They Planted Well

v

THEY PLANTED WELL NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS IN MARITIME CANADA

Edited by Margaret Conrad

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7

INTRODUCTION 9

IMMIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT

R.S. Longley, The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley 14

D. Murray Young, Planter Settlements in the St. John Valley 29

Esther Clark Wright, Cumberland Township: A Focal Point of Early Settlement on the Bay of Fundy 36

Ernest A. Clarke, Cumberland Planters and the Aftermath of the Attack on Fort Cumberland 42

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

Jack Greene, Recent Developments in the Historiography of Colonial New England 61

George Rawlyk, J.B. Brebner and Some Recent Trends in Eighteenth-Century Maritime Historiography 97

Barry Cahill, New England Planters at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia 120

Terrence Punch, Genealogy, Migration and the Study of the Past 132

CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Graeme Wynn, The Geography of the Maritime Provinces in 1800: Patterns and Questions 138

Debra McNabb, The Role of the Land in Settling Horton Township, Nova Scotia, 1766-1830 151

Elizabeth Mancke, Corporate Structure and Private Interest: The Mid-Eighteenth Century Expansion of New England 161

Allen Robertson, Methodism Among Nova Scotia's Yankee Planters 178

Daniel Goodwin, From Disunity to Integration: Evangelical Religion and Society in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 1761-1830 190

Thomas Vincent, Henry Alline: Problems of Approach and Reading the Hymns as Poetry 201

Gwendolyn Davies, Persona in Planter Journals 211

MATERIAL CULTURE

Allen Penney, A Planter House: The Simeon Perkins House, Liverpool, Nova Scotia 218

Daniel Norris, An Examination of the Stephen Loomer House, Habitant, Kings County, Nova Scotia 236

Heather Davidson, Private Lives from Public Artifacts: The Architectural Heritage of Kings County Planters 249

M.A. MacDonald (with Robert Elliot), New Brunswick's 'Early Comers': Lifestyles Through Authenticated Artifacts, a Research Project 262

Deborah Trask, 'Remember Me As You Pass By': Material Evidence of the Planters in the Graveyards of Nova Scotia 298

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Phillip Buckner 307 Brian Cuthbertson 310 Marie Elwood 313 James Morrison 315 William Naftel 318 Esther Clark Wright 320

They Planted Well New England Planters in Maritime Canada

Edited by Margaret Conrad

Acadiensis Press Fredericton, New Brunswick

1988

© Acadiensis Press 1988

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

They Planted Well

Includes bibliographical references. Proceedings of the Planter Studies Conference sponsored by the

Planters Studies Committee, and held in Wolfville, N.S., October 1987. ISBN 0-919107-20-6

1. Maritime Provinces — Emigration and immigration — History. 2. New England — Emigration and immigration — History. 3. Land Settlement — Maritime Provinces. 4. Farmers — Maritime Provinces. 5. Maritime Provinces — History — to 1867.* I. Conrad, Margaret. II. Planters Study Conference (1987: Acadia University). III. Acadia University. Planter Studies Committee.

FC2032.T53 1988 971.500413 C88-098642-5

Acadiensis Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Publishers Assistance Programme of the New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Recreation and Heritage and of Acadia University.

COVER: William Morrison, engraved by J. Clark for Letters from Nova Scotia, published by Colburn & Bentley, London, 1830.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Turning conference proceedings into a bound volume is more difficult than most people realize. I am particularly indebted to Hazel Ward and Sherri Davis who entered the manuscript on disks for nothing more than the experience of doing it. Deborah Eaton had the thankless task of keeping paper moving, badgering delinquent authors and copy-editing their work. Without her constant presence (funded by a SEED grant) and efficient ways (surely a manifestation of her Planter roots) the manuscript may never have been completed. Acadia University Archivist Patricia Townsend was her usual helpful self during this project and Edith Haliburton cheerfully tolerated our many demands for "rare" books at a time when the Library was officially closed. The History Department at Acadia University, particularly its head Sam Nesdoly and his assistant Carolyn Bowlby, were supportive in ways too numerous to mention. The other members of the Planter Studies Committee — Douglas Baldwin, Gwendolyn Davies, Richard Davies, Alan Macintosh, Barry Moody, James Snowdon and Patricia Townsend — gave me a free hand to do as I wished and spared me the trouble of endless editorial meetings.

Since books like these rarely pay for themselves, I am also grateful to those who dug even deeper into their purses to provide publication subsidies; in particular, Lois Vallely-Fischer, Dean of Arts, Marshall Conley, acting Director of Graduate Studies, and President James Perkin of Acadia University. The remainder of an Occasional Conference Grant provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the Planter Conference was essential in putting us "over the top" and I am grateful to the Council for its support. Finally, I would like to thank the contributors, most of whom scrupulously met my unrealistic deadlines and graciously accepted my editorial nit-picking. It is to them, both longtime and recent Planter scholars, that the book is dedicated.

Margaret Conrad Acadia University

Planter Nova Scotia, 1767

Introduction

Between 1759 and 1768 some 8000 New Englanders emigrated to what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Known as "planters," the old English term for colonist, they were among the first anglophone immigrants to the area of present-day Canada. In October 1987 nearly 150 people converged on Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to attend a conference billed as "New England Planters in Maritime Canada." It was the first time that the Planters had ever been made the exclusive focus of an academic conference, and the unexpectedly large turn-out suggested that the time was long overdue for such an event.

The obscurity into which the New England Planters have fallen is a curious phenomenon of Canadian historical scholarship. In numbers, the Planters included almost as many people as migrated to Quebec during the whole period of the French regime, and they equal or surpass the Icelandic, Doukhobor and Mennonite migrations to the Prairies in the nineteenth century. Yet, as George Rawlyk points out in his article in this volume, authors of Canadian history texts give short shrift to the Planters, if they mention them at all.

Part of the explanation for the "missing" Planters must surely lie in their motives for coming to Nova Scotia. Because the Acadian deportation and Loyalist migration were far more dramatic events than the peaceful migration of a mass of land-hungry Yankees, the Planters have received less scholarly attention than their numbers and impact warrant. But this explanation alone is not enough. Other migrant groups endowed with a healthy strain of possessive individualism have not been expunged from our textbooks. Nor can it be said that little is known about the Planters. J.B. Brebner, whose book, The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, was first published in 1937, explored, at great length, the period during which the Planters dominated the population base of Nova Scotia. Why have Brebner's mighty labours, and those who have followed in his footsteps, not guaranteed the Planters their place in the Canadian mosaic?

It would be easy to blame the Toronto-dominated Canadian history profession for deliberately down-playing the Planter heritage in the Maritimes. However, this explanation, appealing though it may be, will not do. And it would be equally remiss to blame the Americans for refusing to acknowledge that people have actually left the United States for opportunity elsewhere. Indeed, it is the Planters themselves who must share much of the blame for the neglected state of Planter Studies. As Ernest A. Clarke reveals in his discussion of Cumberland Township during the American Revolution, Planter identity was a fragile concept, at best, during the first generation of settlement. It more or less easily gave way to

10 They Planted Well

Loyalist rhetoric once it became clear that Nova Scotia would remain a British possession. Even the term "Planter" atrophied from disuse. Although the New Englanders called themselves "planters," a generic term for colonist, they did not see themselves collectively as an exclusive group called "Planters." Nor did ninteenth-century historians find the term particularly useful. A.W.H. Eaton in his History of Kings County, published in 1910, described his ancestors as "Planters" but Brebner referred to them only as "New Englanders" or "Yankees." By the 1960s "Planter" was again in vogue, an attempt on the part of historians to avoid the obviously ahistorical use of the term "pre-Loyalist" to lump together all anglophone immigrants to Nova Scotia prior to the American Revolution. Nevertheless, as the articles in this collection indicate, Planter is still not a widely accepted term. In New Brunswick, a colony established in 1784 as a response to Loyalist pressure, "early comer" still vies with "pre-Loyalist" as a way of establishing the Loyalist migration as the benchmark against which all other immigrants are measured.

It is instructive to consider how the Planter identity would have evolved had Nova Scotia joined the newly formed United States of America in 1776. Surely New England origins would have served the Planters well in establishing their claim to citizenship in the great republic. Such roots were considerably less useful, however, in making one's argument for position and privilege before Loyalist claims commissions and British-appointed governors. In fact, American citizenship has rarely been an asset in Canada — officially at least. As a result, the Planters have had to remain content with the more mundane boast, still often heard in the Maritimes, that their ancestors are among the oldest European settlers in Canada.

While the Planter heritage withered in the official canon of Canadian identity, locally it grew and flourished. Thomas Chandler Haliburton, himself of Planter origins, described the circumstances surrounding the arrival of his ancestors in his History of Nova Scotia, published by Joseph Howe in 1829. Most nineteenth-century provincial and county historians dutifully acknowledged the New England heritage in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In the twentieth century two Planter descendants, both graduates of, and at various times professors at Acadia University, endeavoured to keep the Planters in the scholarly limelight to which Brebner had raised them. Esther Clark Wright's article, "Cumberland Township: A Focal Point of Early Settlement on the Bay of Fundy," appeared in the Canadian Historical Review in 1946. Her book The Loyalists of New Brunswick, published in 1955, revealed important insights about the Planter experience. On the occasion of the Planter bicentennial, R. S. Longley, a member of Acadia's history department (1929-64) and Vice President from 1957 to 1964, delivered a paper entitled, "The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley" to the

Introduction 11

Nova Scotia Historical Society. It appeared in the society's collections published in 1961. Unfortunately, administrative duties and poor health made it difficult for Longley to pursue his interest in the Planters.

In the 1970s and 1980s an increased enthusiasm for heritage, and the annual request from the University of Maine for presentations to their Canadian Studies students brought pressure upon the history department at Acadia University to formally embrace the Planters. Esther Clark Wright's publication of Planters and Pioneers in 1978, and her insistence that the younger generation of historians at Acadia do justice to the Planters, was also a spur to action. Finally, in 1983 the Canadianists in the history department created a Planter Studies Committee to co-ordinate research on the people who had figured so prominently in the founding of Acadia University in 1838. It was the committee's aim to produce a bibliography of primary and secondary sources relating to the Planters, to host a Planter Conference and ultimately to create a Planter Studies Centre at Acadia University. A Checklist of Secondary Sources for Planter Studies compiled by Daniel Goodwin appeared in 1987, in time for the conference, the proceedings of which form the basis for this publication. Plans are underway for a Checklist of Primary Sources for Planters Studies, scheduled to appear in 1990. As part of the celebrations marking Acadia's 150th anniversary, the university launched a fund-raising drive to establish a Planter Studies Centre.

The members of the Planters Studies Committee made a conscious decision to use the term "Planter" to describe the people who migrated from New England to take up land in the old province of Nova Scotia between 1759 and 1768. While we recognized that it would be opposed in some quarters and produce as many problems as it solved, "Planter" seemed a better term than "pre-Loyalist," "Yankee" or any of the other suggestions put forward. Our committee tends to take an inclusive approach in deciding who was a Planter but there will, no doubt, be some debate as to whether New England merchants and officials in Halifax — especially those who took advantage of the free grants of land in the Planter townships — should be included under the term. We, of course, use the term only as a means of making distinctions for scholarly purposes and not as a label bestowing some imaginary status on people who can trace their origins to the Planters.

Having never staked a claim to be included among the founding people of Canada, the Planters nevertheless left an idelible mark on their Maritime homeland and further afield. Descendants of the Planters include major educators, theologians, inventors, industrialists, social reformers, politicians and at least two Canadian prime ministers. Planter descendants have spread across Canada and, during the great exodus from the Maritime Provinces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

12 They Planted Well

centuries, they found their way back to New England. Like their ancestors, they were quickly absorbed into the larger Anglo-American identity and left few visible traces of their Canadian sojourn.

A few words of explanation are in order concerning the content of this book. Readers will see that, in addition to the papers presented at the conference, the articles by Esther Clark Wright and R.S. Longley, mentioned above, are published in this volume. Both articles have much to offer and document the Acadia University connection to Planter scholar­ship. It therefore seemed appropriate to include them.

Readers might have expected the historiographical articles to appear first in the table of contents. Although this was the original intent, it became clear as the conference was being organized that, even among the academic community, the details of the Planter migration were not widely known. A 'preface' to the interpretative articles seemed in order. In the section entitled "Immigration and Settlement," R.S. Longley and D. Murray Young outline the contours of Planter migration to and settlement of Nova Scotia and what would become New Brunswick, while Esther Clark Wright and Ernest A. Clarke provide a glimpse of the complexity for the Planters of both the migration experience and the American Revolu­tion by focusing specifically on Cumberland Township.

The "Historiographical Context" includes a comprehensive discussion by Jack Greene, Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, of recent developments in the writing of the history of colonial New England. Since it is their New England roots that define the Planters as a group, such an overview is suggestive of future directions for Planter research. George Rawlyk, a friend of Planter Studies, describes develop­ments in Canadian scholarship relating to eighteenth-century Maritime history since the appearance of Brebner's work over fifty years ago. Barry Cahill's discussion on the sources for Planter Studies at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia provides an excellent starting point for anyone interested in pursuing the Planters, while Terrence Punch issues a timely reminder that historical genealogy has much to offer the academic historian.

Graeme Wynn, one of Canada's foremost geographers, prefaces the section on "Culture and Society" with an overview of the Maritime Provinces in 1800. He is followed by four young scholars, Debra McNabb, Elizabeth Mancke, Allen Robertson and Daniel Goodwin, who studied the Planters as part of their graduate school experience. Their careful research into land holding patterns, religious beliefs, and comparative developments in British North America and the United States testify to the new questions now being asked about the Planters. Thomas Vincent and Gwendolyn Davies, both established scholars in the field of eighteenth-century British North American literature, explore aspects of the Planter written heritage.

Introduction 13

Some of the most vital Planter scholarship currently underway is focused on material culture. Allen Penney, in his fine study of the Simeon Perkins House, cautions us against wearing rose-coloured glasses in our efforts to interpret the Planters. Daniel Norris and Heather Davidson demonstrate that the Planter material heritage is a changing and evolving reality, not one that can be fixed for all time. M. A. MacDonald and Robert Elliot describe Planter artifacts which have surfaced in their search for material culture from New Brunswick's "early comers." Finally, Deborah Trask explains what grave markers reveal about Planter society.

To conclude the conference, five people were asked to offer brief comments on future directions for Planter Studies. Phillip Buckner, Brian Cuthbertson, Marie Elwood, James Morrison and William Naftel are people who, both through their offices and their research, have had a significant impact on the history of Atlantic Canada in recent years. They offer wise counsel to scholars considering the Planters as a field of study. Esther Clark Wright's banquet address, which stirred a few comments among her listeners, is also published here. At the banquet, Dr. Wright was proclaimed the first Planter Scholar by the Planter Studies Committee. Dr. Wright's lifetime interest in the history of the Maritime Provinces in general, and the Planters in particular, made her an obvious choice for this distinction. From her address to the banqueters at Blomidon Inn, it is clear that she has lost none of her fighting spirit or her commitment to regional scholarship. Her comments and her injunction to "hang on" to our spelling provide a fitting ending to the volume.

A highlight of the conference was a presentation of selections from Around Alline, an opera/drama composed by Michael R. Miller of Mount Allison University. Professor Miller, pianist, and David Carle (Atlantic Baptist College), Baritone, performed in Acadia's Manning Memorial Chapel on a beautiful autumn day. The capacity audience was delighted with yet another interpretation of Planter evangelist Henry Alline, whose spirit seemed to hover over the conference deliberations. Unfortunately, it is impossible to publish the opera in this forum but readers will be happy to know that the performance was captured for posterity on video by Acadia's Audio Visual Department.

They Planted Well serves up a veritable Maritime "hodge-podge" of methodologies and queries relating to the Planters. Most of the research is tentative — "work in progress" — and little of it definitive. Much remains to be done. For that reason Planter Studies, and eighteenth-century Maritime history generally, is an exciting field and one which promises to make the New England Planters in Maritime Canada conference but the first of many on the Planter experience.

MARGARET CONRAD