the land. The 'Saxby tide', in the autumn of 1869,
made a clean sweep over it, carrying masses of it out bodily. The
whole three thousand acres were flooded, cattle were drowned, and
'Long Island' became an island in reality. The salt left on the land
destroyed the crop of grass for three years".

CHAPTER XII
CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF THE COUNTY

In previous chapters we have given some account of the chief
industries of the Acadians, especially of their dyke building, and
have shown how this last industry was continued by their succes-
sors. The first care of the New England planters when they came
to the county was, of course, to provide proper shelter for their
families, and the next to plant corn, flax, and roots in the already
well cultivated fields, and from the dyked marshes and the uplands
to gather hay for their cattle and sheep for the next winter's use.
As early as December 12, 1760, Mr. Jonathan Belcher writes the
Lords of Trade that already a thousand tons of hay have been
gathered in Horton, five hundred in Cornwallis, and six hundred in
Falmouth. From New England, the planters brought with them
stock, farming utensils and household goods, and the seed for future
^rops. Whatever sorts of plows, harrows, hoes, scythes, and rakes
they had been accustomed to use in New Engl?ind they, of course,
also used here. They had flails for threshing and sieves for win-
nowing grain. In their houses they had spinning wheels for flax
and wool, and hand looms for weaving linen and woolen cloth. In
building their houses and barns they gave each other material help.
In convenient places they set up blacksmiths' forges, where carts
and farming utensils were mended and oxen and horses brought
to be shod. Here and there they located carpenters' shops, where
much of their household furniture and many of the common utensils
they used were made. On the brooks they built grist mills, saw mills,
and carding mills, and in various places established brick-yards and
tanneries. The French had found the soil and climate of Nova
Scotia well adapted for fruit raising and had set out small orchards,
from which they gathered considerable crops of apples; they no

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 191

doubt had given some attention also to the growing of pears,
cherries, currants, and plums. This fruit industry the New England
planters continued, and with the ripening of their apple crops they
set up cider presses as the French before them likewise had done.

Regarding the county's subsequent agriculture and fruit rais-
ing a good deal must be said. In November, 1789, a society for pro-
moting agriculture was formed in Halifax, with Hon. Richard
Bulkeley, president; Hon. Henry Newton, vice-president; Mr. Law-
rence Hartshorne, treasurer; and Mr. James Clark, secretary; and
the 10th of December of the same year the ' ' King 's County Agricul-
tural Society", which has had a continuous history to the present
time, began its career. The wide purpose of this latter society was
declared to be "the better improvement of Husbandry, encourage-
ment of Manufactures, cultivation of the Social Virtues, acquirement
of Useful Knowledge, and to promote the good order and well being
of the Community to which we belong". The first officers of the soci-
ety were : Jonathan Crane, president ; John Thomas Hill, vice-presi-
dent; James Noble Shannon, treasurer; James FuUerton, secretary;
Pavid Denison, steward. The society stiU exists and holds meetings,
and in 1889 celebrated its centennial by a dinner at the American
House, Wolfville. The minute books from the beginning are care-
fully preserved and these give us the early membership in full. In
the list of members, as we should expect, are the names, most of
them familiar in the county still: Allison, Avery, Bacon, Bennett,
Bigelow, Bishop, Borden, Calkin, Crane, Crowe, Denison, DeWolf,
Elderkin, Fillis, Fitch, Fuller, FuUerton, Gilmore, Harding, Harris,
Hill, Johnson, Laird, Leonard, Palmer, Rathburn, Reid, Scott,
Shannon, Starr, Woodworth. One of the first acts of this society
yras the appointment of an agent in Halifax, for "the vending of
beef, etc.," and the appointment in the county of inspectors, whose
business it should be to see "that cattle sent to the agent were fit
for the market". It was further provided that when a number of
cattle were ready to be driven to Halifax, they should be divided
into lots and sent, "by ballot, in turn".

That the diversified objects for which the society was founded

192 KING'S COUNTY

were all conscientiously kept in mind its ancient records make
clear; these show that it concerned itself with the buying of
imported stock and seeds, making experiments in fertilizing land
with marsh mud, Hme, and plaster, testing new or strange crops,
holdiug fairs and ploughing matches, fencing the burying ground,
buying a pall for use at funerals, instituting Sunday schools and
paying teachers in the same, founding a circulating library, and
frequently recommending to the Town Meeting and Court of Ses-
sions, needed general reforms. A newspaper report of the centennial
celebration from which we have drawn the facts given above, goes
on to say that "these recommendations generally met a ready
response, and it is only within a few years that a memorial from the
society to the Municipal Council led to the purchase of a Poor's Farm
for the township of Horton, which has resulted in decreasing taxa-
tion and in greatly improving the condition of the poor".

In 1843, the Society had branches in Horton, Cornwallis and
Aylesford. The Horton branch had as officers, Thomas Andrew
Strange DeWolf, president; James Harris and Charles W. H.
Harris, secretaries; the Cornwallis branch had, Hon. John Morton,
president; Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton, secretary; the Aylesford
branch had, Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen, president; James D. Van
Buskirk, secretary.

In 1898, no less than nine agricultural societies existed in
King's County, their total membership being 677. The only other
counties in the province having a larger number of such societies
were, Pictou with fifteen, and Colchester with ten. Among the
many importations into the county of new varieties of agricultural
products one notable one must be mentioned here. This is the
"Bluenose" potato, imported for the Agricultural Society about
1820, by the Earl of Dalhousie. It is from this importation that
the name "Bluenose" himiourously given Nova Scotians is
believed to have come.

The famous "Letters of Agricola", which appeared anony-
mously in the Halifax Acadian Recorder, between July 25th and
December 26th, 1818, gave a great stimulus to intelligent farming

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 193

in King's County, as elsewhere throughout the province. In con-
sequence of suggestions these letters contained, agricultural
societies were organized in various counties of Nova Scotia, and
farming generally was put on a higher plane. The author of the
letters was Mr. John Young, born at Falkirk, Scotland, in Sep-
tember, 1773, and educated at Glasgow University, one of whose
sons was the Hon. Sir William Young, Kt., ninth Chief Justice of
Nova Scotia. In the last quarter of the 19th century a nephew and
namesake of Sir "William lived in Cornwallis and very successfully
farmed there.

To promote agriculture a Grange movement was organized
throughout Canada about 1878 or '79. In the Maritime Provinces
it began in Colchester county, from there spreading rapidly
through Hants, King's, Annapolis, Pictou, and Cumberland counties;
and in New Brunswick, through "Westmoreland, Albert, and York
counties. In each of these counties was a district grange, and in
the Maritime Provinces at large was a Maritime Provincial Grange,
sending delegates to the Dominion Grange, which met annually at
Toronto and Ottawa. In King's County there were strong sub-
granges at Pereau, Sheffield's MiUs, Port "Williams, and Grand Pre.
The grange system did good work in Nova Scotia for several years,
especially in promoting a system of cash buying among the farmers
and in abolishing the long credit and longer price system of the
country stores. Finally, however, dissensions arose in the manage-
ment of the granges; at headquarters in Ontario politics were
allowed too much sway, and in country places grange stores were
not managed on the best business principles. The grange move-
ment, consequently, after a few years entirely ceased.

The yield of wheat and rye in King's County in 1813, was as
follows : of wheat, in Aylesf ord 2,4071/^ bushels ; in Cornwallis 1,844
bushels; in Horton 790 bushels; in Parrsborough 158 bushels. Of
rye, in Cornwallis 1,812 bushels; in Aylesford 643 bushels; in Hor-
ton 230 bushels; in Parrsborough 190 bushels. In 1900 King's
County produced 829,922 bushels of potatoes and 57,658 tons of
hay. The value of its field crops was $777,676; forest products

194 KING'S COUNTY

$168,517; dairy products $174,557; fruits and vegetables $373,414;
eggs $34,455; wool $11,521; furs $473. Of live stock it sold 196,944
animals. In 1901 King's had 131,320 acres of improved, and 177,178
acres of unimproved, land. Of forest lands it had 73,688 acres; of
pasture land 91,247 acres; of land in field crops, 68,173 acres; in
vegetables and small fruits, 990 acres. In 1889, according to a
newspaper article, the inhabitants of Gaspereau raised and manu-
factured into pickles, 15,000 bushels of cucumbers. In 1890 from
the cultivated bogs of Aylesford some 400 barrels of cranberries
were gathered, in 1898, this crop was almost ten times as great.

April 14, 1832, an act was passed by the legislature encourag-
ing the importation of improved breeds of cattle into Nova Scotia^
and it is likely that the interest in thoroughbred stock, which led
to the passing of this act, was strong among intelligent King's
County men. In the last half of the 19th century, at least, much
attention was given in the county to the importation and breeding
of foreign stock. One of the most noted stock-raisers has been Mr.
Herbert Stairs of Cornwallis. In 1898 two Dairy Companies existed
in King's, the Acadia Dairy Company, Limited, at Grand Pre, of
which Charles H. R. Starr was president, and S. Avery Bowser,
secretary; and the Aylesford Creamery Company, at Aylesford, of
which John C. West was president, and N. J. Bowlby, secretary.

"The Annapolis Valley", says a late writer truthfully, "is one
of the favoured regions of the world for fruit culture^ Situated in
the western portion of the Provinxie, comprising Annapolis, King's,
and a part of Hants counties, it is sheltered from the cold north
winds by a range of hills known as the North Mountain, extending
from Digby Gut to historic Blomidon, while a parallel mountain
range, some eight or ten miles distant, shuts out the fogs of the
Atlantic Ocean from this charming country. A watershed about
midway of the valley divides the source of the Annapolis river
from that of the Cornwallis, the former running fifty miles west,
to the Annapolis Basin. These two small rivers, with a hundred
rippling brooks and gushing springs, water the roots of tens of
thousands of fruitful trees. The soil varies from a yielding sand

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 195

to a clayey loam, and strange though it seems, in all its varieties
is wonderfully adapted to the growth of fruits. All up and down
the Valley, orchards of apple, plum, and pear trees, with an occa-
sional peach and quince tree, cluster round the cosy farmhouses,
while strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and every other
variety of the smaller fruits and berries, grow plentifully from the
fertile soil". In June the Valley from end to end is like a sump-
tuous garden, "in that month every tree is a mass of blossoms, tha
air is laden with perfume, and the hum of bees fills the air with,
gentle music". "When the Acadians came to Minas they soon dis-
covered, as we have said, the remarkable adaptation of the King- s
County soil and climate to apple growing, and so they set out small
orchards, but of comparatively insignificant fruit. How early the
New England planters began to give special attention to the raising
of apples we do not know, but from the beginning of the 19th century,
at least, the townships of Comwallis, Horton and Aylesford, have all
raised a great deal of this fruit. Among early settlers in the county
several persons have been mentioned as being specially interested
and as interesting others in the cultivation of apples. One of thes©
was Col. John Burbidge, who is said to have introduced the "Non-
pareil" apple into the county from England, about 1775. A pear
grown in Comwallis down to a recent time was known, after CoL
Burbidge, as the "Burbidge pear". It was round. Hot large, and
and was sweet and well flavoured.

In the first quarter of the 19th century an intelligent man, a
Mr. Hugh Pudsey, came from England to Horton, where he married'
Eoxalina, daughter of Benjamin Cleveland, and sister of Mrs. Cor-
nelius Fox. He was a man of scientific tastes and had a good
library, and he imported from England grape vines and other fruit
scions, rare in the province. Others who helped promote fruit cul-
ture in the county were the Rev. John Wiswall, long settled m
Aylesford and Wilmot, and Bishop Charles In^lis, who is said to
have introduced here several fine varieties of apples, among them
the beautiful yellow "Bishop Pippin", now commonly known as
"BeUefleur". Among men who in later tim^s have been deeply and

196 KING'S COUNTY

intelligently interested in frnit raising in the county have been, the
Hon, Charles Ramage Prescott, who between 1830 and '35 intro-
duced the Gravenstein apple and the Ribston Pippin, Dr. Charles
Cottnam Hamilton, Mr, Samuel Starr and his son. Major Robert
"William Starr, Mr. John Edward Starr, Mr. Leander Rand, and Mr.
Ralph Samuel Eaton, whose wonderful "Hillcrest Orchards", in
Cornwallis (now owned by a stock company), of apples, pears,
plums, quinces, and cherries, are known to fruit raisers all over the
continent. By 1870 every farm in the fruit-growing sections of
Annapolis, King's, and Hants counties had on it many fruit-bearing
trees. The complete apple yield of the Annapolis Valley for that
year was a hundred thousand barrels, of which twelve thousand
were exported, chiefly to England. The market for Annapolis
Valley apples, at first was chiefly the United States, but about
1870- '75, exportation to the English markets began. In 1892 the
orchards of the Valley are said to have covered 25,000 acres, and to
have produced 300,000 barrels, about half of which were sent
abroad. Since that time orchard development has gone steadily
on, the crops, shipped almost exclusively to England, being at
present much greater, and the apples much flner, Ihan over before.
In 1901 the county had in orchards 12,944 acres, the adjoining
counties of Annapolis and Hants, next to Bang's the largest fruit
producing counties in the province, having respectively, but 6,264,
and 3,280 acres. Besides apples, pears and plums continue to be
widely cultivated, the "Burbank" being the most commonly grown
plum.

A horticultural society seems to have been formed in King's
County about 1825 to '28 ; in the latter year, we find as its officers :
Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, president; John Whidden, vice-
president; Ebenezer P. Harding, corresponding secretary; Caleb
Handley Rand, recording secretary ; and James Delap Harris, treas-
urer. This society is not remembered to day, and it is thought it
must have had a very brief career. A Fruit Growers' Association
and International Show Society of Nova Scotia was organized at
Halifax, March 11, 1863, with a few members. Its first meeting for

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 197

business was held in Kentville, July 3rd of the same year, Charles
Cottnam Hamilton, M. D., being then elected president. At Dr. Ham-
ilton's death in 1880 Major Robert William Starr became president,
and following him have been as presidents: Avard Longley,
1883- '84; Rev. J. R. Hart, 1885- '87 ; Henry Chipman, M. D., 1888- '90;
J. W. Bigelow, 1890- '02; S. Spurr, 1903; Peter Innes, 1904; Ralph
Samuel Eaton, 1905; John Donaldson, 1906- '07; Major Robert Wil-
liam Starr, 1908. The annual meetings of the society were held at
Wolfville until 1901, the places of meeting after that being succes-
sively Middleton, Bridgewater, Windsor, Annapolis, Wolfville, Ber-
wick, and Middleton. To the teaching and general stimulus given by
this society, the fruit industry of the Annapolis Valley owes
much of its late remarkable success. In 1873 an act was passed by
the legislature for the better protection of growing fruit in King's.
A School of Horticulture, having afiflliation with Acadia University,
for some years existed at Wolfville. At the close of 1898 this
school, then under the direction of Mr. F. C. Sears, reported sixty-
two students, fifty-seven of whom were from Nova Scotia.

When the distribution of lands to the New England planters
was made, two reservations were set apart in Cornwallis, and no
doubt two or three in Horton, for mills. The first Cornwallis mills
were. Knight's, afterward ShefSeld's, and one at Port Williams
(Terry's Creek), probably first owned by James Wood. At Shef-
field's mill a hundred acres were allowed for a mill-pond, though
so much was never used. A little later, Barnaby's grist mill, after-
wards Killam's carding mill; Bishop's mill at Lakeville; Garrett's
mill near Steam Mill Village; Obed Benjamin's mill at White Rock;
and Lane's mill on the Gaspereau river, were all established. In
1829 there were on the Habitant river, two grist mills and a carding
mill; at Canning, Harrington's tide mill for grinding wheat and
rye, in conjunction with which was a mill for grinding oats; and
on or near the Pereau river, a mill of some kind owned by Nathan
Loomer. At this period there were in the county in all, eleven grist
mills and sixteen saw mills. A little later, Thomas Dickie had a
carding mill somewhere in Lower Canard. Of tanneries there were

198 KING'S COUNTY

Chase's at Lakeville, Lowden's at Centreville, Phinney's in Kent-
yille, Bragg 's under the "Gallows hill", and probably Johnson's at
Wolfville.

The lumber interests of the county have always been consid-
erable. In 1900, as we have seen, the total value of forest products
was $168,517; of the various woods cut and exported then, pine
holding the first place. The most considerable lumber merchant
in the county for the past twenty or thirty years has been Mr. S. P.
Benjamin. His ownership of lumber woods and his large shipments
of lumber have given him a conspicuous place in the county's long
roll of enterprising men.

At various points in King's County from early times a good
deal of shipbuilding has gone on. At Scots Bay, Hall's Harbor,
Baxter's Harbor, Black Rock, and French Cross, many vessels have
been built, while at Canning and Kingsport there have been a great
many more. It is said that the first vessel built in the county was a
schooner rigged craft, of about forty tons register, built at the Corn-
wallis Town Plot about 1790. To the grand event of its launching
jpeople came in all directions from thirty miles around, and the day
throughout Cornwallis was made one of much festivity. The first
ship-builder of importance was Ebenezer Bigelow, Sr., of Canning,
who began to build vessels in 1800. His craft ranged in size from
seventy to a hundred and fifty tons. The next was Elijah "West, Sr.,
who at various points built vessels of a larger class still. In the
spring of 1813, Mr. Handley Chipman built a brig of some two hun-
dred tons on the Cornwallis river, near the bridge at Kentville. At
the same place in 1846, James Edward DeWolf built a barque,
which he called The Kent. The first vessel built at Lower Horton
(Horton Landing) was the schooner Nonpareil, built about 1848 or
'50 for Arthur M. Wier and Capt. Joseph Rathbun. Mr. Wier
owned the shipyard and the property round it, and lived in a two-
story house, with elms shading it, near the wharf. Prom him the
shipyard passed to Jacob Curry, who by and by sold it to J. B.
North. Mr. North, in 1780, built the barque Kestrel, and after that
three other barques and a brig. In the year ending September 30,

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 199

1866, there were built in the county, three barques, with a combined
tonnage of 1,467; seven schooners, with a tonnage of 394; three
brigantines, with a tonnage of 437 ; and three brigs with a tonnage
of 794.

In Canning, says a late writer, about the middle of the 19th ccut
tury it was no uncommon sight to see two ships on stocks at the same
time. From 1850 to '75 the chief ship-builders at this place were,
Ebenezer Bigelow, John Northup, William Harris, and Charles
Connors. At Scots bay the men building ships were Jacob Lockhart
and Abraham Ells. At Kingsport, Benjamin and Isaac Bigelow and
W. H. Church were the chief builders, the Bigelow brothers also
having a shipyard at Spencer's Island. At Baxter's Harbor, the
builders were Amos Baxter and John Irvin. In 1883 Philip R.
Crichton of Halifax, who had for some time been build-
ing vessels in King's County, sold his interests to C. R. Burgess
of Wolfville, and thereafter for some years Mr. Burgess built
and owned more ships in the county than any one else. "His
splendid fleet of full rigged ships, among the largest ever
built in Nova Scotia", were all built and launched at Kings-
port. These were the Kammira, 1,885 tons, built in 1882;
the Karoo, 1,900 tons, built in 1883; the Earl Burgess, 1,800 tons,
built in 1887; the Queen, 1,894 tons, built in 1887; the King's County ^
2,071 tons, built in 1890 ; the Canada, 2,127 tons, built in 1891 ; the
Golden Rod, built in 1892 ; and the Skoda, built in 1893. Launchings
at Kingsport and elsewhere were always festive occasions and
brought together great crowds of people, young and old.

From the earliest settlement of the county, fishing has been
carried on in Minas Basin and the rivers and along the Bay Shore.
By the New England planters, seines were early stretched across the
Habitant river for catching shad. In the Gaspereau river at certain
seasons alewives or gaspereaux, and salmon, have always been plenti-
ful. At Pereau, herring have been abundant. On the broad flats at
Starr's Point and at the mouth of the Canard, weirs are annually
placed for shad and other fish. In the mill-brook at Kentville, neap
its junction with the Cornwallis river, in the early spring, quantities

200 KING'S COUNTY

of smelts are caught. At Scots Bay, shad and herrings and at Hall's
Harmor, salmon, abound. In 1861 there were engaged in fishing in
the county six vessels, manned by twenty-eight men ; and fifty boats,
manned by forty-three men; of nets and seines there were in aU a
hundred and forty-one. From time to time acts have been passed by
the legislature regulating the King's County fisheries.

The county's trade began in French times with the shipment
of farm produce from Minas to Annapolis and Louisburg, and with
the return of French imported merchandise from the latter place.
At some period, we do not know precisely when, Joshua Mauger,
an adventurous trader, the son of a London Jewish merchant,
making Louisburg the centre of his business operations established
"truck houses" at Piziquid, Grand Pre, and Annapolis, and smug-
gling goods in large quantities from France sent them to these
points and to the St. John River. He is said to have been not only
a "prince of smugglers", but for years the great intermediary
between the French government and the inhabitants of Acadia, both
French and Indian, and next to the priest Le Loutre the most mis-
chievous influence in Acadia with which English authority had to
contend. The tomahawks and scalping knives in use among the
Indians are said to have been brought from France largely by him,
the French emissaries here distributing them to the dwellers in the
forest. "When Louisburg was first captured he returned for a short
time to London, but after the founding of Halifax he came to Nova
Scotia and established himself in the new capital of the province.
In Halifax he obtained a license to distil rum for the fleet, and he
was further successful in obtaining a grant of the greater part of
"Comwallis Island and Beach", a short distance from the town.
He also formed a partnership with Messrs. Apthorp and Company
of Boston to supply the government with almost all that was
required for the support of the new settlement, the profits from the
breadstuffs alone this firm imported, since they charged whatever
they pleased, amounting annually to a very large sum. When the
French were expelled from Acadia it is probable he closed his
business at Halifax, where among other valuable possessions he

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 201

bwned three distilleries, and at once settled in London. There he
secured a seat in Parliament, lived in princely style, married his
only daughter to the Due de Brouillan, and May 4, 1792, died worth
three hundred thousand pounds sterling. In connection with two
places in these provinces his name still stands. These are, Mauger's
Beach, near Halifax, and the town of Maugerville, on the St. John
river. In 1780 Mr. Bulkeley, the cool headed Secretary of the
province, estimated that in the thirty years since the founding of
Halifax, through the smuggling of Mauger and others, fully four
hundred thousand pounds currency had been lost to the treasury.
Mauger's dishonest career in Halifax had, it is said, a most per-
nicious effect in lowering the tone of commercial morals in the
province for years after he left. With the removal of the Acadians,
of course, all trading operations in King's County, except about the
fort at Piziquid, entirely ceased.

Soon after the New England planters came they opened small
general stores at Cornwallis and Horton Town Plots, and these
stores in time came to have rivals at cross roads and in other con-
venient small centres of population. Such stores as Chipman's, at
Chipman's Corner, Buckley's, at Buckley's Corner, Dickie's, near
the Baptist meeting-house corner in Canard, and others like them,
which lasted until comparatively recent times, were survivals of
these early established Cornwallis and Horton general stores. In
time, Wolfville, Kentville, Canning, Kingsport, Billtown, Berwick;
and on the bay shore. Hall's Harbor, Baxter's Harbor, Black Eock,
Harborville, and French Cross, became notable trading centres.
Since the building of the railway, naturally trade has been greatest
chiefly in the places near which the railway runs. These places are,
Grand Pre, "Wolfville, Kentville, Waterville, Berwick, and Kingston.
In the year ending Sept. 30, 1865, the value of products exported
from Cornwallis was $134,684; from Horton was $35,827. In the
following year, however, the figures were less. They were, for
Cornwallis $125,109; for Horton $32,746. The products exported
in 1865-6 comprised wood, fish, and hides to the United States,
vegetables, to New Brunswick, potatoes to New Brunswick and

202 KING'S COUNTY

Newfoundland, and fruit to New Brunswick. In the same year
there were imported from the United States, tea, leather, hardware,
earthenware, flour, and drugs and medicines. While the potato
industry flourished, shipments of potatoes were frequent to the
West Indies, return cargoes from West Indian ports being molasses,
sugar, and rum. "Before the Windsor and Annapolis railway was
built", says some one, "all poultry, pork, eggs, butter, etc., were
trucked away to Halifax, by the farmer himself, who in addition to
his own expenses and those of his team was obliged to spend three
or four days in marketing a load that now would not fill one corner
of a railway car. Cattle and great flocks of lambs were driven to
market, the driver footing it after them, often with blistered feet,
and not seldom far into the night, so as to be in Halifax at an early
hour the next morning". For a good while, potatoes were the most
important product of the Annapolis Valley, gradually, however,
apples came to take their place.

"The pioneer advocate of Boards of Trade in King's County",
says Mr. Peter Innes, "was Mr. George E. Calkin, and it was owing
to his spirited and persistent efforts, ably seconded by those of the
late Mr. Melville G. DeWolfe, that the Kentville Board was founded
in 1886. Subsequently, Boards of Trade were established in Wolf-
ville. Canning, Berwick, and Hantsport. While these Boards
admirably served the interests of their respective towns it was felt
by many that the important agricultural and rural population of
the county should have a directly representative organization of
their own to promote, foster, and protect their varied industries
and interests. Accordingly, in 1895, the King's County Board of
trade was incorporated, under the provisions of a general Dominion
Act respecting Boards of Trade, W. H. Chase being elected president
and the late Dr. Frank H. Eaton, secretary. This board, which is
the only County Board of Trade in the Dominion of Canada, con-
cerns itself with all matters affecting the progress and prosperity of
the Province and the Dominion. Its membership, in addition to the
County Councillors from every ward, includes the leading repre-
sentatives of the industries and trades of the County, and its

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 203

activities have been a distinct factor in the County's progress and
development. Its regular quarterly meetings are held alternately
at different important centres". The successive presidents of this
Board of Trade, have been: W. H. Chase,, 1895-6; Peter Innes,
1897-1902; C. 0. Allan, 1903- '05; J. A. Kinsman, 1906; A. McMahon,
1907; W. H. Woodworth, 1908; T. H. Morse, 1909. Its secretaries
have been: Frank H. Eaton, 1895- '97; Charles F. Rockwell, 1898-
'99; Ralph S. Eaton, 1900- '03; H. G. Harris, 1904; J. Howe Cox,
1905; W. B. Burgess, 1906- '08; M. K. Ells, 1909.

King's County has had a few small manufacturing interests,
but none of them have ever had great importance or have yielded
their projectors much profit; the county is not a manufacturing
county. As early as 1836 an act was passed incorporating the
"King's County Woolen Cloth and Mills Co". The persons com-
posing this company were: Caleb Handley Rand. James Edward
DeWolf, James Denison, Levi Rice, Isaac "Webster, George M. Terry,
William B. Webster, Winckworth Chipman, Silas W. Masters, and
Henry B. Webster. This laudable enterprise, however, must have
died in its infancy. Since that time several other small manufac-
turing interests have been established in the county, but except in
the ease of one or two none have had much success.

So conspicuous has King's County become for successful fruit
raising, and so much is said in certain chapters of the present book
on the extent and the beauty of the orchards in King's, that we
append to this chapter the following interesting historical sketch
of the fruit industry written for the purpose by one of the acknowl-
edged masters of fruit culture in King's, Mr. Ralph Samuel Eaton,
whose genius in this direction, as we have already said, conceived
and brought to successful issue the famous CornwaUis "Hillcrest
Orchards", not far from the county town. Mr. Eaton says:

"The first fruit gardens of King's were planted by the
Acadians, and a few individual apple trees at Gaspereau, Grand
Pre, and Canard still stand, which are supposed to have been
planted by these fruit-raising pioneers. Though the first plum
trees have long since disappeared, some varieties of this fruit are

204 KING'S COUNTY

still grown which are traceable to these French Gardens. These
patches of fruit trees planted by the French encouraged the New
England settlers who came in 1760 to the farms of the Acadians,
and they soon began to enlarge the orchards and introduce new
varieties of fruit. We have the names of several men of the early
part of the century who took special interest in fruit, and we have
also the names of a number of varieties of apples, some of them
still standard sorts, which these men introduced. Col. John Bur-
bidge has the credit of having started the Nonpareil and English
Golden Russet; Bishop Charles Inglis introduced the Bishop Pippin
or Yellow Belle fleur; Ahira Calkin, the Calkin Pippin and Calkin's
Early; David Bent brought from Massachusetts the Greening Spit-
zenbzerg, Pearmain, and Vandevere ; but the one man who exerted,
perhaps, the greatest influence on the early history of the industry
was the Hon. Charles Prescott, who removed from Halifax to
Starr's Point in 1812. Here, in his beautifully kept garden, Mr.
Prescott planted the Eibston, Blenheim, King of Pippins, Graven-
stein, Alexandra, and Golden Pippin, which he imported from
England, the Baldwin, Rhode Island Greening, Esopus Spitz,
Sweet Bough, Early Harvest, and Spy, which he obtained from
the United States, and the Fameuse, Pomme Gris, and Canada
Eeinette, which he got from Montreal. To Mr. Prescott 's credit,
too, is the introduction of many of the standard varieties of plums,
pears, and cherries since grown ia the province.

"Following Mr. Prescott, Charles and Richard Starr, Benjamin
Woodworth, James Hardwick, Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton,
Ward Baton, Charles Dickie, James Eaton, Leander Rand, and
John Chipman, in Cornwallis, and the Johnsons and DeWolfs in
Horton, should be mentioned as men who showed great interest in
the early fruit culture of the county.

"In the days of those men the great hindrance to orchard
extension was lack of markets, which in turn was because of lack of
transportation facilities. The industry was put on a stable footing,
and began a steady increase of about fifty per cent, every five years,
■when the railway was opened to Halifax. Between 1870 and '80,

CHIEF INDUSTRIES 205

regular shipments of apples began to England. The following
figures show the average export of barrels for each five years of
the last thirty years from the whole province, and it is quite safe
to allot one-half of this quantity to the County of King's. The
total crop of the county would be about one-third added to this
half for local consumption: 1880- '85, 23,920; 1885- '90, 83,249;
1890- '95, 118,552; 1895-1900, 259,200; 1900- '05, 320,406; 1905- '10,
482,298. It is felt by the best fruit growers that this ratio of
increase should be more than maintained during the next twenty
years; the result will then be that King's will raise over a million
and a half barrels a year.

"Inseparable from the history of the fruit industry in Nova
Scotia, and unquestionably the principal agent in orchard develop-
ment during these thirty years, has been the Nova Scotia Fruit
Growers' Association, which until the last few years has virtually
had its home in King's County. This association was organized in
1863, with Robert Grant Haliburton as its first president, and the
next year Dr. Charles Cottnam Hamilton as its second, and its
existence shows, as has often before been shown, how men of travel
and education frequently have marked influence in organizing and
carrying on works for the public good ontirely outside the lines of
their own proper professions. The Nova Scotia Fruit Growers'
Association was largely the outcome of the success of an exhibit
of fruit and vegetables made by the province the year before its
inception, at the Royal Horticultural Society's Exhibition in Lon-
don, England, where one silver and seven bronze medals were won by
the province besides much favourable press comment. All the early
exhibitions of Nova Scotia, from which so much inspiration and
education came, were the result of this association's activity. To
its credit, too, is due the enviable position the province has taken
at such international displays of fruit as at Philadelphia, Chicago,
Buffalo, Omaha, London, Edinburgh, Paris, and the several exhibi-
tions that have been held in the Dominion of Canada.

"No record of the King's County fruit industry would be com-
plete without the mention of names of men who have borne a

a06 KING'S COUNTY

leading part in the activities of the Fruit Growers ' Association dur-
ing the past thirty years. The man who has been identified longest
with the association, and has probably rendered it the best service,
is Major Robert William Starr of Wolfville, one of the leading
scientific pomologists of the Canadian Dominion. Major Starr was
one of the first secretaries of the association, and has been twice its
president. The other secretaries have been Andrew Johnson and
Charles H. R. Starr, of WolfviUe, and S. C. Parker of Berwick, the
last of whom has efficiently filled the position for about fifteen
years. Among the King's County men who have held the presi-
dency have been Henry Chipman, M. D., of Grand Pre, J. W.
Bigelow, of "Wolfville, who held the position with marked credit
for many years; Peter Innes, of Cold Brook, Ralph S. Baton, of
Hillcrest Orchards, John Donaldson, of Port Williams, and E. E.
Archibald of Wolfville.

"To the Fruit Growers' Association is further due the existence
for some years at Wolfville of a Horticultural School for the
province, the first of such schools on the continent, and later the
establishment of an Agricultural College, the second of its kind on
the continent, which absorbed the Horticultural School. Its latest
service to the fruit-growing industry is the establishment of a
Provincial Experimental Station for Horticulture, the farm for
which has lately been purchased at Kentville.

"The breadth of the valley in King's County, its central
position in the fruit belt of Nova Scotia, and the intelligence of its
fruit growers, combine to make the county one of the most progres-
sive fruit-raising sections of the whole American continent. Already
the development of the fruit industry has increased the value of
the county's farms many times over what they would otherwise
have been, and with the future certain progress of the industry
this value will doubtless in the future still further increase."

To this interesting sketch of the fruit industry of the county
Mr. Eaton adds the fact, that J. Spurgeon Bishop, of Auburn,
shipped the first car load of cranberries from King's County in
1892. In 1898, he says, there were 3,000 barrels of cranbefries
grown in Aylesford, in 1908, 5,000 barrels.

CHAPTER XIII
HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS

The frames of some of the first houses that were built in Corn-
wallis and Horton, but how many we do not know, were brought
from Connecticut or from Maine, and the standards of architecture
the planters who owned them recognized, were those commonly-
held in rural communities of New England at the time they came
to King's County. In his "Early Rhode Island Houses" and
"Early Connecticut Houses", Professor Isham, of Brown University,
apparently divides the dwelling house architecture of New England
before strictly Colonial times into three periods, from 1640 to 1675,
from 1675 to 1700, and from 1700 to 1730. The Connecticut houses of
the first period he describes as of one story, a story and a half, or two
stories high, and as having an "overhang", or projection over the
lower story. On the ground floor they had usually but two rooms
and a narrow entry, with sometimes a small lean-to. In the second
period the great change consisted in the addition of a kitchen and
other rooms at the back, these rooms covered by a lean-to roof and
built as an integral part of the house, and not as an ell. The dis-
tinguishing mark of the third period was the upright or fuU two-
story house, with its kitchen and kitchen chamber behind the
parlour and hall. In this period the overhang was still very often
founds but it had much less projection. In the earlier houses
the "summer", a beam supporting the upper story, and crossing
the room from the chimney to the end, was universally found,
but here it was of less depth, that it might on the under
side be flush with the joists, which were now made larger, and be
plastered over and concealed. In all three periods plaster was
freely used on ceiling and walls, and the great brick chimney, with
its cavernous fire-place, was found.

208 KING'S COUNTY

The first Cornwallis and Horton houses must have partaken of
the characteristics of both the first and the second of these early-
American architectural periods, they were chiefly low, steep-roofed,
story and a half dwellings (the roof, back and front, having the
same pitch), containing two rooms on the ground floor and often a
back porch or ell, the narrow entry leading directly to the chimney,
which occupied the end of the house, but was not uncovered. In front
of the chimney a steep, narrow stair-case led to the low-eaved bed-
rooms above. In King's County neither the uncovered chimney
nor the overhang, so far as we know, was ever found. In Connec-
ticut, says Professor Isham, at a later period, perhaps about 1760,
"the increased wealth of the colonists and their desire to follow
English fashions introduced more elaborate finish. There appears,
too, a most significant change in the plan, the introduction of the
central-entry type. Here the old entry or porch, with its chimney
behind it, is replaced by a passage running from the front to the
back of the house. There are two rooms at each side of this pas-
sage, and the chimneys of these were at first in the end walls of
the house, and then between each pair, as the chimney once was
between the rooms which anciently constituted the dwelling. A
later development still, is the addition of the ell, often really an
older house, to contain the kitchen. Already, early in this period,
if not toward the end of the one before it, the old sharp pitch of
the roof had been visibly flattened, and before the end, the gambrel
had become established, though how or when it came into fashion
is an obscure question. The central-entry plan, with either a
gambrel or a plain pitched roof held sway till long after the Eevo-
lution, and was superseded only at the Greek Revival of 1830".

In Nova Scotia the "Greek Revival" never spread. Nowhere
there did the lofty-pillared mansions, so conspicuous in many New
England and Middle States' towns, rear their imposing heads. The
plain two-story, central-entried or more frequently, gambrel-roofed
house, was the highest type of dwelling Cornwallis and Horton, as
a general thing, ever achieved. In the first quarter of the 19th
century a few houses showing Colonial influence appeared, but

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 209

these -were conspicuously few. For the most part, the King's
County houses, at least those built before 1860, were central-entried,
story-and-a-half houses, with chimneys of not very large size
between each pair of rooms on the first and second floors. In the
larger villages slightly different types have developed, small
piazzas often serving to break the monotony of line. The four most
conspicuous examples in Horton and Cornwallis of houses of a, more
ambitious type, are the Colonial house built apad originally occupied
by Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, near the. Cornwallis Town Plot,
the house in Wolfville built by Elisha DeWolf, Jr., that built in
Kentville by David Whidden, Sr., long owned by Hon. James Delap
Harris, but now by Col. Leverett de Veber Chipman ; and the house,
also in Kentville, of Mr. Caleb Handley Sand, now owned by Col.
Wentworth Eaiton Roscoe.

Of the early Norwich, Connecticut, houses. Miss Caulkins, the
historian says: "Towns were not built in those days like a factory
village, all at once and after one model. At Norwich, especially,
if considered in its whole extent, great diversity in the form and
position of the buildings was displayed. Here a house stood
directly on the town street; another was placed at the end of a
lane; a third in a meadow by a gurgling brook; and others were
scattered over the side-hills, or sheltered under jutting ledges of
rock. Some were only one-story, with two rooms, but the better
sort presented a wide, imposing front of two stories, ending in a
very low story in the rear. The windows were small and few. The
rooms were supplied with chimney-closets, both over the fire-
places and by their sides. In the chambers, and sometimes even in
the garret, large closets might be seen diving here and there into
the chimney, or occupying the space between the chimneys. As
the houses decayed, these closets became receptacles for rubbish
and vermin. Often in later times, the wrecks of discarded furni-
ture, old snow-shoes, moth-eaten buff-caps, broken utensils, and
sometimes books and pamphlets, or written papers, discolored,
tattered, nibbled, till they were worthless, have been dragged from
those reservoirs".

210 KING'S COUNTY

Suggestive, indeed, this description is of the location and
and general external and internal appearance of many of the
Cornwallis and Horton houses that older people, bom in the county,
remember well. As a rule, the houses of the Cornwallis and Horton
planters were placed a very short distance off the main roads, with
small flower gardens in front and vegetable gardens at the side.
The most important interior feature of the house was the cavernous
fire-place. In these huge fire-places, on winter nights, the flames
from great logs "bellied and tugged" in a majestic way. Wood
was abundant, though it often had to be hauled a long distance,
and the absence in the fall of a generous wood-pile was usually
a distinct indication of unthrift, as well as a mournful prophecy
of discomfort to the household the long winter through. In 1744
Benjamin Franklin invented a cast-iron open heater, the Franklin
stove, but the cast-iron box stove was not invented till 1752. In
1782, and very likely earlier, Franklin stoves were advertised for
sale in Halifax, and it is very likely that some few of these almost
as soon as they reached Halifax found their way into King's County
houses.

As late as from 1885- '90 some few of the old first planters'
houses of the county were still standing. One of these was a
gambrel-roofed house at Grand Pre, in 1885 occupied by Mr. H. C.
Vaughn; another a house built by Jonathan Hamilton, at the date
mentioned occupied by Col. Tuzo, and believed to be the oldest
house then standing in the eastern end of the county.

In Connecticut, in the middle of the 18th century, the great
mass of furniture, even in rich men's houses, was entirely of
native manufacture, and was made of cedar, white wood, cherry,
and black walnut. Among these woods, cherry, especially, had
favour for the construction of chests, tables, chairs, and cases of
drawers. The furniture the Bang's County planters brought with
them from Connecticut must have been chiefly of these common
woods. They had two, three, four or five slat, black-painted rush-
bottom chairs, oval tables, tables with drop leaves, high-post bed-
steads, chests of drawers, brass dog's head andirons, bellows, iron'

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS Sll

shovels and tongs, often with brass tops; warming pans, foot-
stoves, brass kettles, wool and flax spinning wheels, and possibly
a few of not the most expensive grades of tall clocks. In Miss
Esther Singleton's "The Furniture of our Forefathers", the
author says: "It is customary to think of old and 'Colonial' fur-
niture as consisting entirely of mahogany. This idea is erroneous.
Mahogany furniture was virtually non-existent in the South before
1720. People in Moderate circumstances occasionally possessed a
mahogany table, but their furniture was almost entirely of oak,
pine, bay, cypress, cedar, and walnut". In New England
mahogany did not much make its appearance before 1730, "when
an occasional dressing box begins to appear in the inventories ' '. How
many pieces of mahogany furniture were brought into King's
County from Connecticut, or were later imported from England,
or purchased in Halifax, we cannot, of course, tell, but it is doubt-
ful if before 1830 or '40 there was very much. In Halifax and
"Windsor, however, where there was a good deal more wealth than
in the villages of King's, it is likely that as soon as mahogany
became at all common in Boston it pretty freely appeared.

Of the furniture of Halifax houses towards the end of the
18th century and the beginning of the 19th, Dr. George W. Hill
says: "The furniture in the dwellings of those who possessed
means was of a far more substantial character than that now used
by persons of the same class, and was considerably more expensive.
The householder, however, was content with a far less quantity
than is deemed necessary at the present day. It was usually made
of mahogany wood, of a rich, dark colour. The dining-room table
was plain but massive, supported by heavy legs, often ornamented
at the feet with the carved resemblance of a lion's claw. The side-
board was high, but rather narrow and inelegant; the secretary or
covered vn-iting desk was bound with numberless brass plates at
the edges, corners, and sides. The cellaret, standing in the corner,
which held the wines and liquors brought up from the cellar for
the day's consumption, was also bound elaborately with plates of
burnished brass. The chairs, cumbrous, straight-backed, with

U% KING'S COUNTY

titei? cfli^^ipn? covered with blacks hor^e-haircloth, were as uncom-
fpFt^tjle as they were hefivy. The sof^, when found, was unadorned
but roomy. The great arm-chair deserved its title, for it was wide
enough and deep enough to contain not only the master of the
hpl:^sehold, but, if he pjea,§ed, sevepal of his children besides. These
article^ for tbe most part cowppised the furniture of the upper
pla^ses.

"That contaijied in the bedroom was built of the same wood,
ap4 of a corresponding style. The bedsteads were those still knQwn
as four-poste4, invariably curtained, and with a canqpy overhead,
Upt pnly shutting put air, but involving serious expense and labour
to the matron, as ^t the approach of winter and summer the curtains
were g,lw^ys changed- The chests of drapers ai^d the ladies' ward-
rpbep were covered with the ubiquitpus brazen plates, and being
kept bright, g^ve the poom ftn a,\T of comfort and cleanliness. In
filmost every hall stood a clock, encased by a frame of grefit size ;
^ Qnston; introduced by the Germans, from whose native la,nd they
^eem to have been imported in great nijmbers. The mistress of such
an establishment ha4 no sinecure in keeping such furniture in
or4er; and it was not an unfpunde4 cpmpla,int which they pre-
ferred, that tbe time of ope servant was wholly engrossed with the
daily routine of burnishing the metal on the furniture and doors,
^nd polishing the wood. For common use rough tables were made
by the piechanics of the town ; and chairs with rush-bottomed seats
were mj^nflfactijred in an old establishment in HoUis Street, con-
ducted by one of the early settlers. It was necessary, however, to
speat some months before the chairs were actually needed, and if
the good man happened to be out of rushes, the intending purchaser
was obliged to wait until the rushes grew, were cut down, and
4ried".

The dress of the period in New England between the strict
Purit9.n times and the Eevolution, "cannot be eulogized," says
Miss Caulkins in her History of Norwich, "for its simplicity or
economy. The wardrobe of the higher circles was rich and extrava-
gant, and among the females of all classes there was a passion for

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 618

gathering and hoarding articles of attire beyond what was necessary
for present use, or even for yeal's ahead. It was an object of
ambition to have a chest full of linen, a pillow-hier of stoekihgs, aiid
other articles in proportion, laid by". For example, a certain
widow Elizabeth White of Norwich, daughter of Samuel BliSs, and
formerly Wife of Daniel White of Middletown, tfrhen she died (in
1757) had among her effects, gowns of brown duroy, striped stuff,
plaid stuff, black silk crape, calico, and blue camlet ; a scarlet Cloak,
blue cloak, satin-flowered mantle, and furbelow scarf; a woolen
petticoat with calico border, a camlet ridihg-hood, a long silk velf et
hood, white hoods trimmed with lace, a silk boimet, nineteeil caps;
cambric, laced silk and linen handkerchief fe, sixteen in all; mutelin
laced, flowered laced, and gfeen taffety aptoiis, fourteen in all; a
silver ribband, a silver girdle and a blue girdle; four pieces
of flowered satin; a parcel of crewel, a woman's fan, a gold
necklace, a death's head gold ring, a plain gold ring, a set
of gold sleeve buttons, a gold locket, a silver haii* peg, silver
cloak clasps, a stone button, set in silver; a large silver
tankard, a silver cup with two handles, a silver cup with
oue handle, a large silvet spoon; and besides all these
treasures, some turkey-worked chairs. The more interesting to us
is this remarkable inventory from the fact that Madam Elizabeth
White, both by birth and by marriage was related tci persons iii
King's Coimty tracing their descent from the Connecticilt Blisses
and Whites.

In her "Historic Dress in America", Elizabeth MeClellah says:
"We find that in 1745 the hoop had increased at the sides ahd
diminished in front, and a pamphlet was published in that year
entitled 'The Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Pettidoat, as the
fashion now is'. The hoop of this period was a great bell-Shaped
petticoat or skirt of the dress stiffened by whalebone. The ihaterial
Was placed directly upon it, so that, being a part of the gown itself,
it was customary to speak of ' a damask hoop ', or ' a Brocade hoop ' ' '.
In the summer of 1745, "Gypsy" straw hats appeared, with a
ribbon tying them imder the chin. At this time, ladies* hair was

214 KING'S COUNTY

dressed rather close to the head, French curls (which looked "like
eggs strung in order on a wire tied around the head"), and a little
later Italian curls, "which had the effect of scollop shells and were
arranged back from the face in several shapes", or the tete de
mouton, or tete moutonee, in which the hair was curled close all over
the back of the head", being fashionable. By 1760 no doubt these
fashions had considerably changed, but some of them in more or
less modified form the wives and daughters of the King's County
planters probably brought with them from Connecticut. At the
time of the migration the calash, as a head covering for women does
not seem to have come into fashion. Women of mature years all
wore close-fiitting linen caps, and whatever their bonnets may have
been for formal occasions, it is likely that our grandmothers for
simple goings abroad commonly wore home-made silk or woolen
hoods.

By 1779, in Connecticut, "cushions stuffed with wool and
covered with silk" were used to comb the hair over, this mode of
hair-dressing making the calash necessary instead of the bonnet.
The calash "was large and wide, a vast receptacle for wind, and an
awkward article of attire, but often shrouding a health-brimming
face in its depth, needing no other ornament than its own good
humoured smile". The word honnet, says Mrs. Alice Morse Barle,
does not appear in America till 1725. By the middle of the cen-
tury, however. Quilted bonnets, Kitty Fisher bonnets, Quebeck
bonnets, Oarrick bonnets, Banelagh bonnets, French bonnets.
Queen's bonnets. Cottage bonnets, Russian bonnets. Drawn bonnets.
Shirred bonnets, were all advertised by New York and Boston
milliners. To Halifax, and so to the smaller towns of Nova Scotia,
it is likely that most of the styles of head covering popular in
Boston and other leading places of New England little by little
found their way. As Halifax was the headquarters of fashion in
Nova Scotia, it is probable that very early some King's County
women bought their best millinery there.

In 1761, and long after, both for men and women, cloaks of
some kind were popular in the county. The cloak is always a

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 215

comfortable article of dress, for it wraps the form well, and is easy
to be thrown on or off. In New England, scarlet cloaks for women
were worn for several successive generations, and it is impossible
that the first planters' wives should not have brought some of
these with them to the province when they came. The capucin or
hooded cloak, the cardinal, the pellerine, all these may have found
their way from Connecticut here. Whether muffs were used in
the county as early as 1761 we do not know, but they must have
become common soon after, for Mrs. Earle says that "from 1790
tiU 1820 great muffs never went out of fashion for women", or to
a certain extent for men. It is likely that because of the cold
climate of Nova Scotia, furs were early universally worn in King's
County, and that soon after the planters came they began to
slaughter the little fur-bearing animals to secure these articles of
dress.

In 1820, according to Mrs. Earle, a description of the dress
worn by the generality of New England men in the years previous
to the Revolution was given in the Old Colony Memorial. The
description says: "In general men, old and young, who had got
their growth, had a decent coat, vest, and small clothes, and some
kind of a fur hat. These were for holiday use and would last half
a lifetime. Old men had a great coat and a pair of boots. The
boots generally lasted for life. For common use they had a long
jacket, or what was called a fly coat, reaching doAvn about half
way to the knee. They had a striped jacket to wear under a pair of
small clothes like the coat. These were made of flannel cloth. They
had flannel shirts and stockings and thick leather shoes. A
silk handkerchief for holidays would last ten years. In summer
they had a pair of vnde trousers reaching half way from the knee
to the ankle. As for boys, as soon as they were taken out of petti-
coats they were put into small clothes, summer and winter. This
lasted till they put on long trousers, which they called 'tongs'.
They were but little different from the pantaloons of today. These
were made of linen or cotton, and soon were used by old men and
young, through the warm season. Later, they were made of flannel

216 KING'S COUNTY

cloth, and were in general use for the winter. Young men never
thought of great-coats; and overcoats were then unknown".

This account no doubt accurately describes the ordinary cloth-
ing of many of the New England planters and their sons who came
to the county in 1760 and '61. It is doubtful if any of them were
able to indulge in the "exceeding magnifical" waistcoats, "with
their embroidered pocket-flaps and buttonholes, and their beautiful
paste buttons; these latter rich in coloured enamels and jewels, in
odd natural stones of lovely tints, such as agates, carnelians, blood-
stones, spaf, marcasite, onyx, chalcedony lapis lazuli, malachite",
which Mrs. Earle herself describes as worn by the richest New Eng-
land men. Nor that any of them, like a certain Boston bridegroom,
wore rose-pink waistcoats, embroidered in silver, with buttons of
darker pink shell in silver settings ; or silver-gray velvet coats, also
with shell buttons; or white satin small clothes, but the dress of
the most important of them must have been such as comfortably
off New England rural gentlemen of their time were accustomed
to wear.

The only attempt, so fat as we know, to record the fashions
of dress in Nova Scotia, at any period, is that of the late Rev.
George W. Hill, D. C. L. long the beloved Rector of St. Paul's
Church, Halifax, who died in England a few years ago. Of men's
dress in Halifax in the latter part of the 18th century. Dr. Hill
says: "The fashion of the times was to wear the hair powdered,
with a queue. This was a long and tedious process. As the hair
dressers were few they were compelled, in otder to get through
their task previous to the hour appointed for a festivity, to begin it
early in the morning. He was an unfortunate man, whose turn
came first, for he was obliged to sit the whole day in idleness, or
move with slow and measured step, lest he should disarrange the
handiwork; sleep he dare not, for one unlucky nod would spoil it
all, and so he was forced patiently to wait until the time came, and,
then with cautious Wary step, proceed slowly to his host's On such
occasions the full dress consisted of knee-breeches, silk stockings,
shoes and silver buckles, white neckerchief of amazing thickness.

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 217

straight-collared coats, ornamented with large buttonSj a coloured
waistcoat, and hanging at the side a sword or rapier. This last
addition to the costume, which was more like a long dagger than
a sword, was looked upon as the distinguishing badge of one who
was entitled to be considered as an esquire or gentleman. And
this species of court dress was frequently called into use. The
custom of constantly calling together the leading men for consul-
tation on topics of importance to the colony, resolved itself, as time
passed, into the holding of levees. In the course of some years
these official gatherings were held no less than nine times, and on
all these occasions the streets leading to Government House, were
filled with the gentlemen of the powdered hair, the silk stockings,
the silver-hilted sword".

How many of the King's County gentlemen of the 18th and
early 19th centuries on state occasions wore frilled shirts, knee-
breeches, wigs or powdered hair, cocked hats, and swords, it is
impossible to say, but some of them, like Col. "William Charles
Moore, and most probably Col. Burbidge, Benjamin Belcher, Hand-
ley Chipman, John Wells, the DeWolfs, and others, did. "By
1809", says Mrs. Earle, "we find a stiff standing collar (called a
dicky in New England) on the necks of all men, worn with or
without the full pudding cravat. The shirt-frill still continued to
be worn. I have portraits wherein a full, finely-pleated shirt-frill,
a jabot shaped chitterlings a pudding cravat, and a dicky can be
be seen on one unfortunate wearer. When the waistcoat stood up
fiercely outside this wear, and an ear-high coat collar was a wall over
all, no wohder men complained that they could not turn their heads
or move their necks a half degree. It seems to me a period of excep-
tional discomfort for men". Until near the middle of the 19th cen-
tury, in King's County, and with old men long after that, the dicky
and large black stock were commonly worn. For Sundays and state
occasions, good black broadcloth, both for trousers and long frock
coats, was almost invariably used, but on week days men, old and
young, appeared in grey homespun, w^oveu either at home or on
some community loom. How early silk hats, "beavers" as they

218 KING'S COUNTY

were called, came into use, we do not know, but certainly;
soon after the 19th century began they were considered necessary,
at least in summer, for Sunday and holiday wear.

The tables of King's County people have always been bounti-
fully supplied. As a rule, says Dr. Hill, writing of Halifax in the
18th century, food was plentiful and good, and this has always
been true of King's County as well. Dr. HiU's account of the
supply for Halifax tables ia the 18th century, is interesting. He
says: "Corned-beef, pork, and salted codfish, far more frequently
formed the dishes of all classes than fresh meat. For delicacies
and variety, anxious housekeepers were driven to ingenious devices
in cooking. The same species of meat was dressed in many ways.
Poultry early came into fashion, and for game a porcupine was con-
sidered the right thing. For vegetables each man was dependent
either on the produce of his own garden, or if he lived in the middle
of the town, where gardens could not be, he might purchase from
the public gardener. When after a few years these public gardens
were abandoned, the want of vegetables was very seriously felt,
and it was then viewed not only as an enterprise on the part of the
proprietor, but as highly conducive to the public welfare, when on
Saturdays he sent one wheelbarrow filled with greens and
vegetables from a well-kept garden near Freshwater Bridge. All
the ungardened gentlemen kept watch for the passage of this valu-
ably laden train, and followed it down to the market that they
might get their share. The butchers' meat was carried round to
the customer in the ordinary tray by boys, or on small carts drawn
by dogs: as was also the bread baked at the two chief bakeries".
As to drink, "wines and strong liquors" were always plentiful
and "a craving for stimulants early became the crying evil of the
town".

In King's County, fruits and vegetables of the finest kinds
have always been plentifully raised, in the Basin and the rivers
the best fish has abounded, beef, mutton, and poultry have been of
excellent quality, and bread and pastry have usually been baked
at home. Consequently, the limitations felt by Halifax house-

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 219

keepers can hardly be said to have been felt here. In all the early-
years of the New England occupation of the county, and indeed
until comparatively recent times, a good deal of rum and cider were
drunk, and from the records of the Court of Sessions we learn that
the results were often of a most disastrous kind. Yet it can hardly
be said that drunkenness has ever been a conspicuous King's
County vice. Of "Windsor township, shortly after Hants County
was set off from King's, Dr. Henry Youle Hind, in his "Old Parish
Burying Ground", says: "In the four years included between
1788 and 1792, great efforts at reform were made in Windsor town-
ship", as indeed in Hants County at large. "The old Parish
Church was built, the Academy was opened, the College was
founded and inaugurated, a Temperance Society was organized, a
Beading Society was established, men were fined for being intoxi-
cated in the streets, citizens were arrested and fined for uttering
one profane oath, public whipping for misdemeanors was prac-
tised, the pillory was in full operation, sinners were mulcted for
not going to church, constables were appointed to inspect public
houses on the Sabbath Day, women of light character were hustled
out of the village by officers of the law, and petitions from the
Bench and the Grand Jury were in order to stop trade with the
United States. Yet, in the midst of all these efforts at goodness,
rum strove hard, and often succeeded in holding the reins of
power". At this period, as later. King's County undoubtedly had
its share of moral defects, yet gross immorality can nowhere be
said to have been, in any remotest corner of it, a glaring thing.

In pursuance of the mention by Dr. Hind of fines being exacted
for failure to attend church, it may be noticed that among the
early statutes made in the province is one which prescribes that
"a person absenting himself from public worship for the space of
three months, without proper cause, if the head of a family, shall
pay a fine of five shillings, every child over twelve years of age,
and every servant, five shillings". It was also enacted that in
Halifax "the church wardens and constables should once in the
forenoon and once in the afternoon, in the time of divine service,

220 KING'S COUNTY

■walk through the town to observe and Suppress all disorders and
apprehend all offenders". In Windsor, on the 24th of April, 1789>
the Court of Sessions of Hants County directed that as George
Henry Monk and Nathaniel Ray Thomas, Esqrs., Massachusetts
Loyalists, "had neglected to attend divine service for the space of
three mouths, to the evil exahiple of society, these two getitlemen
should be fined ten shillings each". The Sessions record reads
that Mr. Thomas paid his fine, but that Mr. Monk on technical
grounds was relieved from doing so.

In Windsor, from the eal-liest period, the Church of England
■was pre-eminent among religious bodies, but in Cotnwallis and Hor-
ton Puritan Independency bore less interrupted sway. With the
Nova Scotia Congregationalists outward conformity to the require-
ments of Religion was not so much a matter of course as ■with
Anglican Churchmen, and moreover, in their eafliest years in the
Cbunty the Congregationalist planters had only desultory feligiolis
services of their o^wn denomination, when they had any at all.
Consequently, We do not hear in King's County of presentments by
the Grand Jury ot Court of Sessions foi* failure to attend chiiteh.
That the keeping of Sunday free from labour, however, was an abso-
lute rule, trill be understood from the fact that in 1761 the provin-
cial legislature enacted that no person ot persons should "do ot
exercise any labour, Work, or business, or his of their ordinary
callings, or other worldly labour, or suffer the same to be dohe, by
his or their servant or servants, child or children, either by land or
by water (works of necessity and charity alone excepted), or use
or suffer to be used, any sport, game, play or pastime, on the Lord's
Day, or any part thereof", under penalty of ten shillings for each
offence.

With few books and almost no newspapers, how the long
Sundays were spent in the various scattered communities of King's
County in these times one often wonders. In later days churches
■were multiplied and it became almost as much the rule to attend
service, even when the preachers' doctrines were not fully agreed
■with, as it was in communities where Anglicanism strongly prevailed.

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 2gl

On week days and evenings, however, the natural instinct for
diversion was permitted to assert itself, and social gatherings on
winter nights, and picnics in summer, besides what may be called
"industrial frolics", were very common. In Anglican and Pres-
byterian circles, dancing and cards were more or less freely allowed,
but before the middle of the 19th century, and indeed a good deal
later, among Baptists and Methodists indulgence in simple amuse-
ments of this nature was regarded as sinful in the extreme. In
Henry AUine's New Light church in Cornwallis, August 21, 1792,
"Sister Susanijah Eaton, made a public acknowledgement of her
levity, dancing, etc., and still desired to walk with the church,
except in the Sacrament". About the same time "Sister Julia Ann
Sivgard" was suspended from the church "on account of levity,
siuging songs, etc., and had no desire to lay the least restraint upon
herself"— poor light-minded, song-singing Sister Julia Ann! As
people's ideas grew broader, what was known as the best society
of the county indulged freely in dancing and cards, and at least
after the middle of the 19th century, many gay and rather elegant
entertainments were given every winter, especially in and near
the more important villages and towns.

To the New Light revival in Cornwallis and Horton must
la,rgely have been due the strong objection to dancing which so
late continued to prevail in the township, for at the time our
ancestors left Connecticut, "neighborly dancing" was one of the
commonest amusements in that colony. On the 12th of June, 1769,
a great wedding dance took place at New London, at the house of
Squire Nathaniel Shaw. His son, Daniel Shaw, had just married
Grace Coit, and ninety-two gentlemen and ladies came to the dance.
It is recorded that this merry assemblage danced "ninety-two jigs,
fifty-two contra dances, forty-five minuets and seventeen horn-
pipes", and that they retired at forty-five minutes past midnight.
The music for these Connecticut dances was often furnished by a
skilled fiddler; though quite as often, we learn, part of the com-
pany sang for the others to dance. The suppers that followed the
dancing were of cake, nuts, apples, and cider. In winter, sleighing

222 KING'S COUNTY

parties were common, and on Election, Training, and Thanksgiving
days, shooting at targets, horse-racing, wrestling, running, and
jumping, were popidar amusements. In King's County, also, these
athletic sports must sometimes have been indulged in, and from the
love of good horses that has always prevailed, one can hardly believe
that horse racing did not at an extremely early date have a recog-
nized, if somewhat qualified, place among the county's diversions.
Tradition has it, says Dr. Hind, that during his administration as
governor of the province (1766-1773) Lord William Campbell had
a race-course round Fort Edward hill at "Windsor, and this may
easily have been the formal beginning of horse racing in the County
of King's. In 1773, the Nova Scotia Gazette advertises that at a
fair to be held at Windsor races are to be held, the competition in
which is to be limited to native bred horses. The prizes to be run
for are to be one "plate" of twenty pounds, and one of ten pounds.
"This day", says Henry AUine, in his journal, writing on the 28th
of February, 1781, "I went from Cornwallis to Horton, and O,
how was I grieved to see a vast crowd of people at horse-racing!
O, if they knew the worth of those precious hours they are
wasting, and the danger their poor souls are in, they would not
risk their souls on such a pinnacle of danger"!

In Halifax, theatrical performances were popular at an early
date. In April, 1773, two comedies, "The Suspicious Husband",
and "The Citizen", were given for the benefit of the poor, the
price of admission to this double performance being two-and-six-
pence. About 1818 two rival theatrical companies were perform-
ing in Halifax, only one public theatre, however, a theatre situated
on Fairbanks' Wharf, being in existence in the town. A few of the
King's County people, no doubt, from time to time saw these
Halifax performances, but travelling was expensive and difficult,
and the great majority of them could hardly ever, if ever, have
visited the city.

In Nova Scotia at large, until daguerreotyping became known
there were very few portraits of any kind made. Consequently, of
the earliest Eling's County settlers we have no likenesses. With

HOUSES, FURNITURE, DRESS 223

the advent of the Loyalists from the richer American colonies a few
oil portraits came into the province, but in King's County, to the
middle of the 19th century, at least, there must have been almost
none. In 1839 the French Daguerre perfected the wonderful art ever
since known by his name, and by the middle of the century, or a
little later, beautiful daguerreotype portraits were freely made in the
county. As the art of photography developed, the taking of small
card photographs and tin-types became common, and thus by
degrees photographic portraiture in the county became a finished
art.

In common with all civilized peoples, the King's County
planters loved and cultivated ornamental shade trees and flowers.
The native flora of Nova Scotia is similar to that of eastern New
England, but the Connecticut people brought with them from their
old homes not only the imported Lombardy Poplars, but most of
the beautiful vines and garden flowers they had cultivated with
affection on the places they had left. On the trellised porches and
in the gardens of King's County will still be found blooming lineal
successors of the fragrant cream-and-pink petalled honeysuckles,
and the luscious white roses, and other familiar flowers, that are the
delight of summer visitors to Norwich and Lebanon, in the State
of Connecticut, to-day.

In the early King's County gardens grew freely, old-fashioned
sweet-wiUiams, shy lilies of the vaUeys, rich carnation pinks, hardy,
gay coloured stocks, dainty sweet-peas, pungent scented southern-
wood, blue bachelors' buttons, deep-belled foxgloves, asters, mari-
golds, nasturtiums, and fragrant mignonette. In the yards were
clumps of red cabbage, or pink blush, roses, drooping bushes of
white waxberries, and heavily laden purple lilac bushes ; and some-
times, interspersed, the dominating simflower, with his huge, golden,
heavy-fringed head. Above them all the acacia often hung his
fair clustering blooms, and along the roadsides, a little further away,
would be spicy-smelling Balm-of-Gilead trees, and the drooping
boughs, laden with glistening scarlet berries, of the sturdy mountain
ash.

CHAPTEK XIV
MARRIAGES, DOMESTIC LIFE, SLAVES

In the King's County township books, the parish register of St.
John's Church, Cornwallis, and the record of licenses, in Halifax,
most, if not all of the early marriages solemnized in the county after
1760 will be found recorded. In Nova Scotia, from 1758, when the
first Assembly met, until 1832, in spite of the legal religious equality
that was promised to all settlers in the province except Roman
Catholics, licenses to marry without the publication of banns were
strictly withheld from dissenters from the Church of England. In
the first Assembly an act was passed imposing a fine of fifty pounds
on any one who should celebrate a marriage without publication of
banns, except under a license from the governor. From the gov-
ernor, through the Provincial Secretary, it was always easy on
payment of twenty shillings currency to obtain a license, but
licenses were invariably addressed to some minister of the Anglican
Church, never to one of another denomination. Very early, how-
ever, it became common for the clergymen who had received these
licenses, for a consideration to transfer them to ministers of other
religious bodies. The license invariably specified that the marriage
was to be performed according to the rites of the Church of
England, but even this restriction, it is said, was not by any means
always observed.

By 1818 the double restriction concerning the performance of
marriages became so intolerable to the people discriminated against
that strong petitions were presented in the legislature for entire
equality in the laws. The complainants properly described the
discrimination against them as an infringement of the liberty in
religion that had been so frankly promised them when they came
to the province. In the protracted discussion of the subject which

DOMESTIC LIFE 225

now arose in the Assembly, Col. Jonathan Crane of Horton, among
others, took a leading part, "he showed that the license system had
existed for sixty years and more, and that it was peculiar to the
Church of England. He concurred in the opinion that it was a
grievance that dissenters were obliged to apply for a license to the
head of a church to which they did not belong". Changes in the
laws, however, are usually slowly made, and it was not until 1832
that the oppressive restrictions were removed. By an act of the
legislature passed on the 14th of April of that year it became lawful
to issue marriage licenses to the duly ordained and settled ministers
of all denominations, the parties desiring the license, however, being
required to belong to the same denomination as the minister by
whom the ceremony was to be performed. The preamble to the act
declares, that "it is expedient that the ministers of various denomi-
nations of Christians within this province should possess the power
of solemnizing marriages by license, without the publication of
banns, according to the forms of their respective churches, or
religious persuasions, and it is expedient that such power should
be granted". Under the new system, as under the old, a bond was
always given by the intending bridegroom, declaring, under
penalty of a hundred pounds, that the parties were not already
married, and that they did not come within the table of prohibited
degrees.

The first marriage recorded on the Town Book of Cornwallis
is that of Archelaus Hammond and Jerusha, daughter of Simon
and Jerusha Newcomb; it was performed by Handley Chipman,
Justice of the Peace, on the 22nd of June, 1762, "agreeable to the
form prescribed in the Common Prayer Book". Amongst other
couples Mr. Chipman married also, July 29, 1763, James Condon
and Sibel Bill. An early marriage in Cornwallis, performed by
the Rev. Joseph Bennett, Anglican missionary, probably on one of
his brief visits to the town, was that of Joseph Chase and Hannah
Ells, the date being October 21, 1764. A somewhat curious marriage
ceremony which is recorded at length in the Cornwallis Town
Book was that which united Stephen Chase and Abigail Porter. It

226 KING'S COUNTY

bears date August 2, 1764. The post facto declaration made by the
parties is as follows: "Whereas Stephen Chase of Cornwallis, in
the county of King's County, and in the Province of Nova Scotia,
yeoman, and Abigail Porter, daughter of Samuel Porter, late of
Cornwallis, deceased, and Remember, his wife; they, the said
Stephen Chase and Abigail Porter having declared their intention
of marriage and nothing appearing to obstruct — Therefore these
may Certify to all whom it may Concern that for their full accom-
plishing of their said Intentions of Marriage, they the said Stephen
Chase and Abigail Porter appeared at the House of Said Stephen
Chase in said Cornwallis, before a number of people met together
for that purpose, and then and there the said Stephen Chase took
the said Abigail Porter by the hand and declared that he took her
to be his Wife and promised to be a True and Loving Husband until
Death should separate them, and then and there the said Abigail
Porter took the said Stephen Chase to be her husband and in Like
Manner to be a true and Loving Wife unto him until death should
separate them, and furthermore as a further Confirmation thereof
she the said Abigail assumed the name of her Husband, and we
whose names are hereunto written being Present at said solemniza-
tion, have hereunto set our hands as witnesses thereof on the
second Day of August, 1764,

Isaac Bigelow Moses Gore, Jr.

Samuel Starr Stephen Herenton

Branch Blackmore Abigail Bigelow

Ethan Pratt Sarah Blackniore

Ezra Cogswell Ruth West

Elisha Porter Meriam Porter
William Newcomb

f Abigail Chase
1 Stephen Chase ".

By a like ceremony Stephen Chase was married again in Corn-
wallis, January 28, 1776, to Mrs. Nancy (White) Bushell, of Hali-

DOMESTIC LIFE 227

fax. The witnesses to this marriage were : "William Smith, Samuel
Bill, Perry Burden, Samuel BUs, Stephen Emmerson, Mary Bill.

In 1793, an act was passed making valid marriages that had
been performed in any part of the province by "Justices of the
Peace and other laymen". In a letter to the home authorities on
the subject. Governor "Wentworth explains that the act had been
passed for the benefit of people, chiefly settlers from New England,
who lived in places where it was difficult if not impossible to get
a clergyman. In 1795 the governor was empowered to appoint
laymen to solemnize marriages in townships where there was no
resident clergyman, and the practice of marrying in this way, saya
Murdoch in 1865, "continued till very recent times".

Concerning the domestic life of King's County people in the
scattered homes of Cornwallis and Horton in early times. Dr. John
Burgess Calkin has pleasantly written : "In the time of our grand-
fathers and later, almost everything people in the country places
used was home-made. The farmer manufactured his own imple-
ments, his carts, sleds, harrows, plows, rakes, baskets. If the
good-wife wanted milk dishes her husband made trays from
blocks of wood by scooping out the centre with an adze and a
crooked knife. If she needed brooms he made them from ash or
birch saplings taken from the neighboring forest. The ash broom
was the more durable, but it required more work in its manufac-
ture. In making the brush the wood had to be pounded to separate
the different years' growth, "Within the house the industries were
equally varied. The home was a cheese-factory, a soap-factory, a
candle-factory, a cloth-factory. The wool was taken from the
sheep's back, picked, carded, spun, dyed, woven, and made into
garments, all by the mother and daughters. In like manner was
carried on the manufacture of linen, from the raising of the flax,
through the various processes of pulling, rotting, breaking,
swingling, hackling, spinning, weaving, bleaching, until there came
out from the long and varied operations the snow white table
clothes and towels. All this has passed away with the changing
times. The little treadle wheel, propelled by the busy foot, whUe

228 KING'S COUNTY

the dextrous hand drew out the thread from the distaff, this same
little wheel, that with its incessant hum kept time with the anxious
thought of Miles Standish, now stands forever silent, cleaned,
stained, and polished — a parlour ornament. These home-made things
lacked that fineness of finish characteristic of the factory-made ones
of the present day, but besides serving their purpose for the genera-
tion that then was, the making of them gave an all round develop-
ment to boys and girls and helped fashion them into the strenuous
men and women they became. Our pioneer ancestors were many-
sided men and women. They abounded in expedients, they were
never nonplussed by emergencies.

"In no way, perhaps, is a people's progress in civilization and
comfort more clearly indicated than in the history of its means of
illumination, the lighting of its homes. From the pine knot to the
electric light is a long stride, and one that indicates marvellous
changes in social life. The chief light in early days was the tallow
candle. The manufacture of these feeble luminaries was generally
the work of some day in winter, soon after the slaughter of a cow
for family use. The first part of the process was the preparation of
the wicks and the stringing of them on rods. The candle rods were
sticks about twenty inches long and three eighths of an inch in
diameter. Over these the cotton wicking was doubled, each wick
being about nine or ten inches in length. Six of these were placed
on each rod, about an inch and a half apart. Sixty or more of
these rods, thus strung with wicks, the centres and beginnings of
as many candles as there are days in the year, were hung across
two long poles, which rested on kitchen chairs, one at either end.
The tallow was melted in a large pot or kettle of boiling water in
such proportions that about one third of the liquid in the vessel was
tallow and two thirds water. The melted tallow having less specific
gravity than the water would rise to the top. The vessel was
placed beside the suspended rods and forthwith the dipping began.
Beginning at one end the dipper lifted the rods, one after another
consecutively, from the poles, plunged the wicks into the kettle,
took them out quickly, and then replaced the rods across the poles.

DOMESTIC LIFE 229

This process went on through the whole row, and was repeated
many times, until the candles had grown to the proper size. The
growth was on the same principle as that exemplified in the forma-
tion of icicles, only there is no central thread in the icicle, and the
lower end is smaller.

"The most sacred spot in all the house in the olden time was
the hearth, with the big open fire burning brightly on it. It was
no easy matter to start this fire, or to maintain its continuity. It
is difficult for people of our day to realize fully the value or con-
venience of the friction match. It is a little over half a century
since matches came into common use; how did our fathers and
grandfathers do without them? In the first place, like the ancient
Vestal Virgins they used every precaution to keep the fire from
dying out. A partially burned brand, its face glowing with fire,
was carefully covered over with ashes to exclude the air and thus
arrest combustion. For holding the fire nothing served better than
a hemlock knot, which was obtained from some decayed log or
stump. In the morning the ashes were drawn off, showing a fine
bed of coals on which to build the new fire. Sometimes, however,
the brand was wholly consimied and not a spark remained. Then
came the question what to do. Various expedients were possible,
a common one was to send a small boy to a neighbor's, a quarter
of a mile away, ' to borrow fire '. Seizing the coal between two chips,
held by the thumb and finger, the boy hastened home with his
precious charge. The faster he ran, fanned by the current of air
set up by his movements the more lively became the coal. Occa-
sionally, to save his fingers he had to throw down the burning
thing before he reached home. Another way to start the house-
hold fire was to use an old flint-lock gun. A little powder placed
in the pan was ignited by a spark generated by the action of the
hammer on the flint. Sometimes the flint was removed from the
gun and struck sharply by the back of a jack-knife blade. The
burning powder conveyed the flame to a bunch of tinder or tow,
and this again set fire to the wood. When the sun shone, fire was
sometimes obtained by concentrating the rays through a convex

230 KING'S COUNTY

lens, or burning-glass, as it was called. Again, a chemical match
was employed. This consisted of a splinter of wood coated with
sulphur, having the end tipped with a mixture of sugar and
chlorate of potash, made adhesive by a little glue and ignited by
dipping the end in sulphuric acid".

On the gradual substitution of small burning-fluid lamps for
tallow candles, as a means of lighting houses and churches, Dr.
Calkin has not spoken. The earliest "fluid lamps" must have
come to the county somewhere about 1855, but as late as 1860, at
least, tallow candles must have been chiefly used to light all build-
ings, public and private. For a long time, in Kentville, people of
various denominations were accustomed to worship on Sunday
evenings in the Methodist Chapel, near the foot of the Academy
hill, and many persons living must retain vivid recollections of the
lighting of candles in that church, as the darkness grew deeper,
often during the singing of a hymn. From "fluid" the county
passed before long to kerosene oil as a means of obtaining light,
this finally, in the towns, being supplanted in great measure by
electricity.

Of people's amusements and holiday observances. Dr. Calkin
says : ' ' Our fathers were sons of toil, but they were often able to
get amusement out of their work. In many places, 'frolics' or
'bees' were common, in which all the neighbors for miles around
would assemble to help one another. There were 'piling frolics',
'husking frolics', 'raising frolics', for all which it was essential to
have some stimulating drink, mostly rum. When Christmas Eve
came, the Christmas back-log, of larger size than the back-log of
other days, was rolled into position hard to the back of the fire-
place, the smaller sticks being built up in front. Early on Christ-
mas morning the children of the household were astir. Breakfast
was soon over and preparations for cooking the dinner were begTin.
A long string was twisted from the coarser fibres of home-grown
flax. One end of this string was fastened to a large nail in the beam
directly over the hearth. To the other end, which came down
directly to the fire, was attached a turkey, a goose, or perchance a

DOMESTIC LIFE 231

young pig. The cooking process was thus carried on by the heat
that was radiated from the open fire. But that the cooking might
go forward evenly, the roast must be kept ever on the whirl to
bring all sides in turn before the fire. The impetus for this cir-
cular movement was given by hand, so that constant attention was
needed. But to keep the string from being untwisted and falling
to pieces, with constant disaster to the roast, the whirling had to
be now in one direction, then in another".

To Dr. Calkin's brief account of the amusements of King's
County young people, might be added holiday excursions to launch-
ings, and once a year to the performances at Kentville of the
"travelling circus. For many of the older men, Supreme Court trials
at Kentville were, spring and fall, an important diversion. When
a, particularly interesting case was being tried men from all parts
of the county would drive to the shire town in the early morning,
and all day remain spell-bound in the stifling court-room, listening
to the evidence as the various witnesses were called. Fortunately,
few murder trials have ever been held in the county, and the
morbid excitement of these lamentable events for the most part
King's County people have been spared. To the Kentville young
people the opening of court was always an interesting event. After
the Kentville Hotel was opened, the Supreme Court Justice from
Halifax, Judge Wilkins, Judge Dodd, Sir William Young, Judge
Bliss, or whoever the judge on circuit for the term happened
to be, on the morning of the opening of court, as indeed every
morning while the session lasted, would issue from the hotel, with
the Sheriff marching before him and various members of the bar
attending, and so, on foot, proceed formally to the court. If the
county was so fortunate as not to have any criminal cases for trial,
it was the custom for the barristers of the county to present the
judge with a pair of white kid gloves.

" On winter evenings", proceeds Dr. Calkin, "the family were
accustomed to gather round the parlour hearth. There the father
told the oft-repeated tale of his early efforts at home-making in the
-forest, which even then was so near that the voice of the hooting

232 KING'S COUNTY

owl could often at evening be heard. When he first came there was
no road for many miles — only blazed trees to mark the way. He
Tvould tell how he had traversed on horseback the primitive bridle-
that led to the thicker settlements, his wife behind him on a pillion.
At first one child had been encircled by the mother's left arm as
she sat on the horse behind him, holding herself in position by
■throwing her right arm i^und his waist. "When a second child was
added to the family the eldest sat on the horse's neck in front of
the father, while the mother held the baby fast.' Then the narrative
would be varied by a thrilling story of a bear hunt. How Bruin
had killed a sheep or a calf, had been tracked to his lair in some
forest glen, and had been made to pay the penalty of his wicked-
ness. Or it may be the evening was passed in telling tales of
apparitions and ghosts, until every shadow on the wall seemed a
visitor from the spirit world". To this graphic description the
writer might have added an account of the apple paring and
stringing, and pumpkin-cutting, which occupied people in late
autumn evenings, in almost all farm-houses, the county through.

Concerning horseback travel before carriages were introduced,
Dr. Calkin further writes: "For a woman riding behind a man on
horseback there was a peculiar sort of saddle called a pillion. This
was somewhat like a chair with a foot-rest. An amusing story is
told of a good Presbyterian deacon and his wife in old-time Truro,
who were accustomed to ride together to church. Near the Church
was a block with steps on it for convenience in getting on and off
the pillion. One Sunday, so it is said, the worthy deacon, after
service was over, mounting his horse rode up beside the block,
where his wife was standing ready to take her place on the pillion.
Probably meditating on the wholesome truths of the sermon, he
jogged towards home. As he came near his house, which was two
or three miles from the Church, he met a neighbor who asked him
in surprise: 'Where's Esther?' 'She's — where is she?' said the
startled deacon, looking round, first on one side, then on the other.
He had not given his wife time to mount the pillion and had left
her standing on the block. Another story is told of a much sadder

DOMESTIC LIFE 233

kind. A good Truro couple had to cross the Salmon river in order
to reach home from church. The river was much swollen by late
rains, and in the midst of the stream the poor wife slipped off and
was drowned".

The subject of slavery in New England and the Canadian
Provinces is a very interesting one, and it has been ably treated,
in the tenth volume of the Nova Scotia Historical Society's Collec-
tions, by the late Rev. Dr. T. Watson Smith. Until after the
Revolution, many Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
people kept slaves, and sooner or later some of these found their
way to various places in Nova Scotia. In 1783 Colonel Morse, Royal
Engineer in the province, found in the three townships of Horton,
Cornwallis, and Parrsborough, as servants to the more independent
people, a hundred and seven persons, and no doubt part, at least,
of these servants were Negro slaves. In September, 1751, the Boston
Evening Post advertised: "Just arrived from Halifax, and to be
sold, ten strong hearty Negro men, mostly tradesmen, such as
caulkers, carpenters, sailmakers, and ropemakers. Any person
wishing to purchase may inquire of Benjamin Hallowell of
Boston". In 1752, Thomas Thomas, "late of New York, but now of
Halifax", bequeathed his plate and his Negro servant Orange to
his son. In the Halifax Gazette of May 15, 1752, Joshus Mauger
advertised that he had imported and would sell a Negro woman
aged thirty-five, two boys aged twelve and thirteen, respectively,
two boys of eighteen, and a man aged thirty. In 1760 the same
newspaper advertised: "To be sold at public auction, on Monday,
the 3rd of November, at the house of Mr. John Rider, two slaves,
viz., a boy and a girl, about eleven years old; likewise a puncheon
of choice cherry brandy, with simdry other articles"; and in 1769:
"On Saturday next, at twelve o'clock, will be sold on the Beach, two
hogsheads of rum, three of sugar, and two well-grown Negro girls,
aged fourteen and twelve, to the highest bidder". In 1770 the
executors of the estate of Hon. Joseph Gerrish ' ' announce a loss of
thirty pounds on three Negroes appraised at one hundred and eighty
pounds, but actually sold for one hundred and fifty to Richard
"Williams and Abraham Constable".

234 KING'S COUNTY

In 1780 the executors of the estate of Henry Denny Denson, of
"West Falmouth, report that they had received seventy-five pounds
for a Negro, "Spruce", sixty pounds for "John", and thirty pounds
for "Juba". In the autumn of the same year, Benjamin DeWolf of
"Windsor offered publicly a handsome reward to any one capturing
his negro boy, "Mungo", about fourteen years old and well-built,
and sending the slave home. In 1781 Abel Michener of Falmouth
offered five pounds for the capture of his Negro, "James". In an
inventory of the effects of John Porter, "late of Cornwallis",
deceased, in 1784, are enumerated : ' ' One grain fan, fifteen shillings ;
one Negro man, eighty pounds; books, thirty shillings".

On the 25th of December, 1790, Col. John Burbidge made a
deed of manumission of his slaves, giving them freedom, but on
specified conditions. The slaves were : a Negro woman Fanny, a
boy Peter, aged seventeen years and eight months ; a girl Hannah,
aged seven years and eight months; a girl Flora, aged two years
and seven months; and all the other children that Fanny might
have before the end of her servitude. The mother of the children,
Fanny, was to serve seven years before she should have her free-
dom; the boy Peter was to have his freedom, and the yoimger
children theirs, when they should reach the age of thirty years.
None of these slaves were to be taken out of the province, but if
this should happen they should then at once become free. They
should be taught to read, and when they became free should be
dismissed with two good suits of clothing, one for S\mdays, and
one for week days. At the same time as his uncle, Henry Burbidge of
Cornwallis manumitted his slaves under conditions. His man
Spence was to be free after seven years, his boy Job, who was then
four years and seven months old, when he should reach the age of
thirty. These slaves were to be treated exactly as his uncle had
prescribed that his should be. On St. John's parish register, Corn-
wallis we find recorded the baptisms of Col. Burbidge 's slaves:
Hannah, Sept. 28, 1783 ; Peter, July 3, 1786 ; Flora, Aug. 31, 1788 ;
Charleston, Feb. 13, 1792; Samuel, Feb. 5, 1794; Eosanna, July 3,
1796.

DOMESTIC LIFE 235

In 1801 Mr. Benjamin Belcher in his will made the following
disposition of his slaves: "I give and bequeath my Negro boy-
called Prince to my son, Stephen Belcher, during his life, after
that to his eldest surviving son ; I give my Negro girl called Diana
to my daughter, Elizabeth Belcher Sheffield, and after her death
to her eldest male heir of her body; I give my Negro man named
Jack, and my Negro boy Samuel, and Negro boy James, and Negro
girl called Chloe, to my son Benjamin and his heirs, forever ; charging
these my children unto whom I have entrusted these Negro people
never to sell, barter, or exchange them or any of them under any
pretension, except it is for whose bad and heinous offences as will
not render them safe to be kept in the family, and that to be
adjudged of by three Justices of the Peace in said Township, and
in such case on their order they may be sold and disposed of. And
I further request that as soon as these young Negroes shall become
capable to be taught to read, they shall be learned the Word of
Ood".

In 1809 Jonathan Sherman of Cornwallis, who in Rhode
Island in 1768 had married Sarah Harrington, and after that had
come to Cornwallis, in his will prescribed that his wife and daugh-
ter should maintain comfortably during her life his Negro woman
Chloe, "should she remain with them as heretofore". In 1787,
John Huston of Cornwallis, gives and bequeaths to his dear and well
beloved wife, his Negro man Pomp, and all the live stock, utensils,
and implements, etc., of which at the time of his death, he should
be owner. In 1776, John Rock, who twenty years before had
obtained a license to conduct the ferry between Halifax and Dart-
mouth, died, and among his effects, was a "Negro wench named
Thursday, who was valued at twenty-five pounds". Soon after-
ward, Rock's executors sold the slave girl to John Bishop
for twenty poimds. Whether the buyer was a Horton man or not
we do not know, but his name suggests that he probably was. A
few years before his death Rock advertised in the newspaper as
follows: "Ran away from her master, John Rock, on Monday, the
18th day of August last, a Negro girl named Thursday, about four

236 KING'S COUNTY

and a half feet high, broad-set, with a lump over her right eye.
Had on when she went away a red cloth petticoat, a red baize bed-
gown, and a red ribbon about her head. Whoever may harbour
the said Negro girl, or encourage her to stay away from her said
master, may depend upon being prosecuted as the law directs, and
whoever may be so kind as to take her up and send her home to her
said master, shall be paid all costs and charges with two dollars
reward for their trouble ' '. In 1788 a fierce controversy arose among
the Presbyterians of Nova Scotia concerning the morality of the Rev.
Daniel Cock's holding two slaves, a mother and daughter, in the
village of Truro. In the chapter on the Cornwallis Congregation-
alist Church, reference is made to the visit in Cornwallis in
theologically troubled times there, of the Rev. Daniel Cock and the
Rev. David Smith, At this time, or on some other visit he made to
Cornwallis, the Truro minister received the elder slave as a gift
from some person there, we do not, however, know whom. The
younger slave he is said to have bought.

In her book, "Customs and Fashions in old New England", Mrs.
Alice Morse Earle cites the case of a respectable Newport, Rhode
Island, church elder, who sent many a slaver to the African coast
and who on the safe return of his ships always gave thanks in
meeting "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased
to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen
to enjoy the blessings of a Gospel dispensation". From the care-
ful provisions made by our Cornwallis slaveholders for the future
freeing of their slaves we gather that a serious conviction had
shaped itself in their minds that slavery was not right. In 1784,
Connecticut passed an act for the gradual emancipation of slaves,
declaring that all Negroes born in the state after that period should
be free when they reached the age of twenty-five years, and giving
masters the right to liberate at once all slaves between the ages of
twenty-five and forty-five. In 1800 forty-five slaves remained in
the state, but some time later the legislature declared slavery
"extinct and forever abolished". Of the Negroes in Nova Scotia,
and of the disappearance of slavery in this province Judge Hali-

DOMESTIC LIFE 237

burton wrote in 1829: "A small portion of the labouring popula-
tion of the country is composed of free blacks, who are chiefly
employed as agricultural and domestic servants, but there are no
slaves. Formerly there were Negro slaves, who were brought to
the country by their masters from the old colonies, but some legal
difficulties having arisen in the course of an action of trover,
brought for the recovery of a runaway, an opinion prevailed that
the courts would not recognize a state of slavery as having a
lawful existence in this country. Although this question never
received a judicial decision the slaves were all emancipated. The
most correct opinion seems to be that slaves may be held in the
colony; and this is not only corroborated by the construction of
several English acts of parliament, but by particular clauses of the
early laws of the province ' '.

Before we close this chapter a few words must be said con-
cerning early Freemasonry in King's County. The earliest char-
tered lodge, St. George's, was opened November 22, 1784, at the
house of William Allen Chipman in Cornwallis, a dispensation to
that effect having been granted by John George Pyke, Grand
Master of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia, to Benjamin Hilton.
The first offlcers of St. George's Lodge were: Benjamin Hilton,
Worshipful Master; Dr. William Baxter, Senior Warden; Samuel
Wilson, Junior Warden; the two remaining masons present at the
opening being John North and John Smith. The same night. Dr.
Samuel Willoughby was initiated; later Dr. Willoughby became
Junior Warden. The lodge was registered as No. 11. At the
second regular meeting under the charter the Worthy Master is
recorded as having purchased a set of silver jewels for the Master
and Wardens, at a cost of eighteen shillings and fourpence.
December 27, 1785, the lodge held its first festival, the day being
St. John's Day. On that occasion, Brothers Hilton, Baxter,
Willoughby, North, and Pineo, met in the lodge room and dined.
This custom was continued by the lodge for a number of years.

Under the lodge's warrant the first person initiated was Cor-
nelius Fox of Cornwallis, who was the first regularly installed

238 KING'S COUNTY

secretary. The date of his taking the secretaryship was August 7,
1786. During part, at least, of his incumbency as Rector of St.
John's Church Cornwallis the Rev. William Twining was Chaplain,
The first funeral recorded was that of brother Patrick McMasters,
who had been shipwrecked and whose body was brought to Corn-
wallis for burial. The funeral took place January 8, 1798. In the
same month and year a Past Master's jewel was purchased for Past
Master Charles Prescott, and also jewels for the Senior and Junior
Deacons. On the 4th of December, 1809, Past Master's jewels were
presented by the lodge to Past Masters, Brothers Best, Cummings,
and Webster. In 1811, the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding of Horton
received the three degrees of ancient craft Freemasonry in St.
George's Lodge. Afterward, on several occasions, Mr. Harding
preached before the lodge on St. John's Day. His first sermon was
December 27, 1812, the text being: "What manner of persons
ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness". In May,
1812, the lodge presented Brother Harding with ten pounds, "pre-
sumably to help him in his ministerial labours ' '. In April, 1813, the
lodge removed from Cornwallis to Horton.

February 7, 1814, Hon. Samuel Chipman was a visitor from
Virgin Lodge, Halifax. He had been made a mason, in Virgin
Lodge, December 23, 1813, just six weeks before this visit. At the
time of his death (in 1891) he was the oldest mason in America,
being, within one month of completing his seventy-eighth masonic
year. In October, 1816, Perez Benjamin of Horton, who was after-
wards a representative in the Assembly, was made a mason. In
September, 1818, the lodge purchased a hearse "for the decent
carriage of the deceased friends of the fraternity, and for the
accommodation of the people of Cornwallis and Horton". Some
six years later the hearse was sold at public auction, but the pall
was kept. In May, 1827, Bphraim Clark, G. D. Pineo, and Dr.
Isaac Webster were voted the distinction of honorary members, the
first persons ever given this distinction by the lodge. In October,
1827, the altar and pedestal, in active service thereafter until
November, 1890, were built by Peter Fox, at a cost of four pounds.

DOMESTIC LIFE 239

ten shillings. In November, 1830, the lodge removed to Kentville
and met three times, when it was again removed to Horton, meeting
there at the house of Jonathan Graham. In October, 1830, it met
at the Kentville Hotel. In April, 1832, it was removed to Peter
Pineo 's in Cornwallis.

From December 3, 1832, until January 25, 1858, the lodge never
met. The reason of the suspension seems to have been that dis-
satisfaction arose among the members in consequence of dues being
claimed by the Provincial Grand Lodge, which the Book of Consti-
tutions received from England did not sanction. During this long^
intermission the original warrant was never forfeited, and when
in January, 1858, it was decided to reopen the lodge, Brother
Eliphalet Fuller went to the house of Brother Peter Pineo, in West
Cornwallis, and got the ark and furniture. Taking these to Lower
Horton, he and Brothers John and Cornelius Fox, the latter having
been members in 1832, opened the ark. The aprons, collars, etc.,
they found in good preservation, the pedestals, altar, and candle-
sticks, however, being broken and defaced After this the lodge
met for some years at Temperance Hall, in Lower Horton. In April,
1862, it moved to Wolfville, where it has since remained. An inter-
esting relic of the lodge is a "Worthy Master's Chair, made by
Brother James Cochran from the wood of an oak tree cut on the
farm of a brother mason, who had grown it from an acorn, and had
presented it in 1878. The earliest masonic lodges in Nova Scotia
in the order of their f oimdation were : St. Andrews, Chartered as
No. 118, March 26, 1768; St. John's, as No. 161, June 30, 1780;
Virgin, as No. 3, October, 1784 — all in Halifax ; St. George 's, as No.
11, November 22, 1784.

CHAPTER XV
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

Organized religion in Nova Scotia began with the Roman
Catholic missions established among the French and Indians soon
after the first European settlement in the province was made. Of
the Jesuit and EecoUet, or Franciscan, priests who long laboured
among the Micmacs and later became so great a power with the
Acadian French it would be interesting to know who was the first
to celebrate the rites of Christianity within the limits of King's
County. This, however, we shall probably never know, but in
another chapter we have given as complete a list as we could of the
priests who ministered in the churches at Grand Pre and River
Canard. In the first Assembly of the province, in 1758, it had been
enacted that the worship of the Church of England should be con-
sidered the fixed form of worship in Nova Scotia, but that all dis-
senters from the Church, save "Papists", should have free liberty
of conscience, and "might build meeting houses for public worship
and choose and elect ministers for carrying on Divine Service and
administering the Sacraments according to their several opinions".
The long continued work in Nova Scotia of the famous English
missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts (commonly known as the S. P. G.), began with the
founding of Halifax. With the Cornwallis fieet came from Eng-
land two clergymen, the Rev. William Tutty and the Rev. William
Anwell, and a schoolmaster, Mr. Edward Halhead. Following them
came the Rev. Jean Baptiste Moreau, who was at once sent to
Lunenberg; while not very long after, the Rev. John Breynton, an
English clergyman who had been chaplain on a war ship at the
siege of Louisberg, assumed the rectorship of St. Paul's Church,
Halifax. In 1754 the Rev. Thomas Wood was sent from New Jersey

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 241

to assist Dr. Breynton, and when the New England planters came
to King's County, Dr. Breynton and Mr. Wood were sharing the
arduous labours of the parish of St. Paul's.

In 1761 the Society appointed the Rev. Joseph Bennett, prob-
ably a New England man, then in his thirty-fourth year, itinerant
missionary in the province, with instructions, however, to officiate
chiefly at Lunenburg. Not knowing of the Society's appointment,
the lieutenant-governor, Mr. Jonathan Belcher, had meanwhile
appointed Rev. Robert Vincent to Lunenburg. Mr. Bennett's head-
quarters, therefore, had to be fixed in some other place. As soon as
the New England planters were fairly established in King's County,
the Halifax clergymen. Dr. Breynton and Mr. "Wood, had begun to
make them visits. Sometime in 1762, as the S. P. G. Reports inform
us, Mr. "Wood visited the "interior parts of Nova Scotia", going
twice to East and "West Falmouth, CornwalUs, and Horton, at each
of which places, he was kindly received. At the beginning of this
same year, Mr. Belcher had recommended to the Society that a
resident missionary should be appointed for Horton, to officiate in
rotation there and in the townships of Cornwallis, Falmouth, and
Newport. A house for public worship, he said, was much needed at
Horton, and he proposed that a chapel should be built there which
the Calvinistic settlers, as well, could use for Congregationalist
services if they should settle a minister of their own denomination.
Mr. Bennett being without a settlement, on the lieutenant-gover-
nor's recommendation was now appointed missionary in the four
townships of Newport, Falmouth, Horton aijd Cornwallis, and in
November,1762, with the promise of seventy pounds sterling a
year, took up his residence somewhere (it seems probable at Fal-
mouth) in his large field.

About Fort Edward (Piziquid) there were a few English
speaking people, but the group, including soldiers, must have been
small, and in all the four townships, except at the "Windsor fort,
there were not more than 766 resident adults. That in spite of their
Calvinistic Congregationalist sympathies the King's County people
generally took kindly to the Prayer Book worship, is clear from the

242 KING'S COUNTY

fact that in 1763 Mr. Bennett reported that the Cornwallis people
purposed "building a Church", and that the Horton people had
already started a subscription for "purchasing a house to hold
service in". In a letter to the Society, dated January 4, 1763, he
states that he has now been settled in King's County six weeks, and
that he finds in Horton 670 persons, of whom 375 are children; in.
Cornwallis 518, of whom 319 are children; in Falmouth 278, of
whom 146 are children; and in Newport, 251 of whom 111 are
children. In still another letter, dated July of the same year, he
writes that his success in his mission has far exceeded his expecta-
tion. He has already baptized sixteen and married three couples,
and he has eighteen communicants. In September he writes that he
now officiates at five places, for the governor has ordered him "to
take Fort Edward in rotation on account of a difficult and dan-
gerous river, which renders it impossible, at least five months in
the year, for the inhabitants near that fort to attend Divine Worship
at the place appointed". To perform the regular duties of his
mission on Sundays he was obliged to ride nearly two hundred
miles a month. In the preceding half year he had baptized fifty-two
children and one adult, and he says that as the prejudices of the
people against the Church wear off, the duties of his ministry
increase.

In 1768-9 he writes still more optimistically of his mission,
especially of his Cornwallis field. That township he visits once a
month and one of the means he has taken to win its people to the
Church, has been to distribute widely a little tract entitled "The
Englishman Directed in the Choice of his Eeligion". This tract the
people have gratefully received, and he is sure that it has done
good. About Horton he has nothing to say, but the Cornwallis
young people, he writes, attend church very regularly.

In 1770 he reports that at "Windsor and Falmouth he has large
congregations; "that at Newport, where it is very inconvenient for
the people to assemble to Divine Worship, by reason of that town's
being intersected by deep and dangerous rivers, he officiates in pri-
vate houses". In January, 1763, writes Professor Hind in his "Old

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 243

Parish Burying Ground", Mr. Bennett took up his residence at Fort
Edward, and there when ill-health at last compelled him to resign
his work in the province, he lived, and probably died. In the S. P.
G. Report for 1780 it is stated that "the Society have received the
sad intelligence that the Rev. Mr. Bennett is confined at Windsor,
greatly disordered both in body and mind, so that the physicians
are of opinion that he will never again be serviceable". How soon
after this report this missionary died we do not at present know.

Ij;i 1775 an exchange was effected between another missionary,
the Rev. William Ellis, and the Rev. Mr. Bennett, the former taking
the wide King's County mission, and the latter becoming an
itinerant missionary in the province. In 1776 Mr. Ellis reports his
communicants at Windsor as sixteen, at Newport nine, at Falmouth,
eleven, and at Cornwallis eighteen. He complains that there is na
church building at Newport or Falmouth, and that the building at
Windsor, "which is called a church, is applied to various purposes,,
and occasionally to very improper ones". Although Governor
Legge had made a present of very handsome church furniture to the
Windsor congregation the furniture could not be made use of, the
church building being quite unfit to receive it.

In 1779 Mr. Ellis writes the Society that in Cornwallis alone
there are upwards of a thousand inhabitants, most of them well
affected to the Church and very desirous of having a minister to
themselves. That year the Rev. Jacob Bailey of Pownalborough,
Maine, so weU known in Loyalist annals as the "Frontier Mis-
sionary", after suffering incredible hardships in New England took
refuge with his family in Halifax, and very soon was permitted by
the Governor to go to the assistance of Mr. Ellis in his laborious
field. "I have made an excursion into the country", he writes his
brother at Pownalborough under date of Sept. 6th, 1779 "and
travelled through all the fine settlements on the Basin of Minas,
and never beheld finer farms than at Windsor, Falmouth, Horton,
and Cornwallis. The latter is the place where the Neutral French
had formerly their principal habitation. I have dined upon the very
spot where Charles (Rene) le Blanc formerly lived. Two hundred

244 KING'S COUNTY

families are settled in this place and I am invited to officiate among
them this winter, and believe I shall accept their offer till I can
return to Kennebeck in safety. They have agreed to furnish me
with an house and firing, to give me an horse worth ten guineas, to
be at the expense of my removal, and to allow me a weekly con-
tribution besides presents, which will amount to more than seventy
pounds sterling per year, if I reckon the price at Halifax. I have
likewise had an invitation to St. John's and Cumberland. In the
latter department I might be admitted Chaplain of the garrison,
worth a hundred and eighty pounds per annum, but I cannot en-
dure the thoughts of that remote situation, especially among a set
of people disposed to revolt".

Mr. Bailey's engagement with the Cornwallis people and his
residence in the township began iu October, 1779, and in Cornwallis
he remained until July, 1782, when he was transferred to the mis-
sion at Annapolis Royal. In Cornwallis he experienced a good deal
of disappoiutment. "My emoluments are small", he writes a
friend, "I am allowed a little, inconvenient house and fire-wood,
and get besides, five or six shillings per week contribution for preach-
ing. I have about ten or twelve scholars which afford me about
eight dollars per month. Every necessary of life is extremely dear
in this place". In 1780 he writes that he has lately, without any
solicitation on his part, been appointed "deputy chaplain to the
84:th Regiment, part of which keep a garrison at Annapolis". His
report to the S. P. G. in the same year states that he has officiated in
Cornwallis every Sunday since his arrival there, and had had "a
decent and respectable, though not a large congregation".
"Their contributions towards my support", he says, "are pre-
carious, and all the articles of subsistence are so excessively extrava-
gant that my emoluments will hardly support my family. The want
of books is a misfortune I sensibly feel in my present situation, for
I was constrained to leave my library behind me when I escaped
from New England, and being so remote from the metropolis I can
receive no assistance from others".

In July, 1782, Mr. Bailey left Cornwallis for Annapolis, and

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 245

when minister and people at last had to part," the scenes", he -writes
"were affecting, mutual effusions of sorrow were displayed, and our
hearts were agitated with tender emotions. Once I imagined it impos-
sible to abandon Cornwallis with such painful regret, and conceived
that we could bid the inhabitants adieu without a single tear of
sensibility on either side, but I found myself mistaken. Justice and
gratitude compel me to entertain a more favourable opinion of these
people than formerly, and their conduct has appeared in a much
more amiable light at the conclusion than at the beginning of our
connection. Most of my hearers, and several of other denomina-
tions, made us presents before our emigration, and we were at no
expense for horses and carriages".

On the eve of his departure from Cornwallis, as he writes to a
friend, Mr. Bailey was invited to officiate in the Congregationalist
Meeting House at Chipman's Corner, and there he read prayers and
delivered two sermons to a more numerous assembly than he had
ever seen in the province. Most of the inhabitants, of every denom-
ination, attended these services, a "very handsome collection" was
taken for the retiring clergyman, and the people "seemed to
relish" his farewell discourses. With the detailed information thus
given us of this clergyman's leave-taking of Cornwallis, we have no
reason to question the truth of Mr. Ellis' statement to the Society
that "Mr. Bailey's leaving Cornwallis was not without the greatest
regret of the inhabitants ' '.

The time had now fully come for the large double mission of
Hants and King's to be divided, and soon after Mr. Bailey's removal
to Annapolis the division was formally made. By this change the
three townships which now composed the newly erected Hants
County, became one mission; the other included the townships of
Cornwallis, Horton, and Wilmot, most of the third township, how-
ever, lying in the eastern part of Annapolis County. On the
division, the Cornwallis people signified to the Society that the Rev.
John WiswaU, formerly missionary at Falmouth, Maine, would be
to them a very acceptable priest. Accordingly, the Society
appointed Mr. WiswaU to the King's County mission. With the

246 KING'S COUNTY

life and character of this clergyman we have almost as intimate an
acquaintance as with that of his predecessor at Cornwallis, the Rev.
Jacob Bailey. Like Mr. Bailey, Mr. Wiswall was for some years
before taking orders in the Church of England a Congregationalist
minister. He was the son of Peleg and Elizabeth (Rogers) "Wiswall
of Boston, his maternal grandmother was Sarah, daughter of John
Appleton of Ipswich, and he was a graduate of Harvard of the class
of 1749, During the Revolutionary "War he suffered greatly for his
allegiance to the crown, and at last, like many others of the dis-
tressed Loyalists, made his home permanently in Nova Scotia. His
pastorate at Cornwallis began on the 24th of August, 1783, and
lasted until 1789, when the Bishop having made several important
changes in the Nova Scotia missions, one of which was the separa-
tion of Wilmot from Cornwallis and the erection of "Wilmot and
"the best part of Aylesford" together into a new mission, Mr.
"Wiswall by his own preference was transferred to the latter. In
the now greatly narrowed Cornwallis field he was succeded by the
Rev. William Twining, a clergyman born in Pembrokeshire, "Wales,
in 1750, who had lately come to Nova Scotia from Exuma, in the
Bahama Islands, where he had for some time been a missionary of
the S. P. G.

The Report of the Society for 1789, describing the Bishop's
changes remarks that "the remaining mission of Cornwallis, being
forty miles in length, by fourteen in breadth, the best settled part of
the province will still be large enough for one mission". "The
people of Cornwallis have expressed their gratitude to the Society
for its constant care and attention in supplying them with able
missionaries and, as appears from a letter from Mr. Burbidge, who
Vidth Mr. Belcher is a principal supporter there of the Established
Church, they are much satisfied with the appointment of Mr.
Twining, and evidence their respect for him by a constant atten-
dance on Divine Service every Sunday, when the weather will
permit. The congregation increases, and Mr. Twining hopes that
the subscription will also in another year".

Until 1770 the parishioners of St. John's Church, Cornwallis,

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 247

must have worshipped either in private houses or in some temporary
building ; in that year, however, the first Anglican Church building in
the county was erected at Fox Hill, near the Town Plot. The struc-
ture was built, and probably the land given, by Messrs. John
Burbidge and "William Best, two men reared, not in New England
but in the mother land, and about the church was an acre of ground
given for a churchyard. Of churches built in the county before this
time, we have the Congregationalist church at Chipman's Corner,
erected in 1767- '68, and the Presbyterian church at Lower Horton,
built probably a little later, but very nearly at the same time. In
the churchyard at Fox Hill, now in many places thickly overgrown
with bushes, the graves of a few of the most important of the early
King's County people, with well preserved tombstones, may still
be found.

Until 1776 St. John's Church was not finished, but from the
time of its erection it was used for worship in fair weather, when-
ever the missionaries could get to Cornwallis to officiate, this,
however, being at first probably not more than five or six times a
year, and later only as often as once a month. In 1776 it was
finished, and in 1784 was repaired. Shortly after Mr. Twining
assumed the rectorship a gallery large enough to accommodate
sixty worshippers was built, and when Mr. Benjamin Belcher died
in 1802, he left two hundred pounds towards "rebuilding an altar
piece" in the church. By September, 1792, the church was hope-
lessly out of repair, in winter, at least, it was impossible to use it,
and again the congregation had to worship in private houses. A
formal agreement to built a new church was entered into, Septem-
ber 29th, 1802, and on Christmas Day, 1810, the present church, on
Church Street, though unfinished was opened for worship.

Probably as early as the coming of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the
Cornwallis congregation had erected or purchased a small par-
sonage, and when Mr. Wiswall's rectorship began, they added, or at
least planned to add, to this inadequate house. In 1785 Mr. Wiswall
reports that his parishioners have given a proof of their regard for
him in agreeing to build for him a house on the Glebe, "which in

248 KING'S COUNTY

its present condition rents for fifteen pounds per annum". To the
fund for this house, Col. Burbidge, the Senior Warden, had given
fifty pounds, Mr. Belcher, the Junior Warden, agreeing to furnish
the house at his own expense. Shortly after Mr. Twining 's arrival,
at Cornwallis, this clergyman writes that Col. Burbidge is about to
complete the parsonage at his own expense. In 1784 the subscribers
to the parsonage fund were : John Burbidge, Eobert Pagan, James
Burbidge, Col. Jonathan Sherman, David Starr, Thomas Brown,
William Allen Chipman, Joseph Sibley, Richard Best, William
Morine, Colin Brymer, Pern Terry, Penderson Allison, Blkanah
Morton, Jr., Dr. WiUiam Baxter, William Marchant, Cornelius Fox,
Joseph Jackson, Dan Pineo, John Whidden, John North, John Hus-
ton, John Terry, Thomas Ratchford, Mason Cogswell, Benjamin
Belcher.

The Rev. John Wiswall was inducted into the parish by mandate
from Governor Parr, February 1, 1784, and on the 29th of Septem-
ber of the same year, a full parish organization was effected. At
the meeting for organization, Mr. Wiswall being chosen moderator
nominated Col. John Burbidge, Senior Warden, and Capt. Thomas
Farrel (that year the county's High Sheriff), Parish Clerk. Col.
Burbidge then nominated Lieut. Benjamin Belcher for Junior
Warden, and Capt. Thomas Ratchford seconded the nomination.
The vestry chosen were: Capt. John Terry, Capt. Thomas Farrel,
Lieut. Henry Burbidge, Major Samuel Starr, Mr. David Starr, Mr.
Joseph Jackson, Mr. John Robinson, Jr., Capt. Thomas Ratchford,
Capt. John Cox, Mr. Cornelius Fox, Mr. John Burbidge, Jr.,
and Capt. Ebenezer Farnham. [Most of these gentlemen held
commissions in the militia]. The church, opened for worship
in 1810, was not finished until 1812, nor consecrated until
August 9th, 1826, but on the Register remains a plan of the
interior, with the names of the pew-holders, in 1811. On this
plan the pews are in four rows, the two middle rows extending only
to the chancel, the wall pews, north and south, extending to the
east wall, beside the chancel. The north wall pews were held by the
following persons: (The Governor's Pew), Blisha Eaton, Jr. (two

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 249

pews), James Delap Harris, William Charles Moore, Daniel Cogs-
well, Dr. William Baxter, Samuel Leonard, Samuel Leonard
Allison, George Chipman, William Starr, William Campbell,
Coloured People. The south wall pews were held by: (The Bishop's
Pew), Charles Ramage Prescott, James Allison, Ann Burbidge,
Sarah Belcher, Edward Sentill, Sarah Jarvis, Elias Burbidge,
Gideon Harrington, Owen Brien, Charles Ramage Prescott, Coloured
People. The north middle row were held by: William Campbell,
WiUiam Robinson, Henry Gesner, Dr. WiUiam Bayard, Joseph Starr,
John Terry, Luther Hathaway ; the south middle row by : Ann Bur-
bidge, James Allison, George Jackson, Benjamin Steadman, Phebe
Lockwood, Joseph Jackson, David Whidden. This list of pew-
holders of course gives us exact information as to who the most
conspicuous adherents of the Church of England in Cornwallis in
the first quarter of the 19th century were.

Regarding the three most active lay supporters of the Church
in its beginning in Cornwallis, a few words may properly here be
said. Col. John Burbidge, who from 1784 until 1802 was Senior
Warden of St. John's, and for a longer period than this was prob-
ably the most influential man in Cornwallis, was an Englishman,
born in 1716, or '17, in Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1749 he came
to Halifax, perhaps with the first group of English settlers of that
town, and in the first, second and third Assemblies of the province
represented the town. Shortly after 1761, however, having received
a share and a half of land in Cornwallis, he removed to King's
County, and thereafter was one of the controlling forces among the
New England planters who had settled on the Acadian lands. In
1764 he was appointed Deputy Registrar of Deeds for Cornwallis and
in the fourth Assembly of the province, from 1765 to 1770, he repre-
sented the town. In all matters of local government his decisions
had great weight, and to his intelligence and foresight the early
agricultural and commercial intersts of the county owed much. His
first wife, Elizabeth, born in 1720, died in Cornwallis in 1775, and
was buried in St. John's churchyard; his second wife was Rebecca,
daughter of the Hon. William Dudley of Boston, grand-daughter of

250 KING'S COUNTY

Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, great-grand-daughter of
Governor Thomas Dudley, and when Col Burbidge married her,
widow of Hon. Benjamin Gerrish of Boston and Halifax, a merchant
of prominence, who died in England, May 6, 1772. Col. Burbidge
had no children by either marriage, but he brought to Cornwallis
from Cowes, four nephews, who founded the Burbidge family so
long known in King's County, and in Canada at large. The opening
words of the Parish Register of St. John's are: "Historical memo-
randums taken by John Burbidge, Esquire, during his lifetime and
continued by him after being elected Church Warden of the Church
of St. John's, at Cornwallis, in King's County, in the Province of
Nova Scotia ". On a later page of the Register is the statement that,
"In the year 1770, John Burbidge and William Best, Esquires, at

their own expense built a small church in said Cornwallis for the more

•

decent and convenient performance of Divine Service". Later still
is this conspicuous entry : "On the 11th of March, 1812, John Bur-
bidge, Esquire, the great patron of the Church in King's County for
upwards of fifty years, departed this life, and on the 14th his
remains were interred at the old Church, attended by all the magis-
trates, the militia officers in their uniforms, and the principal
inhabitants of the County". Mr. Burbidge was a colonel in the
militia and it was desired by the commanding officer that his
remains should be interred with military honours. The offer to have
this done, however, was refused by his relatives. When he died (in
his 96th year) he was the oldest militia officer, the oldest justice of
the Court of Common Pleas, and the oldest magistrate in the
province. The newspaper notice of his death speaks of him as a
man "revered and loved by all who knew him, for his piety,
integrity, and benevolence".

Of William Best, whose name is associated with Mr. Burbidge
in the building of the church, we know less than we do about the
latter. He, too, came out to Halifax with the early settlers
and soon removed to Cornwallis, and he and his family were
long prominently connected with St. John's Church. But the
person next in general importance to Col. Burbidge was Mr. Ben-

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 251

jamin Belcher, founder of the important Belcher family of King's
County, who was born at Gibraltar, probably of English parents,
July 17, 1743, and who married in Oornwallis, in 1763 or '64, Sarah,
daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth (Clark) Post. Like Col. Bur-
bidge, he was a considerable land-owner and farmer, but he was
long a prosperous trader, as well. In 1784, as we have seen, he was
elected Junior Warden of St. John's, and this office he held until
his death in 1802. From 1785 to '99, Mr. Belcher also represented
Cornwallis in the legislature. Of other early supporters of the
Church of England in Cornwallis, however, the Starrs, Steadmans,
Shermans, Harringtons, Chipmans, Eatons, Harrises, Katchfords,
Pineos, and others, few had been reared Churchmen, but most had
in infancy been baptized in New England Congregationalist
churches.

The 18th century witnessed in England and America a series
of great "Revival Movements" in religion, and at last, in the
spring of 1776, one of these stirring revivals began in Nova Scotia.
The chief agent of the revival, as we shall hereafter more fully see,
was Henry Alline, born in New England, but reared in Falmouth,
King's County, a young man of remarkable gifts, but of slight
education and little knowledge of life, in whose heart had been
kindled a burning zeal for religion as he conceived it, and for the
rescue of souls from hell. Having experienced in his own life a pro-
found awakening, he soon felt constrained to give himself entirely
to the work of quickening others, and for seven years, in Hants
and King's counties, and indeed throughout the Maritime Provinces-
generally, he travelled incessantly, holding stirring revival meet-
ings, preaching fiery sermons against sin, condemning worldliness in
the churches, and rousing the country communities to a pitch of
religious fervour that Nova Scotia had never witnessed before. To
the sober Church people, and indeed to the more conservative Con-
gregationalists and Presbyterians of the province, Alline 's irregular
opinions and methods naturally gave the greatest offense. The
young man had little respect for traditional Church organization
or order of any kind, and he took no pains to conceal his belief that

252 KING'S COUNTY

most of the clergy labouring in Nova Scotia were still unconverted,
and so, blind leaders of the blind. The consequence was that with
some justice, though often with a good deal of misunderstanding,
the revivalist and his converts came under the severe censure
of those who had faith in the long established methods of church
order and church work that the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, and the first New England Congregationalists, had intro-
duced into the province. In both Hants and King's counties AUine's
preaching resulted in a lamentable schism from the regular Con-
gregationalist body, and the establishment of "New Light"
Congregationalist churches, which later became Baptist churches,
and for some years after the revivalist's death the clergy of the
Established Church in their reports to the S. P. G. continued to
deplore the effects of his irregular teaching.

In 1787, Mr. Wiswall, in Cornwallis, writes with sorrow of
"the vast number of Methodists, New Lights, and Lay Teachers",
whom he finds invading his parish. This clergyman's immediate
successor, however, the Eev. William Twining, was evidently less
out of sympathy with the spirit of the new teachers, for in 1804 the
Rev. William Black, founder of the Wesleyan body in Nova Scotia,
writes the Methodist Missionary Society that at Horton, "the princi-
pal place in his circuit", for several years the Rev. Mr. Twining of
Cornwallis has preached regularly one in three weeks in the
Methodist chapel, and has frequently administered the Lord's
Supper to the Methodist people. Five or six years before, says
Mr. Black, Mr. Twining had been first brought "to experience the
converting grace of God"; from which time he had not shunned
to declare the necessity for regeneration, and warmly to press on
the consciences of his hearers "this and the other distinguishing
doctrines of the Gospel." He had frequently been present at the
meeting of the "class", and had spoken with great humility and
thankfulness of the grace of Jesus Christ. Sometimes he had
even conducted the class meeting himself. His attachment to the
Methodists, and his plain manner of preaching the doctrines of
the Gospel, hed brought upon him, Mr. Black says, ' ' much reproach,

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 253

and considerable trials from some from whom he ought to have
received much encouragement. Benjamin Belcher, Esq., one of his
vestry, who had been his principal opponent and had pre-
ferred many charges against him to the Bishop, on his death-
bed had sent for Mr. Twining to pray with him, and in his
will he left about two hundred pounds towards the building him
a church". In his own report to the Society in 1803, Mr. Twining
speaks of the loss the Church had met with in the death of Mr.
Belcher, whom he calls "a valuable parishioner". Mr Belcher, he
says, "has bequeathed two hundred pounds towards building an
altar piece in the church".

In 1806 Mr. Twining removed from Cornwallis to Sydney, Cape
Breton, but some time later he came to Newport and Eawdon,
Hants County. Of this latter parish he was rector when Bishop
Charles Inglis died, in 1816. His wife was Sarah, daughter of the
Rev. Joshua "Wingate "Weeks, a New England Loyalist clergyman,
who at the Revolutionary "War took refuge in Nova Scotia, and in
Cornwallis the Twinings had seven children born. The eldest of
these was afterward the Rev. John Thomas Twining, D. D., curate
of St. Paul's and the Garrison Chapel, because of attachment to
whom a number of influential families soon after 1825 seceded from
St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and gave their influence to the Baptist
denomination.

When the Rev. "William Twining left Cornwallis the Rev.
Robert Norris was elected in his place. Mr. Norris was an English-
man, born in 1763 and ordained, it is said, in the Roman Catholic
Church. Becoming a Protestant, however, in 1797 he was sent as
an S. P. G. missionary to Nova Scotia, and very soon after was
placed at Chester, where he married Lydia, daughter of Dr. Jona-
than Prescott, and sister of the Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, who
was long a resident of Cornwallis and an important parishioner of
St. John's. From Chester, in 1801, Mr. Norris removed to New
Brunswick, but in 1806 he came to Cornwallis. "What his religious
temper was may be seen from the report that is given of him when
he was at Chester. There, it is said, he generally chose for his sermons
"Gospel themes", endeavoured to give his congregations right

254 KING'S COUNTY

apprehensions of the doctrine of Salvation, pointed out to them the
advantages of peace and union and Christian charity, and "took
every occasion to remove the prejudices and correct the errors
which some had fallen into through the influences of the New Lights,
who prevailed". In the Rectorship of St. John's, Cornwallis, he
remained until September 15, 1829, when he resigned ; he continued,
however, to live in Cornwallis until his death in 1834. In the Rec-
torship of Cornwallis he was at once succeeded by the Rev. John
Moore Campbell, who remained until 1835. From 1835 till 1838 the
Rev. John Samuel Clarke was rector; from 1841 to 1876, the Rev.
John Storrs ; from 1876 to 1879, the Rev. Richmond Shreve (now the
Rev. Richmond Shreve, D. D., of Sherbrooke, Diocese of Quebec) ;
from 1879 to 1903, the Rev. Frederick J. H. Axford. In 1903 the
present efflcient rector, the Rev. T. C. Mellor, began his work.

MISSIONAEIES AT CORNWALLIS

Rev. Joseph Bennett 1761 — '75

Rev. William Ellis 1775— '79

Rev. Jacob Bailey 1779— '82

EECTORS OF ST. JOHN's, CORNWALLIS

Rev. John Wiswall 1782— '89

Rev. William Twining 1789—1806

Rev. Robert Norris 1806— '29

Rev. John Moore Campbell 1829— '35

Rev. John Samuel Clarke 1835— '38 (July)

Rev John Storrs 1841— '76

Rev. Richmond Shreve "^ 1876— '79

Rev. Fred'k J. H. Axford 1879—1903

Rev. T. C. Mellor 1903—

During the absence in England of Rev. John Storrs, 1874- '76,
the Revds. Robert P. Brine and H. Sterns, successively, took
the Rector's place.

.Of the work of the earliest English Church missionaries on the-

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 255

Horton side of the Cornwallis river we know very little in detail.
Until late in the first quarter of the 19th century no parish
organization existed in the township of Horton, and although the
Cornwallis rectors officiated with more or less "frequency there, very
few references to their labours are to be found in their reports to
the S. P. G. In 1785 Mr. Wiswall was officiating once a month in
the Baptist Meeting House at what is now "Wolfville, but in 1786 he
reports that he has but two communicants in his Horton mission.
In Horton, between August, 1783, and June, 1786, he had married
three couples, baptized three persons, and buried two. As late as
1804, as we have seen from the Eev. William Black's letter, Mr,
Twining was officiating once in three weeks in the Grand Pre
Methodist Chapel.

Of the formal constitution of the parish of St. John's, Horton,
no record whatever remains in the parish itself. In 1813 there was
a survey made of the marsh belonging to the Horton glebe, on
behalf of the Rev. Robert Norris, who was then called "Missionary
of Cornwallis and Horton". Our earliest intimation of the organ-
ization of a parish at Horton comes from the record of a deed of
one acre of ground (for thirty pounds) given by Stephen Brovm
DeWolfe to Bishop Stanser, January 1, 1817, and the gift to the
parish by the S. P. G., through the Rev. Robert Norris, missionary
in charge, of a large Bible, in 1818. The parish was therefore
probably organized in 1817, and the church building erected very
soon after. It is said that Thaddeus Harris, of Kentville, for some
years after the parish was organized acted as clerk of the vestry,
but somewhere about the middle of the 19th century his father's
store in Kentville was burned, and whatever records he kept,
with other public records of Horton township, were probably
then destroyed. The earliest records of the parish now in existence
are of the year 1823, at which time the Rev. Joseph Wright was
Rector. The earliest baptism Mr. Wright records was, July 27th,
1823, and the earliest marriage was August 16th of the same year.
The last entry made by this clergyman is a burial on the 3rd of
September, 1829. It is therefore probable that Mr. Wright was the

256 KING'S COUNTY

first Rector of Horton and that he was inducted into the parish about
the time his first entry was made.

On the 1st of January, 1830, Mr. Wright was succeeded by the
Rev. John Samuel Clarke, of a family that had early settled in
Halifax, who in 1835 also assumed the rectorship of St. John's
parish, Cornwallis. When Mr. Clarke came to Horton the Rev. John
Moore Campbell was Rector of Cornwallis, but owing, it is said, to
a reduction in the grant of the S. P. G. to the latter parish, by which
act the clergyman's stipend became less, in 1835 Mr. Campbell
resigned at Cornwallis and went to Granville. To the Cornwallis
rectorship, also, the Rev. Mr. Clarke was then elected, and this
double office he held until July, 1838, when by his removal from the
diocese both parishes became vacant. What priests have ministered
to the two King's County parishes during the immediately follow-
ing three years we do not know; but the next rector to be settled
over them was the Rev. John Storrs, a clergyman born in Yorkshire,
England, but at the time of his appointment, curate at St. George 's
Halifax, who assumed the double rectorship in April, 1841. As
rector of both Cornwallis and Horton, Mr. Storrs remained until
1876, when after two years' absence in England he resigned and
settled permanently in the mother land. On his retirement the Rev.
Richmond Shreve succeeded to the Cornwallis rectorship, but the
Horton parish once more began under a separate head.

Originally, as we know, the chief point in the township of
Horton was what is now Grand Pre, but as the western part of this
township and the eastern part of Aylesford became more thickly
populated, the village of Kentville attained the dignity of the
county town. With the steady growth of Kentville in importance
the interests of the Church in Horton naturally came to centre there,
and in 1843- '46, a "Chapel of Ease," under the name of St. James,
was erected in Kentville. The parish church was still St. John's,
at Wolfville, but the number of worshippers at Kentville was now
so considerable that the need of a resident clergyman at this place
became imperative. In 1855, therefore, as is recorded on the parish
registers of both Cornwallis and Horton, "the District of St. James,

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 257

Kentville, was set off from the parishes of Cornwallis and Horton as
a separate charge, by written agreement between the Rev. John
Storrs and the Rev. Henry. Leigh Yewens, dated 12th day of April.
1855. The sanction of his Lordship the Bishop to said agreement,
and the separation of the District of St. James, Kentville, was
signified home (probably to the S. P. G.) by letters. Date the 2nd
of May, 1855." This agreement is signed by Harry Leigh Yewens,
"Missionary in charge of the District of St. James, Kentville".

The first services in the Kentville ' ' Chapel at Base ' ' were prob-
ably conducted with more or less frequency by the Rev. Mr. Storrs,
possibly assisted by temporary curates. From March 28, 1852, to
early in August of the same year, the Rev. James Johnstone Ritchie,
afterward Rector of St. Luke 's Church, Annapolis Royal, as ' ' assist-
ant curate" ministered at Kentville, and the parish register (now
at "Wolfville) records baptisms and burials performed by him there.
When Mr. Ritchie left Kentville, the Rev. Harry Leigh Yewens,
Tjorn in London, England, who had first come to Nova Scotia in the
autumn of 1848, and for some time before he settled in King's had
ministered at Shubenacadie and adjacent places, was at once
installed in his place. In 1853 he was advanced to the priesthood in
St. Paul's, Halifax, and his work as a priest in Cornwallis then at
once began. When the District of St. James, Kentville, was set off,
he left Cornwallis to become "missionary in charge" of this field,
and here he remained until 1863, when after eight years of intelli-
gent and faithful service he resigned and went to Digby. His first
recorded baptism at Kentville was on the 1st of June, 1855, and the
last during his ministry was that of his daughter, Katherine Agnes,
performed not by himself but by Rev. John Storrs, on the 4th of
March, 1863. Mr. Yewens ' wife was Katherine, born in 1827, fourth
child of Thomas Blake, Esq., a retired Commander in the Royal
Navy who had settled at Shubenacadie in 1839. Prom the beginning
of Mr. Yewens' ministry at Kentville, the District of St. James,
while not an organized parish, had almost the autonomy of a parish.
By whom during this clergyman's incumbency services were held
.at Wolfville we are not informed, but the officiating clergyman

258 KING'S COUNTY

there was more probably Mr. Storrs than the Kentville missionary
in charge.

A few weeks after Mr. Yewens left Kentville for Digby the
Rev. John Owen Buggies, M. A., was appointed in his place. Mr.
Ruggles who was a great-grandson of Brigadier-General Timothy
Ruggles, the noted Massachusetts Loyalist, was graduated from
King's College, Windsor, in 1859. He was still in deacon's orders,
but the next year after he came to Kentville he was ordained priest.
For eight years, one of the most faithful clergymen the county
has ever had, he laboured in Kentville and the country aroiind, but
early in 1871 he resigned his King's Coimty charge and went to
St. Margaret's Bay. During May and June, 1871, the Rev. Edward
Scaummell officiated at Kentville, but from August of that year
until November, 1876, the Rev. Theophilus Richey was minister.
When Mr. Storrs resigned the double rectorship of Comwallis and
Horton, the District of St. James seems to have become absorbed
by the Parish of Horton, the Rev. J. Lloyd Keating, a native of
Halifax, being called to the Horton rectorship. In about a year Mr.
Keating resigned, and early in 1878 the Rev. John Owen Ruggles
was recalled to the county, this time as Rector of Horton and not
merely missionary in charge of Kentville. For ten years, until 1888,
this devoted clergyman ministered with unflagging interest to his
large parish, but in 1888 he retired from pastoral work and opened
a church bookstore in Halifax. In 1889 the Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D.,
accurate scholar and faithful priest, some time President of King's
College, and later Canon of St. Luke's Cathedral, Halifax, was
elected in his place. In 1893 the parish of St. James, Kentville, with
fixed boundaries, was formally set off from the parish of Horton,
and the Rev. Dr. Brock was elected its first rector, the Rev. Kenneth
C. Hind becoming rector of the old parish of Horton. For more
than six years Dr. Brock faithfully served St. James Parish, but
January 30, 1900, he resigned and on the 25th of July of the same
year, the present incumbent, the Rev. Charles De Wolfe White,
became rector. In 1899, the Rev. Richard Ferguson Dixon, born at
Houghton Hall, Cumberland, England, for two years previously

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 259

Rural Dean of Avon, a governor of King's College, and former
editor of Church Work, was elected to the rectorship of Horton, and
this position he still holds.

The act of the legislature, passed April 28, 1893, which divided
the parish of Horton, prescribed that the parish of Kentville should
comprise all the territory west of the "Deep Hollow Road", south
to the county line, and north to the Comwallis river. The Rectory
of St. James, KentviUe, was built in 1854,

EECTOES OF HORTON '

Rev. Joseph Wright 1823 (probably)— '25

Rev. John Samuel Qarke 1830— '38

Rev. John Storrs 1841— '76

Rev. J. Lloyd Keating 1877— '78

Rev. John Owen Ruggles 1878— '88

Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D. 1889— '93

Rev. Kenneth C. Hind 1893— '99

Rev. Richard Ferguson Dixon 1899 —

MISSIONABIBS-IN-CHAEGE OP ST. JAMBS, KENTVILLE

Rev. Harry Leigh Tewens 1855 — '63

Rev. John Owen Ruggles 1863— '71

Rev. Theophilus Richey 1871— '76

EECTORS OP ST. JAMES, KENTVILLE

Rev. Isaac Brock, D. D. 1893—1900

Rev. Charles DeWolfe White 1900—

When the first Anglican missionary may have visited Parrs-
borough we do not know, but the earliest settled clergyman in that
part of King's County was the Rev. Thomas Shreve (grandfather of
the Rev. Dr. Richmond Shreve), who was licensed by Robert,
Bishop of London, "to perform the ministerial office of a priest at
Parrsborough, in Nova Scotia, in North America", June 6, 1787,

260 KING'S COUNTY

and who remained at Parrsborough until 1807, when he was insti-
tuted (August 13th) by Bishop Inglis to the Cure of Lunenburg,
In the office of the Registry of Deeds at Parrsborough is recorded
the following deed: "Know all men by these presents, that I,
Thomas William Moore, of Parrsborough, King's County, Nova
Scotia, esquire, from the regard and respect I have for the Church
of England as by law established, and in consideration of a church
being built and placed on the land hereinafter described, have given
and granted and do by these presents give and grant and alien unto
the Reverend Thomas Shreve, the present rector, Edward Cole and
Elisha Lawrence, esquires, wardens, and unto John Longstreet,
Edward Potts, Caleb Lewis, John Fordyce, Silas Crane, James Ray-
mond, "William Taylor, Dr. John Mercer (one of the commissioners),
Archibald McEachern, and Archibald Thompson, Vestrymen; and
to them and their successors in trust for the sole use and behoof of
the said Established Church forever, one hundred and fifty acres of
land, situate lying and being as follows to wit: Beginning at high
water mark up the river called Partridge or Chignecto, etc., etc. To
lave and to hold the above described premises unto the said rector,
church wardens, and vestry, in trust aforesaid, to them and their
successors forever, thereby engaging to warrant and forever defend^
the said premises against all persons claiming right to the same. In
witness whereunto I have hereunto set my hand and seal at Parrs-
borough, this 12th day of August, A. D., 1788, and in the twenty-
eighth year of his Majesty's reign, whom God preserve.

' "(Signed) Thomas William Moore ".

May 31, 1813, a glebe or minister's lot of 600 acres, and a
school lot of 400 acres, were given to Parrsborough by the govern-
ment, but it was largely through the liberal benefaction of Captain
Moore that the Church was first able properly to establish itself in
this part of Krag 's County. In Mr. Shreve 's first report to the S. P. G.
he says that a church building has been begun at Parrsborough,
Governor Parr having allotted .for the building of it two hun-
dred poimds. The church is to be forty feet long and twenty-seven

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 261

feet high, with a steeple fifty feet high, and its location is near
Partridge Island, the supposed centre of the parish, where the
Rector himself resides. In this report Mr. Shreve also speaks of
the great extent of his mission, in which he believes there are about
a hundred families. Besides Parrsborough, he ofSciates at Ratch-
ford Harbour and Half-Way river. In two distinct reports after
this he announces that the church is nearly completed, but after
1792, until the end of the century, the Society's reports give us no
information concerning the Parrsborough parish.

The church was finished, and consecrated as "St. George's",
in 1790. The first rector, born probably in New Jersey, was gradu-
ated at King's College, New York, in 1773, and then began to study
for orders. When the Revolution broke out, however, he entered
the King's srvice, in which he served, first as lieutenant, then as
captain, in the Prince of Wales American Volunteers. When the
war was over he retired from the army on half pay, and going to
London was ordained Deacon in April, 1787, and ordered Priest in
June of the same year. He then came to Nova Scotia and for
twenty years laboured at Parrsborough, after which, as we have
seen, he settled in Lunenburg, where, August 21st, 1816, he died.
Capt. Thomas William Moore, the earliest benefactor of the Church in
Parrsborough, was also a new York Loyalist. In 1781 he came to
Parrsborough, where he built a large house, which he named
"Whitehall", and in which he lived for a few years. Becoming
tired of Nova Scotia, however, he finally went back to New York,
leaving in Nova Scotia a son. Col. William Charles Moore, who
moved from Parrsborough to Cornwallis and there founded the
well-known Moore family of King's County, which afterwards
became more closely identified with Horton. Capt. Moore 's daughter,
Rachel Lane Moore, became the wife of William Campbell, Esq., long
Judge of Probate for King's County, and like Col. William Charles
Moore, a parishioner of the Cornwallis Church of St. John. The list
of Rectors of Parrsborough (so far as we have been able to compile
it) to the present time is as follows :

262 KING'S COUNTY

BECTOES OP PARRSBOKOUGH

Rev. Thomas Shreve 1787—1807

? ? ? ?

Rev. George Morris 1823— '27

Rev. W. B. King 1830— '31

? ? ? ?

Rev. N. A. Coster 1836— '42

Rev. Robert Arnold 1843— '45

Rev. W. H. Cooper 1846

Rev. W. B. King 1846— '75

Rev. Robert F. Brine 1875— '78

Rev. Charles Bowman, D. D. 1878— '88

Rev. Simon Gibbons 1888— '96

Rev. John Ambrose, D. D. 1897

Rev. Robert Johnston 1897—1900

Rev. "William Driffield 1900— '04

Rev. H. J. Johnston 1905— '07

Rev. George Backhurst 1907 —

Like Parrsborough, the township of Aylesford was settled
chiefly after the close of the American Revolutionary War. Until
1789 "Wilmot, in Annapolis county, and the whole township of
Aylesford, which lay between "Wilmot and Cornwallis and Horton,
was part of the large King's County mission, and occasionally we
find mention in the Society's reports of work done in the western
part of this enormous field. Such mention, however, is chiefly of
Wilmot, where between August, 1783, and June, 1786, Mr. Wiswall
reports that he had had seven baptisms ; in 1787, however, in that
township he had had twenty-eight baptisms. In 1789, as we have seen,
the best part of Aylesford was united with Wilmot in a separate
mission, and the Rev. Mr. Wiswall, removing from Cornwallis,
became its minister.

Of his new field, in 1791 Mr. Wiswall gives the Society a rather
dreary account. He says that that part of the province, "though
the finest land, and most healthy and pleasant of any in Nova Scotia,

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 263

is yet but thinly settled, and by those who in general are very poor,
living mostly in huts, having none of the conveniences and few of
the necessaries of life, and being so long habituated to what may
be called a savage life that it is very difficult to civilize them". The
past winter he says, had been so severe that he had been prevented
for four Sundays from getting to the Aylesf ord church. Perhaps on
account of the severe weather, in half a year he had had only three
children brought to him for baptism. In this time he had married
seven couples, and had attended one funeral. The settlers, of whose
character he speaks in such a deprecating way, were chiefly com-
mon soldiers who had served on the British side in the Revolution,
and with many of the officers who had commanded them, when the
war was over had come to Nova Scotia and from the government or
from private owners had obtained small tracts of land. By this
class certaia parts of "Wilmot were almost exclusively settled.

In Upper Aylesford, however, as we have seen, late in the 18th
and early in the 19th century there were not a few settlers of a very
much higher class. In 1783 Mr. James Morden, an Englishman,
ordnance storekeeper at Halifax, received a grant of five thousand
acres in Aylesford, and very soon after fixed his summer residence
there. In 1790 Bishop Charles Inglis also received land in Aylesford,
and he too soon built in that township a summer house. In 1814
Henry VanBuskirk, formerly of New Jersey, received a grant of
land in the township, and thereafter for many years he was a
prominent person in the town. In 1790, chiefly through the exer-
tions and benefactions of Mr. Morden, a church called St. Mary's
was built at Aylesford, of which we have a detailed account in the
Society's report for that year. It was fifty-seven feet long, includ-
ing the chancel and steeple, and twenty-eight feet wide, and was
"the neatest and best finished Church in the Province". As in all
the Nova Scotia churches built in the 18th century, one pew was
set apart ia it for the Governor, and one for the Bishop, and over
their pews the King's arms and the arms of the Nova Scotia See,
respectively, were handsomely painted. In the steeple was a bell,
and for the Communion table, Reading Desk, and Pulpit, Commis-

264 KING'S COUNTY

sioner Duncan had given a set of silk-damask hangings, probably
red. To complete the furnishing, Governor Wentworth had given
the Church "a Bible and Prayer Book, elegantly bound". As an
endowment for the parish, the governor had granted three hun-
dred acres for a glebe, and Mr. Morden had given two hundred
acres.

In the parish is preserved a copy of a paper, "which was placed
in the upper ball attached to the vane on the tower" of the church,
when it was built. The paper records that "this Church of St.
Mary's was built in the year 1790, under the patronage of his
Excellency John Parr, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor of this Province;
the Right Rev. Charles Inglis, D. D., first Bishop of Nova Scotia;
and James Morden, Esq., ordnance storekeeper; the first minister,
Rev. John Wiswall; the builder, William Matthews". An article
on St. Mary's parish, published in the Canadian Church Magazine
in 1891, says that from Mr. Matthews' bill of construction it is
learned that the total cost of the building was £475, Is, 5d, the
amount being obtained as follows: Governor Parr, £222, 4s, 6d;
various smaller benefactions, £86, 3, 3 ; James Morden, £165, 13, 7.
"The furnishings of the Church", the writer of this article says,
"were all gifts, among others an elegant folio Bible with three
Prayer Books to match, the gift of Governor Wentworth. In
addition to the great care and expense at which Mr. Morden had
been, he gave a deed of the grounds (between five and six acres)
on which the Church stands, with its surroundings".

In February, 1791, the parish of Aylesford was duly organized,
but of the first parochial officers we have not the names. The
earliest recorded minute of the vestry, however, is of the year 1802.
On Michaelmas Day of that year, there was a regular meeting of
the parish held, at which officers were elected and other business
was transacted. In 1795 Mr. Wiswall writes the Society that he
had a good congregation at Wilmot, but not at Aylesford. At the
latter place, Mr. Addison, "the catechist", was very diligent and
gave great satisfaction. In 1797 he writes that at Wilmot his
congregation increases, but at Aylesford it grows less. The condi-

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 265

tion of things at the latter place is made worse by the sympathy
of some of the Aylesford people with the extravagances of the
New Lights and Methodists.

On the ordination, in 1801, of Rev. John Inglis, Bishop Charles
Inglis' son, as Deacon and Priest, Mr. Wiswall's jurisdiction over
the parish of Aylesford seems to have ceased, for from that time
until 1816, when he was elected rector of St. Paul's, Halifax, the
third Bishop of Nova Scotia was rector of St. Mary's. Not long
after his ordination, however, he was appointed his father's Com-
missary, and during much of his rectorship of Aylesford he must
necessarily have been absent from his parish. In 1806 he was in
England, and again in 1813. In July, 1804, his first child was born,
apparently in Halifax, and it would seem that six others of his
children were born there also. But in St. Mary's parish remain
fixed traditions of much faithful service performed by him in Ayles-
ford. " In no case ' ', it is said, ' ' did he spare himself, but continually
travelling the wilderness paths, either on horseback in summer, or
on snowshoes in winter, he visited the scattered settlers, relieved
their necessities (for there was much poverty at that time), prayed
with the sick, baptized their children, and encouraged all by his
life and example to follow, as he endeavoured to follow, in the
footsteps of the Master".

In spite of these traditions we are compelled to believe that much
of the time during his fifteen years rectorship of Aylesford Dr.
Inglis was away from his parish, and we cannot help wondering
how in his frequent and sometimes long absences the parish needs
were met. Of his rectorship surprisingly few records remain, but
of one important fact we are assured from sources outside the
parish, — on the 23rd of March, 1810, the government increased the
endowment of the parish by granting to "the Rev. John Inglis,
D. D., Rector, and Alexander Walker and Henry VanBuskirk,
Churchwardens and trustees of the parish", a hundred acres "in
part of a glebe", and a hundred "in part of a school". In 1816
Bishop Charles Inglis died, and his son went to England hoping
to be appointed to the Nova Scotia See. His hopes, however, for

266 KING'S COUNTY

the time were disappointed. Instead of the episcopate he received
from the government the rectorship of the parish of St. Paul's,
Halifax. His immediate successor at Aylesford was the Eev.
Edwin Gilpin, born August 8, 1792, at Lower Dublin, Pennsylvania,
baptized there by Bishop White, admitted to King's College, Nova
Scotia, in 1814, and probably early in 1816 ordained to the ministry
and elected Rector of Aylesford. For the first few years of his
rectorship Mr. Gilpin lived in "Wilmot with John Wiswall, Jr. (son
of the Rev. John Wiswall), whose daughter, Eliza, October 29, 1817,
he married. Mrs. Gilpin died in Aylesford, July 5th, 1823, in her
27th year, and Mr. Gilpin married, second, June 15th, 1827, in
Trinity Church, Newport, R. I., Gertrude Aleph, eldest daughter of
Edward and Janet (Parker) Brinley, who died January 17, 1845.
In 1832 Mr. Gilpin became rector of St. Luke's Church, Annapolis
Royal, and there he remained until his death twenty-eight years
later.

When he had been at Aylesford a few years, Mr. Gilpin "pur-
chased the property a great part of which now forms the Rectory
grounds". During the whole of his ministry in Aylesford it is said
there was no minister of any other denomination settled in the town-
ship, consequently in his farewell sermon, holding up his hands he
was able to say: "With these hands have I baptized every child that
has been bom in the parish during my ministry". Having some
knowledge of medicine he was able to minister very often to the
bodily needs of his people; thus in every way he was in King's
County a faithful and useful minister of Christ.

In 1832 the Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen became Rector of
Aylesford, and three years later. Dr. Charles Inglis, son of Bishop
John, who continued to live in Aylesford until his death in 1861, by
perseverance secured funds and built a schoolhouse for the parish
use. In 1847, among other good works which he did, the Rev. Mr.
Owen started a branch of the Diocesan Church Society in Aylesford,
thus materially helping the work of diocesan missions. In 1852, at
the Bishop's request, this clergyman left Aylesford and assumed
the rectorship of Lunenburg, in which position he remained until
he died.

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 267

The next rector of Aylesford was the Rev. Richard Avery, son
of John and Elizabeth (Simmons) Avery, who was bom at South-
ampton, England, and educated there, at Warminster, and at
Oxford, his brothers, the Rev. John S. Avery, M. A., and the Rev.
"William Avery, B. A., being chiefly his tutors. Passing the Clerical
Board of the S. P. G. in London, Mr. Avery was sent out as a Deacon
to Nova Scotia, and by Bishop John Inglis was given the curacy
of Lxmenburg. In the spring of 1842 he was called as assistant to
St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and Christ Church, Dartmouth, and in
September, 1843, was priested and elected rector of Yarmouth.
Early in 1846 he resigned the parish of Yarmouth, and for the
next six months was assistant at Digby. For almost two years
after that, in the absence of the Rev. Dr. Gray, he was locum tenens
in St. John, N. B. In the spring of 1848, however, he went to Pug-
wash and Wallace, but in 1852 was elected Rector of Aylesford, to
succeed Mr. Owen. The duties of St, Mary's, Aylesford, he faith-
fully performed until January 1, 1887, when with the permission
of the Bishop and the S. P. G. he retired from active labour, his
place being filled until May, 1900, successively, by the Revs. J. M.
C. Wade, and G. I. Foster, as vicars. In May, 1900, he resigned
the parish. Mr. Avery married, first, in Yarmouth, Mary Ann,
daughter of Gabriel Bydder Van Norden, of Yarmouth, who bore
him a daughter, Helen, and a son. Dr. William A. Avery ; secondly,
November 22, 1853, in Aylesford (the Rev. Mr. Stamer of Wilmot
officiating), Lavinia Mary Palmer, of Aylesford, who bore him a
daughter, Elizabeth Palmer Avery.

Mr. Avery was a gentlemen of the kindliest spirit and the
most exact good breeding. The last years of his life were spent at
Kentville where, esteemed and honoured as he had been through-
out his whole ministerial career, on the 6th of May, 1900, he passed
to a better life. In 1900, on his resignation of the parish of Ayles-
ford, the Rev. G. I. Foster became Rector. From 1901 until Decem-
ber 31, 1903, the Rev. James Simonds was Rector, and in January,
1904, the Rev. Henry T. Parlee, M. A., the present faithful incum-
bent, succeeded to the parish.

268 KING'S COUNTY

BECTOES OF ATLESFOED

Rev. John Wiswall 1791—1801

Rev. John Inglis, D. D. 1801—16

Rev. Edwin Gilpin 1816— '32

Rev. Henry Lambeth Owen 1832— '52

Rev. Richard Avery 1852—1900

Rev. G. I. Foster 1900— '01

Rev. James Simonds 1901— '03

Rev. Henry T. Parlee 1904^

J VICARS OP AYLESFOED

Rev. John Moore Campbell Wade 1888— '99

Rev. G. I. Foster 1899—1900

A subject of no little interest in connection with the Church
of England in King's County is the administration of the glebe
and school lands in Cornwallis and Horton, given by the govern-
ment in 1761. In the Rector and Wardens of the several parishes
of the county, glebe lands of course always have been vested. In
Cornwallis the glebe has from the first been managed in a careful
way, but in Horton, it is said, owing to early mismanagement the
uplands have lost to the Church. The dyke lands, however, are
still intact, and the revenue from them is enjoyed by the parish of
Horton. On the creation of St. James parish, Kentville, the division
of lands then made gave whatever forest lands are still owned by
the Church to the newer parish, as its share of the original grant.

As we have elsewhere stated, September 26, 1769, a grant of
666 acres was given the Rev. Benaiah Phelps, the Cornwallis Con-
gregationalist minister, as the first minister of any denomination
to be actually settled in the town. The subsequent history of this
grant will be alluded to further on. At the same time as Mr.
Phelps, the Rev. James Murdoch of Horton, Presbyterian, received
a grant of 500 acres on his own side of the Cornwallis river, but
whether this clergyman on his removal from Horton sold his land
or not we do not at present know. In 1761, two shares in Horton,

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH 269

comprising a thousand acres, were given to the Eev. John Breyn-
ton of Halifax. This was, however, strictly a personal grant.

The history of the school lands in King's County is too long
and involved to be given save in the barest outline here. By an
act passed in 1766 the income from these lands was to be paid by
such trustees as the governor should appoint ' ' to protect and improve
them", to the acknowledged schoolmasters of the S. P. G. By an
act dated December 31, 1790, the Cornwallis school lands were
vested in the Rev. William Twining and his Churchwardens,
Messrs. Burbidge and Belcher, as trustees, but by whom the Horton
lands were to be administered the Nova Scotia "Private and Local
Acts" do not inform us. In 1813, it is said, all the Nova Scotia
school lands came directly under the control of the Bishop of the
Diocese and two other trustees in each parish where they existed,
which provision seems to have remained indisputedly in force until
1838.

With the gradual broadening of educational methods in the
province, in 1838 an attempt was made to withdraw the school
lands from Church control, but the governor. Sir Colin Campbell,
positively refused his assent to a bill authorizing a new mode of
appointing trustees. The next year the right of the Church of Eng-
land to administer the school lands was brought fully before Her
Majesty's Government, the provincial legislature then pasing an
act to vest them all in trustees for the purpose of general euduea-
tion. This act, however, the British Government refused to
sanction, and after hearing the opinions of counsel in England as
to what rights in these lands were held by the S. P. G., ordered that
all lands then occupied and improved by the Society should be
preserved to the Church.

In 1850 the Nova Scotia legislature passed another act, similar
to the act of 1839, but again strong protest was made to the Queen
by the S. P. G. Upon this. Earl Gray in a dispatch expressed his
surprise that the Nova Scotia governor, Sir John Harvey, had
assented to the bill, and required an explanation from the Attorney
General. Thus the conflict went on, until at last, as regards the

270 KING'S COUNTY

Comwallis school lands, the matter was brought to the notice of
the Privy Council. The decision of this body is not at hand, but
after the erection of the Nova Scotia counties into municipalities in
1879, the school lands of King's County seem all to have become
securely vested in the municipality. By an act of the legislature,
passed April 28, 1893, the trustees of school lands for the time being
were empowered to sell, if need be, the school lands in Comwallis ;
and by an act passed March 11, 1895, the school lands in Horton;
and appropriate the income from such sale to the general purposes
of education.

The first S. P. G. schoolmaster in King's County was Mr.
Cornelius Fox, at Comwallis, a gentleman born in County Cork,
Ireland, in 1745. On the 18th of June, 1782, the governor, Sir
Andrew Snape Hamond, granted a license to Cornelius Fox "to
occupy and possess that lot of land called the School lot, in the
township of Comwallis, containiog four hundred acres, so long as
he shall continue to be employed as schoolmaster by the Society
in England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts". Mr.
Fox left Comwallis for Sydney, Cape Breton, in 1797, his imme-
diate successor in Comwallis being Mr. Matthew McLoughlin.

CHAPTER Xyi

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH

AND THE ALLINE REVIVAL

The New England planters of Cornwallis and Horton were,
of course, with hardly an exception, members or adherents of the
independent Congregationalist churches of the various towns from
which they had come to Nova Scotia, and one of the matters of
immediate concern to them must have been the establishment in
the new townships where their lot was now cast, of the worship
to which they had always been used. In Halifax, shortly after
the settlement of that town, there were enough New England
people of Puritan Congregationalist origin to form a dissenting
church. .Of this church, to which the name "Mather's" was given,
the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, who later took Orders ia the English
Church, was the first pastor. Soon after the New England migra-
tion several other Congregationalist churches sprang up in places
where New England men had settled, and by the beginning of
1770 seven Nova Scotia Congregationalist churches had entered on
their career. These were, at Yarmouth, with the Rev. Nehemiah
Porter as pastor; at Barrington, with the Rev. Samuel Wood; at
Liverpool, with the Rev. Israel Cheever.; at Chester, with the Rev.
John Secombe; at Cumberland, with the Rev. Caleb Gannett; at
Halifax, with the Rev. William Moore; and at Cornwallis and
Horton, with the Rev. Benaiah Phelps. Of these Congregationalist
ministers, the Rev. Israel Cheever, the Rev. John Secombe, and the
Rev. Caleb Gannett were graduates of Harvard ; the Rev. Benaiah
Phelps alone was a graduate of Yale. With the exception of Mr.
Moore, who was a native of Ireland, all were New England born
men.

272 KING'S COUNTY

The exact date of the founding of the Congregationalist
"Church of Horton and Cornwallis" it seems improbable now that
we shall ever be able to know. For five years after the New
England planters came to the county they were without settled
religious ministration; but deeply attached to religion as many of
them were, it is necessary to suppose that during this time they
sustained neighbourhood meetings in private houses for lay preach-
ing or conference, and prayer. In an explanatory letter from Mr.
Handley Chipman of Cornwallis, one of the most important of the
King's County planters, written June 30, 1777, to two Presbyterian
clergymen, Messrs. Daniel Cock and David Smith, who as we shall
see had come to Cornwallis to try to produce a better state of feeling
in the church, it is stated that as early as 1761 or '62 the people
subscribed to send to New England for a minister, and that while
the question of whether to look for one in Massachusetts or Connec-
ticut was still under discussion, the Eev. Benaiah Phelps was sent
to them by an Association of Connecticut ministers.

As a matter of fact, probably early in 1765, the church or some
important members of it made formal application to the South
Hartford Association for a minister, and that year, four years from
the time of his graduation from Yale, the Eev. Benaiah Phelps was
ordained especially for this field. The young minister came first to
Halifax, and Mr. Handley Chipman courteously went from Corn-
wallis to accompany him to his new field. "When the minister
reached Cornwallis it was thought best for some reason not to
settle him at once, but to take him on trial for a year, and this the
church did. At the end of the year he became the church's regular
pastor, and in this position remained until probably some time in
1776. As a whole, the people, glad to be once more under a settled
ministry, were at first pleased with Mr. Phelps, though Mr. Chipman
says he himself early had doubts of the sincerity of the young man 's
attachment to his calling, and was generally not much impressed in
his favour. The salary promised the minister was eighty pounds a
year, and there was much discussion as to the proper way of raising
it, whether by a distinct pledge on the part of the committee repre-

THE CONGREGATIONAUST CHURCH 273

seating the congregation, by entirely voluntary contributions, or
by a definite rating of the pews.

How soon after Mr. Phelps' formal settlement as pastor of the
church strong opposition to him began to manifest itself we do
not know, nor are we informed precisely what the grounds of the
people 's dislike of him were. By 1776, however, the feeling against
him had grown so bitter that he was obliged to withdraw from the
pastorate, and in 1778 he left the province not to return. The
culminating reason for the bitterness that followed him when he
left was he had sold to John Robinson the land granted him Septem-
ber 26, 1769, as the first minister settled in the town, and had appro-
priated the money he received for the sale. The grant, which was
given under the seal of Lord William Campbell, the governor, was
made out in Mr. Phelps' own name, and he therefore evidently had
a legal right to seU it, but the people believed that the land had
been intended for the continual benefit of the church, and they
regarded the minister as having committed a moral wrong in
treating it as his own. Mr. Phelps' salary was probably in arrears,
for as time went on the people 's subscriptions towards it had fallen
off, and this fact may have seemed to him sufficient justification for
the course he took in selling the land. Be that as it may, the people
felt that he had wronged them, and after he had returned to New
England they appealed to the South Hartford Association to take
some action toward having the money he had received for it
refunded. Their appeal, however, was disregarded, and the prog-
ress of the Revolution soon stopped all commimication of a
friendly nature between Nova Scotia and the revolted colonies.
"My father", says Mr. Phelps' son in a biographical notice of the
clergyman in question, "got into trouble with the Government of
Nova Scotia and had to leave unceremoniously in 1778". Pre-
cisely what meaning this statement may have had to the writer
of it we do not know, but it is said that Mr. Phelps added some-
what to his unpopularity in Cornwallis by showing decided sym-
pathy with the revolt against England on the part of his New Eng-
land friends.- In connection with his removal from the Horton and

274 KING'S COUNTY

Comwallis church, the name of one prominent man is still remem-
bered, the name of Mr. Samuel Starr. Major Starr was from the
first, in Comwallis, a person to be reckoned with, and for Mr.
Phelps he evidently shared the common dislike. Whether he held
any official position in the Congregationalist Church at this early
time we do not know, but in 1784, when St. John's parish was
organized, both he and his younger brother David became vestry-
men in it, thenceforth probably giving it their exclusive support.

The difficulty in Comwallis about raising Mr. Phelps' salary
was almost from the first so great that the committee charged with
raising it were sometimes obliged to take money from their ovra
pockets to pay it. Finally, on their own authority, without pre-
senting the matter to the congregation, these men wrote the Rev.
Dr. Andrew Eliot, third pastor of the New North Church, on Hanover
Street, Boston, representing their church as very poor and asking
for help. The preface to their appeal, which was dated November
8, 1T69, in the following way, describes the condition of things in
the church : ' ' God in his Providence, who orders the bounds of the
habitation of his people, after previously removing our enemies,
planted us in this infant colony, in the year 1760, and after con-
tinuing five years destitute of a minister of the gospel, by applica-
tion to the South Association in Hartford, in the colony of
Connecticut, we obtained one Rev. Benaiah Phelps, who came to
us ordained to the work of the ministry and well recommended by
said Association, who after one year's continuance with us on
probation took the pastoral charge of us to our general satisfaction.
Our numbers consist of a hundred and thirty-three families (not
ten of which are of the established church), and between eight and
nine hundred souls". The members of the committee who made
the appeal were. Captain Samuel Beckwith, Deacon Caleb Hunt-
ington, and Messrs. Isaac Bigelow, John Newcomb, Hezekiah Cogs-
well, and Elkanah Morton, Jr. These men seem personally to have
been some three hundred dollars out of pocket in their management
of the Church's affairs, and according to the letter already referred
to of Mr. Handley Chipman to Messrs. Cock and Smith, to have

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 275

taken this means to reimburse themselves. The appeal was received
by Dr. Eliot in the kindest way. At once, it is stated, he raised a
hundred pounds for the church, but just then happening to see in
Boston a Halifax Congregationalist, Mr. Malachy Salter, he asked
him if there were not other congregations in the province as needy
as that at Cornwallis. Mr. Salter assured him that there were, and
particularly the congregation at Chester, where the Eev. John
Secombe, a graduate of Harvard of the class of 1728, was stationed.
Accordingly, Dr. Eliot sent his contribution to the Hon. Benjamin
Gerrish, another Boston man living in Halifax, who distributed it
as he judged wisest amongst the various Nova Scotia Congregation-
alist churches.

In the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for
1888 this appeal has been printed, and in connection with it a long
letter from Messrs. Gerrish and Salter to the Eev'ds. Andrew EUot,
and Samuel Cooper (of the Brattle Square Church in Boston),
describing in detail the condition of the several churches of the
Congregational order throughout the province. There is also
printed a letter from the Rev. Nehemiah Porter, of Yarmouth, Nova
Scotia, to Dr. Eliot, thanking him for his donation of forty dollars,
which he says he had received in September, 1769, almost two
months before the Cornwallis people's appeal had been sent. Of
the later donation from Boston it is said that the Cornwallis and
other churches received ten pounds apiece, the more needy church
at Chester, however, getting double the amount.

When the appeal of the Cornwallis Committee to Dr. Eliot be-
came known, Mr. Chipman and others were very indignant, and
from that time on there seem to have been continual ill feeling and
frequent dissensions among the members and adherents of the
church. A little later, however, the church, probably as a body,
did appeal to a clergyman in New England to get assistance for
them in their low financial state. On the minutes of the Council of
Connecticut, under date of New Haven, October 11, 1771, we find
the following important record: "Upon the memorial of the Rev.
Solomon [Williams of Lebanon (Rev. Solomon Williams D. D.,

276 KING'S COUNTY

minister of the First Church of Lebanon from December, 1722, to
February, 1776), in behalf of the Congregational Church in the
town of Cornwallis, in the Province of Nova Scotia, shewing to
this Board that the inhabitants of said town were settled there in
the year 1760, and continued five years almost destitute of gospel
administration; that they have since by the general desire of the
people settled the Kev. Mr. Benajah Phelps in the gospel ministry
in that town with the pleasing prospect of a sufiScient support,
since which their circumstances are become very difficult and dis-
tressing, chiefly by means of the fruits of the earth being cut short
in 1767 and 1768, and by extraordinary expense in building a meet-
ing house, and especially in repairing their dykes to the amount of
near 2000 (£), which has involved them so deeply in debt that
except they can obtain relief by the charity of their christian
brethren and friends ia Connecticut, the cause of religion will
greatly suffer ; praying for a Brief &c as per memorial on file :

"Resolved by this Board that the said Rev. Solomon Williams,
in behalf of the church and town of Cornwallis, have liberty to ask
the charitable contributions of the inhabitants of the several relig-
ious societies in the towns of New London, Norwich, Windham,
Lebanon, Colchester, Canterbury and Lyme; and said church and
inhabitants of said Cornwallis are hereby recommended to their
christian liberality".

The meeting house referred to in this minute was built at
Chipman's Comer in Cornwallis, in 1767 and '68. Until it was
erected the people must have worshipped in private houses or school-
houses, or perhaps on important occasions in barns. That the
Horton Congregationalists did not also move to erect a church
building on their side of the river, seems strange ; our only explana-
tion of their failure to do so is that, as we shall see, a Presbyterian
church was very soon built at Grand Pre, and a Scotch Presby-
terian minister settled there. The Cornwallis Congregationalist
church organization, it will be remembered, however, was techni-
cally known as the Church of Horton and Cornwallis ' '.

The Cornwallis church building was located on land that had

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 277

originally been a corner of the Parade at Chipman's Corner, the
road across the Middle Dyke here meeting the road called Churcli
Street. Very near where the church was placed, in French times
stood the parish church of St. Joseph, of River Canard, the Con-
gregationalist churchyard, where many of the most important of
the early Cornwallis people are buried, being identically the church-
yard of the French parish church. The site of both church and
churchyard, it is said, as iudeed of the Parade, was first included
in Major Samuel Starr's grant; very soon, however, this
gentleman made the land a gift to the town for public use. The
meeting house was a large, square, two-story wooden structure,
with high-backed pews, and a lofty pulpit arched by a canopy or
Bounding board. The pews were arranged in four tiers, besides the
wall pews, and the church must have seated not much less than a
thousand persons. The frame was brought from New England,
probably from Machias, Maine, whence the frames of the old gam-
brel roofed houses on Church Street are said to have been brought.
The church was used for worship continuously until 1859, when on
the division of the King's County Presbyterians into three separate
congregations, services in it were finally discontinued. An act of
the legislature, passed May 7, 1874, authorized the trustees of the
South Presbyterian congregation of Cornwallis to sell it, the pro-
ceeds to be applied to keeping the burying ground in order.
Shortly after this the building was bought by the Hon. Samuel
Chipman and taken down. So many of the New England grantees
had settled farther northward in Cornwallis, toward the Habi-
tant river, that even for Cornwallis the location of the church was
never central. "As to building the meeting house", says Mr. Hand-
ley Chipman, "a number of the people was of the mind to have two
smaller ones built, as the town was very large in extent, of which
I was one, although where it now stands accommodates me and
most of mine best, but it was carried otherwise, by reason of which
many over Canard and Habitant river would never give one
farthing to the meeting house, and caused some to be backward
about Mr. Phelps' support and caused uneasiness that has subsisted
ever since".

278 KING'S COUNTY

Mr. Phelps himself lived a little to the eastward of the meeting
house, but it was in Horton that he got his wife. From the Corn-
wallis Town Book we learn that ' ' The Eev. Benajah Phelps, son of
Nathaniel Phelps of Hebron, in the Colony of Connecticut, in New
England and Mary his wife, was married to Phebe Dennison,
daughter of Col. Robert Dennison of Horton, and Prudence his wio,
November the 19th, 1766, by the Eev. Joseph Bennett". Among
the births recorded in the Town Book, are to be found the names of
the Phelps children : Elizabeth, born August 30, 1768 ; Phebe, born
Oct. 7, 1770; Denison, born Sept. 24, 1772. It is probable that
one of the first ofBcial acts of Mr. Phelps in his new parish was the
marriage of Margaret Bigelow to Nathan Longfellow, on the tenth
of October, 1765. Among other marriages he celebrated were those
of George Smith and Lucy Rude in October, 1765; Jonathan Rand
and Lydia Strong, November 12, 1776 ; Perry Borden and Mary Ells,
October 22, 1767; Moses Gore and Molly Newcomb, January 26,
1769; Cyrus Peck and Mary English, October 11, 1770; John
BngUsh and Christina Cogswell, October 31, 1771 ; Mason Cogswell
and Lydia Huntington, October 31, 1771; Ezra Pride and Lydia
Bigelow, January 30, 1772; Peter Pineo and Eunice Bentley, May
14, 1772 ; Ahira Calkin and Irena Porter, December 24, 1772 ; Dan
Pineo and Anna Bentley, October 21, 1773; Oliver Cogswell and
Abigail Ells, December 23, 1773 ; William Pineo and Phebe Bentley,
July 18, 1766 ; William Allen Chipman and Ann Osbom, November
20, 1777. This last date is the latest that we can be sure of his
having performed any clerical function in the county.

About the time of Mr. Phelps* retirement from the pastorate
of the Horton and Cornwallis church, the first religious revival
movement of Nova Scotia began. In 1740 and '41 New England
had been stirred by what is historically known as the "Great
Awakening". This movement had begun almost simultaneously in
Old and New England, in the former with the "Methodist" move-
ment in Oxford, with which the names of John and Charles Wesley
and George Whitefield will always stand inseparably connected, in
the latter with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton,

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 279

Massachusetts, in 1735. The first sermon that "Whitefield preached
in Gloucester Cathedral after his ordination to the deaconate in
1736 was so vehement that several persons in the great congre-
gation almost went mad with excitement and fear. Complaints
were made to the bishop that the young enthusiast was driving
people crazy, but the bishop only replied that he hoped the madness
would last until the following Sunday.

In 1738 "Whitefield came first to America, but he soon returned.
The next year he again came to America for a longer time, and
wherever he preached, the feeling of his audiences was roused to a
fervid flame. The other chief names connected with the American
revival movement were Gilbert Tennent from abroad, and Graham,
Meacham, Whitman, and Parrand, native born American evangelis-
tic preachers. At New London, Groton, Lyme, Stonington, Preston,
and Norwich, as well as in other parts of Connecticut and in various
places in Rhode Island, people were stirred religiously as they had
never been before. New England, generally, was moved, but Con-
necticut more remarkably than any other colony. "In many places
people would cry out in time of public worship under a sense of
their overbearing guilt and misery, and the all-consuming wrath of
God, due to them for their iniquities ; others would faint and swoon
under the affecting views which they had of God and Christ. Some
would weep and sob, and there would sometimes be so much noise
among the people, in particular places, that it was with difficulty
that the preacher could be heard. In some few instances it seems
that the minister has not been able to finish his discourse, there has
been so much crying out and disturbance".

The excesses of the revival movement naturally led to great
opposition to it on the part of the more conservative people in the
churches. Newly aroused persons often branded their fellow church
members, and indeed their pastors, as unconverted, and refused to
have further fellowship with them; the aroused people, in turn,
were, of course, charged with being fanatical disturbers of the
churches' peace. The result of the movement on the whole, how-
ever, was a great increase of vital religion throughout all the

280 KING'S COUNTY

colonies. The number of converts made in a few years in New
England is variously estimated at from twenty-five to fifty thousand,
and in less than twenty years a hundred and fifty new Congrega-
tionalist churches were formed. But for a time in many of the older
churches the greatest bitterness of feeling prevailed, and in the
course of the revival a considerable number of Separatist churches
— in Connecticut no less than ten — ^were formed, in which "New
Light" principles, as they early came to be called, found full
expression. This religious awakening was chiefly in the Congre-
gationalist churches, but its effect was greatly felt also in the Baptist
churches, many of the Separatist churches in a short time going
completely over to the Baptist faith.

In 1748, in Newport, Rhode Island, Henry AUine was born.
His father and mother were natives of Boston, but after their
marriage, in 1730, they moved to Newport, and probably there came
under the influence of the great revival. In 1760 they migrated to
Falmouth, Nova Scotia, and in that town from his twelfth year,
their son Henry grew up. With a poetical, spiritual nature, and a
mind keenly sensitive to impressions of every sort, the boy came
into manhood. Outwardly he was much like other boys, but deep
within were always seething the elements of fierce spiritual conflict.
The theology in which he had been reared is pathetically described
by himself in the "Life and Journal" he has left, which was pub-
lished in Boston by Gilbert and Dean in the year 1806. When he was
twenty-seven years old, "wherever I went or whatever I did, night
or day", he says, "I was groaning under a load of guilt and dark-
ness, praying and cryiag continually for mercy; yea I would often
be so intent ia prayer that when I met any one in the street I would
be praying until I spoke to him, and as soon as I left him would
begin to cry within myself for mercy. * * « When I waked in
the morning the first thought would be, 0, my wretched soul, what
shall I do, where shall I go? And when I laid down would say,
'I shall perhaps be in hell before morning'. I would many times
look on the beasts with envy, wishing with all my heart I was in
their place, that I might have no soul to lose ' '.

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 281

In a short time, however, his conversion came and his ecstasy
was then as great as his previous agony had been. At that
instant of time, when I gave up all to Him, to do with me as He
pleased, and was willing that God should reign in me and rule over
me at His pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul .with
repeated scritpures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be
melted down with love ; the burden of guilt and condemnation was
gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled with grati-
tude and my will turned of choice after the Infinite God, whom I
saw I had rebelled against, and been deserting from all my days.
Attracted by the love and beauty I saw in His divine perfections,
my whole soul was inexpressibly ravished with the blessed
Eedeemer; not with what I expected to enjoy after death or in
heaven, but with what I now enjoyed in my soul: for my whole
soul seemed filled with the Divine Being. My whole soul, that was a
few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, wading
through storms of sorrow, racked with distressing fear, and crying
to an unknown God for help, was now filled with immortal love,
soaring on the wings of faith, freed from the chains of death and
darkness, and crying out 'My Lord and my God; thou art my rock
and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my
present and my everlasting portion' ".

At once the conviction came to him that he must preach salva-
tion to other. s. "In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an
hour after my soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered to me my
labour in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out,
'Amen, Lord, I'll go, I'll go, send me, send me'. And although
many (to support the preaching of antichrist) will pretend there
is no such thing as a man's knowing in these days he is called to
preach any other way than his going to the seats of learning to be
prepared for the ministry, and then authorized by men ; yet blessed
be God, there is a knowledge of these things which an unconverted
man knows nothing of. * * * As for learning, it was true I
had read and studied more than was common for one in my station,
but my education was but small : what I had of human literature I

282 KING'S COUNTY

had acquired of myself without schooling, excepting what I obtained
before I was eleven years of age, for I never went to school after I
came to Nova Scotia".

Because of his lack of education, for a year he refrained from
anything more than a local exercise of his gifts for preaching, but
at last he was led to believe that God wanted him to go forth just
as he was and show men the way of eternal life. "About the 13th
or 14th day of April, 1775, I began to see that I had all this time
been led astray by labouring so much after human learning and
wisdom, and had held back from the call of God. One day
in my meditation I had such a discovery of Christ's having
everything I needed, and that all was mine, that I said
I needed nothing to qualify me but Christ; and that if I had
all the wisdom that could ever be obtained by mortals, with-
out having the spirit of Christ with me I should never have any
success in preaching; and if Christ went with me I should have all
in all. And 0 what a willingness I felt in my soul to go in his name
and strength, depending on him alone. I found I had nothing more to
inquire into, but whether God had called me; for he knew what
learning I had, and could have in the course of his providence
brought me through all the seats of learning that ever man went
through, together with all the orders of men ; but he had not, there-
fore I had nothing else to observe but the call of God".

Accordingly, though his parents were reluctant to have him do
so, he began to preach in Falmouth, the town where he lived. From
the first, people were deeply moved by his sermons, and before long
he went from Falmouth to Newport and preached there. His
preaching began in April, 1776, and the 3rd of November, having
been invited to Horton he preached two sermons there. He had
occasionally been in Horton before, and "it was a strange thing",
he says, "to see a young man who had often been there frolicking,
now preaching the Everlasting Gospel. The people seemed to have
hearing ears, and it left a solemn sense on some youths". A few
evenings later he spoke again, and there was then "such a throng
of hearers that the house could not contain them ; and some of them
were that evening convicted with power".

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 283

As he was on his way back to Falmouth, he was requested to
attend a funeral, and at the funeral he met a young man from Corn-
wallis who begged him to come as soon as possible and preach in
that town. He promised that if AUine would do so he would find a
place for him to preach. AUine told him that he was willing to go
wherever God called him, and that if it seemed his duty he would
come to Cornwallis as soon as he possibly could. On the 9th of
November he did set out for Cornwallis, stopping that night "in
the borders of the town". The next morning he rode to "the further
part of the town", where the meeting had been appointed, and
preached two sermons. The day following he went about four miles
and preached again, and at this service ' ' the Lord began to set the
word home with power on some of the hearers". Here the "stand-
ing minister" tried to "dash" him, but the minister and all the
rest were to him as worms of the dust like himself. His opponent,
he says, who of course was the Rev. Benaiah Phelps, "had been
minister of the town, but on account of some division between him
and his people had been dismissed, and did not seem pleased" at his
coming into the town. From Cornwallis Alline returned to Horton,
where he preached two sermons as he passed through. There "God
was pleased to take hold of the hearts of some of the hearers, and
never left them until they were brought to the knowledge of the
Redeemer". January 15th, 1777, he went to Newport, where he
preached five days ; then he returned to Falmouth and preached and
visited there until the 3rd of February. After that he went again
to Cornwallis, and there for four days preached to attentive and
deeply moved congregations. On his way through Horton, as he
returned to Falmouth, he held a service, at which the "standing min-
ister" resident there "got up and opposed". The other people,
however, paid little attention to the minister and he soon rose and
left the house.

This was the beguming of Henry Alline 's work in King's
County, a work which continued at intervals for five years, set in
motion streams of earnest religious feeling that have not ceased
flowing yet, and shaped a theology that to the present time may be

284 KING'S COUNTY

said to have been essentially the theology of the deeply religious
population of the outlying districts, and to a great extent of the
more closely settled villages and towns. In the course of the next
five years Alline visited the two townships of Horton and Com-
wallis some thirty or forty times. He conceived it to be his duty
never to remain long in one place; he preached now in Falmouth
and Newport, now in Horton and Cornwallis, now in Annapolis and
Granville, now in Liverpool and Chebogue, now in the county of
Cumberland, now in Prince Edward Island, and now in the New
England settlements in New Brunswick, on the banks of the pic-
turesque river St. John. Under the influence of his preaching
several New Light Churches were formed, the first of these being at
Cornwallis, where he had what more nearly approached a settled
pastorate than at any other place. In the first months of his min-
istry he had a chief part in organizing a church at Newport, the
articles for which in conjunction with others he was chosen to
draw up. At Newport "I preached a sermon", he says, "and the
Lord seemed to own us. The reason that we called for no assistance
from other churches was because we did not think the churches in
those parts were churches of Christ, but had only a dry form without
religion. The church was gathered both of Baptists and Oongrega-
tionalists, also, for we did not think that such small non-essentials as
different opinions about water Baptism were sufiSeient to break any
fellowship, and to obstruct building together among the true citi-
zens of Zion ; and the Lord owned and answered us, and blessed us
by increasing the gifts, graces, and the numbers of the small, feeble
band. But the powers of darkness and church of antichrist rose
against it from every quarter, both in public and private ' '.

"When Alline first came to Cornwallis the disaffection in the
church there was no doubt virtually a schism. To the flame of dislike
of the old church Alline 's fervid preaching added fresh fuel, and at
last some of the more conservative members of the church in despair
sent to Colchester County for the two Presbyterian ministers,
Messrs. Smith and Cock, to come and use their influence to restore
better feeling. In the meantime, about a year after Alline 's first

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 285

visit, sixty of the disaffected signed a paper entreating the evan-
gelist to settle permanently among them and form a church. To their
earnest appeal AUine answered that he believed God had called him
to an itinerant mission, and consequently he felt that he could not
accede to their wish. When Messrs. Smith and Cock came, AlUne
was in Cornwallis and went to hear them preach. He had reason to
hope, he says, that at least one of them was a minister of Christ,
"although something sunk into a form without the power". The
advocates of order soon confronted the young evangelist and asked
him, since he was not ordained what right he had to preach. He
told them his authority was from heaven, and upon that began a
discussion with them as to where the power of ordination truly lay.
He said he upheld order in the Church, but he looked on the power
of God's Spirit as of far more importance than "the bare tradi-
tions of men". The ministers begged him to leave off preaching
until he could study more, and offered him the use of their libraries,
but he politely refused their offer and said that God knew before he
called him how uneducated he was, and that he trusted the Almighty
would qualify him for any work he still had for him to do. The
clergymen finally told him they regarded him as a "stiff young
man", and so went away. A short time after this AUine came to
ComwaUis again. The interest in religion was stiU so deep there
that "a great number met almost every evening and continued till
eleven and twelve o 'clock at night, praying, exhorting, singing, some
of them telling what God had done for their souls, and some groan-
ing under a load of sin. At last, in August, 1777, the newly aroused
people appointed a committee to wait on the evangelist formally
and request him to engage to stay with them continuously for some
time. To this request he answered, that though the divisions of the
town did not make the prospect of a long stay there agreeable, yet
considering the people's destitution in religious ministration he
would stay with them for six months of the ensuing nine.

On the 15th of July, 1778, the Cornwallis New Light Church,
over which AlUne soon for a while assumed intermittent pastoral
eare, was brought into being. From the minutes of the church.

286 KING'S COUNTY

which are still preserved, we learn that at this date "there met at
the house of Mr. Simon Pitch a number of brethren to enter into
church covenant, and accordingly signed a church covenant (viz.),
Jonathan Rockwell, "William West, Elias Tupper, Benjamin New-
comb, Stephen West, Peter Wickwire, Elnathan Palmeter". A
covenant had previously been signed by Joel Parrish, Benjamin
Kinsman, Abner Hall, Isaac Bigelow, Nathaniel Bliss, and Cyrus
West, the last two of whom, however, were dead, and with the four
of these earlier signers who were living, the seven newly covenant-
ing church members now joined. The 29th of October of the same
year Alline assisted in organizing a mixed Baptist and Congregation-
alist Church in Horton, and the following January (Jan. 22, 1779),
having become convinced that under existing circumstances his use-
fulness would be increased if he submitted to ordination, he met the
Comwallis Church to consult with them about methods for obtaining
this rite. The Church proposed that they confer with other New
Light churches concerning the matter, and to this plan Alline will-
ingly assented. He positively refused, however, to let any of the
"churches of antichrist" have a voice or hand in the act. On the
6th of April, after prayer and singing, three lay delegates each
from the churches he had founded or helped found, at Horton,
Falmouth, and Newport, laid their hands on his head, and the
minister was thus ordained. The ordination was held at Falmouth
in a large barn, and when it was over, with his new credentials
signed by the nine delegates, Alline went back to Comwallis and
resumed his work. There he staid for about a fortnight, but on the
25th of April he said good-by to his people and sailed down the
Bay for the River St. John. In July he was back again, and on
Sunday, the 25th, baptized Lebbeus and John Harris, sons of
Thaddeus Harris, and for the first time administered the rite of
Communion to the Church. During this visit he also introduced
into the church three other members, and as he says, "preached the
sweet mysteries of the cross and enjoyed many happy hours".

It seems almost incredible that a man of such delicate organi-
zation as Henry Alline could have stood as long as he did the

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 287

intense strain of a fervent evangelist's life. Whether the seeds of
consumption were in him from birth or not we do not know, but
the poor fellow soon became a victim to this dreadful disease. The
last visit to Cornwallis his journal records was in September, 1782 :
"I went also to Windsor and Newport; preached often in both
places, conversed with the people there, and found some still press-
ing on for the immortal prize. And after I had been there a while
I went to Horton and Cornwallis, where I often preached early in
the morning, and was rejoiced to see how people would crowd to
meeting so soon and so early in the morning. 0 the sweet hours that
I have enjoyed, proclaiming my Master's love to the hungry souls.
I remained in Cornwallis, preachiag twice and sometimes three
times a day, until the last day of September, when I went to Annap-
olis, where I preached often and saw blessed days". In April,
1783, however, he tells of two visits to Horton, but he was now in
very feeble health and it is possible his beloved Cornwallis people
had no visit from him at all. In spite of his growing weakness he
had made up his mind to go to New England, and on the 27th of
August of this year he sailed from Windsor probably for Boston,
where his parents had been born. At Jones' River, in the state of
Maine, he left the vessel and bought a horse, and from there
travelled by land. Preaching in many places along the way, some-
time in January, 1784, he reached the house of Rev. David McClure,
minister of the Congregationalist Church in Northampton, New
Hampshire. He was now in the last stages of his sickness, and
almost immediately had to be put to bed. His temperature grew
'high, his feet swelled, he was greatly distressed for breath, and at
last in the early hours of the morning of February 2nd "he breathed
out his soul into the arms of Jesus, with whom he longed to be".
One of the objects of his visit to Boston was to publish a collection
of hymns he had written for public worship.

When Mr. Alline first came to Cornwallis, Mr. Phelps had
ceased to be pastor of the church there, and the congregation was
therefore left without settled preaching. Accordingly, a majority
of the persons who controlled the meeting house had given their

288 KING'S COUNTY

consent to the evangelist's preaching in it when services had not
been arranged there for other men. Mr. Handley Chipman, who
was one of Mr. Alline's supporters, says, however, that there were
some "heady" men that opposed his doing so, and that for the sake
of peace Mr. AUine's friends preferred to forego their right to the
meeting house and were content to listen to the preacher in private
houses or barns. For a good while after its formation the New
Light Church used a schoolhouse near Hamilton's Corner for its
services, but it is clear that in the earlier part of Alline's irregular
ministry the evangelist preached often, if not always, in private
houses or barns, in various parts of the town. Two of these private
houses, as we learn from Mr. Handley Chipman 's letter to Messrs.
Smith and Cock, were those of Samuel Beckwith, Jr., and "Deacon"
Huntington. In 1786, about two years after Alline's death, a New
Light Meeting House at "Jaw Bone Corner", was built. Like its
predecessor at Chipman 's Corner it was a large, square, heavily-
framed structure, but unlike that it was never finished within, and
was seated only with benches. The last public service held in it
is said to have been "on the Sunday that the tide was finally shut
not from the Wellington Dyke", this being in the autumn of 1824.
At a somewhat later date, but when, we do not know, the building
was removed. In the churchyard about it were buried a good many
persons who lived in the part of Cornwallis where it stood, most of
them, no doubt, adherents of Alline's New Light Church.

We have dwelt at some length on the life of Henry Alline
because of the marked infiuence he exerted on religious thought
and feeling in the county. The only approach to a settled pastorate
he had in his short ministerial career, as we have said, was in Corn-
wallis, and while his influence has been felt, in great part for good,
all over the province, it is certain that in King's County some of the
best fruits of his fervid evangelistic labours have along the years
been seen. In some places the Alline movement was attended with
extravagances, and to a certain extent no doubt this was true in
King's, but here, as indeed almost everywhere else in Nova Scotia,
the people generally were of so high an order of intelligence that

THE CONGBEGATIONALIST CHURCH 289

the extravagances soon disappeared, the movement leaving in the
people's characters a deposit of sound, godly principle, that has
never in the century and a quarter since been lost.

The complete withdrawal from the regular Congregationalist
Church in Cornwallis of the people who composed the New Light
Church left the old church in a depressed and enfeebled state. On
the 3rd of November, 1778, in response to an urgent appeal from
the old church, the Eev. Jonathan Scott, pastor of the Congrega-
tionalist Church at Chebogue, in Yarmouth County, visited the
town. His visit lasted all winter, and his ministrations did the
people much good. Soon after he went home the Cornwallis people
wrote his church in Yarmouth, saying that unless he came back
they feared matters with them would soon be as bad as they had
been before. They therefore earnestly begged the Chebogue church
to allow him soon to return. The letter was signed by Elkanah
Morton, Seth Burgess, Caleb Huntington, Abraham Webster, and
John Chipman. Soon followed a third letter, carried by the hands
of Mr. John Porter, who also took with him two horses to bring Mr.
Scott and his two elder children back. But Mr. Scott did not come.
The Chebogue Church not unnaturally felt that the Cornwallis people
were interfering with them and did not hesitate to express their
minds on the point. When the CornwaUis men heard this, in a
truly Christian spirit they wrote: "Dearly beloved, we wish you
peace. We would not willingly act anything that would be preju-
dicial to you, either directly or indirectly. And if our perplexed
circumstances under the present situation of religious matters
among us hath moved us to proceed too hastily to obtain an answer
to our request by your Reverend pastor, or have presumed too far
on your indulgence, we are heartily sorry". This letter was written
on the 17th of July, 1779, and in addition to the five names signed
to the former letter bears the signatures of Hezekiah Cogswell,
John Huston, David Bentley, and John Beckwith, Jr. One name
which appears on the former letter, that of John Chipman, is here
left out. In a note in the records of the Chebogue church, Mr. Scott
himself wrote: "It is evident they (the Cornwallis people) sur--

290 KING'S COUNTY

mounted their sore trial, and acquitted themselves in a manner that
will ever be an honour to their memory. The Church of Chebogue
was influenced by their Christian carriage to write a decent letter
of apology".

A crisis had now come in the Comwallis church's affairs. The
Revolutionary "War was at its height and there was little friendly
intercourse between Nova Scotia and the revolting colonies. More-
over, the members of the church had not forgotten the Hartford
Association's refusal to oblige Mr. Phelps to return to them the
proceeds of the land he had sold before he left the town. In the
meantime, a few families of Scotch or Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
had settled among the New England Puritans on both sides of the
Comwallis river, people like the Cummingses, Dickies, and others,
and in Lower Horton there was a well established Presbyterian
Church. These combined facts led the Comwallis Congregation-
alists to appeal to the Glasgow Associate Synod of the Secession
Church of Scotland for a minister to supply their religious
needs. The result of their appeal was that in 1785 the Eev.
Hugh Graham was sent by the Presbytery of Edinburgh to
serve the Comwallis Church. Mr. Graham had been licensed
by the Edinburgh Presbytery in 1781, and had then received
a caU to South Shields, in the north of England. The Pres-
bytery, however, thought best that he should go to Nova
Scotia, and accordingly he sailed from Greenock, on the
22nd of June, 1785. Two months later he arrived at Hali-
fax, and from there at once went to Comwallis. On Sunday,
August 29th, he preached his first sermon in the Comwallis
church.

The following persons were members of the Comwallis New
Light Church before 1799: William AUine, Joseph T. S. Baley;
Joseph, Eebecca and Sarah Barnaby; Catherine, Elizabeth, Hand-
ley, and Marvin Beckwith; Asael Bentley; Abigail, Amasa, and
Isaac Bigelow; Asael and Mary Bill; Thomas Bligh, Nathaniel
Bliss, Joseph Boyle, James Brown, Alexander Campbell, Mrs. Caton,
Esther Chase ; Ann, Charles, Eunice, Handley, William, and William

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 291

Allen Chipman; Hannah and old Mr. Clark; Benjamin and Mary
Cleveland J Preserved Coffil, Eunice Cogswell, Nathaniel Cottle^
Samuel Crossman, John De Maregnanst j Asa, Elizabeth, Moses, and
Sara Dewey; Elizabeth, James, Sabra, and Sarah DeWolf ; Rusha
Dickie, Abigail Dunham; David, Elizabeth, Irene, Timothy, and
old Mrs. Baton ; Anna and Mary Elderkin ; John Fielding, Alice Fox,
John Godfrey; Elizabeth and Nancy Graham; Mary Hail, Abner
Hall, Mrs. Harding, Amy Harrington; Eliphalet, Lebbeus, LuciUa,.
and Thaddeus Harris ; Robert Hicks ; Benjamin and Robert Kinsman ;
Mary and Stephen Loomer; Percy Luice; Edward, James, Nancy,,
and Mrs. Edward Manning ; Mary McDonald, Mary Mclnemay , Mrs.
Stephens (Anna Miner) ; Mrs. DeWolf (Sarah Miner) ; Benjamin
Newcomb, Elizabeth Osburn, George Owen; Abigail, Elizabeth,
Ehiathan, Eunice, Juda, and Nathan Palmeter ; Joel Parrish, Abner
Parsons, Erastus Pineo; Mary and Sarah Power; Dorcas Prentice,
John and Rebecca Rand; Deborah, Greene, and Lydia Randall;
"William Rear, Reuben Richards, Jonathan Rockwell, Lucretia
Rogers; Deborah, John, Ruth, Samuel, and Sarah Sanford; Julia
Anna Sivgard, Daniel Shaw; Anna and Eunice Skinner; Deborah
Strong; Benoni and Elizabeth Sweet; Elias and Elizabeth Tupper;
Daniel and Mrs. Welch ; Asael, Elenor, and Judah WeUs ; Cyrus,
Mary, Paul, Seth, and Stephen West; Mary Whalen, Peter Wick-
wire ; Keturah Whipples, Bill Williams, Shalometh Woodworth. Of
these early members of the church founded by AUine, sixty, it is
said, had received infant baptism, seventy-six had been immersed
as adults. In 1799, seventeen of these persons were dead.

Concerning the literary gift of Rev. Henry Alline a few words
ought to be added here. Besides his Journal, which records as we
have seen, with great minuteness, his inner experience and much of
his evangelistic work, there was published at Stonington, Connec-
ticut, in 1802, a collection, for public worship, of ninety-nine
"Hymns and Spiritual Songs" written by him. These hymns,
though quite equal in devotional feeling to those of the Wesleys and
Watts, as might be expected are generally on a lower plane of
literary excellence. Many of them, however, show a delicate lyrical

292 KING'S COUNTY

sense, aud to one a rather high place has justly been given. It is
the following :

Amazing sight, the Saviour stands

And knocks at every door,
Ten thousand blessings in His hands

For to supply the poor.

Behold, saith He, I bleed and die

To bring poor souls to rest ;
Hear, sinners, while I'm passing by.

And be forever blest.

Will you despise such bleeding love

And choose the way to hell ;
Or in the glorious realms above

With me forever dwell ?

Not to condemn your sinking race

Have I in judgment come.
But to display unbounded grace

And bring lost sinners home.

May I not save your wretched soul

From sin, from death, and hell.
Wounded or sick, I'll make you whole

And you with me shall dwell.

Say, wiU you hear my gracious voice

And have your sins forgiven.
Or will you make a wretched choice

And bar yourselves from Heaven?

Will you go down to endless night

And have eternal pain,
Or dwell m everlasting light,

Where I in glory reign?

THE CONGREGATIONALIST CHURCH 293

Come, answer now before I go,

While I am passing by,
Say, will you marry me, or no,

Say, will you live or die ?

CHAPTER XVII
EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM

"With the coming to Cornwallis of the Kev. Hugh Graham in
1785 the history of the Cornwallis Congregationalist Church as a
Presbyterian church may be said virtually to begin. Long before
that time, however, a Presbyterian church had been established at
Grand Pre, in Horton, and the early history of that church is
synonymous with the beginning of Presbyterianism in the county.
Before 1765 the only Presbyterian ministers who had laboured in
Nova Scotia were the Eev Samuel Kinloch and the Rev. James
Lyon, the former of whom had previously preached in Pennsyl-
vania, the latter in New Jersey. These clergymen had made the
Scotch-Irish settlers of Colchester their chief charge, but in 1766
the County of King's also was added to the field of Presbyterian
missionary work.

In 1765 the spiritual needs of Nova Scotia aroused the atten-
tion of some young men studying for the ministry in Scotland, and
three belonging to the General Associate or Anti-Burgher Synod
volunteered to go to that distant province. Before the time of
leaving, however, two of them changed their plans, but the third,
the Eev. James Murdoch of Gillie Gordon, County Donegal, Ireland,
persevered in his intention, and on the 2nd of September was
ordained by the Presbytery of Newton Limavady for the "Province
of Nova Scotia or any other part of the American continent where
God in his Providence might call him". With this wide commission,
in the autumn of 1766 Mr. Murdoch landed at Halifax, where for a
short time he preached to the Congregationalists. Seeing a chance
for settled work in Horton, however, the next year he removed
there, and in a short time gathered a church at what is now Grand
Pre. After Mr. Phelps' withdrawal from the Cornwallis Congrega-

EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 295

tionalist Church in 1776, it is almost certain that Mr. Murdoch
sometimes preached in Cornwallis, for it is a matter of record that
he travelled much farther than that, occasionally preaching at
Windsor, Parrsborough, Fort Lawrence, Amherst, Cumberland, and
Economy. In 1795 he removed from Horton to Musquodoboit, and
in the Musquodoboit river, at Meagher's Grant, on the 21st of
November, 1799, was unfortunately drowned. His wife was
Abigail, daughter of Malachy Salter, of Halifax, a Boston merchant
who had settled in Halifax soon after its founding in 1749. A
valuable sketch of Mr. Murdoch is to be found in the second volume
of the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society. He was
the grandfather of Beamish Murdoch, Esq., whose documentary
history of Nova Scotia is one of the most valuable literary posses-
sions of the Canadian Dominion. To the Presbyterian Church of
Horton Mr. Murdoch founded belonged members of the families of
Avery, Calkin, Curry, Davison, Denison, DeWolf, Dickson, Frame,
Fuller, Godfrey, Martin, Peck, Reid, Whitney, and Woodworth,
most of these, of course, like the Cornwallis people who became
Presbyterians at a later date, originally New England Congrega-
tionalists.

The first meeting house built by the Horton Presbyterians was
situated at Grand Pre, almost on the site of the present Methodist
church, in the rear of which the graves of a good many of the
earliest settlers of Horton lie. It must have been erected very soon
after Mr. Murdoch took up his residence in the county, but the
exact date of its building we do not know. A few years after Mr.
Murdoch left Horton it was taken down, and in 1804 a new one,
which still stands but has long been disused, was begun. This.
second one was not, however, finished until 1818. The distance
between it and the meeting house of Mr. Moulton's mixed Church
at what is now Wolfville, was about five miles. Of the few archi-
tectural relics in the county, this Horton Presbyterian meeting
house is perhaps historically the most interesting. In it remain still '
the original high-backed pews, and the old sounding board that so
many years echoed the voices of the first Scottish ministers in the
county.

296 KING'S COUNTY

Mr, Murdoch's pastorate in Horton was not by any means con-
tinually a pleasant one, and he seems to have retired from it some
four years before he finally left the county. He did not remove
from Horton before 1795, and it is said that his successor, the Rev.
George Gilmore, became pastor of the Church in 1791. Mr. Gilmore
was bom in Antrim, Ireland, in 1720, studied in Edinburgh, married
and had children bom in Ireland, and came to Philadelphia in 1769.
From Philadelphia he removed to New England, where he staid
until the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Then, hated as a
Tory, he fled on the ice, across the St. Lawrence river, to Canada.
Prom Canada he found his way to Nova Scotia, and in 1785 was in
Halifax making claims for losses he had met with in the war. On
Ardoise Hill, near Windsor, the government gave him a farm, and
there for one winter he and his family "lived on potatoes and
milk". At this time he was so poor that it is said he once walked to
Halifax to try to mortgage his farm for a barrel of flour. His dis-
tresses ought not to have been so great, for on coming to Hants
county he assumed charge of the Presbyterian church that Mr. Mur-
doch had gathered at Windsor and Newport, and at these places
preached more or less regularly until 1791. In that year he removed
to Horton, and there he laboured till his death in 1811. He sleeps
in the burying ground near the church where for so long he
preached, and a slab with a Latin inscription marks his now almost
forgotten grave. In the care of the Windsor Church, when he left
it, he was succeeded by the Rev. James Munro, but in Horton he
seems to have had no immediate successor.

The ministry of Rev. Hugh Graham at Comwallis began, as we
have seen, in 1785. Before his departure from Scotland the Asso-
ciate Synod issued an injunction that as no Presbytery yet existed
in Nova Scotia, as soon as he should be settled there one should
be formed. Accordingly, in August, 1786, the two Colchester county
clergyTuen, Messrs. Smith and Cock, together with Mr. Graham,
constituted themselves a Presbytery, the name given to the new
organization being the "Associate Presbytery, of Truro", and the
standards adopted by it being precisely those of the Presbyterian

EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 297

churches of the same faith in Scotland. At a meeting some little
time after the date of organization, the clergymen who composed
the synod declared themselves "subordinate to the Burgher Asso-
ciate Synod in North Britain". Into this Presbytery, since he
belonged to another section of Presbyterianism in Britain, Mr.
Murdoch of the Horton church did not come. As may readily be
imagined, the New England Congregationalists, who for the most
part composed the Cornwallis church, did not easily relinquish
their independent ways. In a pamphlet, written at a later period
by the Eev. William Sommerville, the writer disapprovingly says
that the church "up till late days refused to know any distinction
among Presbyterians; to testify their disapprobation of division
stood divided from every Presbyterian body in the enirpire; and
conducted their affairs more upon Congregational than Presbyterian
principles". From the people's origin and early training this
attitude on their part is precisely what we should expect. They
were Presbyterians, not from natural inclination or inherited
tendency, but from force of outward circumstances, and their
positive refusal for a long time to give up the use of their familiar
New England Watts' hymn book was a natural mark of their
attitude towards the new ecclesiastical relations in which they
found themselves.

As a Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Graham with all his might
urged the substitution for this hymn book of the Presbyterian
version of the scripture Psalms, but the people were unflinching,
and at last, partly it is said because of their persistence in the use
of Watts' hymns, in 1799 Mr. Graham resigned his charge. In
spite of the annoyance he sometimes suffered from the people's
un-Presbyterian ways, and his continual irritation at being obliged
to use "uninspired hymns", his ministry was on the whole a suc-
cessful and happy one. At last, however, when Mr. Murdoch was
drowned, a call came to him from the united congregations of
Stewiacke and Musquodoboit, and perhaps not unwillingly he
accepted that charge. Of marriages performed by him in Corn-
wallis the Town Book contains the records of not a few. Among

298 KING'S COUNTY

the people he married were: Experience Ells to Prince Coffin,
January 8, 1798 ; Sarah Chase to Andrew Newcomb, December 22,
1791; and Eebecca Dickie to George Cummings, January 22, 1795.
He himself married, December 15, 1791, Elizabeth, daughter of John
and Elizabeth Whidden, his friend the Bev. Daniel Cock performing
the ceremony. To Mr. Graham and his wife at least three children
were born : Hugh, November 21, 1792 ; John Whidden, February 22,
1795; Elizabeth, June 18, 1798. Rev. Hugh Graham died in April,
1829, in his seventy-fifth year, his work in Nova Scotia having
extended over the long period of forty-four years. In the pastorate
of the Cornwallis Church Mr. Graham was succeeded by the Rev.
iWilliam Forsyth.

This clergyman was a licentiate of the Established Church of
Scotland, had been ordained by a college of lay elders in the United
States, and was minister of the Cornwallis Church from 1799 till
his death in 1840. The first marriage recorded as having been cele-
brated by him is that of Peter Bentley Pineo and Olive Comstock,
September 2, 1802. He was himself married to Mary Beckwith,
daughter of Asa and Mary (Morton) Beckwith, born February 6,
1781, by whom he had seven children : Mary, who became the first
wife of Rev. George Struthers; William, who became a physician
and died unmarried; Jean, who became the second wife of Mr.
Thomas Lydiard; John, who became a physician and married Miss
Martha Ann Morton, daughter of Hon. John Morton; Margaret,
who was still living, unmarried, in 1885 ; Bezaleel, who married first
Miss Tupper, second Miss Oakes; and Elizabeth, who died unmar-
ried. In the agreement made with Mr. Forsyth it was expressly
stated that the people were still to be allowed to use Watts ' hymns,
and this through his whole pastorate they continued to do. Mr.
Forsyth was not only the minister of the church, but the teacher of
many of the sons of leading Cornwallis men. His grammar sehoolj
indeed, was the most important school in the western part of the
province. He had a good deal of dry humour, and it is related of
him among other things that once in an interview with a farmer
whose son he had found unusually dull, he said: "Your boy cannot

EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 299

learn, it is no use for him to try" ! "Manure (inure) him to it", said
the father, "Manure him to it"! "Alack, alas, man"! said the
Scotch parson, "if I were to put all the manure in your barnyard
on him he could not learn". Among those who received their early
education from "Parson Forsyth" were the three sons of Dr. Isaac
Webster — ^Dr. William, Dr. Frederick, and Henry Bentley Webster;
John and William Robertson, of Annapolis County; Dr. Samuel
Bayard^ H. N. Chipman, J. Hosterman DeWolf, Peter Delancey,
Edward Beckwith, George B. Morton, and other afterwards well
known men. Mr. Forsyth's active ministry ended some four or
five years before his death, though nominally he still continued
pastor of the church. In 1827, the Rev. George Struthers, also of
the Established Church of Scotland, who afterwards (the Rev. John
Martin of Halifax officiating), January 28, 1830, married Mr.

Forsyth's eldest daughter, Mary, and the Rev. Morrison were

sent from Scotland by the Lay Association as missionaries to Nova
Scotia. At once Mr. Struthers came to Horton, Mr. Morrison going
to Dartmouth, which place he afterwards left for Bermuda. Mr.
Forsyth needing assistance, Mr. Struthers preached for some time,
once a month, at Cornwallis. Very soon after his marriage, how-
ever, he went to Demerara, but in August, 1835, on an invitation
from the Cornwallis church, sent him through Dr. Isaac Webster,
he returned to Cornwallis, where for five years he ministered to the
congregation as subordinate pastor. In 1840 Mr. Forsyth died and
Mr. Struthers became sole pastor of the church.

While Mr. Struthers was at Demerara the Rev. William Som-
merviUe, M. A., a Scotch-Irish Covenanter of the strongest person-
ality, who had been ordaind. May 31, 1831, by the Reformed Church
of Ireland, and for a time had ministered in Amherst, Nova Scotia,
came to the Horton Church. To assist Mr. Forsyth, he, too, gave a
quarter of his time to Cornwallis. His pastorate in Horton began
April 1, 1833, and continued for about seven years. When
Mr. Struthers returned from Demerara he at once withdrew from
Cornwallis, but during his brief ministry there he was able to bring
about the long desired substitution of the Scripture Psalms and

300 KING'S COUNTY

Paraphrases for Watts' Hymns. He first came to Comwallis on
his wedding tour, and the people, it is said, enjoyed his sermons so
much that as soon as he assumed the Horton pastorate they engaged
him to assist Mr. Forsyth. In his initial sermon after his engage-
ment with them, he spoke strongly against the use of "uninspired
psalmody", and this oft-repeated invective sounded a little unpleas-
antly to their ears. His influence over them soon became so strong,
however, that they yielded their prejudice in favour of their beloved
Watts, and at last adopted the Presbyterian version of the Old
Testament Psalms.

Mr. Struthers' ministry at Cornwallis lasted until 1857, a
period of between twenty-one and twenty-two years; his death
occurred March 17, 1857. His second wife, the mother of his chil-
dren, was Eliza Ann Davidson, who was married to him by the Rev.
Donald Fraser of Lunenburg. "Mr. Struthers", says Dr. John
Burgess Calkin, "was a preacher of simple, forceful style, and as a
man was held in the highest regard by all who knew him". He was
succeeded in the Cornwallis pastorate by the Rev. William Murray,
born in Colchester county, who entered into his work with great
energy and zeal. During his ministry new church buildings were
erected in Kentville, Lakeville, and at Canard, and an unfinished
church at Waterville was completed. The oldest extant connected
records of the Cornwallis church begin with May 1, 1843, and dur-
ing Mr. Murray's ministry were accurately and fully kept. From
these records we learn that a call was issued to the congregation of
the old church to meet on Monday, December 27, 1858, at 2 P. M., in
reference to a proposal to divide the church. This division was
made in 1859, and by an act of the legislature, dated March 30 of
that year, a threefold division of the dyke lands owned by the
church, most of this property being bequests, was authorized.
Henceforth, the history of the Presbyterian Church in Cornwallis
becomes the history of three separate congregations, the northern
worshipping at Canard, the southern worshipping at Kentville, and
the western worshipping at Lakeville. On the division, the Rev.
Mr. Murray became pastor of the church at Canard, and the Rev.

EARLY PRESBYTERIANISM 301

Alexander "W. McKay of the church at Lakeville. The 22ud of May,
1859, the Rev. William Furlong was inducted into the charge of the
Kentville congregation, and the church building, known as St.
Paul's, was dedicated. At this dedication service the Rev. Dr.
Sedgewick of Musquodoboit officiated. In 1868 the Rev. Mr. Fur-
long resigned, and the successive pastors since have been: Rev.
John B. Logan, 1868-1885 ; Rev. E. W. Archibald, Ph. D., 1886 ; Rev.
W. P. Begg, 1887-1896; and Rev. G. McMillan, 1897—. In 1909 the
Presbyterian ministers in the county were, Rev. G. McMillan at
Kentville, Rev. Mr. McCurdy at Canard, Rev. Mr. MacKinnon
at Lakeville, Rev. Mr. "Wright at "Wolfville, and Rev. Thomas McFall
at West Cornwallis. The manse, during Mr. Forsyth 's ministry, and
that of Mr. Struthers' until 1847, was the house in Canard that for
many years afterward was the parsonage of the Baptist Church. It
was sold by the Presbyterians in 1847, and a new manse was built
nearer Kentville for the Rev. Mr. Struthers.

Rev. William Sommerville left Horton for West Cornwallis prob-
ably in 1840, and as a "Reformed" or "Covenanting" minister began
missionary work there and in Wilmot. In 1843 he organized a
Reformed church in West Cornwallis, his congregation in 1842-3
erecting a church building, the interior of which, however, was not
for some time finished. Mr. Sommerville first celebrated the Lord 's
Supper in the church in November, 1844; of the congregation he
remained pastor until his death in 1878. In 1882 the Rev. Thomas
McFall, also a native of Ireland, but educated in the Middle States,
became pastor, and in this position still remains. At Church Street,
Cornwallis, services of the Reformed Church are also now regularly
held.

Ministers of the Congregationalist-Presbyterian Church, meet-
ing at Chipman's Corner:

Rev. Benaiah Phelps 1765—1776

Rev, Hugh Graham 1785—1799

Rev. William Forsyth 1799—1840

Rev. George Struthers 1840—1857

Rev. WilUam Murray 1857—1859

302 KING'S COUNTY

Ministers of the Horton Presbyterian Church:

Rev. James Murdoch 1766—1791

Rev. George Gilmore 1791—1811

Rev. George Struthers 1827—1830

Rev. William Sommerville 1833—1840 (probably)

Of some of the customs of early King's County Presbyterianism
in the first half of the 19th century Dr. John B. Calkin says : ' ' The
Sunday service was an all-day affair. It included a morning sermon
and an afternoon sermon, with an intermission of fifteen minutes, so
that the wox'shippers could eat the lunch they had brought with
them in their pockets. In church people were accustomed to stand
in prayer, with their faces turned from the minister. This peculiar
custom, the turning of the back to the minister in prayer, was prob-
ably originally intended as a protest against reverence for the
minister as a priest. The hymns were lined out before singing, two
lines at a time, sometimes by a sort of rapid chanting of the words.
The minister's stipend, like the priest's portion under the Mosaic
dispensation, was paid in farm produce, a quarter of lamb or veal,
a roast of beef, a cheese, or whatever happened to be most plentiful
and in season among the parishioner's products".

CHAPTER Xyill
THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS

The distinguishing feature of the Baptist faith has always been
the admission of adults only, after a deep inward experience called
conversion, into the visible church, this introduction in every case to
be effected by the rite of immersion. In opposition to the Baptist
belief is the doctrine, common to all the leading denominations of
Christians besides Baptists, that in certain cases others besides con-
sciously "converted" people are proper subjects for the Church of
God ; and especially the Anglican doctrine, that the Church is rather
a great graded school for training in Christian life than a voluntary
association of people of mature religious convictions. Other denom-
inations of Christians other than Baptists hold that while the
original Eastern mode of baptism was by complete immersion of the
body in water, the spirit of the act is sufficiently maintained in the
application of water to the body in any quantity, or, except that a
certain formula must be used in the application, in any particular
way. The great first apostle of Baptist doctrine in New England
was Roger Williams, whose opinions were so distasteful to Massa-
chusetts, where he first settled that he was early obliged to flee to
Ehode Island and establish himself permanently there. Before the
middle of the 17th century Baptist churches were established at
Providence and Newport, and in many other places individual men
were to be found who had carried their Calvinistic faith to its full
logical limit, and their views of baptism to the most exclusive point.
In Massachusetts the first Baptist church was established at
Eehoboth in 1663, this being followed by one at Charlestown in
1665. At the time of the "Great Awakening" there were in the
New England Colonies, in all, about twenty Baptist churches, but

304 KING'S COUNTY

this widespread revival, emphasizing as it did the prime importance
to church membership of conscious conversion, gave a great impetus
to the Baptist faith.

The New England people who came to Nova Scotia in 1760 were
chiefly from Congregationalist churches of the conservative type, but
among them were no doubt some who had been strongly influenced by
the New England New Light revival, and there was probably here
and there one who had gone beyond the others, and in sympathy, at
least, had given his complete allegiance to Baptist belief. The
most notable example of this was the Kev. Ebenezer Moulton, who
had been ordained pastor of the Baptist Church at South Brimfield,
Massachusetts, in 1741, but who in 1761, came to Nova Scotia.
"With other immigrants he landed at Chebogue, in Yarmouth
County, and there received from the government seven hundred
and fifty-flve acres of land. Soon after his arrival he and two
others were appointed land surveyors in the western part of the
province, Moulton also being made a magistrate. For some years
Moulton probably preached wherever he could flnd hearers, two
of the places being Horton and Cornwallis, at both of which places
we find him in 1763. Under his preaching in these townships a good
deal of religious feeling is said to have been aroused, and as a
result he baptized in Horton a number of men and women, whom
he at once organized into a church. It is agreed by all historians
that this church was not exclusively Baptist, that its membership
included some who more properly still belonged among "Pedo-
Baptist" Congregationalists, and it is a matter of common knowl-
edge that because of lack of harmony among its members, and
perhaps from general indifference, its existence gradually, before
many years, came to an end. [It is not clear how long Mr. Moulton
stayed in Horton. The Rev. Dr. Saunders in his history of the Bap-
tists says that there is some ground for believing that while he was in
the province he received an appointment a chaplain on board an
English man of war. He finally returned to Brimfield, however,
and there in 1783 died.]

Under Henry Alline's preaching the Horton people were agaitt

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 305

aroused spiritually, and as we have already seen, in 1778 the evan-
gelist was called upon to assist in forming a new church there. In
his Journal he says: "Being requested, I attended now a meeting
of some of the Baptists in Horton, to advise about gathering a
church there. 0 may the time come when Ephraim shall no more
vex Judah nor Judah envy Ephraim, and that there might never
more be any disputes about such non-essentials as water baptism,
the sprinkling of infants, or baptizing of adults by immersion, but
every one enjoy liberty of conscience. They gathered in church
order, and made choice of one N. Person (who was not endowed
•with a great gift in the word) for their elder, intending to put him
forward until God gave them some better one, or brought him out
more in the liberty of the gospel; after which he was ordained".
The minister here called "Person", of whom the Horton Church
had made choice as their "elder", was Nicholas Pierson, an English
^oemaker living at Horton, of whose origin, or the time of whose
migration to Nova Scotia, we are entirely ignorant. The church
he helped organize began its existence October 29, 1778, and his
own ordination took place the 5th of the following month. His
first fellow members in the Church were : Benjamin Sanford, John
Clark, Peter Bishop, Silas Beals, Benjamin Kinsman, Jr., Daniel
Hiintley, John Coldwell, Esther Pierson, and Hannah Kinsman, in
all ten persons. At the organization of the church Benjamin
Kinsman laid his hands on Mr. Pierson 's head and charged him
to be a faithful pastor, and Mr. Pierson laid his hands on Mr.
Kinsman's head and created him a deacon. To Pierson 's formal
ordination the New Light churches of Falmouth and Newport sent
delegates, and at the service Henry AUine himself preached the
sermon. The 6th of April, 1779, when AUine was ordained, Pierson,
jt is said, in return preached the sermon for him. Of the Horton
church, Benjamin Kinsman was at once made clerk as well as
deacon. In the succeeding year ten other persons were baptized
by Pierson and added to the membership. These were Peter Wick-
wire, Jerusha Harrison, Frederic Babeoek, Susannah Palmeter,
Mary Loomer, Thomas Handley Chipman, Deborah Newcomb, Haji-

306 KING'S COUNTY

nah Loveless, Huldah "Woodworth, and Joseph Morton. Of these
new members, Thomas Handley Chipman afterward became one of
the "Fathers" of the Baptist denomination in the Maritime Pro-
vinces, and the Church generally had a strong pioneer Baptist
influence in Nova Scotia at large.

For a short time after the founding of the Horton Church the
subject of close communion was evidently warmly disputed, and for
a year or two the more exclusive Baptist practice prevailed. For
this reason, or because of some other supposed divergence of the
Horton Church from New Light standards, on the 22nd of July,
1780, the Cornwallis Church voted "that the Baptist Church of
Horton, of which Rev. Nicholas Pierson is pastor, have no right
to sit in any council with this Church, neither have this Church or
any member of it a right to sit with them". That the Horton
Church, however, had not become fully confirmed in Baptist ex-
clusive beliefs is shown by the fact that in the autumn of 1780, at
a "Conference" in Wilmot the Church voted "that the Congrega-
tional brethren who are sound in the faith be invited to sit down
with us at the Lord's table occasionally, and that the mode of
baptism is no bar to communion". This vote, however, by common
practice, at least, if not formally, was later rescinded, for during
the pastorate of the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, the Church like
all the other Baptist churches in the province, became a strictly
close communion church. In 1780, Peter Bishop was appointed a
deacon of the Church, and in 1779- '80 thirty persons were baptized
into its membership. In 1784 the church had eighty members.

From 1791, when Mr. Pierson left Horton for Hopewell, New
Brimswick, until 1796, the Horton Church was without a settled
pastor, but had more or less regular "supplies", one of these, the
Rev. Joseph Read, of Sackville, New Brunswick, who at some time
unknown to us died suddenly at Wolfville, from "the lodging of
an apple core in his throat". In June, 1795, Rev. Theodore Seth
Harding was engaged to preach for six months, and with this event
begins the settled history of the church. The Rev. Mr. Harding
was a native of Barriagton, Queen's County, and was bom March

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 307

14, 1773. His parents, Theodore Harding, Sr., and Martha (Sears)
Harding, came to Nova Scotia with other Cape Cod families, from
Eastham, Massachusetts, in 1761, in the same migration, also, being
the founders of the later well known Queen's county families of
Collins, Crowell, Doane, Freeman, Nickerson, and Snow. Theodore
Harding, Sr., was born at Eastham, June 11, 1730, and May 13, 1756,
married Martha, daughter of Josiah and Azubah (Knowles) Sears.
His children, born in Barrington, Nova Scotia, were Azubah and
Jerusha, twins, born January 1, 1763 ; Joshua, born March 15, 1768 ;
Bethiah, born May 15, 1767; Mercy, born November 24, 1769;
Theodore, born March 14, 1772. The father of Theodore, Sr., was
also Theodore, and a brother was Captain Seth Harding, born April
17, 1734, whom the Harding Genealogy calls "a distinguished naval
commander".

Rev. Theodore Seth Harding was only eight years old when he
came under the influence of Henry AUine's preaching, and that
moment the boy's deeper spiritual life began. In 1785, Rev. Free-
born Garretson, a Methodist minister of the Baltimore (Maryland)
Conference, came to the province and engaged in evangelistic work,
and under his preaching Mr. Harding's religious life was still fur-
ther quickened. Finally, through the influence of his namesake. Rev.
Harris Harding of Horton, he was effectually converted, and in
1793 began to preach. His mother was "a pious Presbyterian",
but he had come under the influence of the Methodists and in 1794,
Rev. William Black gave him a lay preacher's mission to Windsor,
Horton and Cornwallis. For nine months he preached in these
places, and whenever he preached, Methodists, Baptists, and New
Lights flocked to his sermons. At last his early Presbyterian train-
ing showed itself so strongly in his preaching that the Methodists
called him to account. The examination was kindly conducted, but
it resulted in his leaving the Methodist denomination. Before long
a decided change came in his views of baptism, and on the 31st of
May, 1795, he was immersed by the Rev. John Burton, at Halifax".
The 26th of the following June, he was engaged, as we have seen, to
preach for six months to the Horton Church. When the six months

308 KING'S COUNTY

■jv^as elided he received 9, call to the pastorate, and on the 13th of
f'ebruary, 1796, began his settled work. The following July (July
13) he was ordained at Horton by Rev. John Burton, and from that
tifne till his death, the 8th of June, 1855, he was the faithful and
honoured pastor and friend of many of the most influential of the
Horton people. His immediate successor at Wolfville was the late
Rev. Dr. Stephen William DeBlois, who also laboured faithfully with
the church till his death. "Father" Harding's long ministry at
Horton, a pastorate lasting for the extraordinary period of more
than fifty-nine years, was one of unstinted devotion to duty, and of
lingular fruitfulness in spiritual resuljts. When the first church
building of the Horton Baptists was erected it is impossible to say ;
it must have been, however, some time early in the Key. Ebenezer
Moulton's pastorate. The building stood in the old burying ground,
Reside the njain street of the village, very near where Rev. Theodore
Seth Harding is buried. For a long time it was used not only for
preachii^g on Sundays, but for secular meetings in the week as well.
We have seen how from the disturbances which early aro^e in
the Congregationalist Church of Cornwallis and Horton, finally
resulted a New Light Congregationalist church, with its meeting
place at "Jaw Bone Corner", we have now to see the latter church
torn by dissension, and at last dividing, as the church of the ' ' Stand-
ing Order" earlier had done. That the Cornwallis New Light con-
T^erts were often full of religious fervour, we have ample testimony
ip AUine 's Journal, but we find also in that Journal evidence that at
a very early stage of its history the fiercest doctrinal disputes began
5;^ the church. In December, 1779, AUine writes of his Cornwallis
converts : ' ' The Christians were sometimes blest with liberty in their
souls; but the work of conviction had been declining ever since
the dispute began about water baptism. 0 that Christians would
tjiipk -what they are about, when warmly contending about such
non-essential matters; and that they are not only laying stumbling
blocks before the blind world, but neglect also the vitals of religion,
and the salvation of poor unconverted souls". Shortly after this
the evangelist visited Cornwallis again and found that many of

THE RISE OF TItE BAPTISTS Bm

the awakened ones had "tone back to sin and vanity", that thid
work of conviction was declining, and that people were ihdulgin^
in "unprofitable disputes about Wat€r baptism". In July, 1780;
he complains once more of the same thing, and says : " 0 how much
advantage does the enemy get iii the minds of Christians by those
zealous disputes about non-essentials, making that the chief subject
of their discourses, when the essentials or work of God is neglected.
I have often observed in the short compass of my ministry that
when the Christians get much of the life of religion with the love
of God in their souls, those small inatters were scai'cely talked of;
but whenever they met their discourse A^as abbiit the work of Gbd
in the heart, and what God had doiie for their souls, exhorting sin-
ners to come to Christ, and setting forth in their conversation th(3
important truths of the gospel, but as soon as religion grows cold
then they sit hours and hours discoursing about those things wHieli
would never be of service to body or soul, and proving the validity
of their own method, or form of some eiternal mattei-s, and con-
demn others who do not think as they do. Ah, how many hours I
have Spent even among Christians to prove the different methods
of Water baptism either to infants or adults, either by sprinkling
or immersion; when it Would not at all help the poor soul in the
least out of its fallen state back to God without the true baptiSni
of the spirit of Christ, which alone can". Six months later he
Writes: "About the 25th of December I went to Cornwallis and
remained there until the 1st of January. I preached bfteii there
among the people and found many of the Christians very lively iii
religion but there remained still some disputes between the Baptists
and Congregationalists about water baptism. Many hours were
very unprofitably spent by some of the Christians contending about
it. O the infinite goodness of God to bear the infirmities of hiis
children. How much tradition, superstition, and idolatry do We'
bear about us, yet he loves us".

The first settled pastor of the Cornwallis New Light Church
after the death of Mr. AUine, was the Kev. John Payzant. The
Payzant family, like the AUines, lived in Falmouth, and there John

310 KING'S COUNTY

Payzant had married a sister of Henry AUine. Payzant's ancestors
had been staunch Huguenots, but for a time he himself had studied
at Quebec for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. After
the family migrated to Nova Scotia, his father had been killed by
Indians at Lunenburg; his mother with her children had then
settled in Falmouth, where the government had given her a grant
of land. Under Alline's preaching at Falmouth, John Payzant was
converted, and in a short time, like Alline, he consecrated himself
to evangelistic work. In April, 1782, Alline was at Annapolis with
Payzant and other delegates from New Light churches for the
ordination of Thomas Handley Chipman, and on the day of
ordination Alline records: "Brother Pezant preached at 7 in the
morning". Monday, July 3, 1786, Mr. Payzant was himself or-
dained over the Cornwallis church, and in the Cornwallis pastorate
he remained until 1795. At that date he removed to Onslow to take
charge of the New Light Church there; later, however, he went
to Liverpool, and until his death in 1834, at a very advanced age,
was pastor of the Liverpool Old Zion Congregationalist Church.

During Mr. Payzant's nine years pastorate of the Cornwallis
church, controversies about baptism were no doubt as frequent as
they had been before Henry Alline's death. To the pastor himself
they must have been as distasteful as they had been to his prede-
cessor, for like Alline Mr. Payzant was never baptized except in
infancy, and to the end of his days he cared little how or when the
baptismal rite was performed. To him the baptism of the Holy
Ghost was the baptism that united God's people and made them one,
and whether men were baptized by "sprinkling or dipping", he
thought was of almost no consequence at all. As to restricted
communion, "the close communion among the Baptists", he said,
"is an old Jewish tradition, new vamped, as we read from the
Greek testament, Mark 7: 4, 'Except they baptize they eat not, and
other things there are which they have received to hold, as the
baptizing of cups and pots, brazen vessels and beds' ".

When Eev. John Payzant left the Cornwallis Church in 1795,
the Rev. Edward Manning assumed the pastorate. The Manning

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 311

family had come from Ireland, by way of Philadelphia, to Fal-
mouth, it is said as Roman Catholics, but the younger members of
it, at least, had embraced Protestantism, and the sons, Edward and
James, becoming converted entered the ministry as New Light
preachers. Edward Manning was first awakened in 1776, by the
preaching and personal conversation of Henry AUine, whom he
met at his father's house. Thirteen years later he came under the
influence of Rev. John Payzant, and then made up his mind
firmly to "seek the Lord". If he was finally to be lost, he said,
he would at least "go to hell begging for mercy". Soon he was
converted, and on Mr. Payzant 's resignation, the 19th of October,
1795, was ordained over and became pastor of the Cornwallis New
Light Church. It is not many years since the last echoes in Corn-
wallis of the strife over baptism in the New Light congregation,
during Mr. Manning's twelve years' pastorate, died away. Al-
though there were many in his congregation who in reference to
baptism remained old time Congregationalists, he himself, like all
the New Light Ministers in the province except Payzant, soon
became convinced that it was wrong to baptize infants, or to baptize
at all except by immersion, and in 1798, at Annapolis, received
immersion from Thomas Handley Chipman, who, as we have seen,
himself had been immersed by Rev. Nicholas Pierson nineteen years
before. After his immersion, Mr. Manning positively refused to
perform the rite of baptism except according to Baptist rules, but
his sympathizers in the church were so many that in spite of con-
tinued controversy and the strong opposition of some, he remained
the church's pastor until 1807, when he and eight or nine of his
people withdrew and formed the Cornwallis First Baptist Church.
In the extant records of the New Light Church are found lists
of names of members who had and had not been immersed, and
these lists alone indicate the division of feeling that must have
existed ill the church. In both lists appear the names of repre-
sentatives of the same families, and tradition tells us that the con-
troversy over the baptismal rite raged so fiercely that intimate
friendships were broken and even family relations sometimes se-

312 KING'S COUNTY

vefely strdined. WKen Mr. Manning decided to form a Baptist
ehurch he may have expected that a large number of the seventy
New Light Church members who had been immersed would follow
him, but this was not the case. The names of those who joined
with the pastor* in forming the new church were only eight, half
of these being men and half women. The men were, William Chip-
man, William Cogswell, Holmes Chipman, and Walter Eeid. The
women wercj Mrs. Edward Manning, Mrs. Handley Beckwith
(Catherine Nlwcomb), Mrs. William Chipman, and Miss Doreas
Hall.

Historians of the Baptists in the Maritime Provinces pi'operly
claim Henry AUine as the father of the Baptist denomination here,
and indeed the greatest influence of men of power often lies ini
directions quite different from those to which they have intention-
ally given their energy. AUine, like all mystics, was the apostle
solely of the inner light. To him forms were of little importance,
indeed they were often a hindrance to the soul's true approach to
God. Except worldliness there was nothing among Christians he
so deplored as discussions about religious forms. When Baptist
opinions began to take such hold of the minds of his converts in
Horton and Cornwallis that they felt it necessary to argue for and
uphold them, to the point of division, the people's sad mistakes, as
he regarded them, filled his soul with pain. Adult baptism, or
pedo-baptism, baptism by sprinkling or by immersion, were to him
matters of utter indifference; the New Testament he had read to
find in it only the necessity for the soul's consecration to God. Oil
the basis of the revival wave which under his preaching swept ovet
the province, the Baptist denomination arose, but its rise is to be
attributed rather to the impulse he gave the old belief in the
necessity for conscious conversion, than to any views he held or
taught concerning ecclesiastical forms. Alline died, as he lived, a
New Light Congregationalist, and it is not too much to say that from
first to last his antagonism to Baptist formal exclusiveness went
very d«ep and strong.

Apart from Alline 's, the two most influential personalities in

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 3 IS

the early Baptist religious history of King's County were undoubt-
edly those of the Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, and the Rev. Edward
Manning. Mr. Harding's ministry lasted, as we have seen, for
almost Sixty years, Mr. Manning's lasted for a little less than fifty-
six years, and both men had a moulding influence on the people at
large of the respective townships in which they ministered that it
is not easy to overrate. Rev. Theodore Seth Harding began his
ministry in Horton, June 26, 1795, and died June 8, 1855. Rev.
Edward Manning was ordained over the Cornwallis New Light
Church in 1795, and died January 12, 1851. Mr. Manning's
physique was powerful, his intellect was commanding, his temper
was stern ; Mr. Harding was of medium height and size, and though
strong in his convictions had a far more magnetic and softer mind.
Mr. Manning towered high above most of the men with whom he
mingled, his head was large, his forehead wide, his eyes dark and
piercing, his arms and legs long, and his voice full and deep, and
he carried always a certain majestic air of command. Mr. Harding
was a smaller, gentler man, eccentric and fervid in utterance, en-
dowed with true apostolic fire, a real prophet of righteousness, but
gifted with poetic sensibility, and with a wide charity, that some-
times completely triumphed over the severe logic of his creed. Mr.
Manning was a born ruler, a man made to sway men; Mr. Hard-
ing's intellect had perhaps less directness and power but his thought
had a wide range, his sentences were epigrammatic ; what he failed
to utter in W^ords, he "conveyed by vivid suggestion", and his
voice was so melodious that his sermons held spell-bound whoever
listened to them. "For fulness and melody of voice", says an his-
torian, "he was without an equal. His speech had a chanting,
rhythmical flow, and was suffused with pathos and charged to the
full with irrestible power". Like several early Nova Scotians in
the political realm, like Uniacke, Howe, and Johnstone, for example,
these ministers well deserved to be called great, for they had great
ability, and they left a great influence behind them; but in estima-
tifig their influence, it is impossible not to wish strongly that they
had had the benefit of wider scholastic training, and larger asso-
ciation with the educated world.

314 KING'S COUNTY

By 1800 all the New Light ministers in Nova Scotia except Rev.
John Payzant, at Liverpool, had been immersed, and on the 23rd
and 24th of June of that year a "Baptist Association" was formed.
In this Association were included two churches in Annapolis County,
one in Digby, one in Horton, one in Cornwallis, one in Newport, one
in Sackville, one in Yarmouth, and one in Chester, but the close
communion platform was not fully adopted by the Association until
1809. After that year the Congregationalism that the New England
settlers of 1760 and 1761 had brought into the province almost
ceased to exist. The Baptist body in Nova Scotia had its birth in
a general religious Revival, and its growth may largely be traced
through later similar revivals. Of these revivals King's County
has had always its share, and oat of them have come undoubtedly
a great deal of deep, continuing religious life. In 1809 the members
of the Cornwallis Baptist Church numbered sixty-five, in 1810 fifty-
six, in 1811 sixty-three, in 1812 seventy-three, in 1813 sixty-five, in
1814 sixty-eight, and in 1820 a hundred and twenty-four.

Mr. Manning's pastorate of the Church lasted until his death,
which occurred, as we have said, on the 12th of January, 1851. In
1847, on account of his failing health, the Rev. Abram Spurr Hunt,
a young graduate of Acadia College of 1844 (and master of arts of
1851), was chosen to assist him. "When Mr. Manning died Mr. Hunt
succeeded to the pastorate, and in this office remained until Novem-
ber, 1867, when he resigned and removed to Dartmouth, the well
known suburb of Halifax. His successor was the Rev. Samuel Brad-
ford Kempton, D. D., a native of Queen's County, whose ministry at
Cornwallis began February 2, 1868, and lasted till 1893. Dr. Kemp-
ton's immediate successor at Cornwallis was the Rev. Charles H.
Martell, who held the pastorate from June, 1894, to May, 1901. He
was followed by the Rev. Daniel E. Hatt, who was pastor from 1901
to 1905 ; and he by the Rev. Frank H. Beals, who began preaching
for the church in October, 1905, and became pastor, March 1, 1906.

When Mr. Manning and his followers withdrew from the New
Light Church they worshipped for a while in a small, square single
roomed brick school-house, with a fireplace on one side, and having

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 315

a wooden roof, which stood on the crest of the hill, west of the
Walton bridge, at Lower Canard. On the south side of the street,
opposite, were "the remains of an old French dwelling house and
blacksmith shop", and near the running dyke, in the rear, were the
remains of a brick kiln, which had probably furnished the brick
for the building. This school-house, which is the first one of which
we have any knowledge in the county, was destroyed by fire in
1856. By 1809 the Baptist Church had grown sufficiently strong in
numbers to erect a building of its own, and this its members did,
choosing for a site the edge of the Parade in Upper Canard. The
building they now erected closely resembled the first Congrega-
tionaUst meeting house at Chipman's Corner. It had the same
plain, rectangular form, and for many years the same unpainted,
weather-stained look. It had two stories, and in each story a long
row of small-paned windows. On three sides of the interior was a
wide gallery, with tiers of pews raised above one another, and at
the church's upper end was a high, square pulpit, hung with red
damask, into which the minister climbed by steep stairs from the
floor. Directly under the front of the pulpit, in a little pen facing
the congregation, sat the venerable .deacons, three or four as the
case might be. In front of them, on ordinary Sundays hanging
down by the hinges, was the communion table, before which once
a month the pastor stood to consecrate the bread and wine. In the
front gallery opposite was the mixed choir, who sang the three
hymns and sometimes a voluntary, usually led by one of the
brethren who used a primitive tuning fork. "Can you picture the
old church and its plan of arrangement"? said a speaker at the
Centenary celebration of the church, which was held September 1st
and 2nd, 1907. "It was a rectangular building, nearly even with
the four points of the compass. A porch on the south side admitted
by two doors. Entering, you saw the pulpit directly in front of
you on the north wall. On either side of the central aisle, leading
from the entrance to the pulpit, was a double tier of pews or high
backed enclosures. These formed the body of the floor space. An
aisle ran all round these ranks of pews. Around the entire wall

816 KING'S COUNTY

ran one continuous row of pews, interruptfed only by the pulpit on
the north side and the doorway on the south Wall. A gallery,
reached by stairs from the porch, occupied the sbuth, east, and west
Walls above, the choir being seated in the south gallery, fronting the
pulpit. The pulpit was high and spacious and enclosed the preacher
seciirely. The building was not square; its longer sides ran froni
east to west. There was no steeple, no toWer, no bell". The meet-
ing houSe, as has been stated, was built in 1809. Its dimensions
T^ere about sixty feet long by forty wide and its timbers were im-
mense. It stood until 1873, when it was taken doT^n to be replaced
by a more modern building. This latter was burned in 1909, a;
third church vei'y soon taking its place.

The offshoots from the First Comwallis Baptist Church have
been, — the "Second Comwallis Chui'ch", organized at Berwick in
1828, with fifty persons; the "Third Comwallis Church", organized
At Billtown, June 6, 1835, with a hundred and sixty-seven persons ;
the "Fourth Comwallis Church", organized at Pereau in 1839; and
the "Fifth Comwallis Church", organized at Canning in 1870,
ivhich in 1906 was united With the Canning "Free Baptist Church".
At the start this Caiining Baptist Church had about twenty-seven
members; when the union was effected the joint membership was
over two hundred. Froih the Berwick Church in 1849 or 1850, the
Lbng Point, now Burlington, Church was organized, with twenty-
eight members; from this latter church, June 23, 1874, the "Cani-
bridge Church" was organized, with about ninety members. "In
addition to these offshoots, the Berwick Church cohtributed largely
towards the original membership of the AylesfOrd Church". At
Town Plot, also, as early as 1839, Baptist services were held, from
these in time coming a Baptist church at Port Williams, the building
of the meeting house for which was begun in 1866. The first Bap-
tist parsonage in Comwallis, which, as we have seen, was originally
the Presbyterian manse, was an attractive cottage on the Middle
Dyke road, -v^ith an avenue of acacia trees leading to it, known as
"Salem Cottage". It was hei^e, for much of his ministrjl' that
the Reir. Abram Spurr Hunt, and for all of his ministry that th6

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 317

Rev. Dr. Samuel Bradford Kempton lived. In 1834 there were ip
the pounty but three Baptist ministers, the Kevds. Edward Manning,
William Chipman, and Theodore Seth Harding. In Aylesford none
is given. In 1860, there were : at Wolfville, Revds. John Chase,
John Mockett Cramp, D. D., Stephen William DeBlois, and Artemas
Wyman Sawyer, D. D. ; at Pleasant Valley, Eev. William Chipman ;
at New Minas, Rev. Thomas W. Crawley; at Cornwallis, Eev.
Abram Spurr Hunt ; at Billtown, Rev. James Parker ; at Gaspereau,
Rev. E. 0. Reid ; at Aylesford, Rev. Abram Stronach.

After Rev. Edward Manning's withdrawal from the Cornwallis
New Light Congregationalist Church, that body, it is said, found
itself composed of "members of the original Chipman 's Corner
Church who could not be Presbyterians, and New Lights who would
not be Baptists after the type of the Manning Church, together
with some newcomers who sympathized with the church in its
difficulties, and the Chase family, who had been Quakers". It was
a time for the Church of great depression, but the majority of the
members who had not joined the secession held steadfastly to their
allegiance, among them the two deacons, Messrs. Thaddeus Harris
and Amasa Bigelow, both of whom had laid their hands on Mr.
Manning's head at his ordination in 1795. The church building at
Hamilton's Corner remained in possession of the New Light people,
and very soon after Mr. Manning's withdrawal, but at precisely
what date we do not know, Mr. John Pineo, who had been one of
Mr. Manning's bitterest opponents, was ordained and became as
the church's records quaintly call him "pasturer" of the flock.
The Church's preserved recprds begin only with the year 1819, at
which time Mr. Pineo was pastor, Messrs. Thaddeus Harris and
John Sanford were deacons, and Mr. Benjamin Weaver was clerk.
For a short time the congregation continued to hold services at
Hamilton's Comer, but a majority of the members living near what
is now Canning, the meeting house was soon abandoned and services
were held in private houses "east of the Little Habitant River".
In 1819 a new meeting house was begun at Habitant, but before it
was finished it was destroyed by fire. The next year, however,

318 KING'S COUNTY

1820, it was rebuilt, but it was at first finished only on the outside, and
floored. During the last years of Mr. Pineo's pastorate the Church
suffered greatly for lack of attention. The minister was old and
infirm, and lived at Scots Bay, and services do not seem to have
been at all regularly kept up. On the 2lBt of June, 1835, in his;
82nd year, Mr. Pineo died, and for four years if the church had a
minister at all it must have been Rev. William Payzant, son of Rev.
John Payzant, who before Mr. Pineo's death had come to reside in
the neighbourhood, and who in the pastor's declining years had
undoubtedly assisted him in his work.

In August, 1839, the Rev. Jacob B. Norton, of Argyle, Nova
Scotia, a Free Baptist minister, was settled over the church, and in
1841 some other Free Baptist minister who happened to be tem-
porarily taking his place, indiscreetly and improperly alluded pub-
licly to the church as a Free Baptist church. This allusion so
angered the stricter Congregationalists that they soon withdrew to
the Bass Creek school-house, leaving the majority, who preferred to
stay with Norton and become Free Baptists, in possession of the
meeting house and the parsonage. Before long the Congregation-
alists engaged Mr. George Sterling as their minister, but in 1846 he
left for Pleasant River and his place was taken by the Rev. Jacob
Whitman, who also resigned in 1852.

From 1855 to '57, Rev. Joseph Peart was pastor of the church;
for a year Rev. Samuel Cox supplied its pulpit; from 1861 to '67
Rev. J. R. Keen was its pastor; and from 1870 to '74 Rev. Jacob
Whitman ministered to it. For five years after this, students were
engaged as supplies; from 1879 to '81, Rev. Enoch Barker served
as pastor; for a year Rev. J. B. Thompson preached in its pulpit;
for several years Hon. Rev. Burnthorne Musgrave acted as supply;
from 1886 to '89 Messrs. Jacob W. Cox, B. C. Wall, and Harry
Goddard supplied it ; in 1890 and '91 Rev. Churchill Moore was pas-
tor ; and between 1891 and 1900 there were several other brief pas-
torates, the longest being that of Rev. David Colburn. In 1847 the
church property at Habitant, which until then had remained in
the hands of the Free Baptists, was restored to the Congregation-

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 319

alists by law. In 1849 the meeting house was completed and the
pews sold, but in 1889 the church disposed of its property, both at
Hamilton's Corner and at Habitant, and began the erection of a
meeting house at Kingsport, in the vicinity of which the majority
of the Congregationalists of Cornwallis still live.

The minutes of the monthly meetings of the church after 1819,
which are contained in a dilapidated book, yellow with age, and
coverless, are characteristic of the time and place in which they
were made. Some of them are as follows: "May the 22 (1819).
The Church met and Eenewed Covenant Several Come forward and
told their Experience and was received we have Reason to Bless
God it was a day of rejoicing". "May the 29. The Church Met and
Eenewed Covenant several Come forward and told their Experience
and was received the Lord was with his People". "June 20. The
Church met and Renewed Covenant. Several come forward and
told their Experience the Lord was righting up his people". "July
3. The Church met and Renewed Covenant the Lord was moving
on the hearts of his people". "Dee. 4. Mary told her Ex-
perience and was Received the 5 or the Sabeth Day following.
Partook of the Sacrament". "January 2 (1820). The Church met
and renewed Covenant. I think there was a quickening of God's
Spirit upon the minds of the people". "Sept. 4. I beleave the
Spirit of the Lord was with the people". "Sept. 25. Their was one
come forward and told their Experience. I beleave the Lord was
moving upon the minds of the people". "Oct. the 9. The Church
met etc. the Lord never will leave nor forsake his people". 'Nov.
7. The Church met etc. We have Reason to Bless God for his good-
ness their was a revival of his Cause". "August 5. The Church
met etc. I beleave it was not a lost opportunity". "Feb. 24 (1821).
The Church met etc. we have reason to bless God for the opertunity
that we have of meeting together from Day to Day and from time
to time". "30 March. The Church met and renewed fellowship
we hope that we shall not forsake Assembling ourselves together.
I beleave the Lord meets with us and owns and Blesses us and will
Bless all his people". "July 28. The Church met and renewed

320 KING'S COUNTY

fellowship we do not enjoy his love as we have in times past".
"Sept. 29. The Church met etc. their was some of the Church that
I beleave could Bless the Day that ever they was Born to Be Born
again". "Oct. 27. The Church met etc. their is yet hope concern-
ing Israel the Lord never leaves himself without a witness". " Jan'y.
25 (1823). The Church met and Eenewed fellowship it was a Dark
time the Church seems to be scattered". "Nov. 29. it is a dark and
scattered time amongst God's people" (This reads like a wail fron^
one of the Hebrew prophets). "Sept. 25. The Church met etc.
we feel like those that goes mourning without the sun". "Decem-
ber 25 (1830). The Church met etc. it was like a great freedom with
a part of the Church". "Oct. 29 (1831). The Church met etc.. And
we beleave many felt the writing of Jesus Christ's Spirit in their
inmost Soals".

The following Baptist and Congregationalist ministers have
been reared in King's County, or have had an immediate King's
County ancestry : The Eevds. Howard Barss, "Walter Barss, William
H. Beckwith, M. A. Bigelow, Ingraham Ebenezer Bill, D. D., John
Chase, Alfred Chipman, Samuel L. Chipman, Thomas Handley
Chipman, "William Chipman, Bennett Chute, Nathaniel Cleveland,
Aaron Cogswell, John B. Cogswell, Joshua B. Cogswell, Erastus
Obadiah Cox, George Davenport Cox, Jacob "W. Cox, Frederick
Crawley, Adoniram Judson Davidson, Austin K. de Blois, D. D.,
M. A. DeWolf, I. J. De"Wolf, Henry Eagles, Charles Aubrey Baton,
D. D.; Joshua Tinson Baton, "William "Wentworth Eaton, "William
D. Fitch, Harris Harding, C. K. Harrington, D. D. ; David Harris,
Edward N. Harris, Masters Harris, Austin Kempton, Thomas A.
Higgins, D. D. ; W. V. Higgins, "William Johnson, Burton "W. Lock-
hart, D. D. ; John M. Lowden, D. D., Ezekiel Masters, John Masters,
John P. Masters, John Chipman Morse, D. D. ; S. J. Neily, Abram
Newcomb, James Newcomb, "William A. Newcomb, James Palmer,
James Parker, Maynard Parker, Obed Parker, David B. Pineo, John
Pineo, Silas Tertius Rand, D. D. ; Charles Randall, S. Martin Ran-
dall, J. Otis Redden, Edward Manning Saunders, D. D; J. H.
Saunders, D. D.; Adoniram Judson Steyens, James Stevens, I. J.

THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS 321

Skinner, J. E. Skinner, Joseph C. Skinner, George Thomas, Aaron
Thorpe, Charles Tupper, D. D.; J. H. Tupper; O. C. S. Wallace,
D. D.; Burpee Welton, Daniel M. Welton, D. D.; Sidney Welton,
Among Methodist ministers have been, Charles DeWolfe, D. D., and
Arthur John Lockhart. '

Of sects other than the larger denominations, King's County
has fortunately not had many. About the middle of the 19th cen-
tury a small congregation of Disciples or "Campbellites" was
gathered in Cornwallis, chiefly, it is believed, of disaffected Baptists,
their first meeting house probably being a small square building
known as the "Tabernacle", a short distance west of the First
Baptist and present Presbyterian churches in Canard. Their second
meeting house was on the Upper Dyke road, between Upper Dyke
Village and the west end of Church Street. The congregation was
always a small one and the church's place in the ecclesiastical his-
tory of the county is not important.

CHAPTER XIX
EARLY METHODISM

The Wes(leyan Methodist denomination had its first adherents in
Nova Scotia in a number of Yorkshire families who emigrated tO'
Cumberland county in 1770-75, that county then including the coun-
ties of Westmoreland and Albert, in the province of New Brunswick.
Of these Yorkshire settlers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick a
few families broke away from the main body and made their
homes in Halifax, Hants, and Annapolis counties, but the majority
remained in Cumberland. The religion of probably all these York-
shire settlers was "Wesleyan Methodism, and the earnest religious
faith their lives manifested has had an important influence on the
character of the people of Nova Scotia to the present time.

A member of this Yorkshire company was William Black,
whose father was a Scotchman from Paisley, but whose mother was
of Yorkshire parentage. William Black himself was born in Hud-
dersfield, England, in 1760, and with deep emotional experiences
was converted in Nova Scotia in 1779. As soon as he attained hi»
majority, like Henry Alline, he began an evangelistic career, but his
ordination to the ministry, which occurred in Philadelphia, did not
take place until 1789. In May, 1782, Mr. Black made his first visit
to King's County. Starting from Amherst, by way of Partridge
Island, for Windsor, he came to Parrsborough, but there found that
the packet for Windsor had gone. An opportunity soon presenting^
itself, however, he crossed to Oornwallis in a privately owned vessel,
and presented himself to some of the people. One of the most
prominent men of Comwallis was Jonathan Sherman, Jr., formerly
of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, son of Jonathan Sherman, Sr., and his
wife Mary (Card). Whether Mr. Sherman had already anywhere
come under the infiuence of Methodism we do not know, but he wa»

EARLY METHODISM 323

"distinguished by a love of good men, nnrestricted by the shackles
of bigotry", and he seems to have been Mr. Black's first Cornwallia
host (The Rev. Matthew Richey, D. D., calls him Gideon Sherman,
but this must be wrong) . Less than four years had passed since the
New Light Congregationalist church of Cornwallis and Horton
founded by AUine had come into being, and neither over that nor
the mother Congregationalist church was there any settled pastor.
Mr. Black's coming, therefore, was undoubtedly welcomed with a
good deal of pleasure, and on Sunday, May 26th, both morning and
afternoon, he preached to the New Light people, one of his texts
being : " I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified". At both services, he says, "God was
graciously present, but it ought to be said with emphasis, 'The
voice of the Lord was heard in the cool of the day' ". At Cornwallis
he staid until the 30th of the month, then he rode to Horton and
preached in the evening there. On this occasion his text was:
Unto you, therefore, which believe he is precious".

Jime 1st he went back to Cornwallis and preached both in the
school-house and at Mr. Sherman's. Again he returned to Horton
to Mr. George Johnson's, and from there went to Falmouth, Wind-
sor, and Newport, preaching his first sermon at Windsor on the 5th
of June. Here his service was held in the house of Mrs. Scott, who
lived on the Francklin farm. "Very precious to the scattered
Methodists of the Province", writes the Rev. Dr. T. Watson Smith,
"must have been the opportunity of receiving the Lord's Supper,
when persons from Horton and Halifax were ready to meet their
brethren at Windsor and Newport for the sacred purpose". [At
this time, however, Mr. Black was not ordained, and that he admin-
istered the Lord's Supper seems doubtful].

Mr. Black's visit to Cornwallis and Horton must have been
attended with some embarrassment, for in many Cornwallis families
Henry Alline was looked on as an inspired apostle, while for much
of his teaching Mr. Black himself, who the year before had come
into close contact with the Falmouth evangelist, had deep-seated
distrust. "Mr. Alline 's religious tenets", says Mr. Black's

S24 KING'S COUNTY

biographer, "were a singular combination of heterogeneous mate-
rials derived from various and opposite sources. They were
fragments of different systems, without coherence, and without any
mutual relation or dependence. With the strong assertion of man's
freedom as a moral agent, he connected the doctrine of the final
perseverance of the saints. He allegorized to such excess the plain-
est narrations and announcements of Scripture that the obvious
and unsophisticated import of the words of inspiration was often
entirely lost amidst the reveries of mysticism". Moreover, he did
not hesitate to speak slightingly of Mr. Wesley, and this in a
Wesleyan's eyes naturally indicated an unsually perverse and mis-
guided mind. With this estimate of Henry Alline Mr. Black would
entirely have agreed, yet he no doubt expressed himself guardedly
concerning the evangelist, and his preaching generally gave satis-
faction to Mr. Alline 's King's County friends.

Before long Mr. Black went to Wilmot and Annapolis Royal, but
soon returning, again preached at Horton, in a large barn. During
his visit here Joseph Johnson, he says, found peace, and Matthew
Ormsby, "formerly a valiant servant of the devil, and confessedly
proud as Lucifer", was deeply affected. In a later visit to Horton
the same autumn, October, 1782, he had a long argument with the
Bev. Aaron Bancroft, a New England Congregationalist, who at this
time was temporarily in the county, perhaps preaching as occasion
might offer, concerning the fundamentals of evangelical religion. Mr.
Bancroft, who was the father of George Bancroft, the historian, and
who before this time from the year 1780 had been labouring as a
clergyman in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, was strongly rationalistic,
and Mr. Black says he was one of them that "prophesy smooth
things" to unregenerate hearers. In 1784, the Methodist evangelist
was in Horton again, and during this visit a Mrs. Card, who had
formerly been "an opposer, but was now on a bed of affliction, and
in great distress of mind, terribly afflicted with the fear of death",
was converted and found great mental relief. In 1785 the missionary
was once more in Horton, preaching at the Baptist and Presbyterian
meeting houses, and in Comwallis , preaching at Habitant. August

EARLY METHODISM 325

7, 1786, he writes Rev. John Wesley that at Horton the prospect for
Methodism was good.

During the winter of 1786-7, under the ministry of the Rev.
Freeborn Garrettson, who in 1785 had come to Nova Scotia from
Maryland, a revival of religion took place at Horton. There,
and at "Windsor and Cornwallis, Garrettson spent the greater
part of the winter, exchanging appointments occasionally
with Mr. Black, on whom devolved the care of the Meth-
odist congregation at Halifax. "The people of Horton", says
Mr. Black's biographer, "had acquired an unenviable distinc-
tion for wickedness; their attention to public and private worship
now became equally prominent". During the winter many
were converted ; " I have had a blessed winter among them ' ', wrote
Garrettson, in March, 1787. "If the work continue much longer as
it has done, the greater part of the people will be brought in. It
would cause your heart to rejoice to know what a deadly wound
Antinomianism has received in the town of Horton. My dear Mas-
ter has given me one of the first lawyers in Cornwallis, and his
lady". In 1786, it is recorded, the Methodist missions at Horton,
Cornwallis, and "Windsor, numbered five hundred and ten members ;
after this revival they probably numbered considerably more.

Methodist missionary labour in King's County, however, for a
long time after the revival was unorganized and desultory. At
Horton, owing to the want of pastoral care , some persons were lost
to the denomination, but to those who remained faithful the Anglican
missionary at Cornwallis, the Rev. "William Twining, preached once
in every three weeks in the chapel. "For several years", writes Mr.
Black, "the Rev. Mr. Twining, a missionary of the Established
Church, resident at Cornwallis, has once in three weeks preached in
our chapel at Horton, and frequently administered the Lord's Sup-
per to our people. About five or six years ago he was first brought
to experience the converting grace of God; from which time he has
not shunned to declare the necessity of regeneration, and warmly to
press on the consciences of his hearers this and the other distin-
guishing doctrines of the Gospel. He has been frequently present

326 KING'S COUNTY

at the meeting of the class, and spoken with great humility and
thankfulness of the grace of Christ Jesus; and has sometimes met
the society himself. His attachment to the Methodists, and his plain
manner of preaching the doctrines of the Gospel, have brought upon
him much reproach, and considerable trials from some from whom
he ought to have received much encouragement. Benjamin Belcher,
Esq., one of his vestry, who had been his principal opponent, and
had preferred many charges against him to the Bishop, on his
death-bed sent for Mr. Twining to pray with him, and in his will he
left about two hundred pounds towards the building him a church".

Some time before 1793, but precisely when we do not know, the
Windsor Circuit, which embraced Falmouth, Newport, Windsor,
Horton, and Cornwallis, was created, and in the year mentioned
Hev. James Boyd was in charge. The head of the circuit was not
"Windsor, but Horton, and in 1804 Rev. William Black writes the
Missionary Society that at Horton, "the chief place in the circuit",
the Methodists have a convenient chapel, which is generally well
attended. Under the management of Rev. William Bennett and a
young colleague. Rev. Robert Alder, the Windsor circuit grew in
importance, and in 1812 the Rev. William Croscombe was sent to it
by the Conference. In 1819 the Rev. William Burt took his place,
and to his activity the denomination in the county owes much.

The precise date of the building of the Horton Methodist chapel
we do not at present know. About 1786, moved by the preaching
of Mr. Garrettson, the Cornwallis people subscribed five hundred
dollars towards a church building in that township, but the church
was apparently not then erected. At the same time, Col. Jonathan
Crane and Mr. James Noble Shannon, together, offered two hundred
dollars towards the erection of a church at Horton, and it ia likely
that on the basis of their generous gift the Horton chapel was there-
after almost immediately built. On the last Sunday in May, 1821, a
new church was opened in Horton, the old one having been moved
across the road to be converted into a parsonage. In 1818 the Presby-
terians had completed a new church for their congregation at Horton,
but without a spire. The new Methodist church was built with a spire,

EARLY METHODISM 327

and when it was finished some of the Presbyterians, determined in
this respect not to be outdone by their neighbours, got together and
subscribed five pounds apiece to add a steeple to theirs. At Horton
Corner (Kentville), says the Rev. Dr. T. Watson Smith, Mr. Burt
"found the frame of a church, which before his removal was form-
ally opened for worship". At Wolfville he frequently preached
at the house of Mr. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, and at Starr's
Point at the house of Mr. Joseph Starr, and in an old dwelling
which had been altered for the purpose. Through his efforts a
church was built in what was known as the "Smith Woods", near
Canning, where services were also held "until the dedication of a
new and neat church in Canning in 1854". In Mr. Burt's time or a
little later, services were also sometimes held at Greenwich and
Billtown.

Probably as early as its establishment in Horton, Methodism
had found a lodgment in Parrsborough, and at some period of which
we have not the record a small church had been built there. This
church, says Dr. Smith, "stood near Cross Roads, about two miles
from the site of the present sanctuary". In 1835-6 a notable
Methodist revival took place in Parrsborough.

Undoubtedly the most distinguished family in the present
county to give countenance and support to Methodism was that of
Col. Jonathan Crane, at Horton. Mrs. Crane was Rebecca, sister of
John Allison, Esq., M. P. P., of Newport, Hants county, and both she
and her brother, though having been bred in Presbyterianism, early
became members of the Wesleyan body. Col. Crane himself never
united with the Methodists, but to the end of his life took great
interest in the denomination's welfare. To his noble-minded liber-
ality, says Dr. Richey, the congregation was chiefly indebted for
"their handsome and commodious chapel at Lower Horton, which
he only lived to see completed" (he died in August, 1820). Of Mrs.
Crane, Dr. Smith says: "She was the acknowledged centre of a
group of godly women" ; and Dr. Richey writes : "Her holy life and
godly conversation long rendered her a distinguished ornament of
the Methodist Society". Other noted converts in the county to the

328 KING'S COUNTY

Methodist faith were, Mr. and Mrs. James Noble Shannon, first of
Horton, then for the rest of their lives of Parrsborough, Mrs. Shan-
non, as we have seen, being Chloe, older sister of Col. Jonathan
Crane. "While memory continues to perform its office", says Dr.
Richey, "or the least spark of gratitude remains unextinguished in
his breast, the compiler of these pages can never forget the parental
kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Shannon, when in the seventeenth year of
his age he laboured on the Parrsborough circuit". It may be noted
here than one of Col. Crane 's daughters, his youngest child, Rebecca,
became the wife of Samuel Black, a son of the distinguished
first missionary of Methodism in Nova Scotia. A long letter of Mr.
Black's, written February 10, 1787, in which he earnestly exhorts his
correspondent to seek religion, was to "Lawyer Hilton", of Com-
wallis, who was undoubtedly the lawyer in Cornwallis whom Mr.
Garrettson about this time speaks of as an important convert.

In 1834 there were in the county but two Methodist ministers,
the Rev. William Temple in Horton, and the Rev. William Smith at
Parrsborough. In 1860 there were in the county, which then lay
in what was called the "Annapolis district", the following minis-
ters: in ComwalUs, the Rev'ds. William Smithson and George
Butcher; in Horton, Thomas Angwin; in Aylesford, George W.
Tuttle.

CHAPTER XX
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

The legal disabilities under which Koman Catholics laboured in
Nova Scotia after the introduction of civil government in 1749,
were for a long time very great. Of the influence the French
priests exerted among the Acadians the government had had such
just cause of complaint that when the first Assembly met in 1758 its
members conceived it necessary to pass the following severely dis-
criminating act: "Be it enacted that every popish person exer-
cising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and every popish priest, shall
depart out of the Province on or before the 25th day of March, 1759.
And if any such person or persons shall be found in the Province
after the said day, he or they shall upon conviction be adjudged to
suffer perpetual imprisonment, and if any person or persons so
imprisoned shall escape out of prison, he or they shall be deemed
and adjudged to be guilty of felony without benefit of clergy. And
be it further enacted that any person who shall knowingly harbour
any such clergyman of the popish religion, or priest, shall forfeit
fifty pounds, one moiety to His Majesty for the support of the gov-
ernment of the Province, and the other moiety to the informer, and
he shall be also adjudged to be set in the pillory and to find sureties
for his good behavior at the discretion of the Court".

In spite of this act, and in the face of the extreme penalties it
prescribed, it is possible that for some little time after the passage
of it the veteran missionary. Abbe Maillard, who had remained in
the province after the expulsion of the Acadians, to attend to the
needs of the Indians, may have sometimes surreptitiously celebrated
Mass in Halifax. As we are not sure, however, of the exact date at
which he left the province, it may be that his work ceased promptly
at the time the Assembly had set. "During the winter of 1771, Mass

330 KING'S COUNTY

was celebrated in Halifax by a priest whose name we have not
learned, in a barn owned by Hon. Michael Tobin, on South Street.
The priest, however, from the opposition raised against his services,
was soon forced to withdraw from Halifax and officiate in "a
secluded spot six miles from the town". This spot has been identi-
fied as Birch Cove.

Against Roman Catholic laymen, also, before the law, almost
equally strong discriminations existed. By the first Assembly it
was enacted that all deeds or wills conveying "lands or tenements
to any Papist" should be utterly null and void. Before a man could
be permitted to hold any public office he must declare unqualifiedly
against "popery and transubstantiation ", and this latter restriction
was not formally removed until 1827. In 1783, however, in conse-
quence of a petition by the Roman Catholics of Halifax to Lieuten-
ant-Governor Hamond, the disabilities under which non-office -hold-
ing Catholic laymen lived were entirely removed. In 1823, Lawrence
Kavanagh, Esq., an Irish Catholic, was allowed by the English
Secretary of State to take his seat as a member of the Assembly
for the Island of Cape Breton. After this decision, which of course
formed an important precedent, the question of Mr. Kavanagh 's
right to sit in the Assembly was debated by the House itself. "When
the vote was put, twenty-one members voted in favour of his being
allowed to do so, fifteen against. Of the King's County members,
Samuel Bishop voted for the measure, William Allen Chipman, Sher-
man Dennison, and John "Wells voted against it.

July 19, 1784, the frame of St. Peter's, the first Roman Catholic
Church building in Halifax, was raised almost on the site of the
present St. Mary's Cathedral, on Spring Garden Road. In 1785
the Rev. James Jones, of the order of the Capuchins, landed in
Halifax and took charge of the congregation worshipping there.
Two years later he was constituted by the Bishop of Quebec, Supe-
rior of all the Catholic missions in Nova Scotia which had come, or
under his supervision should come, into being. His jurisdiction
also included Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
and part of the Magdalen Islands. In 1787, it is stated, there were

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC 'CHURCH 331

besides Father Jones, but two priests working in all the great field
over which the Superior's care extended; by 1800, however, ten
had been added to the number. The first Roman Catholic Bishop
of Nova Scotia was the Right Rev. Edmund Burke, who was con-
secrated at Quebec on Sunday, July 5, 1818. For some years before
his consecration Dr. Burke had been Vicar General in Nova Scotia
of the Bishop of Quebec.

"Whatever earlier ministration there had been in King's County
by priests of the Roman Catholic Church, organized Catholic mis-
sionary labour in the county did not begin until 1853. The parish
now known as St. Joseph's, with its Church and Rectory near
Kentville, was at first "The District of Cornwallis, Kentville, and
Aylesford", and to this district the Rev. David Canon O'Connor was
sent in the year mentioned above. On the fly-leaf of the earliest
St. Joseph's Parish Register are two entries, one stating that the
Rev. D. O'Connor "took possession of the United District of Corn-
wallis, Kentville, and Aylesford on the 13th day of June, 1853 ' ' ; the
other that the Rev. David Canon O'Connor "arrived in this place
on Thursday, the 21st day of November, 1860". From the Register
we also discover that Mr. O'Connor ministered in the county from
1853 to '57, but that from 1857 to '60 he was absent, his place being
fiUed by others, whose names will in the following list appear. The
priests who have ministered at St. Joseph's from 1853 to the present,
are: Rev. D. O'Connor, 1853- '57; Revds. Messrs. Hannigan, Power,
Madden, Dillon, Butler, and Kennedy, 1857- '59; Rev. D. O'Connor,
1859- '61; Revd. Messrs. Mclsaac, Kennedy, Butler, and "Walsh,
1861- '63; Rev. Philip M. Holden, 1863-1906; Rev. John Bernard
Moriarty, 1906 — . The first marriage on the Register was solemnized
in Kentville, Sept. 16, 1853 ; the second in Horton, Nov. 24, 1853 ; a
third, in Aylesford, August 21, 1854; a fourth in Cornwallis, Nov.
8, 1854. In 1853 there were twenty-eight baptisms recorded in this
large mission field, in 1854, forty. The first Register ends with
1862, the second begins in the same year. The title-page of the
second bears the inscription: "Register of Baptisms and Marriages
kept in the mission of Kentville, Cornwallis, &c. 1862 — ".

332 KING'S COUNTY

The Church building of St. Joseph's was completed by December
10, 1853, and until a few years ago underwent very few changes.
Recently, however, it has been completely reconstructed, and in a
beautiful location very near it an attractive Rectory has been
built. During the long rectorship of the Rev. Philip M. Holden,
this popular priest occupied his own house on the Beech Hill Road,
On the 10th of December, 1853, William, Archbishop of Halifax,
gave formal sanction to the following regulations concerning the
church : No one but a member of the Roman Catholic Church could
be a pew-holder; the pews were to be let for five years, at an
annual rent, to the highest bidder ; the pew rents were to be applied
for the current expenses, decorations, and repairs of the church,
under the direction of the Archbishop or Ordinary of Halifax for
the time being ; an annual account of the receipts and expenditures
of the church was to be submitted to the Archbishop or Ordinary
for approval. The first baptisms on the Register number, twenty-
eight in 1853, forty in 1854. The first marriages number, three in

1853, four in 1854. The first marriage in the parish was performed
in Kentville, Sept. 16, 1853, the second "in Horton", Nov. 24, 1853.
One marriage, August 21, 1854, was in Aylesford, and one, Nov. 8,

1854, in Cornwallis. The date of the first baptism by Rev. Philip M.
Holden was August 24, 1863, the last May 19, 1895.

The following surnames appear on St. Joseph's Parish Register in
1853: Bond, Brady, Brennan, Christy, Coleman, Connors, Dalton,
Delahunty, Fitzgerald, Hudson, Galavan, Hanton, Henderson, Mc-
Dado, McPadden, Kehoe, Lacy, Little, McGarry, Murphy, Ryan,
Sarsfield, Sef erene. Shea, Thomson. The following additional names
appear in 1854: Burke, Casey, Cornell, Doherty, Dooley, Doyle,
DriscoU, Pennessy, Foot, Fry, Hamilton, Hare, Harvey, Keanealy,
Lynch, Lyons, Mulloney, Nugent, Quigley, Redmond, Rogers, Slat-
tery, Smyth, Sullivan, Sweeney, Tobin, Tully, Walsh. Later addi-
tional names on the Register are : Ahern, Arnold, Bums, Carter,
Conlin, Corbin, Corkery, Delancey, Dorman, Dunne, Griffin, Hanni-
fen, Kane, Mahoney, McBride, McNally, Nolan, O'Hare, O'Neil,
Patterson, Reddy, Regan, Roach, Taylor, ToUimore, Trainor, Walker.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 333

In the families who since the establishment of St. Joseph's parish
have been adherents of the Boman Catholic Church in King's
County, some of the county's most respectable inhabitants have been
found. Public positions, such as the mayoralty and the postmaster-
ship of Kentville, representatives of these families have from time
to time filled, or at present occupy. The shire town of the county
ia proud to number among its citizens such men as Messrs. Joseph
R. Lyons, Dr. John MuUoney, James W. Ryan, and others like them.
The oldest tombstone in St. Joseph's Churchyard is that of
"Martin Ryan, a native of the County Tipperary, Ireland, who died
December 16, 1838, aged 62". The inscription on the tombstone of
the Rev. Philip M. Holden is, "To the beloved memory of Rev.
Philip M. Holden, bom in Halifax, N. S., June 19, 1829. Pull of
merits and charitable deeds, lamented by his devoted people, he was
called to his reward, Feb. 2, 1906, the fifty-third year of his Priest-
hood, and forty-second year of his Kentville pastorate". The pres-
ent excellent Rector of St. Joseph 's, the Rev. John Bernard Moriarty,
was educated at Lavalle Seminary, Quebec, and was connected with
St. Mary 'i^ Cathedral, Halifax, for fifteen years. He was appointed
Rector of St. Joseph's February 6, 1906.

CHAPTER XXI
THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION

So far as we know no record remains of the schools which may
have existed in the county in French times, nor have we much more
knowledge of the earliest schools established by the New England
planters. Of schools established by the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel we have some record, but these S. P. G. schools could
have given instruction to comparatively few of the planters' chil-
dren, and although the demands of education were not great, with
intelligent people like our ancestors they must have been so
insistent as to lead very soon to the establishment in many neigh-
bourhoods of small schools where the rudiments of education were
taught, by women or men. That no trace except in tradition is now
to be found of these first neighbourhood schools is not strange, for
they were purely voluntary institutions, coming under no general
system, and responsible only to the individuals who subscribed to
them, or later, to the trustees who acted as representatives of the
people at large. It is probable that in every neighbourhood in the
county some tradition remains of the exact location of the first
school-house in that neighbourhood, and possibly of the persons
who first taught in it, but even in the county town, with reference
to the teachers, at least, such tradition has been vague and difficult
to obtain.

From the S. P. G. Report issued in 1764 we learn that on the
3rd of February of the preceding year, Mr. Jonathan Belcher pre-
sented to the Society, with his own strong endorsement, a proposal
from the Eev. Joseph Bennett, then living at "Windsor, that two
schoolmasters should be sent out by the Society, one for Falmouth
and Newport, and one for Cornwallis and Horton. The Report says
that this proposal had been complied with, and that at Horton the

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 335

people were inclined to make some additional provision for a school-
master, who, with the salary paid him by the S. P. G., the people's
voluntary subscriptions, and the use of the land set apart by Gov-
ernment for the school's benefit, it was thought might live very com-
fortably. The earliest mention we find of schoolmasters as actually
in the county is in 1767, when at Windsor and Newport a Mr. "Watts
is reported as being stationed. In the Report for 1769- '70 we find
as schoolmaster at Windsor and Nevirport, a Mr. Haliburton, in
1772- '73 we find at Oornwallis and Horton, Mr. Cornelius Fox.
After 1773- '74 Mr. Haliburton 's name disappears from the list of
schoolmasters, and Windsor and Newport are no longer spoken of.
Mr. Fox, however, is found at Oornwallis until 1798, when he
removed to Cape Breton and Mr. Matthew McLoughlin was appoint-
ed in his place. The salary of each of these men from the Society
was ten pounds a year. That Windsor so soon ceased to share for
purposes of education in the Society's bounty is probably due to the
fact that the Windsor and Newport people were sufficiently well
off to make adequate provision for their own educational needs.

Since the river separated Cornwallis from Horton, Mr. Fox,,
living as he did in Cornwallis (probably at Fox Hill), could not
possibly have taught any of the Horton children ; the Horton people
therefore, must early have established small schools of their own.
But of these schools, or of any schools that may have been estab-
lished in Cornwallis, farther west or north than the Town Plot, we
know absolutely nothing. Much before the close of the 18th cen-
tury we hear of a school-house near Hamilton's Corner, but when it
was built or who first taught in it we cannot now tell. There is
unfortunately no department of the county's history concerning
which we know less than the earliest schools.

In the Halifax Weekly Chronicle of April 20, and 27, and June
15, 1799, we find the following advertisement for a teacher, though
for precisely what part of Cornwallis we are not informed: "Any
person capable of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, with
propriety, who can produce a good recommendation for sobriety
and steadiness of conduct and to whom a residence in the country

336 KING'S COUNTY

would be agreeable, will be informed of an eligible situation by
applying to Messrs. Charles and Samuel Prescott in Halifax or to
Joseph Prescott, Esq., or Timothy Baton, merchant in Cornwallis".

In 1811 an act was passed by the legislature to establish gram-
mar schools in the counties of Sydney, Cumberland, King's, Queen's,
Lunenburg, Annapolis, and Shelbume, and in the districts of Col-
chester, Pictou, and Yarmouth, the master of each school to receive
a hundred pounds a year from the treasury, and his assistant if he
had one, to receive fifty pounds, when over thirty pupils should be
in attendance. This act was to be in force for seven years; it was
then extended to the year 1825. [Halifax, during this period, had a
grammar school under a different act.] In 1812 the grammar
schools in these different counties were established, that in King's
undoubtedly being located at Kentville. At a Town Meeting held
at Cornwallis November 5, 1812, the chairman, David Whidden,
reported that four hundred pounds had been raised by subscription
for schools in that township, that eight school-houses had been pro-
vided, and that six licensed schoolmasters were then teaching under
the direction of trustees. The meeting nominated as trustees:
James Allison, David "Whidden, William Allen Chipman, William
Borden, James Dickie and Daniel Cogswell.

In a notice we have alluded to in the Nova Scotian newspaper,
of the naming of Kentville, the intention of the people of the shire
town to establish a school of the "Madras type" is mentioned. The
Madras educational system, which took its name from the fact that
it was first employed in 1795 in the Orphan Asylum at Madras,
India, by 1811 became very popular in England, and from England
came to the Maritime Provinces. Its general method was the em-
ployment of older pupils in the instruction of younger ones, and the
distribution of both teaching and discipline through various pupil
bodies. In 1816 the S. P. G. sent out a Scottish Episcopal clergy-
man, the Rev. James Milne, to introduce the system into Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, and this clergyman was soon joined by
an English schoolmaster, a Mr. West, also sent out by the Society,
through the exertions of whom a Madras School was opened at

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 337

Halifax. The date of the opening of this Halifax School was
1816, but it is clear that the intention of the Kentville men to estab-
lish a Madras School in King's County was never carried out.

On the 7th of March, 1825, in the legislature, a joint report of
a committee of both houses on the subject of schools was read. In
this report it was stated that in the opinion of the committee two
hundred and ten additional schools were necessary in the province.
It was deplored that the salaries of teachers were so low, and it was
recommended that an assessment should be made on the whole popu-
lation, to provide for common schools, and that children should be
taught in them free of charge. The minimum salary to teachers
should be sixty pounds.

Of the further progress of education in Nova Scotia, Duncan
Campbell the historian says: "In 1832 an Act was passed for the
encouragement of common and grammar schools, conducted on the
precarious principle of voluntary subscriptions by the inhabitants
within the different school districts, the Province not being yet
deemed in a condition to assume the burden of maintaining a sys-
tem of elementary education by an equitable assessment on the
population". In 1835 the number of voluntary schools in the
province was five hundred and thirty, and the number of pupils
attending them was fifteen thousand. In King's the number of
pupils attending school was a thousand. By this time the provin-
cial treasury was supplementing by a considerable amount the sums
for education the people in the various counties were raising, but
the benefits of education were very generally being felt, and the
people themselves were paying liberally, according to their means,
for the support of the elementary grammar schools.

In opening the legislative session of 1841, the Governor, Lord
Falkland, advocated strongly a scheme of provincial education
which involved a general assessment for the • support of common
schools. The Governor's proposal the Assembly did not at this time
adopt, but it amended the old educational act by setting apart six
thousand pounds annually for the period of four years for the
support of schools, and by authorizing the Governor and Council to
appoint five or more Commissioners of Schools for each coimty, who

338 KING'S COUNTY

■were to have the management and control of schools established
under the new law, this board being required to divide the respec-
tive counties into school districts.

In 1848, a fresh attempt was made for a general assessment
for education, but the final introduction of the present Free School
system of Nova Scotia was not accomplished till 1864. On the 15th
of February of that year an Education Bill was introduced by Sir
Charles Tupper, who was then Provincial Secretary, and its pro-
visions were explained. The bill proposed a general assessment of
the people for free schools, and provided facilities for the carrying
of this principle out. A premium of twenty-five per cent, was to be
offered to every school founded on the assessment principle and made
perfectly free. To meet the necessities of poorer, more thinly
settled districts the bill provided that one-fifth of the entire amount
placed at the disposal of each Board of Commissioners should be
set apart for the support of such schools, in addition to the amount
they were already entitled to receive. In supreme control of educa-
tion was.to be a Council of Public Instruction, and under this body,
a Superintendent of Education and a staff of paid Inspectors, whose
duty should consist in periodically inspecting all the schools in
their respective districts. In each district were to be Examiners,
one of whom was to be the Inspector, whose duty it should be care-
fully to ascertain the qualifications of all applicants for license to
teach. These teachers it was proposed to classify according to their
proficiency, and to pay without reference to the wealth or the num-
ber of the population of the district in which they might be engaged
to teach. ^

This enlightened bill now passed the Nova Scotia legislature,
and henceforth the character of education in King's County, as in
the other counties of the province, was completely changed. "The
Educational Act of 1864", says Campbell, "was unquestionably one
of the most important measures bearing on the moral and material
interests of the Province that was ever introduced. It struck at
the very root of most of the evils that tend to depress the intellec-
tual energies and moral status of the people. It introduced the

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 339

genial light of knowledge into the dark recesses of ignorance,
opened the minds of thousands of little ones, the fathers and
mothers of coming generations, to a perception of the true and
beautiful, and placed Nova Scotia in the front rank of coimtries
renowned for common school educational advantages". In 1864
the machinery of the Free School system was completed, and the
first Inspector appointed for King's County was John Burgess Cal-
kin, LL.D., already a weU-known educationist, a King's County
man. Dr. Calkin was appointed in the early summer of 1864, and
assumed office in July of that year. In November, 1865, he resigned
the position, to take the chair of English and Classics at the Pro-
vincial Normal School, then under the principalship of Rev. Alex-
ander Forrester, D. D., and William Eaton, Esq., of Kentville, who
since 1854 had been one of the Commissioners of Schools under the
Act of 1841, was appointed in his place.

No legislative enactment affecting the interests of a whole
people ever goes into effect without friction, and there was not a
single county of the province where great irritation was not pro-
duced by this revolutionary Free School Act. In spite of the
general intelligence of the people of King's, in this county there
were loud protestations on the part of men who had no children, or
whose children had grown up, against being taxed to support free
schools, and perhaps not more than one-seventh of the school sec-
tions throughout the county at first organized schools under the
provisions of the Act, The spirit of the broader minded men of th^
county was that of Mr. William Stairs of Halifax, who at a public
meeting in the capital at a much earlier time had said: "I do not
intend to descant on the exquisite pleasures which learning confers,
or upon the personal resources, dignity, and independence, derived
from it, the mastery which it gives over the art and science of
nature, leading from Nature, as has been beautifully said, to
Nature's God; or to its fitness to prepare the mind both for its
duties here and an inheritance hereafter. These are subjects for
another field, but I put it gravely to this meeting, assembled as we
are to found and perpetuate a system best adapted to open and

340 KING'S COUNTY

perfect the Provincial mind, and thus to promote the virtue, the
skill, and the happiness of the people, from what cause has it sprung
that Prussia and Holland on the continent of Europe, and Scotland
in the United Kingdom, occupy so decided a superiority over the
nations around them? To bring the illustration nearer home, I ask
how it is that the people of New England enjoy so unquestionable a
pre-eminence over those of the sister states in the union? It has
arisen from their admirable system of education and from their
having introduced into their common schools, academies, and col-
leges, all the improvements and principles which have been
discovered by the intelligence of modern times. From the opera-
tion of these systems have sprung their skill in manual labour,
education in public morality, wealth in all the products of intellect
which give richness and embellishment to social life ' '. But the less
enlightened men of the county felt only that their taxes would be
heavier, and that they would not immediately benefit by the new
law. Especially was this true in the outlying districts, and the
first two Inspectors sometimes found cold receptions in places
where their professional duties required them to go. They were
both, however, men of well balanced judgment and pacific temper,
and their united four years faithful administration did much
towards allaying the discontent the new act had aroused. Mr.
Eaton held the Inspectorship until 1868, when through a change of
government the Rev. Robert SommerviUe, a brilliant young Pres-
byterian clergyman, recently from the University of Edinburgh, was
appointed in his place. In 1875, Mr. (now Dr.) SommerviUe, who
for many years to the present has been pastor of the Second
Reformed Presbyterian Church of New York City, resigned the
Inspectorship. Since 1875 the position has been ably filled by Mr.
Colin "W. Roscoe. In 1901 there were in attendance at the public
schools of King's 4,491 pupils; at the high school there were 90;
and at "universities" there were 300.

Among the sons of early King's County planters who taught
school under the S. P. G. were one of the brothers of William
Haliburton of "Windsor, who, as we have already seen, was

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 341

S. P. G. schoolmaster at Windsor for several years, and Blkanah
Morton, Jr., son of Elkanah Morton of Cornwallis, who was
Master of the Society's Indian School at Sussex Vale, New
Brunswick, for teaching white children, from 1792 until
1796. A specimen of the early licenses granted to teachers in
Nova Scotia is the following from the Governor, Sir John Coape
Sherbrooke to the Rev. Edward Manning, who for some time
taught in the school-house near Hamilton's Corner, in which he at
first preached after he left the Alline Church :
"To the Rev. Edward Manning,
"Greeting:

"In consequence of the good report of your conduct and moral
character, and confiding in your integrity and abilities, I do by
virtue of the power and authority in me vested by His Majesty's
Commission and Royal Instructions, and by the laws of the Province
hereby (during pleasure) License and authority you, the said
Edward Manning, to keep a school at Cornwallis in King's County,
for the instruction of youth in reading,writing, and arithmetic, you,
the said Edward Manning first taking the oath of allegiance and
supremacy and subscribing the declaration before two of His
Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the same County.

"Given under my hand and seal at Arms at Halifax, this 30th
day of April, in the 54th year of His Majesty's reign. Anno Domini,
1814.

"(Signed) J. C. Sherbrooke".

"By His Excellency's Command,
"Henry H. Cogswell, Sec'y.

The ideals of common school education which the early planters
brought with them from Connecticut were necessarily not very high.
During the Revolutionary War, says Miss Caulkins in her history of
Norwich, an institution of higher grade than elementary was sus-
tained at the Norwich Town Plot. It announced that it would fur-
nish instruction to "young gentlemen and ladies, lads and misses.

342 KING'S COUNTY

in every branch of literature, viz., reading, writing, arithmetic, the
learned languages, logic, geography, mathematics, etc". But the
average Connecticut school then could not have been much in
advance of the dame school of earlier times, where boys and girls
were taught "to sit up straight and treat their elders with respect;
to conquer the spelling-book, repeat the catechism, never throw
stones, never tell a lie; the boys to write copies, and the girls to
work samplers". Eegarding the educational system of King's
County, even so late as he himself could remember. Dr. John
Burgess Calkin says : ' ' There was little machinery in our early Nova
Scotia educational system. A board of School Commissioners for
the county, and a board of Trustees for the Section or District, as
it was called, comprised the whole. The chief duties of the Com-
missioners consisted in arranging the bounds of the districts,
licensing teachers, and apportioning government grants. This
division of the money was not regulated by any fixed law. The
function of the Trustees was little more than nominal, consisting
chiefly in signing the teacher's return or report, by which act they
certified to the correctness of what they knew very little about. In
those days the teacher's license was issued by the Commissioner's
Clerk, on the recommendation of the two members of the Board who
were supposed to examine the candidate.

"As late as the year 1852, in King's County, an aspirant for
the teacher's ofiSce called on a certain School Commissioner for
examination and for a certificate. The Commissioner frankly
acknowledged his lack of qualification for the function of examiner
and recommended the Candidate to go to a neighbouring member of
the Board, whose qualifications were better. This gentleman was
found in the act of shaving. Pausing occasionally during the opera-
tion he put to the candidate a few general questions. "When his
toilet was completed, however, he requested the young teacher to
go with him to his little general store. Here the candidate was
required to solve a question in vulgar fractions, to read a few lines
from Milton's 'Paradise Lost', and to parse a portion of the pas-
sage read. All this having been done to the examiner 's satisfaction,

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 343

the certificate was made out and signed, first by him, then by the
Commissioner earliest called on. Last of all it was presented to the
Commissioner's Clerk as his warrant for issuing the license. The
clerk at this time was Mr. John Clarke Hall, Barrister, a lawyer of
some distinction.

' ' It was seldom that the Trustees stood in any capacity between
the people and the teacher. The contract was made directly
between the 'Proprietors' of the school, as the parents were called,
and the teacher. The agreement, which was generally carried
round from house to house by the teacher for the signatures of the
parents, bound the teacher to conduct a 'Regular School'. Just
what was meant by the term 'Regular', however, one does not know.
In addition, or perhaps in explanation, the teacher pledged himself
to give instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic — ^the three
'E's'. Sometimes he added the extra branches of grammar and
geography. The patrons bound themselves to provide school-room,
fuel, and board for the teacher. The further item of salary was
variously designated. Sometimes it was a certain number of pence
per week for each scholar, sometimes so much per pupil for the
whole term ; or again it was agreed to pay a fixed salary for the
term, each patron paying his share according to the number of
pupils he sent.

"For many years the teacher 'boarded round', that is, lived
from house to house, his sojourn varying from three or four days to
as many weeks, according to the number of pupils that the various
homes sent him, "Whatever objections this system had, it had the
advantage of bringing the teacher into close contact with his pupils
and their parents. School books in early times were not numerous
or bulky. Indeed it was not uncommon for a single book, and that
a slender one, to include the whole course of a child's study. Such
a comprehensive volume was, 'The New Guide to the English
Tongue, by Thomas Dilworth, Schoolmaster'. It began with the
alphabet, then came the spelling of simple words, easy reading les-
sons, containing such moral precepts as 'Do not tell a lie', and 'Let
thy hand do no hurt', and after that the spelling of longer words,

344 KING'S COUNTY

of two, three, four, or more, syllables. Next came a treatise on
English grammar, Latin words and phrases in common use, abbre-
viations used in writing, arithmetical tables, outlines of geography,
advanced reading lessons in prose and verse, a compendium of
natural history, illustrated select fables (as that of the wagoner
and Hercules), and finally a church catechism, beginning with,
'What is your name?', prayers for morning and evening in the
home, private prayers, grace before meat and grace after meat.
All this for one shilling ! "

Dr. Calkin describes a country school-house: "The school
room was primitive indeed. On one side was a large open fireplace,
near which, in a comer, sat the teacher, often writing copies or
making goose quill pens, while he listened to the small boys read.
Around three sides of the room were the writing tables, which con-
sisted of boards about two feet eight inches in width, standing out
horizontally from the wall. For about eight inches this board made
a shelf for books, inkstands, and pens, but for two feet the board
sloped forward. Originally fairly smooth, in the course of time
this writing table became covered with boys' autographs, made
with the convenient jack-knife. On the south side of the room,
opposite the windows, were deep cuttings made by the teacher him-
self to mark the boundary line between sunshine and shadow at
diflferent hours of the day, especially at mid-day. The sittings of
the school room were made of slabs, supported on legs consisting
of pins or stakes driven into auger holes on the \mder sides. The
seats were without support for the back of the pupil, and as the
room was often used for singing-schools and other evening meet-
ings the legs were made long enough for full grown persons, and
necessarily so long that the pupils' legs often dangled in mid air.
The seats were placed around three sides of the room in front of
the tables. When pupils were writing they faced the wall, when
they were not they faced toward the middle of the room. Besides
these high seats there were two or three of smaller dimensions and
shorter legs, for the pupils who were in the lowest grade of the
school.

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 345

"Perhaps the most unique feature of the old-time school was the
spelling lesson. The last twenty minutes of the day was devoted
to the preparation of this lesson. The class, including all who could
read, sat on the high seats, facing inwards, with full room between
their feet and the floor for the free play of their legs. All studied
aloud and they did so with emphasis. As they pronounced each
letter and syllable and word, they swayed to and fro, keeping time
in their bodily movements with the rhythm of the voice: 'Big a,
little a, r 0 n, ron, Aaron' 'H a b, hah, e r, er, haher, dash, dash,
haherdash, e r, er, haberdasher'. When time was up all took their
places, standing in a long row, in order, from head to foot. The
first part of the exercise was the numbering, to see that each had
his proper place, for there was 'going up and down', and every
pupil was jealous of his place in the line. Then the spelling began".

One of the most important educational institutions of the
county is "Acacia Villa School", or "Patterson's", for boys, at
Grand Pre, whose buildings stand almost in the centre of the old
Horton Town Plot, a little above the present railway station. The
school was founded in July, 1852, by Joseph R. Hea, D. C. L., who
was its principal until July, 1860. At that time it was purchased
by Mr. Arthur McNutt Patterson, M. A., who conducted it until
1907, when he was succeeded by his son, Mr. A. H. Patterson, B. A.,
who for fifteen years had been business manager of the school and
during part of that time had been on the teaching staff. Besides
the proprietor, there are in the faculty of the school a head master
and assistant master, and two or three other teachers. The aim of
this excellent school is to fit boys physically, morally, and intellect-
ually, for the responsibilities of life, to give a practical business
education to those who desire it, and to prepare students to enter
the several maritime provincial colleges.

As might be expected from the character of the people, a very
large number of the sons of King's County men have gone beyond
the grammar schools and other secondary schools of the county, to
institutions of higher learning at home and abroad. The next
chapter in this book will treat of the county's own college, Acadia

346 KING'S COUNTY

University, at "Wolfville, but many representatives of Bang's County
have studied at King's College, Windsor. In the roll of King's
College students have been representatives of the families of Alli-
son, Barclay, Borden, Chipman, Cogswell, DeWolf, Gilpin, Hamil-
ton, Harrington, Harris, Inglis, Laird, Prescott, Batchford, Twining.
The following King's County men have received from King's Col-
lege the degree of D. C. L. : Hon Henry Hezekiah Cogswell, M. L. C,
1847; Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, K. C. B., 1858; Joseph
R. Hea, M. A., 1858; Robert Bayard M. D., 1871; J. Johnstone
Hunt, M. A., 1886; Rev. Edward Albern Crawley, D. D., 1888;
Rev. Silas Tertius Rand, D. D., 1889 ; Sir Frederick William Borden,
K. C, M. G., 1898 ; Rev. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, M. A.,
1905.

King's County men who have studied at Harvard University
and have received degrees (the dates given indicate the last year
the student's name is found in the University Catalogue) have been:
The College: Frank Herbert Eaton, B. A. 1875; Benjamin Rand,
B. A. 1879 ; Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, B. A. 1880 ; Everett
Wyman Sawyer, B. A. 1883; Horatio Hackett Welton, B. A. 1884;
Law School: Samuel Denison Brown, 1848; Joseph James Moore,
1867; Edmund John Cogswell, 1868; Aubrey Blanchard, 1869;
John Pryor Chipman, 1869 ; Barclay Webster, 1871 ; William Law-
son Barss, 1876 ; Frederic Clarence Rand, 1882 ; Allen Edgar Dun-
lop, 1898; Barry Wentworth Roscoe, 1905. Medical School: Adol-
phus K, Borden, 1824; John Jeffers, Jr., 1825; Jonathan Borden,
1841 ; Lewis Johnstone, Jr., 1844 ; John Edward Pryor, 1848 ; Wil-
liam Archibald, 1851; Edward Hill, 1851; Peter Pineo, Jr., 1851;
William Gibson Clark, 1852; John Morton Barnaby, 1863; Mason
Sheffield, 1863; John Allen W. Morse, 1864; Sommerville Dickey,
1865 ; Albert DeWolfe, 1866 ; Clarence David Barnaby, 1869 ; Fred-
erick William Borden, 1869 ; Henry Chipman, 1869 ; James William
Harris, 1869; Augustus Tupper Clarke, 1870; Gideon Barnaby,
1871 ; William Pitt Brechin, 1872 ; Frank Middlemas, 1873 ; Wil-
liam Somerville Woodworth, 1873. Andrew DeWolfe Barss, 1893;
James Clifford McLean, 1898; James Francis Brady, 1902.

THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION 347

Graduate School: Arthur "Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, 1881; Ben-
jamin Rand, 1885; William Penwick Harris, 1892; John Edmund
Barss, 1893; Charles Edward Seaman, 1898; John Cecil Jones,
1902; Percy Erwin Davidson, 1905; Joseph Clarence Hemmeon,
1906; Clement Leslie Vaughan, 1906; Ralph Kempton Strong,
1907; Morley DeWolfe Hemmeon, 1908; Laurie Lome Burgess,
1909. Besides these a few have attended the Harvard Summer
School.

A few King's County men have studied in foreign universities,
in Great Britain or on the Continent of Europe, but we cannot
here give their names. Two of the best known of these, are Arthur
Webster, M, D., physician in Edinburgh, whose medical education
was obtained at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Benjamin
Rand, who studied at Heidelberg University, in Germany.

Among the lamentable deficiencies in the means of education
of Nova Scotians at large has been and still is the absence of public
libraries. In King's County there is no library of much size open
to the public, except it be the library of Acadia University at Wolf-
ville. Sometime before the middle of the 19th century a school
library, containing a good many useful books of various sorts, exist-
ed at Kentville, the last custodian of it being Mr. Winckworth
Chipman. About 1860, however, this library was given up and the
books dispersed.

CHAPTER XXn
ACADIA UNIVERSITY

The next year after the separation of Hants County from
King's, five Loyalist clergymen of the Church of England who
purposed removing from the revolting colonies to Nova Scotia, met
in New York city to perfect a plan that had already begun to shape
itself in their minds for the establishment in the province in which
they intended to settle of a "Religious and Literary Listitution".
When Bishop Charles Inglis came to the newly established Diocese
of Nova Scotia, in 1787, however, the institution had not been
founded, and one of Dr. Inglis' first acts was to urge its establish-
ment. With an appropriation from the provincial treasury of four
hundred pounds the school was founded at Windsor, and November
1, 1788, was opened with seventeen students.

The first schoolhouse was what had been the private residence
of Mrs. Susanna Prancklin, widow of Hon. Michael Francklin,
daughter of Joseph Boutineau of Boston, and granddaughter of
Peter Faneuil of that city. The trustees of the school were Governor
Parr, Bishop Inglis, Hon. Richard Bulkeley, Chief Justice Sampson
Salter Blowers, and Hon, Richard John Uniaeke. The principal
was Mr. Archibald Peane Inglis, a nephew of the Bishop, who soon
after became a clergyman and for a good many years ministered at
Granville, in Annapolis County. The next year an act was passed
for "Founding, Establishing, and Maintaining a College in this Prov-
ince", and an appropriation of not more than five hundred pounds
was made for the erection of a building and for paying a president
and professors. Besides this appropriation a grant of three thou-
sand pounds, which was afterwards increased by fifteen hundred
more, was obtained from the home government, and in May, 1802,
the college received its charter. With the charter came also the

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 349

promise of a thousand poimds a year to defray the current expenses
of the college, and this annual grant the college received till the
year 1834. To this initial Nova Scotia college the provincial govern-
ment was also generous, for until 1851 it annually contributed to
the expenses of the college the sum of four hundred pounds. Though
the charter was not obtained until 1802 the institution opened its
doors to students in 1790, and in twelve years it had had under its
training no less than two hundred men.

The committee appointed to frame statutes for the college were
Bishop Inglis, Judge Alexander Croke, and Chief Justice Sampson
Salter Blowers, and these gentlemen, ignoring the fact that the
larger part of the Nova Scotia population was not attached to the
Church of England, followed so closely the statutes of Oxford Uni-
versity as to demand of all students subscription to the thirty-nine
articles. As the provincial government in subsidizing the college
intended thereby to promote the cause of higher education among
the people at large, the absurdity, and indeed the gross injustice,
of making subscription to the articles a prerequisite of admission
to the college will at once be seen. To render the college still more
impossible to people not of the Established Church the narrow-
minded framers of the statutes prescribed that no student should
"frequent the Romish Mass, or the meeting-houses of Presbyterians,
Baptists, or Methodists, or the conventicles or places of worship of
any other dissenters from the Church of England". To the credit
of Bishop Inglis' intelligence it should be said that he saw the
unwisdom of such statutes, and protested against them. Chief
Justice Blowers, however, siding with the wrong-headed English-
born Judge Croke, the Bishop was overruled, and Congregation-
aUsts, Presbyterians, and Baptists were thus barred from the
college.

Whatever mistakes in the course of their several histories other
religious bodies may have made in Nova Scotia, it may justly be
said that no such act of blind folly has ever been committed as that
which on the threshold of its existence characterized the Anglican
founders of King's College. Its evil results have been so far-reaching

350 KING'S COUNTY

that the Maritime Provinces, which together are fairly able to support
one respectable university, now find on their hands to be meagrely
supported no less than five or six. Under the weight of the dis-
criminating statutes King's College groaned until 1830, when except
in the case of professors and fellows subscription to the articles
was formally abolished.

The rejection of King's College as a place to educate their
sons was of course for people not attached to the Church of England
a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, therefore, with a people so
eager for education as the Nova Scotians other attempts at found-
ing colleges were sure to be made. The first effort was made by the
Earl of Dalhousie, who was Governor of the province from 1816 to
1819. An intelligent, broad-minded man. Lord Dalhousie saw the
pressing need of an tmdenominational college in Nova Scotia, and
as ex-officio President of the board of governors of King's he made
an effort to have the obnoxious statutes that had been made for
that college repealed. Failing in this, he secured from the Imperial
Government the right to establish a college at Halifax, where no
sectarian tests whatever should be required, and to which young
men of all denominations should be equally welcome. On the 22nd'
of May, 1820, the corner stone of the new Dalhousie College build-
ing was laid at the west end of the Parade, in the centre of Halifax,
and in two years the building was finished. In spite, however, of
the fact that the'provincial government had given liberally toward
the new college, Dalhousie was not opened until 1838.

In the meantime the leading Baptists of the province had
united in founding at Wolfville, in King's County, an Academy for
the education of Baptist young men, especially those who purposed
entering, or indeed had already entered, the ministry of their
denomination. The school, of course, was made open to persons of
any other denomination, but it was founded essentially as a Baptist
school. The Academy was opened on the first of May, 1829, Kev.
Asahel Chapin, a graduate of Amherst College, "A Baptist of com-
petent qualifications, earnest piety and zeal, as well as of unblem-
ished reputation", being made the first principal.

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 351

Shortly before the opening of this Horton Baptist School, a
very important event had occurred in the ecclesiastical history of
Nova Scotia. The resignation of Bishop Stanser, the second Angli-
can Bishop of Nova Scotia, was accepted by the British Govern-
ment in 1824, and the Eev. John Inglis, who since 1816 had been the
faithful and beloved Rector of St. Paul's Church, Halifax, was
appointed in his stead. Dr. Inglis' election to the Episcopate left
the rectorship of St. Paul's vacant, and the Crown insisted on its
right to appoint a new rector. For seven years the Eev. John
Thomas Twining, son of the Rev. William Twining, the Cornwallis
missionary, a young clergyman who like his father held evangelical
views and had a spirit of the deepest piety, had been Dr. Inglis'
Curate. Under Mr. Twining 's ministrations the spiritual life of the
St. Paul's parishioners had been greatly stimulated, and as was very
natural they desired him to remain as their rector. The British
Government, however, had another cfindidate for the place, and
before long the parishioners learned that the Rev. Robert Willis,
formerly Chaplain of the Flag Ship on the station, and at that time
Rector of Trinity Church, St. John, New Brunswick, had been
named by the crown as Dr. Inglis' successor. Feeling that their
wishes had been disregarded in a most unjustifiable way, the St.
Paul's parishioners at once entered protest, and from October, 1824,
until February, 1826, a fierce dispute raged in the parish over the
right of presentation to the rectorship. In this dispute the Govern-
ment triumphed, and the Rev. Mr. Willis was finally inducted into
the rectorship. But as a result of the altercation a disruption of a
serious nature ensued in St. Paul's; many of the most prominent
members forsook the old church, and before long, severing them-
selves completely from the Church of England, joined the Baptist
denomination and formed themselves into the "Granville Street
Baptist Church". Among the people who took this course were
representatives of the families of Boggs, Crawley, Ferguson, John-
stone, Kinnear, Nutting, Pryor, and Twining, all of whom became
henceforth closely identified with the history of the Baptists in the
province, giving the Baptist body the prestige of their social influ-
ence and cultured worth.

352 KING'S COUNTY

Of these converts from Anglicanism to Baptist tenets, the two
strongest minds were Edmund Albern Crawley, and James "William
Johnstone. It is doubtful, indeed, if on the whole American continent
two intrinsically greater men in their time could have been found.
Dr. Edmund Albern Crawley, bom in 1799, was the son of a retired
naval officer, who had settled at Sydney, Cape Breton, where he
lived the life of a cultured English gentleman. Prepared by his
father for King's College, Windsor, Edmund Crawley graduated
at that college in 1820, and in 1822 was admitted to the Nova Scotia
Bar. His career began brilliantly, but after his secession from St.
Paul's and his union with the Baptists he felt impelled to study for
the Baptist ministry, and in 1830, in Providence, Rhode Island, was
formally ordained. Beturning to Halifax he now became pastqr of
the Granville Street Church, and this position he filled faithfully
until 1839. The Hon. Judge James William Johnstone was the fifth
son of Dr. William Martin and Elizabeth (Lichtenstein) Johnstone,
and was bom in the Island of Jamaica, August 29, 1792. His early
education was obtained in Edinburgh, but coming to Nova Scotia
he studied law with his brother-in-law. Judge Thomas Ritchie of
Annapolis. After his admission to the bar he practised for a short
time in Annapolis, then for a little while in Kentville, but later he
became a partner with Hon. S. P. Robie in Halifax. From 1843
until his appointment to the Bench as Judge of Equity and Judge
of the Supreme Court of the province, he was the able leader of
the Conservative party in Nova Scotia. He was made a member
of the Council in 1838, Attorney General in 1843, and Judge in
1869. On the death, in 1873, of the Hon. Joseph Howe, for a short
time governor of the province^ Judge Johnstone was appointed
governor. At the time of his appointment he was in Europe for
his health and though he accepted the appointment he did not live
to get home ; he died at Cheltenham, England, November 2, 1873. To
the distinguished advocacy of Rev. Dr. Crawley and Hon. Judge
Johnstone the Baptist Academy at Wolfville largely owed its
beginning.

While Dr. Crawley was pastor of the Halifax Granville Street

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 353

Church, to supplement his small salary and to gratify his love for
instructing and otherwise helping young men, he was teaching
classes in advanced subjects in the Dalhousie College building.
Shortly before 1838, to meet the urgent needs of the province, he
suggested a plan for the opening of Dalhousie. The plan was
adopted, and he himself was promised by the governors a place in
its faculty. When the college was opened, however, Presbyterian
bigotry had asserted itself, and because he was a Baptist, Dr. Craw-
ley had not received the appointment. This violation of good faith
on the part of the governors of Dalhousie and their narrow sec-
tarianism, was promptly condemned by Dr. Crawley's friends, and
especially his associates in the secession from St. Paul's who were
now members of the Baptist Church of which he was pastor. Stung
by the personal slight to so noble and cultured a gentleman as their
friend and pastor, and to the religious body to which they had
given their mature allegiance, and urged on by the pressing neces-
sity for a college where truly liberal principles should obtain, they
got together and in conjunction with the intelligent Baptists of
King's and others of the western counties of the province, deter-
mined to found a third college at "Wolfville, where already the
Academy was doing successful work.

To all broad-minded men in the province the establishment of
one small college after another seemed a calamity. In the House
of Assembly a few years later, the Hon. Joseph Howe unsparingly
condemned the narrow Presbyterian bigotry which had made it
impossible for the Baptists to throw in their lot with Dalhousie, but
the mischief had been done, the Baptists felt that they had been
insulted, and on the 15th of November, 1838, at a meeting in Horton
of the Baptist Educational Society, it was unanimously resolved to
establish a college at Wolfville at once. On the 20th of January,
1839, in the building of the Academy, the classes of "Queen's Col-
lege" began. For two years the legislature, a majority of whose
members properly felt that in a province whose whole population
was less than 203,000 the establishment of a third college was a
fatal mistake, refused to grant the Baptists a charter, but the

354 KING'S COUNTY

denomination's cause was argued with such ability that in 1840 the
charter was granted. Before many months the name "Queen's"
was changed to "Acadia", and this name the college, now "Acadia
University", has ever since borne. At the meeting of the Baptist
Education Society in 1838 two professors were appointed, both of
well known Halifax Anglican families, and both graduates of King's
College, the Rev. John Pryor, who had been Principal of the Acad-
emy since 1830, who was now made Professor of Classics and
Natural Philosophy, and the Rev. Edward Albern Crawley, made
Professor of Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Mathematics.

In 1843, Acadia's first students took their bachelor's degrees.
The graduates were: John Leander Bishop, James William John-
stone, Jr., Lewis Johnstone, and Amos Sharp. The class of 1844
numbered six: George Armstrong, Richard E. Burpee, Samuel El-
der, Abraham Spurr Hunt, William P. Stubbert, and George Rob-
bins Wilby. The class of 1845 contained but three : William Almon
Johnstone, Samuel Richardson, and James Whitman. The class of
1846 contained five: Edward Anderson, Asahel Bill, Stephen Wil-
liam deBlois, Lewis Johnstone, and James Sampson Morse. The
class of 1848 had Harris Otis McLatchy, and John Moser ; the class
of 1849 had Arthur Richard Ralph Crawley, Henry Thomas Crawley,
and Elisha Budd DeMille; the class of 1850 had Thomas William
Crawley, and David Freeman; the class of 1851 had Henry Went-
worth Johnstone; the class of 1854 had Thomas Alfred Higgins;
the class of 1855 had Alfred Chipman, Isaac Judson Skinner, Isaiah
Wallace, and Daniel Morse Welton ; the class of 1856 had William
Green Johnstone, Thomas Richard Pattillo, and Robert Ralph Philp ;
the class of 1857 had Robert Dickey Porter; the class of 1858 had
Charles Henry Corey, George Gilbert Sanderson, Edward Manning
Saunders, Henry Vaughan, Simon Vaughan, and Robert Linton
Weatherbe; the class of 1859 had Andrew DeWolf Barss, Brenton
Halliburton Eaton, Daniel Francis Higgins, and Dugald Thomson.

Of these earlier graduates of Acadia, not a few of whom later
attained considerable distinction, we find a number of King's
County men. Andrew De Wolfe Barss, John Leander Bishop, and

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 355

Harrie Otis McLatchy, were from Horton; Asahel Bill, Alfred
Chipman, and Brenton Halliburton Baton were members of well
known Cornwallis families. In the class of 1860 there were from
Oornwallis, Theodore Harding Band, and William Nathan "Wick-
wire; in the class of 1862, from Horton, James Nutting Fitch; in
the class of 1864, from Cornwallis, Harris Harding Bligh, and
Edward Manning Cunningham Band. In later classes, before 1880,
we find from King's County: Horace Llewellyn Beckwith; Hum-
phrey, Baleigh H., and Trueman Bishop; James Israel DeWolf;
Daniel and Frank Herbert Eaton; George Ormonde Forsyth;
Charles Bandall Harrington; Lewis, James Johnstone, and Ealph
Melbourne, Hunt ; Burton Wellesley Lockhart ; Charles H. Masters ;
"William Abram Newcomb; Benjamin, Charles D., and Henry
"Walter, Band; Adoniram Judson Stevens; and George "William
and Theodore Thomas.

Among the earlier graduates of Acadia, John Leander Bishop
became a physician, practised for a while in Philadelphia, and at
the time of his death was chief of an important division in the
Bureau of Statistics at "Washington, D. C. ; Brenton Halliburton
Eaton, K. C, D. C. L., became a barrister and has long practised
law in Halifax ; Charles Frederic Hartt was a geologist of note, and
was for some time professor at Cornell University; "William Almon
Johnstone, Q. C, practised for years at the Halifax Bar; James
"William Johnstone, Jr., became a county judge; "William Green
Johnstone was a physician in New Brunswick; Harris Otis Mc-
Latchy was a physician in Horton ; John Yoimg Payzant and many
others have practised at the Halifax Bar; Amos Sharp was a
physician in New Brunswick ; Sir Bobert Linton Weatherbe became
Chief Justice of the province and was knighted, and "William
Nathan Wickwire has long been one of the most distinguished
physicians in Halifax.

A large number of the graduates of Acadia have been lawyers,
physicians, ministers of various denominations, and instructors in
the higher departments of education, or directors of educa-
tion, pt educationists are: Albert E. Coldwell, Daniel Francis

356 KING'S COUNTY

Higgins, and Robert Von Clure Jones, professors in Acadia College ;
Rev. Abraham Spurr Hunt, Superintendent of Education for Nova
Scotia; Silas Marcus McVane, for many years an honoured profes-
sor in Harvard University; Theodore Harding Rand, Superintend-
ent of Education, first for Nova Scotia and then for New Brunswick,
afterward becoming Chancellor of McMaster University ; and Prank
Herbert Eaton, who after an influential career as an educationist in
Nova Scotia became the first director of popular education, and a
governor of the College of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia.
A distinguished former student at Acadia is Jacob Gould Schurman,
LL. D., since 1892 President of Cornell University. President
Schurman won the Canadian Gilchrist scholarship in connection
with the University of London in 1875, and leaving Acadia gradu-
ated at the University of London in 1877. Prom 1880 to '82 he was
professor of English literature, political economy, and psychology
at Acadia; from 1882 to '86, professor of metaphysics and English
literature at Dalhousie ; from 1886 to '92 Sage professor of philos-
ophy, and for the latter part of the time dean of the Sage School of
Philosophy at Cornell, in the latter year becoming president of the
university.

Between 1880 and '88 the roll of Acadia's graduates shows the
following students of King's County origin: Walter Barss, M.
Blanche Bishop, Oliver H. Cogswell, Carmel L. Davidson, Austin
Kennedy de Blois, John Donaldson, Poster Pitch Eaton, Charles
"William Eaton, Alice Maud Pitch, Clarence E. Griflan, Walter
Vaughn. Higgins, Benjamin Alfred Lockhart, Joseph S. Loekhart,
Harry Almon Lovett, Lewis Johnstone Lovett, Vernon P. Masters,
Albert J. Pineo, Everett Wyman Sawyer, and Harry Hamm
Wickwire. _

The presidents of the university since its foundation as Queen's
College have been:
Rev. John Ptyor, D. D., 1847-1850
Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., 1851-1853
Rev. Edmund Albern Crawley, D. D., D. C. L., 1853-1859
Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., 1859- 1869

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 357

Rev. Artemas "Wyman Sawyer, D. D., LL. D., 1869

Rev. Thomas Trotter, D. D.

Rev. William B. Hutchinson, D. D.

Rev. George B. Cutten, M. A.

Among professors, instructors, and tutors, besides the presi-
dents, have been: Andrew DeWolf Barss; Rev. Alfred and Isaac
Ij. Chipman; Albert E. Coldwell, M. A.; James DeMille, M. A.;
Brenton Halliburton Eaton, K. C, D. C. L. ; Prank Herbert Eaton,
M. A., D. C. L. ; "William Elder, M. A., D. Se. ; D. Francis Higgins,
Ph. D., and Thomas A. Higgins, D. D. ; Henry W. Johnstone, B. A. ;
Robert V. Jones, Ph. D.; George T. Kennedy, M. A.; E. Miles
Keirstead, D. D. ; Theodore Harding Rand, M. A., D. C. L. ; Charles
D. Randall, M. A.; Everett "W. Sawyer, M. A.; Rev. Robert Som-
merville, D. D. ; A. P. S. Stuart, M. A. ; John Freeman Tufts, M. A.,
D. C. L. ; Henry Vaughn, B. A. ; Sir Robert Weatherbe, Kt., D. C.
L. ; Rev. Daniel M. Welton, D. D., Ph. D. ; and Luther E. Wortman,
M. A.

The names of those on whom Acadia has conferred the hon-
orary degree of Doctor of Civil Law are :

Theodore Harding Rand, Esq., M. A. 1874

Hon. D. McNeil Parker, M. D., M. L. C. 1882

Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., G. C. M. G., C. B. LL. D. 1882

Silas Alward, Esq., M. A., K. C. 1883

Hon. Sir Robert Linton "Weatherbe, M. A., Kt., Chief Justice 1883

George E. Foster, Esq. 1885

Hon. Judge James "William Johnstone, M. L. C. 1886

Hon. Judge J. Wilberforce Longley, of the Supreme Bench 1897

Brenton Halliburton Eaton, Esq., M. A., K. C. 1899

James Hannay, Esq. 1899

Professor J. Freeman Tufts, M. A. 1900

Hon. "WUliam S. Fielding, 1901

Henry R. Emmerson, Esq. 1905

Frank Herbert Eaton, Esq., M. A. 1905

Harris Harding Bligh, Esq., M. A. 1906

358 KING'S COUNTY

Among men of King's County origin, or who have had long
association with the county, on whom the degree of Doctor of
Divinity has been conferred, are: Rev'ds. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill;
John Mockett Cramp; Charles DeWolfe; Stephen William de
Blois; Charles K. Harrington; Thomas A. Higgins; E. Miles
Keirstead; Samuel Bradford Kempton; John Pryor; Silas Ter-
tius Band; Edward Manning Saunders; Joseph H. Saunders;
Charles Tupper; O. S. C. "Wallace; Daniel M. Welton.

The governors of Acadia College appointed by the Lieutenant
Governor, Legislative Council, and House of Assembly, as provided
by the original charter, were : Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, M.
L. C; Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, M. B. C. ; Hon.
Edmund M. Dodd, M. P. P. ; Hon. Samuel Chipman, Esq., M. L. C. ;
Herbert Huntington, Esq., M. P. P.; Charles W. H. Harris, Esq.,
M. A. The governors in 1843 were : Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill,
Caleb Rand Bill, Rev. William Burton, Hon. Samuel Chipman, Rev.
William Chipman, Rev. William Allen Chipman, Rev. Edmund
Albern Crawley, Hon. Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolf, Hon. Ed-
mund M. Dodd, Simon Pitch, C. W. H. Harris, Herbert Huntington,
William Johnson, Hon. James William Johnstone, James W. Nut-
ting, Hon. Charles Ramage Prescott, Rev. John Pryor, Rev. Charles
Tupper. The professor of classics in that year was Rev. John
Pryor; of moral philosophy, logic, and rhetoric, Rev. Edmund Al-
bern Crawley; of mathematics and natural philosophy, Mr. Isaac
Chipman. The principal of Horton Academy was Mr. Edward
Blanchard, his assistant being Mr. Thomas Soley.

In 1860 the Baptist Education Society in the province had the
following officers: President, Rev. William Chipman; Vice-Presi-
dent, Rev. Charles Tupper, D. D. ; Secretary, Rev. Abram Spurr
Hunt, M. A.; Executive Committee,Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill,
D. D., Rev. John Mockett Cramp, D. D., Caleb R. Bill, Esq., William
Johnson, Esq., Simon Pitch, Esq., James Ratchford Pitch, M. D.,
and Ward Eaton, Esq.

Besides the tradition Acadia University well maintains for effi-
cient and useful instruction no little classical interest belongs to

ACADIA UNIVERSITY 359

the college from its location at the centre of the land of the
Acadians. To this interest is added the fact that, as we shall see
in another chapter, many of its students have caught the inspira-
tion of the scenes it overlooks, and have added their tributes in
literature to the charms of the beautiful country surrounding
their alma mater. Of the location of the university the annual
catalogue truthfully says :

' ' Wolf viUe is a beautiful town in the heart of the country made
famous by Longfellow's Evangeline. It is situated on the upward
slope of the southern shore of the Basin of Minas. The University
buildings are well up the slope and, looking northward, command a
fine view of the Cornwallis Valley, the Basin of Minas, the meadows
of Grand Pre, the North Mountain, terminating in Cape Blomidon,
and the distant shores of Cumberland County. It may be said
indeed that the surroundings of the University are of unsurpassed
beauty and breadth; and all that the kind face of nature may in-
spire in a man is here".

In this history it is hardly necessary to trace in detail the prog-
ress of the two attendant schools of Acadia University, Horton
Collegiate Academy, for boys, and Acadia Seminary, for girls. The
former, as we have seen, began in 1829, the latter not until a much
more recent period. The person most active in founding Acadia
Seminary is said to have been the Rev. Thomas A. Higgins, D. D., and
the first principal of the school to have been Miss Alice T. Shaw, who
afterward became Mrs. Alfred Chipman. The present principal is
the Rev. Henry Todd DeWolfe, B. A., and the vice-principal Miss
Carrie E. Small, M. A. The teacher of French and German for
some years has been Miss M. Blanche Bishop, M. A., whose name
appears elsewhere in this book. The principal of Horton Collegiate
Academy is Chalmers J. Messereau, M. A., and the assistant teachers
of the school number eight.

CHAPTER XXIII
LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS

Few spots on the American continent have become so enshrined
in literature as the country that centres in the beautiful Horton
lirand Pre. Some peculiarly subtle charm dwells in the atmosphere
it carries, that quite independently of the mournful historic Acadian
tragedy has inspired the imagination and quickened the love of a
great many writers, both among strangers and men and women
whom King's County may justly claim as her children. Longfel-
low's idyllic poem Evangeline has no doubt given the region its chief
poetic and classic association, and it is evident from the descriptive
setting of this poem that the New England author felt strongly,
from afar, the unusual fascination that the country exercises :

"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pre
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the east-
ward.
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor in-
cessant,
Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the floodgates
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o 'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and corn-
fields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the

northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountaing
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the happy valley but ne'er from their station de-
scended".

LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 861

In his pathetic ballad of the poor French Neutral, "Marguerite",
Whittier likewise shows that from his New England home he too
had caught the spirit of the region :

" But her soul went back to its child-time, she saw the sun o'erflow
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gaspereau ;
The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood,
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood,
The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall,
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast- wall".

The beginning of the native literature of the Minas Basin and
Gaspereau country is contemporary with the establishment at "Wolf-
ville of Acadia University. John Leander Bishop, M. D., a Horton
man and a graduate of the first class that left Acadia, the class of
1843, some time in the early fifties, a good deal in the tone and
manner of Scott wrote a descriptive poem on the Gaspereau river,
in which he loyally contrasts his favourite stream with nearly all
the great rivers of the American continent. Parts of this poem, as
one of the earliest inspired by the Minas country, we give further
on. Poems descriptive of the region were written by Rev. Samuel
Elder, member of a gifted Hants county family that has also had
close association with King's. Mr. Elder was graduated in the
second class that left Acadia, and on his death in 1856 his friend, Dr.
Bishop, apostrophizing the Gaspereau, wrote in his memory :

" Fair stream ! thou once did'st proudly own
A native lyre, of sweetest tone,
That thrilled beneath the touch of one
Who knew and loved thy haunts full well,
Could tunefully thy legends tell.
But Elder's graceful pipe no more
Shall fill thy grottoes as of yore ;
His song is hushed!"

Eev. Arthur John Lockhart, "Pastor Felix", a native of King's
on its extreme eastern limit, has written much beautiful verse in-

362 KING'S COUNTY

spired by the country. Of the spontaneous charm of his general
poems much can be said in praise, but ia his poems commemorating
the "Marsh Country", poems like Acadia, Gaspereau, and A Song
of ExUe, we find the peculiarly intimate quality that the region sel-
dom fails to inspire. His brother, Rev. Dr. Burton Wellesley Lock-
hart, too, has written verse of much beauty fitly commemorating the
scenes of his boyhood and early manhood. John Frederic Herbin,
a descendant of the Acadians, and a long naturalized son of the
Minas country, has also written delightful lyrics and sonnets and
some fiction, directly inspired by the region. About the country she
knew and loved in earlier life, and where now her summer home is
made, Lady Weatherbe has written much verse of fine quality. From
Mrs. Irene Elder Morton we have some excellent poems in which
there is much of the Minas atmosphere, and from a more recent
writer, Mrs. Lillian Ellis Charlton (nee Ells), we have at least one
poem which lovingly and fitly commemorates the sweet charm of the
whole Annapolis Valley. Dr. Theodore Harding Rand's valuable
anthology, *'A Treasury of Canadian Verse", has given Canadian
literature at large a magnificent impulse, but in his own poems, pub-
lished not many years before his death, the part of Canada Dr.
Rand knew and loved best has received treatment so subtle and
musical that the author will always remain one of the acknowledged
laureates of the land.

Although sons only by adoption of the Minas country, for they
are both by birth New Brunswick men, Bliss Carman and his cousin,
Charles George Douglas Roberts, have given the world by all means
the richest and most varied interpretation of any poets of the ever-
changing moods of King's County's beautiful marshland and mere,
and of the inspired upland country that centres in the "Vale of the
Gaspereau":

" The year grows on to harvest, the tawny lilies bum
Along the marsh, and hillward the roads are sweet with fern.
All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue.
Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew",—

LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 363

from his Light on the Marsh, gives us a hint of how enchantingly
Carman can portray the delicate features of the landscape ; and,

" There's a schooner out from Kingsport,
Through the morning's dazzle-gleam,
Snoring down the Bay of Fundy
With a norther on her beam", —

from his Arnold, Master of the Scud, with what fine rhythm he can
reproduce action here. In his "Marshes of Minas", and "A Sister
to Evangeline ' ' Eoberts has given enduring voice also to the historic
spirit of the country.

For the preservation of the wealth of Indian legend connected
with the whole province, including King's County, we are indebted
to the scholarly interest of the Rev. Dr. Silas Tertius Eand, whose
"Legends of the Micmacs" is one of the most important contribu-
tions to native American folk-lore produced in the past fifty years.
For graphic descriptions of the Minas country and for adding classi-
cal distinction to King's County's university and preparatory school
in the vein of Thomas Hughes, the county is deeply indebted to
Professor James De Mille, among whose interesting books for boys
are the well known B. 0. W. C. (Boys of "WoKville College), and
Boys of Orand Pre School. The portrayal in these books of student
life in "Wolfville about the middle of the nineteenth century has not
only vivid local interest, but must appeal strongly to youth at large
for generations to come. In a work of local detail like the present it
will not be out of place to say that the originals of the chief charac-
ters in these student-life books of De Mille 's are as follows : Dr. Por-
ter was the Rev. John Pryor, D. D. ; Mr. Long was Rev. Edmund A.
Crawley, D. D., D. C. L. ; Bart Damar was Rev. Elisha Budd De
Mille; Bruce Rawdon was Henry T. Crawley; Arthur Bawdon was
Eev. Arthur R. R. Crawley; Thomas Crawford was Rev. Thomas
Crawley; Phil Kennedy was Rev. Stephen William DeBlois, D. D.;
BUlp Mack was Rev. William MacKenzie, D. D. ; Pat was Rev. Patrick
Shields; Da/Bid Digg was Rev. David Freeman; Jiggins was Rev.
Thomas A. Higgins, D. D.

364 KING'S COUNTY

THE GASPEREAU

JOHN LEANDEE BISHOP, M. D.

Sweet mountain stream, whose amber tide

With noisy haste, or softest glide,

Like childhood's bright inconstancy.

Pursues its journey to the sea.

And winds in many a graceful sweep

Where blossomed wild-flowers silent weep

Upon thy marge the fragrant dews

That evening's humid steps diffuse,

At intervals scarce seen amid

The herbage of the valley hid.

Whose wild luxuriance reveals

The fertile wave its growth conceals, —

In soft and mazy dance to stray,

I've watched thy gentle winding way.

As leaping o'er its rocky bed

Thy shallow current downward sped,

Or deeply, smoothly slid away

Without a ripple or a spray.

And I have dreamed, tho' scarce to song.

As yet, thy humble name belong.

That not the travelled summer gale

E'er stepped within so sweet a vale

As that upon whose bosom bright

Thy current shapes its line of light.

Where, issuing from the dark ravine,

Thy forest-shadowed wave is seen

To check its tide, that many a mile

Had fretted in the dark defile.

Where frowning o'er their subject flood

Thy mural precipices stood.

LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 365

My thoughts, tho ' seldom now I may
Beside thy murmuring waters stray,
Oft turn, by fond remembrance led,
"Where those gray rocks obscurely shed
Their image on thy foaming wave,
Whose eddying course was wont to lave
Their shelvy base, where in and out
The salmon and the speckled trout
Gliding, were frequent captives made
By patient angler in the shade ;
While sweetly on the branch above
The wild-bird tuned his note of love ;
Or mingled with thy murmur still
Its monotone, the distant mill;
And sloping sky-ward from thy shore,
Those hills a fadeless mantle wore
f)f fragrant spruce and hemlock green,
Where the sun's latest rays were seen,
And in the glade, with Spring's first glow,
The mayflower bloomed amid the snow.

I've seen the dancing foam-wreath fleck

The darkly rolling Kennebec ;

And swiftly on his shining track

Flow down the busy Merrimac ;

Seen leaping from his piny hills.

Augmented by a thousand rills.

Where art, wealth, taste their graces blend,

The fair Connecticut descend.

His cultured vales, with fertile wave

I've seen the gentle Mohawk lave;

Imperial Hudson glide in shade

'Neath his eternal palisade;

Startled the fawn on hills that fling

Shadows on blood-stained Wyoming,

366 KING'S COUNTY

And lingering o'er the classic vale
Have matched the sadly tragic tale
And sorrows of sweet Gertrude's line
With those of thine Evangeline.

And villa 'd banks and cities fair,
Glassed in the magic Delaware;
Her midnight lamp have seen, — the moon,
O'er hidden Schuylkill hang in June;
And the fierce day-star faintly gleam
On Wissahickon's shaded stream;
Beheld in transport from the steep,
Through his wild gorge, Potomac leap;
And gathered the flinty arrow head
By the wild Lehigh's rocky bed.
I've watched the Spring his pride renew
On Susquehanna's hills of blue,
And Autumn's lovely tints grow pale
In Juniata's wiuding vale.
• «***•

But, chief, where Nature wears a mien
Both grand and beautiful, have seen.
Awe-struck, Niagara rush amain
Down the abyss, then mount again
In silver spray, whereon the glow
And radiance of the lunar bow
Were cast, — then turned to muse awhile
In bowered walks on moonlit isle,
"Where every tree seemed tenanted
By a weird sister of the wood ;
And each dark rock I well could deem
Held guardian naiad of the stream,
That in the midst and solemn roar
Of the great flood dwelt evermore;

LITERATURE, AUTHORS, NEWSPAPERS 367

And I have felt in all its power
The witchery of the place and hour.

To scenes like these with fealty true

My heart hath paid its homage due ;

Yet not less constant, nor less free,

Dear native stream! hast turned to thee,

In proud remembrance turned, and then

As oft in fancy pressed again

Thy pleasant banks, and