falmouth township

Planter nova Scotia

1760–1815

FalMoUtH townSHiP

Julian Gwyn

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the year 2010 marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the first New England Planters in Nova Scotia. Most

Planters migrated from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Those who settled the Minas Basin town-ships—Cornwallis, Horton, Falmouth, and Newport—were attracted by the good quality soil, much of it long cultivated by the Acadians, expelled in the 1750s. With a population of about 2,000 by 1767, Planters and their descendants num-bered more than 10,000 in the 1827 census. Their economic history in Nova Scotia, the societies they established, their religious turmoil, and political expression are all sketched in four separate township histories to 1815.

Professor emeritus of the University of Ottawa, Julian Gwyn earned his MA at McGill and DPhil at Oxford. He taught the history of the British Isles, British colonial history, and early American history at the University of Ottawa from 1961 to 1996. An award-winning author, most of his publi-cations reflect his keen interest in the history of pre-Con-federation Nova Scotia. His books include The Enterprising Admiral: The Personal Fortune of Admiral Sir Peter Warren; The Royal Navy and North America: The Warren Papers, 1736–1752; La Chute de Louisbourg . . . 1745 (with Christopher Moore); Excessive Expectations: Maritime Commerce and the Economic Development of Nova Scotia, 1740–1870; An Admiral for America: Sir Peter Warren, Vice Admiral of the Red, 1703–1752; Frigates and Foremasts: The British Navy in Nova Scotia Waters, 1745–1815; Ashore and Afloat: The British Navy and the Halifax Naval Yard before 1820. Julian Gwyn lives on a small farm in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.

published by Kings–hants heritage ConneCtion

Planter nova Scotia

1760–1815

FalMoUtH townSHiP

Planter nova

Scotia1760–1815••

FalMoUtH

townSHiP

••

Julian Gwyn

PreFace7

GloSSarY, cUrrencY & MeaSUreMentS11

SUGGeSteD reaDinGS13

MaPS & illUStrationS15

1. HiStorical SettinGBackground, 17 — Invitation, 20 — Windsor

Township, 23 — The Land, 25 — The Economy, 28 — Society, 35 — Religious Turmoil, 44 — Politics, 46

2. FalMoUtH townSHiPSetting, 53 — Economy, 57 — Society, 59

Religion, 69 — Politics, 70

3. conclUSion75

acknowleDGeMentS83

inDeX85

Copyright © Julian Gwyn, 2010All rights reserved.

PUbliSHeD bYKings-Hants Heritage Connection

c/o Wolfville Historical Society269 Main Street, Wolfville, NS, b4P 1c6

iSbn 978-0-9865365-2-6

This is one of four volumes published by The Kings–Hants Heritage Connection

to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the New England Planters’ mass arrival

on the Bay of Fundy shore in 1760.

[ 7 ]

PreFace

The Kings–Hants Heritage Connection deserves all possi-ble congratulations for seizing the initiative in sponsoring the writing of a new history of the four Minas Basin townships of Newport, Falmouth, Horton, and Cornwallis. In celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the New England Planters’ mass arrival on the Bay of Fundy shore, what could be more suit-able than a new insight into that first generation of settlers?

Given free land with their removable costs from New Eng-land subsidized by the British government, the Planters had to adjust to a rather primitive existence and they had to get along with their new neighbours. Each family quickly had to build some sort of a house for themselves and a shed or barn with fences for their livestock. The affluent, in a few instances, shipped their building materials and paid for the shipping costs to transport their effects and livestock as well.

Not everyone flourished. Not every family avoided debt or was able to hold on to the land freely granted. Not every fam-ily steered clear of the law, nor did everyone keep the king’s peace. Not everyone’s hopes were realized. Poverty was the lot of most families who struggled as subsistence farmers through periods of economic boom and depression.

Within a few years, owing to the rebellion in New England and many of the other British colonies in North America, they had to choose sides. When hostilities broke out in 1775, and independence was declared by thirteen of the colonies a year later, most New Englanders in the Minas Basin townships appear to have opted at first for neutrality, wise in any civil war.

Planter nova Scotia ∙ 1760–18158 FalMoUtH townSHiP 9

In June 1775 the government in Halifax, fearing that the rebel contagion would spread to Nova Scotia, declared martial law by requiring all immigrants from the other North American colonies to swear their “fidelity and allegiance to his Majesty’s sacred person and government.” Neutrality for some ceased to be an option after rebellion broke out in Sackville and Cum-berland Townships, with support as well from New England Planters in the St John River valley, Onslow, and Pictou. The rebel attempt to seize Fort Cumberland utterly failed in the face of British military and naval reinforcements. Thereaf-ter British regiments and warships kept Nova Scotia in the empire, and the Minas Basin Planters soon demonstrated where their allegiance lay, by answering the militia summons.

The end of that war brought further disruption to Planter lives. When the American War proved disastrous for the Brit-ish, New England settlers fared badly. First they were largely cut off from their principal foreign market for their agricul-tural surpluses and their gypsum exports. Secondly, a consid-erable and unexpected influx of poor Loyalist refugees and disbanded soldiers descended on Nova Scotia at war’s end. Relatively few settled immediately in the Minas Basin town-ships—except for Newport—because most of the land grants had long since been taken up. The new arrivals came mainly from New York and South Carolina. The one had the largest slave population of any northern colony, while the other had the highest proportion of slaves to its total population of any southern colony. The incidence of slave owning in Nova Sco-tia thus increased, even as thousands of free blacks, principally from Virginia, arrived in Nova Scotia.

The British Empire was again at war in 1793, this time with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Whereas the French

initially fought for the forward-looking principles of liberté, égalité, fraternité, Great Britain, by contrast, stood for back-ward-looking aristocratic privilege and the restoration of the French monarchy. This long war was still undecided when the United States unwisely declared war on Britain in 1812. Both wars ended in 1815. In the second war with the United States, the descendants of the New England Planters immediately supported their government as they profited from the inflated prices of all sorts of farm produce.

❧

To prepare this booklet, I appreciated the helpful suggestions of Pat Gould-Thorpe, John Whidden, Emilie de Rosen-roll and Professor Barry Moody to improve the text. For their intelligent help in a variety of ways I wish to thank Pat Townsend of the Acadia University archives, Bria Stokesbury of the Kings County Museum, Lois Yorke and her staff at Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, and Karen Smith, Special Collections, Killam Library, Dalhousie Uni-versity. For drawings and a map of the townships I am grate-ful to Diana Baldwin. For sharing his extensive knowledge of Falmouth Township history and his research assistance in locating men’s wills, Dr Allen B. Robertson deserves my spe-cial appreciation. References to sources may be obtained from the author. Many of the manuscript sources may reliably be found on the Planter Studies website: http/libguides.acadiau.ca/planter/.

❧

Planter nova Scotia ∙ 1760–181510

[ 11 ]

I will consider this work a success if I can encourage the read-ers to walk the dykes, especially if they have never done so before, as T. Morris Longstreath reported doing seventy-five years ago when he published To Nova Scotia. The Sunrise Prov-ince of Canada (1935). This is what he wrote.

We were walking by one of the big dikes. “I think that these dikes are the most impressive memorial of vanished people that Canada has to show,” I said. “They stir emotions in me that Longfellow and all the historians fail to stir … My own opin-ion is that the French were a stubborn and ill-advised lot who laid themselves out for their own fate. But a few rods of sod upset all that. They speak to me of generations of slow-mov-ing men, digging, rearing, repairing, teaching their children the secrets of the dike. And the episode which I have taught myself was justified, if unfortunate, once more seems a piece of unwar-ranted and abominable cruelty.

The dykes, originally built by Acadians, were repaired with their help by New England Planters and their Irish labourers, who in time greatly extended them. It is to their memory that I dedicate this booklet.

JUlian GwYnRosemere Farm Berwick, Nova ScotiaNovember 2009

GloSSary, cUrrency

& MeaSUreMentS

ten pounds in Halifax currencyone dollar or peso or piece of eight; worth 5s in Halifax currencyshilling; 20 shillings = £1penny; 12 pence = 1sa half penny; two half-pennies = 1d500 acres = about 202 hectaresabout 36.4 litres100 feet = about 30½ metresabout 4½ litres1 pound (lb) = 0.45 kilogram (kg)

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canaDienS inhabitants until 1763 of the French colony of Canada, which in 1791 became Upper Canada and Lower Canada

to eScHeat to confiscate land and return it to the crown for re-granting, usually for the grantee’s failure to carry out settlement provisions or to pay quit rents due

ForecloSUre removal of the right to redeem estate upon non-payment of debt secured by a mortgage on land

£10$1

sd

½ dacre

bushelfoot/feet

gallonpound


[ 13 ]

loYaliSt supporter of British authority who fled the United States

to ManUMit to set a slave freePatriot supporter of American independencePlanter old English term for colonistqUit rent annual rent paid by freeholder on granted landSUretY a sum of money pledged as security for future per-

formance; or the person who makes himself responsible for another’s appearance in court

wainScot indoor wooden paneling on the walls of a roomYeoMan a man owning and cultivating a modest amount of

land

SUGGeSted

readinGS

The publications which emerged from the four Planter Stud-ies Conferences offer the best of recent research into the New England Planters settlements in Nova Scotia. All but the first are still in print and are available from Acadia University’s Planter Studies Centre. They are: Margaret Conrad, ed., They Planted Well. New England Planters in Maritime Canada, Fred-ericton: Acadiensis Press, 1988; her edition of Making Adjust-ments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia 1759–1800, Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1991; her edition of Intimate Relations. Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia 1759–1800, Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1995; and Barry Moody’s and her edition of Planter Links. Community and Culture in Colonial Nova Scotia, Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 2001.

Two further publications, also sponsored by Acadia Uni-versity’s Planter Studies Centre, are very helpful in undertak-ing new research on the New England Planters in the Minas Basin or elsewhere. They are Daniel C. Goodwin and Steven Bligh McNutt, Checklist of Secondary Sources for Planter Stud-ies, Wolfville: Planter Studies Committee, Acadia University, 1990, and Judith A. Norton’s New England Planters in the Mar-itime Provinces of Canada, 1759–1800. Bibliography of Primary Sources, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

There is one fine MA thesis, available at Acadia Universi-ty’s Vaughan Library, by Debra McNabb, Land and Families in Horton Township, N.S., 1760–1830, MA Thesis, University


[ 15 ]

of British Columbia, 1986. In addition, there are two studies useful particularly for the Planters’ genealogy by John Vic-tor Duncanson, Falmouth—A New England Township in Nova Scotia 1760–1965, Windsor, ON, 1965, and his Newport, Nova Scotia—A Rhode Island Township, Belleville, ON: Mika, 1985.

Finally, there are two older publications still of great value, John Bartlet Brebner, The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia: A Marginal Colony during the Revolutionary Years, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1969, Carleton Library paperback, #45, and Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, The History of Kings County, Nova Scotia. Heart of the Acadian Land, Salem, MA: Salem Press, 1910. Those publications noted above, which cannot be purchased, are usually obtainable through public libraries.

MaPS &

illUStrationS

New England Planters’ Attire in the Mid-1770s Diana Baldwin, 2009

cover

Map of the Minas Basin Townships, based on a “Plan of Nova Scotia, 1761,” by Charles Morris

Redrawn by Diana Baldwin with Andrew Steeves PaGe 18

View from Retreat Farm, Windsor, N.S. William Eagar c.1834–9

(Library & Archives Canada, c–41715)PaGe 32

Early New England Planter Houses Diana Baldwin, 2009

PaGe 38

View of FalmouthJohn Elliott Woolford, 1817

(Nova Scotia Museum, n78.45.49)PaGe 55

From Summit of Falmouth MountainJohn Elliott Woolford, 1817



[ 17 ]

View of Road from Windsor to HantsportJohn Elliott Woolford, 1817


chapter one

HiStorical

SettinG

the people in general; who come here are very poor, and … may frequently be the case hereafter.Governor MontaGUe wilMot (1764)

Background

The movement of some 2,000 families from New England to Nova Scotia in the early 1760s was a small part of the esti-mated migration of 66,000 people to New York’s Mohawk River valley, to New Hampshire, and to what would later become the states of Vermont and Maine. In the years 1760 to 1775, some fifty-four new towns were established in Vermont, 100 in New Hampshire, ninety-four in Maine, and fourteen in Nova Scotia. Land scarcity was the principal cause, free land the attraction, while the defeat of French power in North America, achieved in 1758–60, explains the timing. Hitherto the ability of the French and Canadiens to raid the frontier almost with impunity made such an exodus impossible.

The Planters arrived in Nova Scotia with the Seven Years’ War still raging with France and were to live out their lives against a backdrop of war. This war ended with a peace treaty

FalMoUtH townSHiP 19

negotiated with France in 1763, while in 1760 and 1761 one-sided treaties were concluded with the Mi’kmaq. British hege-mony over the Bay of Fundy, the Gulf of Maine, and the Gulf of St Lawrence was now fully established. The peace that descended on all of British America came to an end in 1775 when hostilities on land and sea broke out between Britain and thirteen of her wealthiest American colonies. If the Plant-ers did not directly feel the impact of French power when the French monarch declared his support for the American repub-lican cause in 1778, they witnessed the landing of a French expeditionary force in New England and learned of its role in the defeat of the British army at Yorktown. Before that war concluded in 1783, rebellion had been crushed at Fort Cumber-land (formerly Fort Beauséjour). Whatever sympathy Minas Basin settlers initially felt for the revolutionary cause, they were early enough disabused of such sentiments when Yan-kee privateers, sometimes acting like pirate vessels, terrorized communities all round the coasts of Nova Scotia. Without a fleet the American rebels had no prospect of defeating the British navy in Nova Scotia waters nor of landing an invasion force. Britain’s loss of so many of her North American colonies triggered a new and larger exodus to Nova Scotia. Thousands of Loyalist refugees streamed into the colony, some of whom settled in the Minas Basin townships. Few came from New England, while most were from New York, New Jersey, and the slave colonies of Virginia and South Carolina.

The war with rebel America was followed by nine years of peace which ended in 1793. Britain intervened in revolutionary France on behalf of the French monarch. This war, against all predictions, lasted until 1815 with but one brief year of peace in

Map of the Minas Basin Townships, based on a “Plan of Nova Scotia, 1761,” by Charles Morris.

1 Canning (Habitant Corner) 8 Horton Landing 2 Kentville (Horton Corner) 9 Gaspereau Lake 3 Chipmans Corner 10 Aylesford Lake 4 Port Williams (Terry’s Creek) 11 Windsor 5 Town Plot 12 Newport Landing 6 Wolfville (Upper Horton) 13 Falmouth Landing 7 Grand Pré

N

12

11

109

78

6

5432

1CornwallisTownship

horTonTownship

FalMoUThTownship

nEwporTTownship

13


1802. The situation was greatly complicated by war with the United States from 1812 to 1815. Here again Planter descen-dants in the Minas Basin townships found their property and lives put at risk in a war not of their own choosing.

Immediately before the arrival of the Planters in 1760, Nova Scotia was thinly settled with perhaps 1,300 inhabit-ants around Halifax harbour and roughly the same number at Lunenburg. It had not always been so. The deportation of many thousands of Acadians, beginning in 1755, undermined the rapidly expanding and well-developed agricultural econ-omy of Nova Scotia, largely based on dyked marshlands and cleared uplands. For instance, before the arrival of a few hun-dred New England Planters in what became the townships of Cornwallis and Horton, some 4,000 Acadians inhabited the area, then known as the parishes of St Joseph at Canard and St Charles at Grand Pré. Their forced removal witnessed as well the destruction of their houses, fences, barns, and the rounding up of all their livestock. These were sold to mer-chants who, under contract, supplied the British military then in Nova Scotia and the warships based in Halifax har-bour. A contemporary estimate for Minas, the principal Aca-dian settlement, listed more than 10,000 cattle, 8,690 sheep, almost 4,200 swine, and 493 horses. Destroyed houses and barns exceeded 530 as well as eleven mills and the two par-ish churches. Rail fences were also stacked and burned. By contrast, in the Pisiquid (later Windsor) parish of La Sainte Famille very little destruction of buildings occurred, so that when the New England Planters arrived, many houses and barns still stood there, if in serious need of repair.

Invitation

Pressured by the British government, Nova Scotia’s military governor, Charles Lawrence, finally authorized in 1758 the cre-ation of an elected House of Assembly. Despite his distaste for the New Englanders who had moved to Halifax as soon as it was founded, he published two proclamations in a Bos-ton newspaper in October 1758 and January 1759 to invite set-tlers from New England to take up the vacated Acadian lands. The proclamations emphasized the security of the colony, with the defeat of the French at Fortress Louisbourg that sum-mer, and the availability of land. The proclamations boasted of the excellent soil, which had been profitably cultivated for several generations by Acadians, as well as the ready availabil-ity of timber, both hard and softwood. Readers were informed that the land would be granted freely with every settler fam-ily receiving a mixture of cultivated fields, pasture, and for-est. Freedom of religion, except for Catholics, was assured. Grantees were given a decade to cultivate and fence one-third of their land grant before quit rents would become payable to the crown. When at least fifty families had settled in a town-ship, they would be entitled to elect two members to the colo-nial Assembly. Prospective immigrants were informed as well that law courts, already well-established, followed the same system of justice as was practised in New England.

The offer was immediately taken up. After meetings of pro-spective settlers took place, agents from Massachusetts, Con-necticut, and Rhode Island visited Nova Scotia in the spring of 1759 to inspect the Minas and Pisiquid areas. The Con-necticut agents for Cornwallis and Horton Townships came


armed with a list of 330 prospective settlers. Discussions with members of the Nova Scotia Council brought additional con-cessions. The government agreed to pay the cost of trans-port by sea from New England for families, up to two tons of their effects and their livestock. Blockhouses, similar to Fort Edward at Pisiquid, or palisaded strong points, were also promised to be erected in each township, and to be garrisoned by colonial troops. To provision settlers during their first year in Nova Scotia, the government also promised two bushels of grain a month to each family.

The Planters arrived by sea, mostly in sloops hired by the Nova Scotia government. Thus many, but not all, travelled at the expense of British taxpayers. It was estimated that, by the end of 1761, settlers had brought into the colony livestock worth £18,000. These included 886 horses and cattle, as well as 1,500 sheep and pigs. Better off Planters shipped their fam-ilies, goods, and livestock at their own expense, and had no need of government provisions. Most families initially were dependent at least in part for their subsistence on such help. Indeed, government provisions were still being accepted as late as 1763. Before the first winter set in, some of the new arrivals were reported to be “so highly pleased with their new posses-sions as to declare that they think the lands fertile far beyond any description which has been given of them.”

Initially three townships were created in the Minas Basin: Cornwallis, Horton, and Falmouth. Falmouth had two sec-tions, West and East separated by the Pisiquid (later Avon) River. In 1764, changes were made when Newport Town-ship was formed from land assigned to Falmouth East. As well, Windsor Township, which until then had been part of Halifax Township, became a separate jurisdiction. A further

development occurred in 1781, when Falmouth, Newport, and Windsor Townships joined to form Hants County. Hitherto, they had formed part of Kings County.

Windsor Township

Windsor Township arose across the Avon River from Fal-mouth Township and was flanked by Newport Township. It was the site, from 1750, of the Fort Edward blockhouse and barracks in what was then known as Pisiquid. This new town-ship was bounded by the rivers Pisiquid and St Croix and stretched inland toward Halifax. Some forty-five miles from Halifax, the spruce, pine, and dwarf birch forest with its thin stone-strewn soil gave way at the Ardoise hills to one of beech, elm, maple, oak, and hemlock. The St Croix was the first river to be bridged in 1750, otherwise travellers had to use ferries or they forded rivers at low tide. This was the case across the Avon River which separated Windsor from Falmouth, until many years later when a thousand-foot bridge, funded by the government, was erected. By the 1820s there were an estimated 2,544 acres of dyke land along the banks of these rivers.

In advance of the arrival of the New England Planters, large land grants were made to Halifax gentlemen in part of what became Windsor Township. The first were the seven coun-cillors who held the strings of power. They were Chief Jus-tice Jonathan Belcher, Treasurer Benjamin Green, Surveyor General Charles Morris, Provincial Secretary Richard Bulke-ley, merchant Thomas Saul, careening yard Naval Storekeeper Joseph Gerrish, and Vice Admiralty Court Judge John Col-lier. They allocated to themselves 7,000 acres each. Others who later benefited from land grants there, included three members


of the Tonge family, as well as Benjamin Gerrish, councillor Edmund Crawley, merchant Joshua Mauger, farmer Moses Delesdernier, merchant Alexander Grant, future Supreme Court Judge Isaac Deschamps, and JFW Desbarres, the cel-ebrated cartographer and future lieutenant governor of Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. As most of these propri-etors lived in Halifax and developed their Windsor Township land as summer retreats amidst pleasant farmland, a system of rural tenancy soon emerged from among those who actually worked the land.

By 1767 only twenty percent of Windsor’s 243 inhabitants were New Englanders. Among the New Englanders who prospered in Windsor was Benjamin DeWolf. Born in Con-necticut in 1744, he married in 1769 and became a successful merchant and shopkeeper in Hants County. He received a 1,200 acre grant lying on the Minas Basin shore in 1784. The second largest taxpayer in Windsor, he was a member of the House of Assembly between 1785 and 1798. Appointed a jus-tice of the peace ( JP hereafter) in 1788, he also served as high sheriff of the county. A slave owner, he granted freedom to his slaves long before his death in 1819.

The village of Windsor, the shire town of Hants County, flourished principally from its strategic position. It was acces-sible by road both to Halifax and to the Annapolis Valley, and by sea, to every port on the Bay of Fundy. It was particularly favoured by the Anglican church, which established a par-ish and a college there. It was also the site of a modest mili-tary outpost, and of the earliest agricultural fair in the colony. By the 1820s it was the foremost village on the Minas Basin. Called by William Scarth Moorsom “an English village of the better order,” Windsor had then more than 120 homes, with

gardens and orchards adjoining, with a population of perhaps 700.

Like its neighbour Newport, Windsor Township profited from the mining of quantities of gypsum and limestone. Those products were the principal exports from the town’s wharves once a market for them developed in the American Republic and at St John, New Brunswick, in the 1780s.

The Land

The Planters from New England who settled in the Minas Basin townships soon located the foundations of many of the Acadian houses and the willow trees and orchards that surrounded them. In 1761, reports estimated that there were 11,500 acres of marshland, with 3,000 in Cornwallis, 5,000 in Horton, 2,500 in Falmouth, and 1,000 in Newport. Besides the marshland, recoverable once the dykes were repaired and extended, there remained much cleared upland in the Minas Basin townships. An estimate in 1761 believed that Cornwal-lis Township contained some 2,000 such acres, Horton and Falmouth 3,000 each, with a further 600 acres in Newport. Beyond the marshland and improved upland, forests covered much of the land. In the four townships this came to almost 297,000 acres, or ninety-four percent of the land. Conifers, especially pine, spruce, and tamarack thrived there, along with hardwoods of maple, white birch, oak, elm, and beech. Before fences could be erected, and before the first crop of hay could be made, settlers penned their livestock in their newly con-structed farm yards.

As Chief Justice Belcher reported, “As soon as these town-ships were laid out by the surveyor, palisaded forts were


erected in each of them … with room sufficient to receive all the inhabitants who were formed into a militia to join what troops could be spared to oppose any attempts that might be formed against them by Indian tribes which had not then sur-rendered and small bodies of the French inhabitants which were hovering about the country.” Though bands of Mi’kmaq continued to camp in the newly-formed townships, they were no threat to the new settlers. They continued to hunt, fish, trap, and trade, especially in furs.

One unsettling fact was the partial destruction of the dykes during a severe storm in November 1759. Lawrence’s inspec-tion in the summer of 1760 reported the scope of the problem and work began under the direction of a large number of Aca-dians, many still imprisoned at Fort Edward. The following year, dyke commissioners were appointed for the four Minas Basin townships, but no government funds were allocated.

By the end of the first year of settlement more than 1,300 people were on the land, yet only an estimated 170 houses had been constructed. By 1763 an estimated 427 houses were built. A year later, there were some 405 families numbering 2,090 people settled in the four Minas Basin townships. Yet so great was the number of Planters who arrived in 1761 that unas-signed land was quickly absorbed. Those who arrived that year were the last to receive free transportation. At this point, Planters represented less than one-third of Nova Scotia’s then estimated population.

Not everyone who first settled in the townships remained there. By 1766 Cornwallis lost twenty-five people to Amherst and one to Yarmouth. From Horton seven departed for Amherst, Cumberland, or elsewhere. From Falmouth four

went to Bedford Basin, Amherst, and Annapolis. In 1770 alone sixty-one people departed from Horton.

Communications remained a significant problem for sev-eral years. Petitions for permission to establish new roads or improve those already in use flooded the proceedings of many counties’ Quarter Sessions. Despite the efforts of the Plant-ers, in 1766 Lieutenant Governor Michael Francklin observed that “although several paths have been cut to some of the set-tlements, yet none but that to Windsor have been so far com-pleted as to admit a carriage, which is as yet in an improper state. Nor is any other passable for horses, without great diffi-culty (that to Annapolis excepted) on account of the swamps and rivers, over which there are no bridges.” They are deemed “a direction to the foot traveller only.” Without such roads, the produce “of the fine fertile marshes and other rich lands in the Bay of Fundy are now chiefly carried to Boston, as the carriage by water is less dangerous than coasting round to this or the other ports on the seashore.” He believed that as long as Nova Scotia continued to depend on New England, it would remain “in a feeble languid state.” He overlooked the fact that Nova Scotia’s new farmers found a ready market for their surpluses, not only in Halifax, but also in New England, just as the Aca-dians had done before the Planters acquired their land.

Incidentally, Acadian labour was employed as well both in early road building and in farm work. A few years later, in 1765, when it was believed that the remaining Acadians were on the point of either emigrating to the West Indies or to France, some sixteen leading Planters from all four townships petitioned the government to allow them to remain at least until fall ploughing was completed. “We find” they wrote, “that


without their further assistance many of us cannot continue our improvements, nor plough, nor sow our lands, nor finish the dyking still required to secure our lands from salt water, and being convinced from experience that unless these dyked lands are inclosed we cannot with certainty raise bread for our subsistence.”

The Economy

Few of the Planter families were affluent. It should be remem-bered that on the eve of the War of Independence, of the thirteen colonies which formed the United States, those which made up New England enjoyed the least per capita wealth. It was less than two-thirds the per capita wealth of the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylva-nia) and a quarter that of the rich southern colonies with their economies based on slavery. If New England wealth was on average less than others, it had been growing largely as a result of rapid population expansion, low taxes, and the export of fish, wood products, and grain surpluses, and through British gov-ernment military and naval spending in the colonies.

Yet the colonial economy was influenced by the general state of the Atlantic economy, and especially that of the Brit-ish Isles. As part of an expanding Atlantic economy both New England and Nova Scotia were powerfully influenced by the business cycle as boom gave way to depression. For much of the 1730s and 1740s the economy was gripped by depression. Recovery began in the late 1750s, when the economy, in Con-necticut, for instance, returned to the level of the 1720s. The Planters arrived in Nova Scotia during the final years of the

wartime boom, and then endured the postwar depression when prices fell and trade declined.

This can be illustrated by evidence about commodity prices and wages from the 1770s through to 1815. Of the West Indies products, rum prices rose 150 percent during the war with rebel America before 1783. In the same war sugar rose by sev-enty-eight percent, and molasses by 133 percent. The peace saw prices fall dramatically, even below pre-war levels in the case of rum and molasses. This occurred despite the arrival in Nova Scotia of thousands of Loyalist refugees and disbanded soldiers. Prices again shot up with the beginning of the long French wars between 1793 and 1815, but they did not again reach levels seen during the American War of Independence.

However much of the West Indies commodities the Plant-ers consumed, what mattered to most farmers was the price their farm products fetched. Typical farm gate commod-ity prices almost doubled during the 1776–83 American War. They then declined sharply during the post-war decade, but still remained more than forty percent above pre-war prices. In the war from 1793 to 1801 prices rose very little, but when war resumed in 1802 until 1815 prices rose almost to the level last seen in the 1778–82 period.

If Minas Basin farmers profited from war-inflated com-modity prices, the wages they paid varied. Rural wages moved in the same general direction as rural commodity prices, but with different amplitudes. In 1778–82 during the Ameri-can War, farm labourers suffered as wage increases rose less than commodity prices in the countryside. In the post-war era of 1784–92, when prices fell, wages fell more steeply. Dur-ing the long wars with France the same experience greeted


farm labourers when commodity prices again outstripped their wages. In a word, it was better to be a farmer, under these con-ditions, than a labourer.

In the first few years of settlement officials collected much information on the progress of the townships. It was esti-mated, for instance, that in the summer of 1760 some 2,100 tons of marsh hay was made, of which 1,000 tons came from Horton, 500 from Cornwallis, and 600 from Falmouth. As the spring of 1761 witnessed a shortage of seed, some wheat seed was imported from Connecticut, while 900 bushels of oat seed and 300 bushels of seed potatoes were purchased elsewhere for distribution in the new townships.

As ever with agriculture weather was a crucial factor in pro-ductivity. If the winter of 1760–61 had been relatively mild, the summer following was one of drought. If the hay crop was adequate to the settlers’ needs, the grain crops were either ruined or very poor. Only in Newport Township was a con-siderable grain crop harvested in 1761. In response, the Nova Scotia government purchased 3,000 bushels of grain to ward off starvation among Planter families. In 1762, weather was no more favourable to agriculture than in 1761. Drought returned and with it swarms of devouring grasshoppers.

Added to this was the sudden military emergency created by the French assault on Newfoundland in 1762 and the destruc-tion of the English and New England fisheries there. This led the Nova Scotia government to summon the county militia to arms, drawing men away from their fields. Before the year was out some 1,200 bushels of grain had to be imported for dis-tribution to poor families in the Minas Basin townships. This aid the inhabitants had to purchase on credit with the govern-ment. It was the last of such public support. Relief afterwards

came from tax revenue collected by the counties through the overseers of the poor.

From the 1763 agricultural census conducted by Isaac Des-champs, we form the first sense of agricultural production and the number of livestock being raised. As measured by popu-lation, Cornwallis led in wheat production (2.7 bushels per head), Newport in rye (1.3 bushels per head) and roots—pota-toes and turnips (33.2 bushels per head), and Falmouth in the number of sheep (1.8 per head).

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Livestock & Crops (bushels) 1767

horses 166 178 148 80 47 619oxen, bulls 242 234 217 180 97 970cows 297 406 393 289 210 1595young cattle 317 665 568 421 308 2279sheep 714 694 562 812 481 3263swine 203 536 346 169 180 1434barley 338 391 1473 411 563 3176oats 1884 967 1574 1581 311 6317rye 700 4220 941 800 903 7564wheat 4595 1410 2905 1806 427 11143beans 0 0 20 0 0 20peas 884 1853 1304 419 193 4653hempseed 6 1 0 0 0 7flaxseed 100 346 354 124 124 1048


A more complete agricultural census was taken four years later. By 1767 there were twenty-five percent more horses in the area than had been the case when the Acadian population of the area had been deported, but fewer than half the cattle, and about one-third the number of sheep and swine. Among the townships, Windsor’s farms had the largest number of cattle and the highest crop yields when measured by popula-tion. The explanation is twofold: farms there were established a decade earlier and the landowners commanded far greater capital. There were, as an example, three times as many horses in Windsor Township as in Cornwallis when measured by population. Among the four Planter townships, lightly pop-ulated Falmouth, when measured by population, excelled in the number of cattle it raised, as well as the number of sheep and the yield of oats. If Horton excelled in wheat and barley yield, Cornwallis excelled in the production of rye and peas.

As root crops were not enumerated, we cannot know if New-port continued to excel in potato production, but in 1767 it led in flaxseed yield.

Other parts of the townships’ economy were based on the fishery and the forest. Both Cornwallis and Horton Townships in 1767 reported a salmon fishery in the Cornwallis and Gas-pereau Rivers. Some 153 barrels of salmon were produced along with two barrels of fish oil and ninety-two quintals of dry cod. One schooner was owned in Horton, besides eight fish-ing boats. Five sawmills had been erected, two each in Horton and Newport and the fifth in Cornwallis. Only Cornwallis and Horton reported the output of these mills, some 300,000 board feet of lumber altogether.

Since farming was the principal occupation of the great majority of the Planter families, how competent were they as farmers? We know little about the initial quality of their livestock brought from New England. When in the 1820s agricultural societies came into existence in many Nova Sco-tia counties, a major complaint by the critics was the inferior quality of livestock. To improve Nova Scotia’s livestock, local agricultural societies imported stallions, bulls, rams, and boars from Scotland and England.

Moreover, the first generation of Planters seemed to have been slow to learn how to cultivate the dyke lands. The key to this was drainage. The rich alluvial waters of the Fundy could fertilize the dyked land without the use of animal manure. This could be saved for the upland fields. Nor did the new settlers seem to understand the value of autumn ploughing to allow spring drainage and early seeding. Rather, the Plant-ers practised shallow ploughing in the spring. In addition, unlike the Acadians who always harvested two separate crops

View from Retreat Farm, Windsor, N.S. (William Eagar, c.1834–9)


of hay—one before the grain harvest from the cultivated land and a second after harvest, the so-called salt marsh hay from beyond the dyked land—the New Englanders found them-selves mowing hay in the midst of their grain harvest. On the other hand, the Planters grew a larger variety of crops than had the Acadians, and sold and exported butter and cheese which the Acadians had not.

In 1774 two men from Yorkshire, John Robinson and Thomas Rispin, travelled through the Minas Basin townships and published their impressions in Journey through Nova Sco-tia. Windsor, they thought, was emerging as a market town as stores had become established to purchase local produce for sale in Halifax. They visited Newport by means of the Avon River, and then landed at Falmouth, where they found much marshland and cleared upland “but very uneven and poor, though what is under cultivation is pretty good.” By land they reached Horton twelve miles distant, during which they encountered only two houses. There they were impressed with the dyke land, yet found little of the upland cleared for cul-tivation. They saw crops of wheat, pumpkins, potatoes, and were impressed by winter rye grown on the marshland. Locals valued the marshland at £2 per acre, cleared upland at half that price, and the woodland at six pence. “Their tillage seems good, and in general they are the best managers of any in the province.” They found both the horses and cattle small in stat-ure. Their barns were built of wood, some clapboarded and shingled, with the cattle housed at ground level and the hay and straw stored above. The cattle were fattened to be sold to butchers in Halifax.

Yet, they found the farmers a “lazy, indolent people … they continue in bed to seven or eight o’clock in the morning; and

the first thing they do … is to get a glass of rum, after which they prepare for breakfast before they go out to work, and return to dinner by eleven. They go out again at two, and at four return to tea. Sometimes they work an hour or two and then return home.” This criticism, fair or not, was repeated later by other observers.

Three of the Cornwallis Township rivers, Cornwallis, Canard, and Habitant, they noted were navigable by ships for a few miles. They reported that these rivers and the Basin abounded in fish. At one tide, for instance, forty barrels of fat shad were caught.

Society

Nova Scotia’s Planters came from a rapidly changing soci-ety as the close-knit and well-ordered New England commu-nities began to change. Populations were ballooning, partly by immigration from the British Isles. By 1762 Connecti-cut, for instance, with 146,000 people including about 4,600 blacks, had twice the population of Nova Scotia and Que-bec taken together. Available land was becoming scarcer and more expensive. In 1760 good meadowland in Connecticut had tripled in price since 1700. Religious cohesion had bro-ken down. Church schisms were frequent, especially since the Great Awakening—the revival movement of the 1730s and 1740s. Urban places remained few, while Boston’s population, in contrast to that of New York and Philadelphia, ceased to expand. Colonial wealth was increasingly dominated by the richest ten percent, while the poor multiplied. Political asser-tiveness among electors became more pronounced as literacy spread.


In the absence of regular census returns, the shape of soci-ety in the Minas Basin townships is difficult to uncover. Some useful details derive from the population census made in 1767. Protestant and New England settlements though they were, nevertheless some seventeen percent of the townships’ population came from elsewhere, half of it from the British Isles. Though neither the townships of Falmouth nor Wind-sor provided birth and death information, it seems clear from the returns of the other Minas Basin townships that births greatly outstripped deaths, leading to a rapid natural increase. Although individuals and occasionally whole fami-lies departed the townships, these were matched by new arriv-als. Within eight years of settlement the population of the townships remained about half the estimated Acadian pop-ulation in 1755. From a wholly Catholic population, the area was now almost ninety-one percent Protestant. From a popu-lation almost entirely derived from France, now less than nine percent were Acadian, with eighty-three percent American, almost eight percent from the British Isles, and the balance from Germany.

Their houses, as it was reported in 1774 in Journey through Nova Scotia, were square-built with brick chimneys in the cen-tre, with several sashed windows. The layout of their houses was simple, usually two rooms on the ground floor, one for cooking and eating, the second room used as a sleeping cham-ber. The loft, reached by a ladder or narrow staircase, was also used for sleeping. Houses always contained a cellar. The small-ness of a typical Planter house should not be a surprise. It approximated the size of house many families had occupied in New England, where one-storey structures under 600 square

Population Census, 1767

population 243 727 634 292 279 2175men 88 170 137 89 58 542women 60 169 113 88 48 478boys 48 202 203 46 66 565girls 47 176 179 65 105 572Indians 0 3 0 0 0 3Negroes 0 7 2 4 2 15births ? 26 27 ? 17 70deaths ? 6 2 ? 2 10arrivals ? 1 21 ? 0 22departures ? 6 8 ? 7 21Americans 48 697 617 200 242 1804Acadians 110 4 0 42 0 156German 15 1 15 18 1 50English 10 15 0 10 4 39Irish 60 2 2 20 17 101Scotch 0 8 0 2 15 25Protestants 100 723 634 250 277 1984Catholics 143 4 0 42 2 191

? = Unknown W

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FalMoUtH townSHiP 39

feet were the most common. Their houses were finished on the outside with clapboard or shingles.

Robinson and Rispin continued their description that “The roofs are first planked and then shingled. Inside the rooms are wainscotted.” The simplicity of the houses, some at first hardly more than shacks, and the sparse furnishings they contained was typical for all Planter families except those of the elite. Sadly, not a single, undisputed example of such simple dwell-ing has survived two hundred and fifty years later. As to the furnishings, examples from homes of the elite families alone survive.

New Englanders, the Yorkshire observers remarked, were “a stout, tall, well-made people, extremely fluent of speech, and are remarkably courteous to strangers … abusive language, swearing and profaneness is hardly known amongst them. The Sabbath is most religiously observed; none of them will do any business, or travel on that day; and all kinds of sports, plays and revels are strictly prohibited.”

Their clothing was homemade. In summer, men worked in trousers and barefooted, while in winter they wore breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes. There was little variety in attire from settlement to settlement or between master and servant. The women wore woolen petticoats and aprons, and instead of stays, a loose jacket like a nightgown. They too in summer worked barefooted. When addressing each other, a Christian name was rarely uttered, instead mister, sir, ma’am, or miss, was the usual address.

Slavery was widespread among the British American colo-nies and Nova Scotia was no exception. Fortress Louisbourg, over the course of its life as a French possession, was home to about 215 slaves. With the establishment of English settlement Early New England Planter Houses. (Diana Baldwin, 2009)


around Halifax harbour in 1749, a market in slaves developed there. Planters who settled in the Minas Basin townships brought slaves with them, where before there had been none in the Acadian lands. The Nova Scotia 1767 census listed 100 such slaves, of whom fifteen were in the Minas Basin settle-ments. An additional fifty acres of land was offered to slave owners for each of their slaves.

Samuel Starr of Cornwallis traded in slaves, while John McMonagle was involved in an unusual case involving a black man and his wife. In April 1780 Thomas Ball of Wind-sor applied to the Supreme Court for the release of his wife, Priscilla, who was being treated as a slave and taken into cus-tody as bail, being part of the attached goods owned by Joseph Haines, a Windsor victualler, who was indebted to McMona-gle. The attached goods included six horses, saddles and har-ness, a cask of West Indies rum and “one negro wench named Sillah.” When the court learned of the matter, it ordered Mrs Ball’s immediate release. The deputy provost marshal refused to comply with this as her husband offered no equivalent secu-rity. Two weeks later she was still in custody. It was a very early case in Nova Scotia to test the legality of slavery. Priscilla Ball died in 1791 and was buried in St Paul’s graveyard.

Wills also occasionally mentioned slaves. In 1787 John Hus-ton of Cornwallis bequeathed his slave to his wife. Henry Denny Denson’s executors sold his five slaves in 1780. In 1801 Benjamin Belcher left his six slaves to his children. Jonathan Shearman of Cornwallis, originally from Rhode Island, by his 1809 will enjoined his wife during her lifetime to maintain his slave comfortably. The inventory of John Porter, a Cornwallis yeoman who died in 1785, listed one slave. John Burbidge and his uncle, Henry Burbidge, manumitted their slaves but under

stringent conditions requiring long continued service. Ben-jamin Condon of Horton, by his 1777 will, left to his son “my Spanish Indian manservant.” The House of Assembly never passed a slave law and members resisted pressure from Loyal-ist refugees to enact one. Nevertheless Assemblymen saw no need to end the practice of slave owning in Nova Scotia. Slav-ery vanished in Nova Scotia by 1820 through a series of judi-cial decisions reached by the Supreme Court over several years.

Court records provide us with an alternative source for social history. For early Nova Scotia they are extensive. Chan-cery Court dealt largely in foreclosing mortgages. Much of the business of the Supreme Court and the Inferior Court of Common Pleas dealt with creditors and debtors, though they also dealt with important matters such as trespass, defamation, and breach of promise. The Court of Probate dealt with wills, ordered the inventories of estates, and oversaw the disposal of the property of the deceased. Taken together such records can tell us, for instance, about the changing levels of literacy, the growing concentration of wealth, the bare-knuckled behaviour of businessmen, and the type of language found unacceptable in public. All such courts were in place as the Planters settled in Nova Scotia.

Very early on, the townships also established a Court of General Sessions of the Peace, which constituted most of what then passed as local government until the 1870s. This court was ruled by JPs who were appointed by the Nova Scotia Coun-cil. These kings of the countryside had extensive responsi-bilities. Their administrative duties included appointing local officers such as coroners, road commissioners, overseers of the poor, assessors, sheriffs, their deputies and constables armed with staves six feet in length and one inch thick, surveyors of


lumber and cordwood, fence viewers, gaugers of casks, seal-ers of leather, cullers of fish, inspectors of thistle cutting, and pound keepers. They selected and swore in the grand jurors. Their sessions also licensed taverns, controlled weights and measures, assessed and collected taxes for the maintenance of the poor and the county’s public needs, controlled prisons, roads, ferries, and bridges, and oversaw the building of schools and other public works. They dealt with petitions from land-owners, the bulk of which dealt with road building. On occa-sion, they dealt with obstructions to rivers as a result of mills being built or weirs erected. The justices also regularly dealt with so-called unruly cattle or sheep which broke through or leaped over fences, or with rams, bulls, or stallions run-ning loose in the common. The frequency with which regu-lations were repeated and occasionally altered indicates they were problems endemic in a farming community.

As well, they occasionally offered bounties for killing bears and other wild animals. In June 1796 the bounty for a bear-skin was seven shillings and six pence and for a lynx or bobcat three shillings and six pence. How many received the bounty is unknown.

As magistrates the JPs had to enforce the law by punishing those who broke the peace by committing what were deemed to be criminal acts. Moreover they vowed to “put in the strict-est execution the laws against all persons who shall be guilty of the neglect of the worship and service of God on the Lord’s Day, blasphemy, profane swearing, lewdness, profaneness of the Sabbath, publick gaming houses, playing at cards, dice or any games whatsoever either in the publick or private houses … thefts, cheats, assaults, affrays, breaches of the peace, or any other dissolute, immoral and disorderly practice.” In 1772 the

court “having taken into consideration the little regard paid by many persons to the Act for the Better Observation and Keeping of the Lord’s Day” warned that hereafter those who drove live-stock from town to town to and from market were liable to prosecution. Either the justices abandoned such prosecutions altogether, for none thereafter are recorded, or, more unlikely, the Sabbath Day strictures were universally obeyed.

Magistrates dealt with threatening behaviour, theft, assault, and on one occasion, with murder. They also dealt with forg-ery, smuggling, and usury. Many of their cases dealt with the poor. Their punishments ranged from fines, public humiliation in the pillory, corporal punishment by branding or whipping, and imprisonment. There could be a combination of these methods. For murder hanging was the sentence.

Wills provided other useful information on social history in the Minas Basin townships. Most men usually made wills in their final illness, when their wives were still living. Women, if married, drew their wills almost invariably as widows. Of the 130 men from the Minas Basin who made wills between 1760 and 1830, all were either married or widowers, and the bulk were literate. Of the eighteen Minas Basin women who made wills between 1760 and 1830, all but one were widows and all but two were literate. At one end of the scale of wealth was Mary Reed, an illiterate widow of Horton, who, when she died in 1821, had nothing more to leave to her only child, George, but her bedding and wearing apparel. At the other end was Ann Burbidge who died childless in 1824 in Cornwallis Town-ship. To her nephews and nieces—the Allisons, Hutchinsons, and Starrs—she left cash, silver, and furniture. To her niece, Betsy Sargeant, her executrix, she willed the portraits of Colo-nel and Mrs John Burbidge, as well as a set of lady’s silver shoe


buckles. As the law required them, men left to their widows the use of one-third of their land and effects, together with a room and its furniture so long as they remained widows. The balance usually was divided among children, and sometimes grandchildren, in a great variety of proportions.

Religious Turmoil

Despite the fact that few of the New England Planter families in the Minas Basin townships adhered to the Church of Eng-land, it was the Anglican cleric, Rev. Joseph Bennet, who first ministered to the settlers from 1762 to 1775. It was a character-istic of early Protestantism in these townships that a preacher of one denomination was welcomed in the churches and meet-ing house of others, whether Baptists, Methodists, Presbyte-rians, Congregationalists, or Anglicans. Officially Catholics, who had neither priest nor church at that time, were excluded. Despite the enthusiasm of successive bishops in Halifax, no Anglican church was erected in Horton Township until 1818. By then, Horton alone had two Baptist, one Presbyterian, and two Methodist meeting houses.

The first church erected in Cornwallis dates from 1767–8 and was located in Chipmans Corner. This Congregationalist community was led until 1776 by Rev. Beniah Phelps, a Yale graduate whose wife was the daughter of Col Robert Denni-son of Horton. He parted in a cloud of controversy probably owing to sale of a lot granted to him by the lieutenant gover-nor, which many in his flock believed was rightfully designed for the future support of a succession of pastors.

It was in this divisive atmosphere in Cornwallis that Henry Alline of Falmouth first preached. Though without formal

education since coming to Nova Scotia at age twelve, he made wide use of the library owned by the Anglican missionary in Windsor, who had befriended him. First preaching in 1776 in Falmouth and Newport Townships, he made a deep impres-sion from the outset. Brushing aside the opposition of Rev. Phelps, when he was invited to Horton and Cornwallis, he continued preaching throughout the Minas Basin settlements and beyond. So-called New Light churches sprang to life, the first in Cornwallis and others in Horton, Falmouth, and New-port. Composed largely of Congregationalists, his early adher-ents were a distinct, if devoted, minority. In the midst of his ministry, he requested ordination, which took place in a Fal-mouth barn. In the spring of 1779 he held his first communion service. In time, the religious revival begun by Alline spread through many Planter townships and helped to undermine the dominance of Congregationalism, already blighted in the eyes of many by its identification with rebellious New England.

The Baptists, not Alline’s new churches, proved to be the great beneficiaries of the religious turmoil among the Planters. Ebenezer Moulton of Massachusetts introduced the Baptist faith into Horton, when he became, in 1763, the first Bap-tist preacher in the Minas Basin settlements. Starting with only ten faithful, who selected Benjamin Kinsman as their first deacon and Nicholas Pierson as the first ordained min-ister, the Baptist congregation of Upper Horton (Wolfville) in 1778 became the oldest continuing Baptist community in British North America. When Pierson departed Horton for New Brunswick in 1791, for some years the Horton Baptists were served by itinerant preachers. The second settled min-ister, Theodore Seth Harding, was of New England stock, but born in Barrington. Influenced by a variety of religious


impulses, at length in 1795 he accepted baptism into the infant Baptist church. By his death in 1855, there were more than 500 in his charge and another 140 had established a second Bap-tist meeting house in Gaspereau. The establishment of Hor-ton Academy in 1828 and Acadia College a decade later did much to ensure the future growth of the Baptist denomina-tion in Nova Scotia.

Though they started earlier, neither the Presbyterians nor Methodists could match those achievements. Presbyterians were first served by Rev. James Murdock, from County Done-gal, Ireland. By 1767 he had abandoned preaching in Halifax and moved to Horton Township. He served there until 1793 having preached in several townships. Responsibility for erect-ing a new church fell to one of his successors, Rev. George Gilmore, also Irish-born and an ardent Loyalist. The build-ing was completed in 1811 in Grand Pré. The Methodists came later to the Minas Basin townships. The first lay preacher appeared in Horton in 1781, having recruited two young mis-sionaries in Massachusetts. One of these, Freeborn Garretson, helped ignite a religious revival of his own in 1786–7, and was able to build the first Methodist chapel in 1789–90. He served for a generation before being replaced.

Politics

From the first settlement of Halifax harbour in 1749, the set-tlers’ right to an elected House of Assembly was envisioned by the British government. Yet, until 1758, the plan was effectively delayed by successive military governors with the support of their councillors, all of whom were appointed by the Lords of Trade and Plantations in London. When at length the first

meeting of the House of Assembly occurred, it was domi-nated by Halifax-based New Englanders who had preceded the Minas Basin township Planters to Nova Scotia.

The rules governing elections changed from time to time. By 1765 counties were given two members and townships one. Tenants could not vote, while so-called freeholders could then cast ballots twice for the two member county election and another for their township candidate. In 1789 to be an eligible freeholder meant owning a dwelling house and at least 100 acres within the constituency. From 1797 freeholders needed to have at least five of these acres under cultivation, while the land deed denoting freehold tenure had to precede the elec-tion by at least six months. In 1799 for instance, in Cornwallis Township, Lemuel Morton topped the poll, but was unseated when it was discovered that he was ineligible to stand as he owned no land then registered in the township.

Women were not excluded from voting until 1806. Six women, for instance, cast their ballots in a 1793 disputed elec-tion in Windsor Township, two of them for John McMonagle, the failed candidate.

At first Assembly elections were held every five years, with at least one session taking place annually. In 1793 the law was altered so that elections thereafter were held only once every seven years, which was then the law governing general elec-tions for the Westminster Parliament.

The difficulty for those elected was that, until 1781, unlike the practice in New England, they received no financial sub-sidy during their attendance in Halifax. Samuel Willoughby, member for Cornwallis Township, was twice expelled for non-attendance, as a result of his poverty.

Polling occurred over several days and moved from


settlement to settlement. As voting was not secret, the ballots cast with the name of the voters were written down in a poll book, some of which have been preserved. Corruption could characterize the local polling. This took the form of bribing electors with payments by the candidates for lodging and food, with rum as a principal ingredient.

Initially candidates for election to the House of Assembly were drawn from among educated men who either arrived in the settlements with some former standing in their New England homes, or who possessed capital enabling them to become large landowners. One of the latter, a native of Ire-land, was Henry Denny Denson of Falmouth, who repre-sented Kings from 1770 until his death in 1780. Some of the elected members, though owning land in the townships, con-tinued to live in Halifax. Of two examples the first was provin-cial surveyor Charles Morris (1711–81), who despised Catholics as much as the French, and who represented Kings County from 1761 to 1770. The second was Irish-born Winckworth Tonge (1728–92), a retired army engineer who had served at Fortress Louisbourg in the 1740s, and at the sieges of Beausé-jour, Louis bourg, and Quebec, and who received land grants in Kings County amounting to 5,000 acres. Tonge represented Kings County from 1770 to 1784.

In time merchants dominated the ranks of elected mem-bers in the Minas Basin constituencies. Until 1784 they were closely followed by farmers, while lawyers rarely appeared as candidates. Thereafter, merchants increased their representa-tion. Between 1811 and 1830, by way of example, electors of Kings County in Cornwallis and Horton Townships elected merchants seventeen times but farmers only twice.

In the early period, by religious affiliation, successful candi-dates were usually Congregationalists of one stripe or another, or Anglicans. After Alline’s revival so devastated Congrega-tionalism, only five were elected between 1785 and 1811, while fully half the Assemblymen from the region were Anglicans. This area elected fewer Planters or their descendants, and rather more candidates who, in the early years, were Halifax residents. With the arrival of Loyalist refugees in 1783, espe-cially in Hants County, the Planter hold on elective office fur-ther weakened.

New Englanders who represented Kings County until 1815 included Col Robert Dennison. Born in Connecticut in 1697, he served at the 1745 siege of Louisbourg. Married first in 1721, upon the death of his first wife, he married Prudence Shear-man. All told he fathered fifteen children. He served in the House of Assembly from 1761 to 1765. He died in Horton in 1766, a devoted Congregationalist.

Another such example was Jonathan Crane, a successful merchant and extensive landowner, who was elected a mem-ber in 1784–93 and again in 1799–1818. Born in Connecticut in 1750, he migrated to Horton Township with his father Silas Crane and his elder brother, both of whom were grantees. He married Rebecca, daughter of Joseph Allison of Horton Town-ship. Adept at business, he was made a magistrate. He rose in the county militia to the rank of colonel. He was elected to represent Horton Township in 1818 and served until his death two years later.

A third was Elisha DeWolf, son of grantee Nathan DeWolf; he was born in Connecticut in 1756. In 1779 he married Marga-ret Ratchford in Horton and they had thirteen children. High


Sheriff of Kings County in 1784–9, he represented the county in the Assembly between 1793–9 and 1818–20. He became an assistant judge in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. At dif-ferent times he was also postmaster, collector of customs, and a JP. His shop in Wolfville was the source of his wealth. He kept a domestic slave until slavery ceased to be legal.

The fourth was William Allen Chipman, born in Rhode Island in 1757 and the son of Handley Chipman. Made a JP from 1797, he served as town clerk of Cornwallis and as mem-ber for Kings County in 1799–1806.

Finally, John Wells was born in Cornwallis in 1772 of par-ents who had settled there. In 1793 he married Prudence Eaton. He prospered in his business based at Habitant Corner (Can-ning). A magistrate, he served in the House of Assembly from 1806 to 1818.

One difficulty that faced candidates for the two Kings County seats was that, until 1840, Kings County also included the Parrsboro shore, where the Crane family was dominant. When polling was completed in the Minas Basin settlements, it then moved across the Bay of Fundy and set up in Parrs-boro. A candidate might have led in the Minas Basin and lose the election when the Parrsboro votes were tallied. A good example is found in the 1811 election where, after three suc-cessive days of polling, Jonathan Crane, with 257 votes, trailed his three opponents. After the poll crossed to Parrsboro, then settled mainly by Loyalist refugees, Crane emerged the winner.

In the absence of political parties it is not clear what issues divided candidates in each of these elections. Prejudices or family preferences were an explanation offered by a Kings County elector in 1840. It was not a simple contest between those who called themselves Tories and others known as

Whigs. The issues that came to divide Americans during the War of Independence—imperial taxation, access to Indian lands, smuggling, impressment into the British navy, the standing army in the colonies, and parliamentary corruption—never overtly surfaced in the Minas Basin townships.

Nor was there any appearance in the Minas Basin of the rebellion that had damaged the reputation of New England Planters elsewhere. For Cumberland Township experienced in 1776 a serious but brief insurrection, followed by a prolonged and vicious period of vengeance. There, a force largely com-posed of New England Planters from the St John River valley and Cumberland and Onslow Townships, laid siege to Fort Cumberland (formerly Beauséjour). Only the arrival of naval and military reinforcements routed the rebels.

This successful display of military and naval power was not lost on the Minas Basin Planters. Their leadership had already been co-opted by acceptance of all sorts of blandish-ments from Halifax. To have accepted official appointments, especially to be made a JP or a judge in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas was to have embraced the establishment. When losses began to be endured at the hands of Yankee pri-vateers and pirates, most Planters abandoned their neutral-ity and gradually emerged as Loyalists. Whereas in 1775 and 1776 most had failed to respond to the call to arms, in 1777 they more readily enlisted to defend their homeland when the mili-tia was summoned.

Much is made of what the arrival of large numbers of Loy-alist refugees in 1783–84 did to Nova Scotia’s political map. In some places, they swamped the Planters and thus changed the political balance. As many Loyalists were so poor, they remained tenant farmers, and were therefore not qualified


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to vote. Others among the new arrivals, the Loyalist grant-ees, would take some time to clear the five acres that was also required to qualify them as electors. In the Minas Basin townships, where the Planter electors remained a majority for sometime thereafter, political change was more gradual. When the change occurred, many Planter descendants on occasion voted in support of the same Tory candidates whom their Loy-alist neighbours also favourably viewed.

Historians have made much of the fact that the New Eng-land form of town government did not survive in Nova Scotia. Instead, a strong central government in the form of a lieuten-ant governor and Council, all appointed by the imperial gov-ernment, became the model of choice. If Planters in the Minas Basin townships objected to this loss of much local autonomy, there is scant surviving evidence.

chapter two

FalMoUtH

townSHiP

Setting

Under a provisional grant made in 1759, 113 proprietors were listed. Before they arrived in Falmouth Township it was dis-covered that much of the land earmarked for the township had already been granted in 1736 to Richard Phillips, the former Nova Scotia governor who had commanded the 40th Foot regiment. To make way for the new settlement, these extensive, still unimproved, lands were escheated. A new distribution of crown land was then undertaken. Of the 113 proprietors in the provisional grant of 1759, only eighteen names reappeared on the two effective grants when they were finally allotted in 1761.

Falmouth Township lay between the townships of Wind-sor and Horton. In the rear of the settlement were low moun-tains and lakes. The land gradually sloped towards the Avon River and the Minas Basin. Its western boundary with Horton Township was the small Cacaquit River (later Halfway). Three features afforded Falmouth its only significant advantages. The first was its location along one bank of the Pisi quid River with access to the Basin and the Bay of Fundy. The second was its proximity to the village of Windsor. The third was the Great


West Road which cut through the whole width of the town-ship, ultimately giving it access to the Annapolis Valley.

In January 1762 the government-appointed surveyor remarked that about eighty families had settled there, con-taining perhaps 350 persons. The division of land provided about eighty acres per share. Much of the rest of the land was mountainous, and what he described as “unimprovable lands . . . These inhabitants have imported large quantities of cattle, and have this year cut hay sufficient for supporting them, but the excessive drought of the summer has blasted most of their grain. The River Pisiquid running through the town is naviga-ble for sloops to all the settlements there being three fathoms at high water for six miles. The . . . woods having suffered at the same time with Horton, the growth of the timber is small.” He referred to the great forest fires of 1710 which ravished many parts of Nova Scotia.

By the 1820s there were 1,184 acres of dyke land, and alto-gether only 3,017 acres were cultivated. The population, which in 1767 numbered less than 300, only amounted to 865 sixty years later.

About 1762 the Falmouth grantees petitioned the govern-ment, noting the inconvenience caused by their having to travel to Halifax to register the land deeds. “The scarcity of money in this country” they explained, “renders it impossible for many to send their deeds to Halifax, if they have a safe con-veyance.” What was needed was a registry office in the county.

As there was not, in 1762, a road suitable for carriages between Fort Edward and Fort Sackville on Bedford Basin, Belcher appointed Isaac Deschamps and Henry Denny Den-son as joint surveyors to lay out the road. Sixty-five years later

it was described as being “level and in an excellent state of repair” owing to then recent alterations.

Some Falmouth Planter families were initially more fortu-nate in various respects than those in Horton and Cornwallis. Many of the Acadian houses and barns were left undisturbed when the Acadian population was deported in 1755. Under the authority of a proprietors’ meeting in July 1760, each house and barn was numbered as was each stack of boards. There fol-lowed a general distribution of these surviving structures and building materials among the settlers. This was a huge advan-tage compared to other Minas Basin townships, where every structure, house, barn, or fence had been deliberately destroyed in 1755. As an example, Henry Denny Denson was granted the house he already occupied with its adjoining barn. In Sep-tember 1760 the proprietors were given a year to remove these

View of Falmouth. (John Elliott Woolford) 1817


structures to their assigned lots. One of the houses was reno-vated for the use of the soldiers sent there for their protection.

In the summer of 1761, when their lots were selected, the townspeople set about locating the best site for a grist mill. Windmill Creek was selected, and three proprietors, Abner Hall, Edward Yorke, and Jesse Crosman, were elected to over-see its construction. In 1762 Jesse Crosman was also commis-sioned, by the town meeting, to build a cattle pound, forty feet square.

Falmouth was unique among the Minas Basin townships in the frequency of its proprietors’ meetings. There were six such meetings alone in 1760, eight in 1761, four in 1762, and one each in 1763 through 1767, and in each of 1769, 1773, 1774, and 1775. Thereafter they became rare, as none was then held until 1784, and only seven more to 1800. Meetings initially selected the township constables, overseers of the poor, assessors, surveyors of highways, fence viewers, surveyor of lumber and firewood, packers of beef, pork, and fish, pound keeper, and gauger. At each such town meeting a moderator was chosen.

At the 21 August 1761 meeting, with Edward Yorke as mod-erator, a great deal was decided. Firstly, a 200-acre lot was set aside for a common. In addition a sufficient piece of wood-land was reserved to serve as a common source of firewood and fencing. Those who cut elsewhere were liable to a £2 fine. It was also agreed that the first 1,000 acres be laid out according to the lots drawn, then a further 1,000 acres of cleared upland again according to the results of the lottery. Only then would the marshland be divided into lots. The surveyor was Samuel Borden, assisted by two chainmen and axemen, overseen by a select committee. Fines were also levied for those who failed to put out fires they had started. A steep fine of £1 was levied for

anyone cutting or girdling a tree still standing in the cleared upland, before the division had been determined. Those who failed to show up to work on the dykes, bridges, and roads were liable to a fine of four shillings a day.

The repair of the dykes had already been put in hand in the summer of 1760, under three overseers: Ebenezer Millett, Thomas Akin, and Edward Church. For work on the dykes men received one shilling, six pence a day and twice this rate if the labourer came with a good yoke of oxen, and nine pence a day in addition if he brought a cart.

Economy

There was a sharp decline in most of Falmouth’s agricultural production between the 1763 returns and those of 1770.

Where there was evidence of growth, such as in barley, the decline in rye production discounted those positive results. Overall grain production fell to 2,463 bushels from 4,228 between 1767 and 1770, a decline of more than forty percent. The failure to record production of hay and potatoes detracts from the value of the report, as hay and potatoes elsewhere had become major crops. The decline in grain production cannot be explained simply by differences in weather during the two growing seasons, for the same pattern of decline was evident among livestock holdings. All types, except sheep, declined. Taken together the drop in livestock numbers amounted to one-quarter in just seven years.

The 1770 returns provide a picture of the three most consid-erable producers. They were Denson with eighteen oxen and bulls, thirty-four cows, thirty-four young cattle, 150 sheep, and twelve swine; followed by Captain Jonathan Marsters with


sixteen oxen, eighteen cows, thirty young cattle, forty sheep, and nine swine; and Jeremiah Northup with nine oxen, four-teen cows, twenty-two young cattle, 115 sheep, and seven swine. Jacob Mullar owned ten oxen, twelve cows, sixteen young cat-tle, and fifty-six sheep. Together these four farms harvested thirty percent of the wheat, twenty-three percent of the oats, seventy-nine percent of the barley, and twenty-two percent of the peas. From a partial list of proprietors made in 1779, Den-son owned 185 acres of cleared land, 196 acres of marshland,

and 4,398 acres of forest. He boasted three houses, two barns, and two stables. Northup owned seventy-five acres cleared, thirty-eight acres of drained marshland, and 1,156 acres of woodland, with a house and barn.

By the 1820s there were more than 3,000 acres under culti-vation. Wheat production at 2,190 bushels and other grains at 5,249 bushels were a considerable advance from sixty years ear-lier. This expanded production was largely the result of popu-lation increase. When measured in relative terms, Falmouth’s grain sector was in a state of decline, though elsewhere there was relative expansion between the 1760s and the 1820s. The largest crop in the 1820s was that of potatoes, as almost 30,000 bushels were harvested in the township. With 248 horses, 839 horned cattle, 834 swine, and 1,555 sheep raised in Falmouth, there was considerable growth when measured by population.

Society

A 1763 census indicated that Falmouth then had 356 souls among 80 families. If accurate, then seven years later the pop-ulation had declined by more than ten percent. Americans formed the largest group, some sixty-two percent, followed by those from the British Isles who constituted twenty-eight percent of the township’s population. There were only thirteen Acadians counted. From being a French and Catholic place, it then contained an almost totally English-speaking population, eighty-seven percent of whom were Protestants.

The census for 1770 was particularly valuable because details for each family were noted, such as household size. This per-mits some comparative observations to be made. Two of the households were unusually large. Henry Denny Denson’s

Falmouth Livestock & Crops (bushels)

1763 1767 1770

horses 126 80 69 oxen/bulls 223 180 144 cows 354 289 207 young cattle 394 421 225 sheep 649 812 832 swine 321 169 102 wheat 1080 1806 1366 rye 273 800 25 corn 694 ? ? barley ? 41 298 oats ? 1581 774 peas ? 419 488 flaxseed ? 124 24 potatoes 5261 ? ?

? = Unknown


both merchants, were members of the Council and played no practical part in the township’s development. Two women were listed among the grantees, Mary Payzant and Martha Dyer. Most of the rest of the men in Falmouth were farmers, calling themselves yeomen, and their sons were described usu-ally as labourers, unless they had a trade.

Of these, two individuals stood apart from the rest. Den-son’s family was a particularly interesting example of the small elite group who effectively ran Falmouth Township. Irish-born, he made a military career before settling in Nova Sco-tia. Accumulating vast acreage, he began the construction of his seat, Mount Denson, in 1770. He was married in Ireland, where he fathered at least one daughter. In Falmouth he set up house with Martha Whitfield, whom he first encountered in England, and by whom he had a daughter, Lucy. His Fal-mouth land included farm lots along the Avon River as well as marsh and dyke lands along the Cacaquit River. From his estate papers deposited with the Probate Court after his death in 1780, the size of his house can be estimated from the consid-erable furniture listed in the inventory. His library consisted of 103 titles on the law, heraldry, peerage, dictionaries, as well as English and Irish writers. In 1780 his was a working farm which specialized in dairy products and livestock raising. His workers were principally Irish and English, and some were indentured servants who had sold their labour to him for a period of years in return for their keep. His five slaves, at the time of his death, included three men, a woman, and a boy val-ued together at £230.

The other substantial Falmouth landowner was Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres, a Huguenot who entered the British army as an engineer. In Falmouth he established

consisted of twenty-two people, sixteen of whom were Amer-icans, including six men and five women. The DesBarres lands included no less than ninety-three people, all grouped by the census taker as a single household. It included forty-two men and thirty-three women, of whom only seven were Ameri-cans. By contrast, at the opposite end of the social scale were Wignal Cole with his one horse, cow, and calf, while Tamber-lain Campbell owned a horse, and Edward Manchester, with a household of four, did not even own a horse. All three were New Englanders.

Among the original grantees only five were called Esquires, Henry Denny Denson, Edward Yorke, JFW DesBarres, Benja-min Green, and Alexander Grant. Of these, Green and Grant,

Falmouth Township Population

1767 1770

population 292 320 women & girls 153 148 men & boys 135 172 Negroes 4 ? Americans 200 198 Acadians 42 13 British Isles 32 90 German 18 19 Protestants 250 277 Catholics 42 43

? = Unknown


himself at Castle Frederick, the grandiose name with which he christened his mansion. It was surrounded by 4,200 acres, of which about 1,200 acres were in drained marsh and dyked land. The house, with its observatory, was surrounded by sev-eral farmhouses built for his labourers, and barns to house his livestock and produce. He claimed to have enjoyed an annual rental income of £200, and to have laid out £5,000 to create the estate. If true, at four percent, it was an unusually high return on land. Despite his wealth, his direct impact on Falmouth was nevertheless muted, when compared to Denson, who served both as a JP and as a member of the House of Assembly.

DesBarres lived to a great age. He departed the town-ship every summer to undertake his remarkable cartographic work, whose charts were published as the Atlantic Neptune. He seems never to have visited his Falmouth estate after he sailed for England in 1776. When Cape Breton became a separate

colony 1783, he became its first lieutenant governor. During his absence and for many years, his Falmouth estate and his lands elsewhere in Nova Scotia were managed by his mistress, Mary Cannon, the mother of several of his children.

Rich or poor, all were subject to the same laws of the colony which, as has been seen, were enforced not by a police force but by the magistrates at Quarter Sessions. One case involved John Jasper Driliot who was accused of having stolen a ewe lamb from the common flock in Falmouth Township. At the May 1768 session he withdrew his original plea of not guilty. Another case involved John Hicks of Falmouth, for threat-ening constable John Stell with revenge, and calling him a “damned scoundrel” and “blackguard.” Stell could have sued him for defamation, but declined doing so. Instead Hicks, as was typical in many such cases, was required to provide the court with security to the value of £20 to keep the peace for one year thereafter. The magistrates made a similar determi-nation in the case involving two Falmouth men, the mason Charles Brown and yeoman Alexander McCurdie.

The most frequent convictions were found in cases of assault. In law in such cases, the crown itself was the victim, as the king’s peace had been broken. In March 1763 illiterate Fal-mouth innholder, Malachy Caigan, swore that he had been the victim of an assault at his own door by Captain Edward Yorke. Yorke had both punched and kicked him, causing his hand and leg to bleed “considerably.” In response, Yorke claimed that he had first been beaten with a stick by Caigan’s servant, the illiterate William Shey. Shey’s evidence provided the con-text for the dispute, which arose when Yorke entered the inn and joined Lieutenant Alexander MacCulloch’s party. Shortly afterwards Yorke accused the lieutenant of having insulted

From Summit of Falmouth Mountain. (John Elliott Woolford, 1817)


him by suggesting that “his negro man should whip” the squire. Another witness phrased the alleged threat differently, stating that Yorke himself had stated that if “the negro should assault him he would kill the negro and kick the master.” This wit-ness insisted that the lieutenant had made no threat whatever. Provoked by this, Yorke called MacCulloch “a damned liar and a scoundrel . . . a damned lousy rascal.” Yorke then threatened anyone who sided with the lieutenant and demanded a room where the two officers could fight it out. At that point the innholder asked Yorke to leave. When outside, Yorke began to remove some of his clothes and again challenged the inn-keeper to fight. Shey then stepped between the two, having struck Yorke several times with a stick. When the matter came before the magistrates the following May, Yorke avoided pros-ecution when he, Shey, and Caigan, with the approval of the bench, allowed the matter to drop. In effect, the squirearchy in Falmouth had stuck together.

That Caigan, for one, kept the peace thereafter is certain, but it did him little good for his fate was to be murdered. Four-teen years earlier at Falmouth, he had married Mary Payzant, a fifty-one-year-old widow and mother of five children. At least for six years before his death he and his wife lived apart, while he had given up his tavern and had become a drover of livestock to the Halifax market. Caigan died by violence in October 1776. Suspicion fell on Peter Manning, an Irish immi-grant to Falmouth. By 1770 Manning was head of a household which included five boys and three women. According to the agricultural census that year, his livestock included two horses, four oxen, six cows, a pig, and four young cattle. He had raised a dozen bushels of wheat, and six bushels each of barley and peas. The cause of the violence between Manning and Caigan

is a matter of speculation, as so little of the original case file has survived. The case was heard by Isaac Deschamps in the Supreme Court; and two weeks after Manning’s arrest he was hanged in Horton, where the trial took place. Two of Man-ning’s sons, James and Edward, became noted Baptists minis-ters, while his daughters married well.

The same Falmouth inn was also the scene of a violent dis-pute in February 1768. The innkeeper was then William Sen-tal. Adam Martin was drinking with William O’Brien, Robert Forbes, and William Coulter, when Coulter left the room to return with a large stick or club that had been removed from him earlier. When O’Brien chastised him for so arming him-self when his companions were unarmed, Coulter replied that it was the custom of his country, meaning New England. An argument ensued and Coulter punched O’Brien. Where-upon each grabbed a chair to be used as weapons. Men from

View of Road from Windsor to Hantsport. (John Elliott Woolford, 1817)


other rooms stepped between them to prevent further dam-age. The innkeeper managed to drag Coulter out of the inn though Coulter had hold of Sental’s neck scarf and managed to strike him. When outside the inn, Coulter, armed with a pitchfork, struck Sental’s illiterate servant, Benjamin Brown, with “a violent blow on the side of his face,” which felled him. The weapon was taken from his grasp with difficulty. Tempers began to cool. The outcome of the case is unknown.

When women or children were the object of the assault, the charges tended to be dropped, or the guilty lightly fined. In 1764 Alice, wife of Samuel Crossman of Falmouth, was con-victed of an unprovoked assault “with a large stick” on Eliza-beth, the ten-year-old daughter of Levi Irish. The matter was settled once Crossman paid the court’s costs.

Men were charged with the maintenance of illegitimate children they had sired, through a process known as an “order of filiation.” The first such case, heard in August 1761, occurred in Falmouth, and involved the male child of Mary Shaw, Sam-uel Bailey being the reputed father. Before the child was born, Mary, who was literate, gave evidence that the previous Octo-ber, after she was made an offer of marriage by Bailey in the home of Thomas Woodworth, he had “carnal knowledge of her body several times,” and she became pregnant. As Bailey had fled the township, the justices ordered that his assets be seized to the value of £20, lest the child become a burden to the overseers of the poor. They seized a yoke of his oxen and a cow, which were sold to Peter and Arnold Shaw. Similarly, in January 1761 Elizabeth Kipp, an illiterate widow who resided in Falmouth Township near Fort Edward, claimed that Dan-iel Bigsby, then a servant of Moses Delesdernier and later a Horton farmer, was the father of her child, having bedded her

several times in the home of William Emerson. He made no defence against the charge. In 1781 the justices at Quarter Ses-sions issued such an order against Matthew Elder relating to the child of Rebecca Jenkins. He was able to satisfy the over-seers of the poor when he posted sufficient security to support her child.

Cases of debt were commonly dealt with by the Supreme Court. Debt was the central problem upon the death in 1772 of Rebecca Gerrish’s husband, Councillor Benjamin Gerrish. Almost all her supposed wealth vanished in a series of lawsuits which she vainly tried to defend. If she lost suits initiated by her late husband’s largest creditors, she also lost a suit with a Cornwallis farmer, Robert Martin, her tenant on a 1,200 acre Falmouth Township farm. Martin successfully sued her for unpaid labour, as well as the use of his oxen and implements. The debt and court costs came to £117. She was rescued from near bankruptcy by a timely and advantageous second mar-riage to John Burbidge of Cornwallis.

Two Falmouth Planters were involved in a 1785 mortgage foreclosure in the Court of Chancery. In 1781 William Simp-son and his wife, Mary, both of Falmouth, executed a mort-gage deed for a debt of £170 they owed to Mary Cannon, also of Falmouth. Mary, then in her late twenties, was JFW DesBarres’s mistress, housekeeper, and estate manager. The mortgage was on four Falmouth town lots. Three years later Cannon assigned the mortgage to Lawrence Hutchinson, a yeoman Planter from Falmouth, for £130. He promptly peti-tioned Chancery for its foreclosure. Though the subpoena was posted on the church door in Windsor and at Simpson’s house in Falmouth, he made no response. As a consequence, the court’s decree required an auction of the properties to be held


and the first £215 12s with interest to be awarded to Hutchin-son, the mortgage holder.

There were at least three slave owners in Falmouth among the Planters. When Denny Denson died in 1780 the inven-tory of his estate listed each of his several slaves. In 1779 Joseph Northup of Falmouth sold a slave to John Palmer of Windsor, while in 1781 Abel Michener of Falmouth, a master mariner and former privateersman, suffered the loss of James, a run-away slave, for whom a £5 reward was offered. The slave was recovered but escaped again in 1786.

Apprenticeship was an established institution both in England and in the American colonies including Nova Scotia, which passed a statute in 1759 governing the matter. Apprentices, if boys, usually served until they reached the age of twenty-one, and girls to age eighteen, or when they mar-ried, if younger. The contract required the master to train the apprentice in his trade and to provide for his lodging, food, and clothing, with some sort of monetary reward at the end of the apprenticeship. In 1811 Robert Michener of Falmouth concluded such a contract with the Cornwallis Township over-seers of the poor, by which Charlotte Barnaby, an orphan then not yet four years old, became his apprentice. He undertook to teach her “housewifery also the art of reading intelligibly and writing legibly.” In addition, besides feeding, housing, and clothing her, he was to provide her, at the time of her release when she reached her eighteenth birthday, with two suits of clothes, one for everyday work and one for Sundays. It was not only orphans who became apprentices, for it was a universally accepted custom for parents to enter such contracts on behalf of their children.

The first consideration of Falmouth residents who made

wills, as elsewhere in the Minas Basin townships, was the care of their souls and a request for a Christian burial. The 1781 will of Thomas Rous, also specified that his body be “laid as near the corpse of Christopher Davison as possible.” As the law required, he left the use of one-third of his estates to his widow for her life or as long as she remained a widow, and with sufficient firewood provided her annually. His land he divided among his sons. In the case of John Davison’s 1799 will, five shillings were bequeathed to each of his daughters. Henry Lyon’s 1798 will required his two sons to be given the right of first refusal, if one wished to sell his half-share of land at any time in the future.

The 1793 poll tax for Falmouth informs us about the variety of male occupations. Of the 110 men listed, all but five were farmers. A tanner, carpenter, blacksmith, cabinetmaker, and tailor formed the balance of the taxpayers.

Religion

Brief mention has been made of the whirlwind that tore through Nova Scotia when Henry Alline of Falmouth began to preach in the Minas Basin townships. Born in Rhode Island in 1748, he accompanied his parents as grantees to Falmouth Township in 1760. Without direct farming experience the family remained mired in poverty. With its thin population and absence of cultural institutions, Falmouth offered little scope for a bright young man. Especially concerned with the state of his soul, an experience widespread among the New Englanders, he became convinced that carnal sin was espe-cially dangerous. His conversion occurred in 1775, followed a year later by the decision to become a preacher. Though he was


widely read in the devotional literature then current among New Englanders, he was without spiritual formation. When hostilities began between patriots and Loyalists in New Eng-land and elsewhere he declined a commission in the Kings County militia, and chose instead to remain neutral in what was clearly a civil war. He did not confine his preaching to the Minas Basin church communities of Newport–Falmouth and Cornwallis–Horton. Rather, he visited almost every Nova Scotia settlement, and went more than once to preach to those in the St John River valley.

The direct result was a considerable spiritual revival. Mem-bership in his New Light churches required a crisis conver-sion, a tenet which took fundamental issue with Calvin’s belief in predestination to salvation. This put him at odds with the Congregational church in which he had been raised and with the Baptists who were beginning to make inroads in the area. With the Baptists he had one irreconcilable difference: the form of baptism. They insisted on total immersion for adults, who alone could take communion, whereas he favoured infant baptism. Both an evangelical and an ascetic, Alline preached against worldly pleasures. Most of the church communities he launched collapsed after his premature death and became free-will Baptists which retained Calvinist principles. Though largely forgotten except by historians, Alline was perhaps the most interesting person and the most saintly among the New England Planters of the Minas Basin townships.

Politics

The most prestigious elective office for a New England Planter was that of member of the House of Assembly. Not

all who represented Falmouth voters were from New Eng-land. Swiss-born Isaac Deschamps, for instance, represented Falmouth Township between 1761 and 1770. Arriving in Nova Scotia, he worked for the Jersey merchant, Joshua Mauger, as manager of his Pisiquid store near Fort Edward, where he built a house and barn. Owing to his fluency in French he inter-preted for the Acadians. With the settling of the Minas Basin townships, he received land grants in Newport, Falmouth, and Horton. In 1761 he became a judge in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas and Kings County judge of probate. Though without legal training, in 1770 he was elevated to the Supreme Court where, in 1776, he became first assistant judge. With the creation of Hants County in 1781 he was named a JP and judge of probate. In 1783, he was appointed to the Council. This did not shield him, as judge, from being accused of par-tiality in 1787.

Another influential Planter was the Irishman born in County Mayo, Col Henry Denny Denson. An original Fal-mouth grantee in 1761, he was made a justice in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. He rose to the rank of colonel in the militia. He represented Falmouth Township in 1761–5, New-port Township in 1769–70, and Kings County from 1770 until his death a decade later.

In the early years Planters dominated the township elec-tions. Among them was Edward Yorke who was elected in 1770. Yorke was master of a sailing vessel and served as a pilot in the Minas Basin. Born in Rhode Island in 1730, he was a 1761 Falmouth grantee. Another example was Jeremiah Northup who likewise was an original 1761 grantee. Born in 1734 in Rhode Island, he was made a JP and represented Fal-mouth from 1775 until his death in 1809. The story is told that


Northup was excessively proud that his farm produced enough wool and flax to clothe his entire household. His successor was William Henry Shey, scion of an Irish family which first emi-grated to Rhode Island before settling in Nova Scotia.

When Hants County was created in 1781, by-elections were held the following year. The successful candidates for the House of Assembly were Benjamin DeWolf and George Brightman. DeWolf was re-elected in 1785 and served until 1793. Born in Connecticut in 1744, DeWolf became a success-ful Windsor merchant. Made a JP in 1792, he died there in 1819. Brightman was born in Massachusetts in 1746. An origi-nal grantee of Newport Township, he was made a JP for Hants County upon its creation. He died in 1785. Winckworth Tonge held the seat from 1785 until his death in 1792. He was suc-ceeded by George Henry Monk. Monk, a barrister, had been born in Boston. His family was among the earliest to inhabit Halifax. He represented Hants County in 1792–3, before rep-resenting Windsor Township from 1799 to 1806. He was pro-moted to the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1816. Upon his retirement Monk moved to Montreal, where he died in 1823.

The election of 1799 saw the appearance of John McMona-gle and Shubael Dimock as Hants County members. Dimock was a Baptist minister and magistrate who was born in Con-necticut in 1752. With his parents he relocated to Newport Township. Having served as member for Newport in 1793–9, he represented the voters of Hants County until 1820. In 1812 he was joined by William Hersey Otis Haliburton, a barris-ter, who had been born in Windsor. Haliburton’s second wife was Susanna, the daughter of the former Lieutenant Gover-nor, Michael Francklin. Made a JP, Haliburton was first jus-tice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, and president of

the Court of General Sessions. He represented Hants County until 1824, having represented Windsor Township from 1806 to 1811.

We know nothing of which issues divided the success-ful candidates from those they defeated at the polls. During the American War of Independence, whatever their private thoughts, elected members for Falmouth voiced no support for the patriot cause. Subsequently their behaviour in the Assembly marked them either as supporters of the policies of the appointed council, or its critics. The concept of a loyal opposition, which, in the course of the eighteenth century, had become well-established in the Westminster Parliament, was still unrecognized in Nova Scotia. Assembly members could pay heavily for their opposition to the lieutenant governor and the council, as was the fate of Winckworth Tonge, who lost all his offices and was driven into exile.

[ 75 ]

chapter three

conclUSion

The majority of the [Kings County] farmers … are in very comfortable circumstances, and very many of them really wealthy. Their farms are kept in excellent order,

and the dwellings, outhouses &ca present a neat and handsome appearance.Herbert croSSkill (1874)

Since most of the labour and capital in the Minas Basin town-ships was invested in agriculture, New England Planters and their immediate descendants should be judged by their atten-tion to farming. For at least a century after the Planters first descended on the rich Acadian lands, their record, at best, was mixed.

In October 1773, a few days after reaching Halifax, the new governor Francis Legge noted, “from the best information I have, the progress of this province is much retarded by want of industry among the people who came into the back part of it from New England and by the want of such roads as might promote an easy communication between the different parts of it. In regards to the former, the people are decreasing by … the sale of their lands to those who have been industrious.” As the governor had yet to travel outside Halifax, it must have been members of his Council who informed him that there was “a want of industry” among New Englanders, an opinion repeated by two observers from Yorkshire a year later.


This view was in sharp contrast to that held by Chief Justice Jonathan Belcher and Governor Charles Lawrence in 1760. Belcher noted that the “townships of Horton, Cornwallis and Falmouth are so well established that everything bears a most hopeful appearance … Some 1,000 tons of hay was gathered in Horton, 500 tons in Cornwallis and 600 in Falmouth. Some corn [grain] and roots were also planted.” This farm work continued while they began to build their houses. Lawrence described the recently-arrived settlers as “substantial, labori-ous people adapted entirely to agriculture.” As fully commit-ted supporters and beneficiaries of the settlement plan, they were bound to provide the government in England, to whom they were writing, with as positive an impression as possible of the Planters.

Their first serious critic was the Lieutenant Governor, the Earl of Dalhousie. A Scotsman, he imported swine into Nova Scotia for the improvement of the breed. An enthusiastic trav-eller in his new domain, he several times visited the Minas Basin townships. In July 1818 he unburdened himself in his pri-vate journal about the Planter descendants as follows.

The character which the people of this part have generally obtained is by no means favourable—living poorly & chiefly on rum or worse … they are idle, insolent and quarrelsome. All in debt. They have no faith in one another. They are strongly tinctured with Yankee manners, ideas & principles—cant-ing & preaching constantly, they have no thought of religion or morality. The state of agriculture here is wretched. They depend entirely on large crops of hay cut upon the marsh & dyke lands; on potatoes and cyder made without any knowl-edge of the art, from heavy crops of apple trees, of every variety

sweet or sour. Everyone, however, tho’ ever so poor has his horse and gig, or ‘shay’.

Their ability to gather hay and thereby fatten cattle for the Halifax market, an easy business he believed, encouraged “that want of industry that keeps down this district in poverty.” Dal-housie contrasted them with the “exceedingly industrious” Acadians, when it came to dyke building.

Simultaneously another Scot, John Young, sought to rouse farmers from their torpor and ignorance. His outlet was the Halifax newspaper, the Acadian Recorder, which in 1818 began to publish his letters. “The contempt in which rustic labour was held” he wrote four years later when some of his letters were published as a book entitled The Letters of Agricola on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage (1822) “originated partly in the poverty of the emigrants and settlers who were peo-pling the wilderness, and struggling hard for subsistence … The keeper of the tavern … the retailer of rum, sugar, and tea, the travelling chapman, the constable of the district were far more important personages, whether in their own estima-tion or that of the public, than the farmer who cultivated his own lands.” Young found that tillage was neglected, that both ploughs and ploughing were primitive. Systematic crop rota-tion was unknown. Manure was ignored, as farmers paid to have it removed and discarded. Nova Scotia “might be justly described as one vast grazing ground.” Like the Acadians before them, the New England yeomen chose to raise cattle, sheep, and pigs rather than raise grain. As too little grain was grown, not half the colony’s needs was furnished by its farmers. This invariably led to a serious shortage of straw for bedding,


which as a result cost almost as much as hay. During the long French wars, he argued, inflation allowed the farmer to enjoy “prodigiously high” prices for his produce that “far outran the cost of production.” When the wars ended in 1815, and pros-perity changed to depression, many were ruined.

Agricola’s suggestions resulted in the creation of county agricultural societies. Led by gentlemen, most were short-lived. Some improvements resulted particularly in the quality of livestock, together with an understanding of the benefits to be derived from crop rotation. Yet by the early 1850s Nova Scotia was less self-sufficient in agricultural products than it had been by 1815. In relative terms, Nova Scotia had no more horses, cattle, and sheep in 1850 than it had in 1808, and less than half the swine. With respect to crops, wheat, hay, and potato production had declined, while production of barley, oats, and grains had expanded. Fruit production went unre-corded. Hay was still harvested principally by the scythe and grain with a sickle.

The criticisms arose in part from the failure of Nova Sco-tia to become self-sufficient in flour. As Lieutenant Governor Wentworth remarked in 1794, “Labourers are not to be had to carry on its agriculture, which now produces meat for the consumption of the inhabitants but not more than half the bread.” Though yields of wheat rose modestly between the 1770s and 1820s, it was too little to accommodate Nova Sco-tia’s rising population. In 1827 Lieutenant Governor Kempt believed, erroneously as it turned out, “that at no distant period it may be expected that Nova Scotia will become entirely inde-pendent of her neighbours in the United States for her sup-plies of flour.” In fact, 24,000 barrels were imported that year alone for domestic consumption. In the 1830s Nova Scotia

annually imported from the United States about 54,000 bar-rels of flour, and in the 1840s some 88,000 barrels. Imported from the United States, flour constituted one of Nova Scotia’s principal exports to the West Indies. Grass was much easier to grow and hay much easier to make, as farmers discovered, than ploughing, planting, and harvesting grain, which was subject to disease or infestation.

The two essential elements needed for profitable farm-ing were good well-drained soil and business acumen. There was, and still is, very little good soil in Nova Scotia—about 400,000 acres (625 square miles) or three percent of its total land mass. As the Acadians had located much of it, the New England Planters were well-placed to profit from it, if they could produce surpluses.

In agricultural settlements, poor soil invariably bred poverty. Such families, as soon as possible, abandoned their holdings, which generally they were unable to sell. Thus, both capi-tal and labour were lost. If they stayed on the land they were reduced to tenantry. This was the lot of many of the New Eng-land Planters in the Minas Basin townships. Perhaps as many as half of the adults who died before 1830 possessed no wealth whatever. Their heirs, even those who lived well, sometimes found that accumulated debt had devoured their anticipated inheritance.

None of this meant that Minas Basin farming families remained poor. Once they survived the settlement years and the later devastation of the potato blight in the 1840s, no farm-ers in Nova Scotia had greater wealth than those in the Minas Basin and Annapolis Valley. A study of wealth between 1851 and 1871 demonstrates that this was, after the Halifax region, the wealthiest area in Nova Scotia. Such wealth was unevenly


shared, with the Minas Basin elite families possessing, in 1851, three times the average wealth of farmers there. By 1871 the wealth of such elite families exceeded by five times that of farmers.

Would the outcome have been different if the Planters had remained in New England? As the wealth of the much more populous Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island con-tinued greatly to exceed that of Nova Scotia, most would have been better advised to have aborted their plans to settle in Nova Scotia. Yet many of the new towns settled by New Eng-landers after 1760, in regions that became part of the United States, were established on soils far inferior to those of Corn-wallis, Horton, Falmouth, and Newport. Had the choice been for farming families to migrate to one of those places less endowed by nature, it would have been much wiser instead to have settled in Nova Scotia. Even a poor farmer in Nova Scotia might have been considered better off than a landless labourer in New England. As it transpired the exodus from Nova Sco-tia to the “Boston states” was delayed until the 1840s. By 1870–71 there were 62,000 Nova Scotians living in the United States or elsewhere in the new Dominion, and not a few from farms established on marginal land in the Minas Basin townships.

The development of shipbuilding and ship owning after 1815 gave the Minas Basin an international perspective. Though there was always more capital invested in agriculture than in shipping, shipbuilding proved especially valuable from the mid-1840s to the 1870s. Windsor became the port of regis-try, ranking third in importance after Halifax and Yarmouth. Windsor registered vessels were built not only in the town itself but in the vicinity at Hantsport, Horton, Avonport, Kempt, Newport, Cheverie, Kingsport, Canning, Cornwallis,

and Scot’s Bay. This created a great demand for locally milled lumber. New vessels were first sold in the British Isles and in other British American colonies. By the late 1850s there was a much diminished market abroad for vessels newly-built in Nova Scotia. Builders were obliged to retain ownership them-selves and speculate in freighting goods across the world’s oceans. In this many Planter descendants participated and prospered, while providing work for skilled tradesmen, espe-cially caulkers and shipwrights.

In matters of ship owning, leadership rested with Ben-net Smith and Shubael Dimock of Windsor. If most of the Windsor registered vessels carried freight to ports distant from Nova Scotia, some direct trade, especially in agricultural products and locally-mined gypsum, continued especially to the Fundy ports of New Brunswick and to Maine. In this way American goods became readily available. Then hundreds of sailing vessels annually entered and cleared the port. Planters and their descendants in these diverse ways helped make the region not only the garden, the dairy, and the breadbasket of Nova Scotia, but also a manufacturing place of considerable importance.

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acknowledGeMentS

The Kings Hants Heritage Connection recognizes the sup-port of the Government of Canada through the Atlantic Can-ada Opportunities Agency and the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heri-tage. We acknowledge the support of the Municipality of Kings County, the Municipality of West Hants, the Town of Wolfville, the Kings Regional Development Agency, the Hants Regional Development Authority, Fieldwood Heritage Society, Grand Pré Heritage Society, Hantsport & Area His-torical Society, Les Amis de Grand Pré, the Committee for the Preservation of the Sainte Famille Cemetery, Kings Historical Society, West Hants Historical Society and Wolfville Histori-cal Society. We are pleased to work in partnership with these organizations to develop and promote our heritage resources for all Nova Scotians.

❧

The book was set into type by Andrew Steeves and printed and bound under the direction of Gary Dunfield at Gaspereau Press Limited, Kentville, Nova Scotia. The principal type used is Carol Twombly’s interpretation of the types of Wil-liam Caslon (1692–1766). The title page and chapter headings were set using a trial version of Planter, a new type designed by Andrew Steeves based on letters cut in headstones for the early Planter settlers by a yet unidentified local stonecutter known presently as ‘The Horton Carver’.

Acadia College, 46Acadian, 10, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 32, 33–4,

36–7, 40, 55, 59, 60, 71, 75, 77, 79agriculture, 10, 30–7, 57–9, 75–6; agri-

cultural societies, 35, 78, 80Akin, Thomas, 57Alline, Henry, 44–5, 51, 69–70Allison, Joseph, 43; & daughter

Rebecca, 49Anglican, 24, 44–5, 51Annapolis Valley, 24, 27, 53, 54, 79

Ball, Priscilla & Thomas, 40Baptist, 44, 45, 65, 70Barnaby, Charlotte, 68barns, 7, 20, 34, 55, 59, 62Bedford Basin, 27, 54Belcher, Benjamin, 40; Jonathan, 23,

25, 54, 76Bennet, Rev. Joseph, 44Bigsby, Daniel, 66Borden, Samuel, 56bridges, 23, 27, 42, 57Brightman, George, 72Brown, Benjamin, 66; Charles, 63Bulkeley, Richard, 23Burbidge, Ann, 43; Henry, 40; John,

40, 43, 67

Caigan, Malachi, 63–5Campbell, Tamberlain, 60Canadiens, 11, 17Cannon, Mary, 63, 67Catholic, 21, 36–7, 44, 48, 59, 60children, 10, 37, 40, 44–5, 49, 63, 64,

66, 68–9Chipman, Handley, 50; William

Allen, 50Chipmans Corner, 18, 44Church, Edward, 57

index

clothing, 39, 68Cole, Wignal, 60Collier, John, 23Condon, Benjamin, 41Congregationalist, 44, 45, 49, 70Connecticut, 21, 24, 28, 30, 35, 49,

72, 80Coulter, William, 65–6Council, 22, 23–4, 41, 46, 52, 61, 67,

71, 73, 75courts, 21; Chancery, 41, 67–8; Infe-

rior Court of Common Pleas, 41, 50, 51, 71, 72; General Sessions of the Peace, 41, 63, 66, 73; Probate, 41, 61, 71; Supreme, 24, 40, 41, 65, 67, 71, 72

Crane, Jonathan, 49, 50; Rebecca, 49; Silas, 49

Crawley, Edmund, 24crimes, 42, 43, 63Crossman, Alice & Samuel, 66Cumberland Township, 8, 26, 51

Dalhousie, Earl of, 76–7Davison, Christopher, 69; John, 69debt, 7, 11, 40, 41, 67, 76, 79Delesdernier, Moses, 24, 66Dennison, Robert, 44, 49Denson, Henry Denny, 40, 48, 54, 55,

59–60, 68, 71DesBarres, JFW, 24, 60–3, 67Deschamps, Isaac, 24, 31, 54, 71DeWolf, Benjamin, 24, 72; Elisha,

49; Nathan, 49Dimock, Shubael, 72; grandson, 81Driliot, John Jasper, 63Dyer, Martha, 61dykes, 10, 20, 23, 25, 26, 28, 33–4, 54, 57,

61, 76, 77

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Eaton, Prudence, 50Elder, Matthew, 67elections, 47–52, 71–3Emerson, William, 67

fences, 7, 20, 25, 42, 55, 56ferries, 23, 42fishery, 26, 28, 30, 33, 35, 42, 56flaxseed, 31, 33, 58Forbes, Robert, 65foreclosure, 11, 41, 67forests, 21, 23, 25, 33, 54, 59fort, Cumberland (Beauséjour), 8,

19, 51; Edward, 22, 23, 26, 66, 71Francklin, Michael, 27, 72furs, 26, 42

Garretson, Rev. Freeborn, 46Gerrish, Benjamin, 24; Joseph, 23;

Rebecca, 67Gilmore, Rev. George, 48grain, 22, 28, 30–1, 34, 54, 57–9, 76,

77–9Grand Pré, 18, 20, 46Grant, Alexander, 24, 60Green, Benjamin, 23, 60Great Awakening, 23gypsum, 8, 25, 81

Habitant Corner (Canning), 18, 50, 80

Haines, Joseph, 40Haliburton, William Hersey Otis,

72–3Hall, Abner, 56Hants County, 23, 24, 49, 71, 72, 73Hantsport, 80Harding, Rev. Theodore Seth, 45hay, 25, 30, 34, 54, 57, 76–7, 78, 79Hicks, John, 63Horton Academy, 46houses, 7, 20, 26, 34, 39, 42, 55, 71, 76;

illus., 38

Huston, John, 40Hutchinson, Lawrence, 67

Irish, 10, 37, 46, 48, 61, 64, 71, 72Irish, Elizabeth & Levi, 66

Jenkins, Rebecca, 67Justice of the Peace ( JP), 24, 41–2, 50,

51, 62, 67, 71, 72

Kings County, 23, 48–50, 70, 71, 75Kinsman, Benjamin Jr, 45Kipp, Elizabeth, 66–7

labourer, 10, 29, 30, 61, 62, 78, 80Lawrence, Charles, 21, 26, 76Legge, Francis, 75literacy, 35, 41, 43, 63, 66, 68livestock, 7, 20, 22, 25, 31, 33, 43, 57–9,

61, 62, 64, 78Louisbourg, 21, 39, 48, 49Loyalist, 8, 12, 19, 29, 41, 46, 49, 50,

51–2, 70

MacCulloch, Alexander, 63–64McCurdie, Alexander, 63McMonagle, John, 40, 47, 72Maine, 17, 19, 81Manchester, Edward, 60Manning, Edward, 65; James, 65;

Peter, 64–5marshland, 20, 25, 27, 30, 34, 40, 56,

58–9, 61, 62, 76Marsters, Jonathan, 58Martin, Robert, 67Massachusetts, 21, 45, 46, 72, 80Mauger, Joshua, 24, 71Methodist, 44, 46Michener, Abel, 68; Robert, 68Mi’kmaq, 19, 26, 37militia, 8, 26, 30, 49, 51, 70, 71mills, 20; grist, 56; saw, 33, 42, 81Millett, Ebenezer, 57

Monk, George Henry, 72Morris, Charles, 18, 23, 48Morton, Lemuel, 47Moulton, Rev. Ebenezer, 45Mullar, Jacob, 58Murdock, Rev. James, 46

neutrality, 7–8, 51New Brunswick, 25, 45, 81New Jersey, 19, 28New Light, 45, 70New York, 8, 17, 19, 28, 35Northup, Jeremiah, 58–9, 71–2;

Joseph, 68

O’Brien, William, 65–6Onslow Township, 8, 51orchards, 25overseer of the poor, 31, 41–2, 56–7,

67, 68

Palmer, John, 68Parrsboro, 50Payzant, Mary, 61, 64Pennsylvania, 28, 35Phelps, Rev. Beniah, 44Pierson, Rev. Nicholas, 45ploughing, 27, 33, 77, 79population, 8, 25, 26, 28, 31–2, 35–7, 54,

59, 60, 69, 78Porter, John, 40potatoes, 30, 31, 34, 57, 58–9, 76, 78, 79poverty, 7, 8, 17, 24, 30–1, 35, 41, 42, 43,

45, 51, 54, 56, 63, 66–7, 68, 69, 76, 77, 79, 80

Presbyterian, 44, 46prices, 9, 29–30, 78privateers, 19, 51, 68Protestant, 36–7, 44, 59–60punishments, 43

Quarter Sessions, 27, 28, 63, 67Quebec, 35, 48quit rent, 11, 12, 21

Ratchford, Margaret, 49Reed, Mary & son George, 43religion, 21, 44–6, 69–70, 76Rhode Island, 21, 40, 50, 69, 71, 72, 80rivers, 17, 27, 42; Avon (Pisiquid), 18,

22, 23, 25, 34, 53, 54, 61; Cacaquit, 53, 61; Canard, 18, 35; Cornwal-lis (Grand Habitant), 18, 33, 35; Gaspereau, 18, 33; Habitant, 18, 35; Kennetcook, 18; St Croix, 18, 23, 26, 27

roads, 24, 27, 41, 42, 54, 57, 75; illus., 65Rous, Thomas, 69rum, 29, 35, 40, 48, 76, 77

Sabbath Day, 39, 42–3St John River valley, 8, 51, 70Sargeant, Betsy, 43Saul, Thomas, 23Sental, William, 65–6Shaw, Arnold & Mary, 66Shearman, Jonathan, 40; Prudence,

49; Sarah, 40sheriff, high, 24, 41, 50Shey, William Henry, 63–4, 72shipping, 7, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 33, 37, 71,

80–1Simpson, Mary & William, 67–8slavery, 10, 14, 21, 24, 28, 37, 39–41, 50,

60, 61, 64, 68soil, 21, 23, 79, 80South Carolina, 8, 19Smith, Bennet, 81smuggling, 41, 50Starr, Samuel, 40Stell, John, 63

taxes, 28, 42tenants, 24, 47, 51, 67, 79Tonge, 24; Winckworth, 48, 72, 73

Upper Horton (Wolfville), 18, 45, 50usury, 43


wages, 29–30war, with France, 8–9, 19, 21–2, 29,

77–8; of Independence, 7–8, 19, 28–9, 51, 73; of 1812, 20

wealth, 19, 28, 35, 41, 43, 50, 62, 67, 75, 79–80

Wells, John, 50Wentworth, John, 78West Indies, 27, 29, 40, 79Willoughby, Samuel, 47wills, 40–1, 44–5, 69Windsor Township, 22–5, 31–2, 36–7,

40, 47, 53, 72, 73; illus., 32; village, 18, 20, 24–5, 27, 34, 45, 53, 67, 72, 80–1

women, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44–5, 47, 49–50, 60–1, 64, 66

Woodworth, Thomas, 66

Yarmouth, 26, 80yeoman, 12, 40, 63, 67Yorkshire, 34, 40, 75Yorke, Edward, 56, 60, 63–4, 71Young, John, 77–8

falmouth township

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