"The New Englander of Nova Scotia" by Anne Borden Harding, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, taken from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register,  Vol. CXVI, No. 461., January 1962, pg. 3-13.

In "The Neutral Yankee of Nova Scotia",  John  Bartlett  Brebner  considers the question:  What  changed the  New  England  Republican of 1760 into the British  North  American?   The  implication is that this change took place during the  years  between 1775 and 1784.   Nothing  could  be further from the truth.  The transition  required  more than fifty years.  The  ravaging of the coast of Nova  Scotia  by  privateers in two wars,  the  invasion of British  Canada  by  the  United  States during  the  War of 1812,  and the change in the concept of  government in  Great  Britain from the autocratic rule of the  House  of  Hanover  to  the  beginnings  of  one  of the truly democratic  governments  of  our  time contributed to it.  Although the War of 1812 was so  unpopular in New  England  that  representatives of the six states met in Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  threatened  secession,  the New Englander  of  Nova  Scotia  still  found  himself  engaged in war  against overwhelmingly  superior  forces.  In  the  words of  the  former  Canadian national anthem:

The struggle  probably laid the  foundation  for the Canada of today since, for the first time,  the son of New  England was brought to the realization that while New England had remained to him a motherland,  the United States had for the most part forgotten his sonship.

A new and  different  people had  emerged from the  amalgamation of the old settlers and the new  immigrants  who had come in  waves  during the quartercentury after the Revolution to the shores of the thirteen original colonies, and New England had lost her  leading  position in the affairs of the nation.   The New Englander is ever a realist and  transplantation to the soil of Nova Scotia had not made him less so.  Since there  was  nothing to be  gained by looking southwestward,  he would  henceforth look  eastward to Britain.  How determinedly  he  cut  himself off  from  remembrance  of  the  past is best illustrated  by the fact that in a  census of  Yarmouth  County in the 1880s the descendants of those men who on 8 December 1775  appealed  to be allowed to maintain a  position of  neutrality  because:  "We were  almost all of us born in New England,"1 gave their national origin as "English".

Throughout the hundred years from 1660 to 1760 the New Englander fought again and again for  Nova  Scotia with very  little help from the  mother  country.While the struggle between  France and  England in Europe was power politics, in the  Colonies it was  self-preservation.  As long as the French-conceived attacks sent the Indians  against the  isolated  inhabitants of New York and Maine,  the British must hug the  shores and  could  make little progress in expanding their  settlements  and their commerce.2   Many times the men from Massachusetts with the help of New Hampshire,  Connecticut, and Rhode Island had conquered Nova Scotia only to have a treaty,  made in Europe,  return it to  France.  In the  invasion  of 1709-10,  Massachusetts  sent  3,250  men, exclusive  of  officers,  New  Hampshire  sent  304  officers  and men,  and Connecticut sent 516 officers and men.  After 1711  Annapolis Royal remained in the hands of the  British forces  but it was to Boston that the Governors must look  for men and  money to repair and  maintain it.3

The New Englanders to Nova Scotia

At Louisburg in 1745, 4,000 Massachusetts men,  500 Connecticut men,  300 New Hampshire men, and 300 men from Rhode Island under General William  Pepperell subdued the fortress but again  England  returned Cape Breton to the French.4   Not until the  Seven  Years  War  did  England  supply either men or money in sufficient quantity to accomplish her purpose of completely destroying French power in North America. As always New England sent her full complement of men
to aid in the  struggle and at  Beausejour  alone  there  were 2,000 men from Massachusetts.

With Nova  Scotia firmly  in  the  hands of the  English  in  1759,  Governor Lawrence  looked  southward for  settlers for his  Province.  The  Cornwallis colonization  had  proven a  disappointment.  The terms of settlement offered to the "officers and private men lately dismissed from His Majesty's Service" and  to  "carpenters,  shipwrights,  smiths,  masons,  joiners,  brickmakers, bricklayers,  and all other artificers"  had been generous---"50 acres in fee simple to every private soldier or seaman,  free from the payment of any quit rents or taxes for ten years at the  expiration thereof no person to pay more than one shilling per annum for every 50 acres so granted." The officers were to have up to 600 acres for men above the  rank of Captain on the same terms.  The settlers were to be  "subsisted during the  passage and for twelve months after their  arrival"  and they were to be given  "materials and utensils for husbandry, clearing and cultivating the land, erecting  habitations, carrying on the fisheries,  and such other purposes as shall be  deemed  necessary for
their  support"5

Despite all the help given by the mother  country to the  first  pioneers of Halifax County and to the German, Swiss and French Protestants later induced to emigrate, the attempts had been failures. At the height of her prosperity Halifax had an estimated  6000+  inhabitants.  In 1760 there were at Halifax 3,000+  persons--disappointed  immigrants  from  England;  peasants from the Continent; camp  followers, sutlers, and  contractors from New England eager for public money.   Disease had taken a heavy toll of the early settlers and others who had little liking for the hard work of pioneering new settlements had left  for the  better  established  older  colonies.

Before 1755, 1,300 German, Swiss,  and French Huguenots had formed their own community  at  Lunenburg.  If Nova Scotia were to be the prosperous Province of Governor Lawrence's dream, sturdy, resourceful men of New England must be induced to make their homes there.

The terms offered to the Colonials were  vastly different from those granted to the English and Continental settlers of 1749-50.  About all that Governor Lawrence could promise them was the bare land,  "full liberty of conscience, and members of dissenting congregations to be excused from tithes to support the Church of England."6   Everywhere  throughout  New  England  were former soldiers  and  seamen,  fishermen  and  traders  who  knew at first hand the potential  wealth of Nova  Scotia and who  doubtless knew also the report of Engineer Paul  Mascarene in which he states:

"The soil  produces  wheat, rye,  barley,  oats, all manner of pulse, garden roots, and herbs, and  abounds in cattle and plenty tame and wild fowl... It is no less rich in its  produce that relates to trade...Its woods are filled with Oak, Fir Pine of all sorts fit for masts, Pitch, Tar, Beach Maple, Ash, Birch Asp, etc..."“There are also undoubtedly  several iron mines and Copper mines, the latter at Cape Dore....there  are good coal  mines and  quarry of  soft  stone near Chignecto  {Cumberland}  and at  Missisquash cove ten leagues from Annapolis Royal,  as also in St. Johns River,  very good and plenty of white marble is found which turns into very good lime...but the most material is the fishing of Cod which all the coasts abound with and seems to be inexhaustible." 7

Within a matter of  months  settlers began to trickle  into the Province from various  communities in New  England.   The first  settlers  at Yarmouth were three  families  from  Sandwich,  Massachusetts, and  two  from  Connecticut, Campbell's and G.S. Brown's  histories of Yarmouth  give us a complete record of the settlement of that township with the former residences of all settlers. Although in October 1763  Morris and  Buldely  reported: "Yarmouth  has  also about fifty families, few among them of ability,...are in the  same situation as Barrington,"8 in 1767 the township, with 78 families totalling 379 persons, had "2 grist mills, 2 saw mills,  3 fishing vessels and 10 schooners & sloops, 1 horse, 72 oxen and bulls,  217 cows,  184 young meat cattle, 354 sheep, 103 swine;  had raised 76  bushels of wheat,  420  bushels of rye, 290 bushels of barley,  194 bushels of oats,  8 bushels of flax see, 6 hundreds of flax; had produced 1935 qtls. of 'merchantable' cod, 20 bbls. Of salmon, mackerel, etc., 22 bbls. of oil;" had sawed 56 thousand feet of board lumber.9

Barrington which on 1 July 1762 returned  "141 persons, 48 from Nantucket, 93 from Plymouth"10  and which  suffered  the  same  disparagement by Morris and Buldely,  in  Lieutenant  Governor  Franklin's  report,  although  lagging in agricultural production,  makes the impressive showing of "2263 qtls. of cod, 68 bbls. of  salmon,  mackerel, etc.,  and  32 bbls. of oil"11  and  compares favorable with Canso, the  acknowledged fishing capital of the North Atlantic and also with Halifax.

Liverpool, settled by families from Plymouth, Kingston, Eastman, and Chatham, Massachusetts, was engaged mostly with  lumbering,  shipbuilding , fisheries, and the carrying trade.  Her sloops and schooners plied between Newfoundland and Liverpool and  between  Liverpool and the  Atlantic ports,  bringing the cured fish, walrus teeth, whale oil, and other products of the north to Nova Scotia,  the  Colonies,  and the  West  Indies and  returning laden with the exotics  and  manufactured hands of the  official  reporters than her sister ports of the South Shore. 12 Governor  Lawrence, on his visit in August 1760, expressed  his  gratification  at the  progress made in so short a  time.  A grist  mill and  saw mill  had  been  erected  and her  shipyards  were busy building fishing boats, schooners and sloops.13

The Diary, which Simeon  Perkins kept over a period of fifty years, has left us a clearer  picture of his town and land  settlements.  The return of 1767 shows  "23 fishing boats and 15 schooners and sloops, 1 grist mill and 5 saw mills,"14 Besides plying her brisk  carrying trade, she had cured 4762 qtls. of cod, produced 383 bbls. of salmon and mackerel, and 34 bbls.of oil, sawed 335 M. feet of board lumber and raised enough grains and stock to sustain her citizens.15

The fourth of the  fishing  townships  reported  to  the  Lords of  Trade by Govermor  Lawrence on  20 September  1759  was  probably  Chester  with  its beautiful basin and its nearness to both timberland and fishing ground.  The thirty  families who came with their minister,  the Rev. John Seccombe, from Massachusetts had grown to 231 pesons by 1766 of whom 175 were Americans, 17 English, 17 Scottish, 11 Irish, and 11 Germans, Swiss and Huguenot.

Since the township returns for 1766 and 1770 have not survived we  do not have an accurate list of the families but the yield from their acres and the amount of fish caught, cured, salted and barrelled speak well for their industry.16

The agricultural  towns of the  Annapolis  Valley and  what is  now Cumberland County  and the  Bay Shore of  New  Brunswick,  Horton,  Cornwallis, Falmouth, Granville,  Onslow,  Truro,  Sackville,  and  possibly  Moncton, were the nine agricultural  townships  mentioned  by  Governor  Lawrence  in  his  July 1759 letter  to  the  Lords  of  Trade.  The  "six or eight  townships  more"  were probably  the  figments of  the  fertile  brains of  Colonel  McNutt  and  his fellows.17  Certainly  Governor  Lawrence had been  approached before 20 April 1759 by  representatives of  "associated  substantial  families" who wished to found  "2 or more  townships" in  Minas  Basin.18   These were the Connecticut and Rhode  Island  planters who  eventually  made up the  citizenry of Horton, Cornwallis,  Falmouth,  and  Granville.

In his "History of King's County,  Dr. A. W. H. Eaton has quoted  verbatim the text of the first grant of  Cornwallis and has  listed the  names of those who  received  subsequent  grants in  Horton and  Cornwallis.19  Perhaps  because a score or more of the  original grantees left Horton before the first  township  census it has been  assumed that many of them never came to Nova Scotia.

From a search of the  King's  County  deeds and the  records at the Provincial Department of Lands and Forests, Halifax, it  appears that they were in Horton at some time, if  only  for a short  period, and  many were large land owners.  Several  had  died  between  the  time  of  the  granting  of the lots and the settlement of the community.  One of these was Micajah Pride, the son of Capt. William  Pride of Norwich, Conn., and  the  brother of  William  Pride, also a grantee who brought with him to Horton Micajah's son Joseph, possibly with the intent of protecting the child's rights in his father's property.

Original Grantees of Township of Horton

In the files of the Nova Scotia  Archives at  Dalhousie  University,  Halifax, Nova  Scotia,  there is the  original  grant of  the township of Horton to the following men "all from Connecticut":-

One and one-half shares:  Major  Robert  DENNISON, Joseph OTIS,  Amos  FULLER, William  WELCH,  Jonathan  PALMETEER,  James  CLELLAND,  Abner  AVERY, Labeus HARRIS, Abraham HARDING,  Ephraim HARRIS, Jonathan HAMILTON, Asa HARRIS, John FLICKS,  Newton RANSOM,  Joshua WELCH, Oliver BULKELEY, Elijah BUELL, William COLDWELL, Samuel THOMSON,  Alexander WHALLY,  James NEWTON,  Charles DICKSON, William  PRIDE,   Nathaniel  FULLER,  Moses  WHEELER,  John  BISHOP,  Gilbert FORSYTH,  Samuel REED,  Eleazer MATHER,  Joseph MATHER, John MATHER, Benjamin MATHER,  Capt.  Elisha  LOTHROP,  Stully  SCRANTON, Samuel  COPP,  Johnathan SWEETLAND,  Nathaniel  FISH,  Jacob  BURNHAM,  Peleg  SANF. {?} MASON, Silas CRANE, Thomas MARTIN, Joshua  JONES, Stephen  HARDING,  Capt. John STANTON, Cornelius  PHELPS,  Noah  FULLER,  Samuel FISK {or FISH}, Andrew LISK, Nathan WEST, Robert AVERY, Cornelius PHELPS,Jr., Joshua RATHBONE, Arthur SEAFIELD, Thomas SPENCER,  Simeon  BRAINARD,  Samuel  PECK,  Gabos {?} LOTHROP, Brotherton MARTIN, Isaac FOX, Samuel DEWAY{?}, Abijah FULLER, Joseph DENISON, Cornelius RICH, Abraham PERKINS, Obadiah HOLFOLD.

One Share:  Jeremiah COGSDON, William DICKS, James LOCKHART, John DETRICK, Ebenezer PALMETTER, Jonathan  CHAPPELL, Christopher MINARD, Darius MINARD, James WEBB,  Silas STARK,  WIlliam  FRINK,  James WICKWIRE,  John TENNANT, Lemuel HARDING, John GRANT, Thomas MINARD,  John COPE, Daniel DODGE, Amos DODGE,  Zebediah WICKWIRE,  Peter GRAVES,  Nathaniel ROGERS,  Asa KILBURN, Elisha SCOVILL,  Jacob  BROWN, Isaac  THOMSON,  Thomas  THOMSON,  Sherman DENISON, Joseph WILLOUGHBY, Thomas JOHNSON, Joseph CHESTER, William BOOTH, Joseph COMSTOCK,  Augustus  ROGERS,  William ATWELL,  Charles MORRIS, Jr., John TAGGART, John DARROW, John COLLWELL, Timothy FORSYTH, John TURNER,Jr.,
Walter WATERHOUSE, Jeremiah COMSTOCK, Rufus  COMSTOCK, Nathaniel CHAPPELL, Andrew  CHAPPELL, Stephen  BAKER, Jabez  HUNTLY, Ameriah LYON, John HATCH, Joshua  KNIGHT,  Obadiah STARK,  Joseph PITTS,  Jacob BACON,  John ATWELL, David JOHNSON, John WHITNEY, Lemuel FOX,  Eleaser GRAVES, Stephen EMERSON, Samuel GRIFFIN, Jedediah WILLIAMS, William BABBIT,  Benjamin  PECK, Andrew DENISON.

One-half  share:  Ezekial  GARDNER,  John  BURDOCK,  James JONES, Jonathan HARRIS, Jr., John DICKSON, Daniel HAMILTON, Thomas HARDING, Matthew LEWIS, Joshua  PERKINS,  Edward  LOVERIDGE,  Charles  RANDAL, Elisha CHAPMAN, Asa JONES,  Bryant  BROWN,  Benjamin  FITCH,  John  BISHOP,  John MASON, Isaac
THOMSON, Jr., Benjamin ATWELL, Peter BISHOP, Timothy BISHOP, Micajah PRIDE, Solomon CHAPMAN,  John CARR,  John  HAMILTON,  Jacob  BACON,  Ezekial  FOX, Oliver  FOX, Isaac  FOX, Jr., James  HAMILTON, Jr.,  Samuel  PARSONS, Eben STAPLES, Nathaniel THOMSON, John OWEN,  Uriah SOUTHWARD, Jonathan BLACKMAN, Oliver THORP, William LISK, Joseph WATTS, Joseph OTIS, Jr., Daniel TENNANT, Elisha  BLACKMAN, Elisha  BLACKMAN Jr., JOHN  ENGLES,  Richard  BOSS{Bass}, Ezekial FITCH,  Nehemiah PALMER,  Isaac RATHBONE, Joseph SILL, 3rd., Samuel DENISON, Joseph ALLEN,  Daniel COGSDALE,  Ezra COGSDALE, Noah WESTON, Silas PECK, Jr., Joseph  HACKETT,  Samuel  PECK,  Joseph  SPRAGUE, Timothy BUELL, Jonathan GRAVES, William SOUTHWARD,  Jesse WILLIAMS, Haines GRAVES, Ichabod BUELL.

R.G. Huling in the  "Narragansett  Historical Register", vol. 7, p. 89-135, 1889,  deals with the  Rhode  Island  families who left that colony to make their homes in Falmouth,  Granville, and Sackville and to  add new settlers to the established townships.  The population of Sackville was augmented in 1768 by the coming of the total membership of a Baptist church from Swansea,
Mass., under the leadership of the Rev. Nathaniel Mason. 20

The Groups that settled Onslow, Truro, and Londonderry were partly Irish and partly American.  Possibly the  greater number of those listed as Irish were  actually  'Scotch-Irish'  who had lived for some time in Londonderry, N.H. and  thereabouts and had  intermarried with the older English-American families.  The fact that the  church  records of  Londonderry have not been
preserved  makes it impossible to say with  certainty which of the Irish of Nova Scotia were from this group but  genealogy after genealogy in Miller's work cites  Londonderry as the home of the family before the immigration to Colchester Country. 21

Each year of the early  1760s saw  the beginning of one or more settlements until,  in  1766,  there  were 30  townships listed.  Miramachi, St. John’s River, the Cape Sable towns of  Argyle  and  Pubnico,  and  the  overlooked community of Ragged Islands raises the total to 34. In June 1762 a group of descendants of the soldiers  who  fought in the abortive invasion of Canada in 1690 under William  Phipps and who were rewarded for their services by a belated grant of land in  Rowley, Canada, now Rindge, N.H., left that place to settle  the  St. John’s Valley. 22   The  excellent work by W. C. Milner known as 'The Records of Chignecto' covers  the  settlement  of the present Cumberland County and the eastern shore of New Brunswick.

In 1756, many of the Acadians,  who the year before had been transported to South Carolina and Georgia, had  procured  boats and made their way back to their former homes where they  joined the Indians in  harassing and killing the  settlers.   Because of this,  the Acadian  inhabitants of Cape  Sable, descendants  of the  French  aristocrats  who  had  come to New France with Claude and Charles de la Tour, came under suspicion.  They were innocent of any  complicity  in the crimes  and had  petitioned  Gov. Thomas Pownall of Massachusetts to allow  them to settle in Massachusetts if they were not to be allowed to stay in their  dearly  loved home in Acadia since "we had all rather die here than go to any French Dominions to live" 23

They were willing to take the oaths of allegiance,  pay their yearly taxes, and support and  maintain the  war  against the king of France. 24  Despite all this and  despite the  intervention on their behalf by Governor Pownall and  General  Amherst,  the  government  at  Halifax in the  spring of 1759 swooped down upon them and  loaded 152 men , women, and children on board a transport bound for England. 25  It was this tragic incident, dealt with in the papers of the Rev. Andrew Brown,  which  fell  into  the hands of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and served as a basis for his story-poem "Evangeline."

Readers of the poem have been under the impression that the settlers of the Annapolis  Valley sat down  in a land  flowing with milk and honey prepared for them by the  Normandy  peasant  whose industry and culture far exceeded their own.  When we examine the  records we discover how far from the truth is this notion. In the first place, the Acadians of the Bay of Fundy region were of a completely different stock from the aristocratic Frenchmen of the Cape Sable townships.  Like the  voyageurs of  French Canada the Acadian of the Minas and  Chignecto regions were peasants--no better and no worse than others of their  kind -- who had  intermarried  to  some  extent  with  the Indians.26

Paul Mascarene,  himself a native of France,  in his report of 1720 states: "The French inhabitants of Bay of Fundy beside are very little industrious; their lands have not improved as might be expected, they living in a manner from hand to mouth,  and provided  they  have a good field of  Cabbages and Bread enough for their families, with what fodder is  sufficient  for their cattle they seldom look for much further improvement."27

And 12 Sept. 1745, Messrs. De Beauharnais and  Hocquart writing to the Count De Maurepas concerning the same inhabitants: "The Acadians have not extended their  plantations  since  they  have come under  English  domination; their houses are wretched wooden  boxes without  conveniences and without ornament and scarcely containing the most necessary furniture; but they are extremely covetous of specie.  Since the settlement of Ile Royale they have drawn from Louisburg  by  means of their  trade in cattle and all the  other provisions almost  all  the  specie  the  King  annually  sent out;  it never makes its appearance again, they are  particularly careful to conceal it."

He goes on to say  that the  specie is  being  hoarded  to  facilitate their removal  to  Quebec.28   These two  reports  present a much  less  glamorous picture of the land the New Englanders inherited.

There have  been  many  misleading  representations of the New  Englander in Nova Scotia.   The officials at Halifax were fond of the  expression "men of ability."  By this they meant  simply men of money  which seems to have been their measure  of the worth of all men.

The early immigrants, who had spent their substance in making a start in a new land which for the  first  few  years  proved so  unfriendly that some settlements  would have been unable to carry on without some help form the Province, were of very little account in the estimation of the bureaucrats who drew their livings from administering the civil affairs of these same men.

The journal of Robinson and Riston 29 has been quoted often to prove that the new  inhabitant of the Minas  Basin was a  slothful  and  inefficient farmer.   To the  visitors from  Yorkshire, where, to wrest a living from the barren and  uncooperative soil,  one must rise at the first streak of dawn and labour until dusk, the farmers of the lush valleys of Nova Scotia who did not begin their labours until seven o'clock, rotated their crops, and cultivated only  part of their  acreage while the rest lay fallow for nature to renew,  were sadly wanting in industry.  That in such a fertile land and such a climate,  excessive  labour was  unnecessary and wasteful of men's time was a concept they were totally unprepared by experience to accept.

Who were the men who between 1759 and 1775 left their homes in New England to start anew in Nova  Scotia?   Were  they,  as had been represented, the newcomers  and  failures of the  older colonies?  Not at all.  A glance at the genealogies of these  settlers shows that  they are the descendants of the oldest and most prominent families of New England. The roster of their ancestors  reads like a roll of  ancestors  of the  Society  of  Mayflower Descendants,  The  Society  of  Colonial  Wars, and  the Colonial Dames of America.

Scions of the Woodburys, Thorndikes, Houchins,  Hutchinsons, Allens, Fales, Faxons,  Fishers,  Whittemores,  Bournes,  Tildens,  Tuppers,  Goodspeeds, Doanes, Dunhams,  Mortons,  Harlows,  Bradfords,  Kemptons,  Wheelwrights, Fowlers, Tapps, Paines, Fullers, Drakes,  Godfreys,  Freemans, Churchills, Tripps, Cornings, and many more joined the trek to the new province. 30

The fact that the majority of these  people were  dissenters has received very  little  attention  from  historians.  Although  both  Yarmouth  and Liverpool were settled by nominal Congregationalists, the speed with which their people  embraced the  new  doctrine of  Methodism  demonstrates  how lightly they held to their denominational beliefs.

The settlers along the Bay of Fundy were  descendants of the Baptists and Quakers who sought refuge in Rhode  Island and Nantucket from the Puritan persecution,  of the antinomians who  joined the Rev. John Wheelwright in exile in New Hampshire, and of the supporters of Cromwell's  Commonwealth who,  in  Connecticut  at the risk of life and  fortune,  had  hidden the regicides  from the  wrath of the King's  party after the  Restoration of 1660.

Although many Salem families such as the Goochs, Loverings, Prides, Balchs, and Crawfords, who sought the obscurity of the hinterlands of Maine during the reign of Charles II,  returned to Salem with the  accession of William and Mary to the throne, it was not long before they had left the unfriendly climate of the  royalist  town to  join  themselves  to the communities of like-minded Connecticut “Yankees."

The paucity of information concerning these people is due to a large extent to the fact that there are no church records to be consulted.

In spite of the fact that many of the  offspring of  Quaker parents did not continue in the faith of the fathers, they did not become reconciled to the established churches; many others were  unchurched, though not irreligious; the Baptists kept a record only of the baptisms and church membership.  As late as 1828 Capt. William Moonsom of the  52nd Light Infantry stationed at Halifax,  writing  home to England,  states  that  one  fourth  of  all the Protestant congregations in Nova Scotia were Baptist. 31

W. A. Calnek and A. W. Savary in their  history of  Annnapolis  state  that 10,027 out of 18,121 residents of the  County of Annapolis were Baptists in 1871 and in the Annapolis  returns  of 1881 in a total population of 20,598 persons there were 11,199 Baptists.32

It is not to be  wondered  at, that the  sons  and  grandsons of these men, remembering  the  disabilities  under  which  their  forebears had labored, passed in 1827 the  Catholic  Emancipation Act.  To paraphrase Edmund Burke they desired  liberty for their own  because  they  trespassed  on no man's conscience.

The misconceptions  respecting  the New  Englanders who accepted Governor Lawrence's invitation  are  perhaps part and parcel of the misconceptions we entertain concerning the American colonies, England, and the world of that day.

The Industrial Revolution had not begun. Life was comparatively primitive at best.  The three  major  enterprises  mentioned  by  Edmund Burke in a speech 19 April 1774, fishing (including whaling), agriculture, and ship- building, were the  areas in which everyone laboured.  The civil servants were few; the professions were limited.  Although  a new class had sprung up to answer the need of government in London to find suppliers for their settlers and armed forces, their numbers were few and today we should call them war profiteers.  Despite the limited field of employment the colonies
were enjoying prosperity.  Edmund Burke says of them; "For my part I never cast an  eye on  their  flourishing  commerce  and  their  cultivated  and commodious  life  but they  seem to me  rather  ancient  nations  grown to perfection  through a  long  series  of  fortunate  events  and a train of successful  industry  accumulating  wealth  in  many  centuries  than  the colonies of yesterday."33

Again he speaks of their whale fishery:  "Today they are in Hudson's Bay, the Davis  Straits, and even the Antarctic.. There is no sea but what is vexed by their fisheries, no climate that does not witness their toils." The men of Nantucket and Cape  Cod were sharers in these toils and these rich rewards.   The word  "substantial"  was  applied to them as well as to the Connecticut  families.  In William F. Macy, History of Nantucket, we read:  "Under the  circumstances no one would suppose that any of the inhabitants could feel an inclination to emigrate with their families to other places."

The term "neutral" has been applied to the Nova Scotia settlers during the American Revolution.   Perhaps non-combatant would be a more exact term to use for the majority because support and comfort was given to the Colonial side, both tangilbly and intangible. We shall never know how many returned to Massachusetts and the other home colonies to fight in the revolutionary armies.  Abraham Gesner gives the population of Nova Scotia as reported to the Board  of  Trade  in 1772 as 18,300  and  that of 1781 as 12,000. 34 These figures tell their own story.

The names of Hyatt Young of Liverpool and Jeremiah Frost, since they appear in the  records,  are  known to most  but the  young  men who went quietly, without  fanfare,  from  their  homes  to return  as quietly after 1782 are unnumbered.   Some we know to have been in New England;  others we can only surmise.   The  uprisings  in  St. John’s  River  and  Chignecto  have been carefully covered by W. C. Milner. 35

The Memorial to the Massachusetts Council, dated 25 Sept. 1779, from William Porterfield,  John Matthews,  Thomas  Hayden,  and Jonathan  Lock of  Ragged Islands protesting a raid on their homes by  privateers armed with authority from the  Continental  Congress reads in part:  "We in this Harbour who have done so much for America,  that have helped 300 or 400 prisoners up along to America and given part of our living to them and have  concealed  Privateers and prizes, too, form the British Cruisers in this Harbour." 36

If the  republicans  of  the  central  section  of  Nova  Scotia  were  less revolutionary  than those of Chignecto  and  Passamaquoddy, it may have been that they were older  and more settled men.   The "men of substance" who had expended so much  money  and  effort in  establishing  themselves in the new Province  and  who had  already  suffered so much loss,  much of it from the Revolution, could not easily risk their own and their children's future.

Also, many of the leaders of the  revolutionary  party in Massachusetts were known and  distrusted by them.   Men who had  served in the  Seven Years War had little  reason to trust John  Hancock and his  partners 37 But if they gave little help to the Colonies they gave none to Halifax. They refused to take the  Oath  of  Allegiance or to become  militiamen or officers.  On 31 July 1775 Governor  Legge wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth:  "Our inhabitants of Passamaquoddy and  St. John's River are wholly form New England as are a greater  part of the  inhabitants of  Annapolis  Royal  and  those  of  the townships of Cornwallis,  Horton,  Falmouth, and  Newport, some of them not forty miles from this township, that by reason of their connection with the people of New England, little or no dependence can be placed on the militia there to make any resistance against them." 38  Simeon Perkins, Colonel of Militia at Liverpool, was  unable to find any men of  officer  material who
would serve with him. 39

When the fighting was over, however,  and the  Loyalists came to join them, families and friends who had  taken  opposite  sides in the controversy sat down together, without  rancour,  at council table and in Assembly to build His Majesty's  Province of Nova Scotia.  Robert R. McLeod lists the leaders of Nova  Scotia who were  descendants  of  New  Englanders,  Loyalist  and Pre-Loyalist,  Thomas  Chandler  Haliburton,  Sir  Samuel Cunard, Governor Wentworth, Bishop Inglis, General Inglis, Bishop Binney, Sir Charles Tupper, W.S. Fielding,  Dr. Borden , and Dr. Silas Rand, and adds:  "The History of Nova Scotia cannot be written without giving a large place to the so-called Yankee element.  We owe the American who came before the Loyalist a debt of gratitude  for his  sturdy  insistence on the  rights that were reluctantly granted by the English governors at Halifax."40

In speaking of their kind in the House  of Commons, 17 March 1773, Edmund Burke said: "I think it as little in our  power to change their republican religion as their free descent."
 

REFERENCES

1.  J. R. Campbell, 'History of Yarmouth', p.81
2.  Cf. Letters; Governor Lawrence to Governor Shirley;  Governor Shirley to Governor        Lawrence; Governor  Shirley to Sir  Thomas  Robinson; Governor Philips to Lord Carteret.  'Nova Scotia Documents', p. 378, 384, 385, 388.
3.  'Ibid'., Letters"  Governor  Mascarene to  Governor  Shirley; Governor Mascarene to the Lords of Trade, p. 131-133, 140, 146, 149, 150.
4.  Beamish Murdock, 'History of Nova Scotia', vol 2, p.68
5.  N.S.D., p. 495, 496.
6.  N.S.P.A. 301 - No. 3. Cf. J. B. Brebner,  'Neutral  Yankees  of Nova Scotia', p. 27.
7. Paul Mascarene, Engineer, 'Description of Nova Scotia', 1720, N.S.S., pgs. 39-49.
8.  Report to the Council, October 1763
9.  "A General Return of the several Townships in the Province of Nova Scotia, the first day of Jan. 1767," signed by Lt. Gov. Michael Franklin, N.S. P.A., Halifax, N.S.  Copy in  Library of N.E. Historic  Genealogical Society, Boston, Mass.
10.  Return for Barrington, N.S.P.A., Halifax, N.S.
11.  Lt. Governor Franklin's Return, 1 Jan. 1767.
12.  Simeon Perkins Diary, N.S.P.A., Halifax, N.S. Copy in New York Public Library.
13.  R.R. McLeod, 'Markland; or Nova Scotia', p. 142.
14.  Lt. Governor Franklin's Return, 1 Jan. 1767.
15. 'Ibid.'
16. 'Ibid'
17. Letters of Governor Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, 20 April 1759. N.S. P. A., Halifax N.S.
18.  'Ibid."
19.  1910 Ed., pg 75.
20. W.C. Milner, "Records of Chignecto," 'Nova  Scotia  Historical  Society Collections', vol. 15.
21. Thomas Miller,  Historical and  Genealogical  Records  of  Colchester County.
22.  'History of Rindge, New Hampshire', N.H. Hist. Soc., Concord, N.H.
23.  N.S.D., p. 306
24.  'Ibid'
25.  'Ibid' p. 308
26.  'ibid', p. 6
27.  'Ibid', p. 42.
28.  N.York Co. Documents, vol 10, quoted by Thomas B. Akins in a footnote,
N.S.D. pg. 157, 158.
29.  'A Journey through Nova Scotia', 1774.
30.  Cf. "Genealogies of Queens County Families"  by  Thomas  Brenton  Smith, N.S.P.A., Halifax, N.S.; G.S.Brown, "Genealogies of Yarmouth Families"; Fred E. Crowell, "New  Englander in Nova  Scotia" (genealogies),  New England Historical Genealogical Society, Boston, Mass.
31. Published in London, 1830.
32.  W.A. Calnek and A. W. Savery, 'History of Annapolis’, p. 318.
33.  Speech, 19 April 1774, House of Commons.
34.  Abraham Gesner, 'Industrial Resources of Nova Scotia', Halifax, 1849.
35.  "Records of Chignecto," Nova Scotia Historical Soc. Coll., vol. 15.
36.  N.S.P.A. Halifax, N.S., Shelburne Records; R.R. McLeod, Markland; or Nova Scotia, pg 306
37. Cf. N.S.D., pg. 422,426,626,630, 631
38.  R.R. McLeod, Markland; or Nova Scotia' pg. 304
39.  Simeon Perkins Diary, Oct. 18, 1774.
40.  R.R.McLeod, 'Markland; Nova Scotia', p.51.

[We are indebted to SUZANNE WHYTE swhyte@email.msn.com
for typing of this history of THE NEW ENGLANDER OF NOVA SCOTIA]