Thanks to a retired Kings County school teacher, I have an inkling of how some of us observed Christmas half a century ago.

Gordon Hansford grew up in Wolfville in the ’30s and while in high school he played in the brass and reed band. Every Christmas members of the band would be asked to carry their instruments to the belfry of the Baptist Church; from the belfry they would serenade the town with Christmas carols.

At the December meeting of the Kings County Historical Society, Gordon Hansford spoke about those Christmas serenades from the church belfry. It was a tradition for a long time, Hansford said as he recalled the difficult climb up the ladders to the belfry carrying his drum.

One snowy Christmas night he was unable to accompany the band on their climb to the belfry. His father who ran a barber shop asked him to shovel the sidewalks and while he was removing ice and snow, he heard music from the belfry wafting over the town. Until that moment he didn’t realize how beautiful the carols sounded.

“I’ll always cherish the memory of those Christmas nights in the belfry,” Gordon said as he sat down.

I regretted not taking notes while he talked. His tale of the belfry serenades was a glimpse of a Christmas few of us will ever know and I felt it was worth preserving. I said as much to Gordon later, asking him to tell me the story again so I could write it down and run it in this column. Gordon offered to put the story on paper for me and here it is in his own words. He called it “The Band in the Belfry.”

“Back in the days just before WW11, I lived in Wolfville and attended the high school there. I played the snare drum in the brass and reed band which was directed by the Principal, Rex Porter.

“A week or so before Christmas, in the early evening, six or eight of the band members would climb up into the belfry of the Baptist Church at the corner of Highland Avenue and Main Street. Led by Mr. Porter, we would play carols which would carry over the town.

“It was really an experience hearing the beautiful old Christmas tunes float out over the busy Main Street as the snowflakes drifted down. We could look across the town, the dykelands and Minas Basin toward the far-off lights of Kingsport.

“It was cramped and cold with lots of cobwebs up in the windy steeple, but there was always hot cocoa and cookies to warm us up afterward, provided by Mr. Porter and his wife Ruth.

“We also played for hockey games in the old Acadia rink, now converted to the Atlantic Theater. We played between periods, fueled with hot dogs passed up from the canteen next to the band room.”

Gordon told me he was an original member of the high school band and was a member when the ritual of playing in the belfry first started. He played in the belfry at Christmas for several years and with the band when it was invited to various Yuletide events in the town.

Called away by the start of World War Two, Gordon couldn’t tell me how many years the band serenaded the town from the belfry. “It probably went on for as long as Mr. Porter had a high school band,” he said.

A meadow and a ford, the ford a crossing on Bass Creek, the surrounding land an expanse of meadow wrested from the wilderness by the early settlers.

In 1855 the residents of Bass Creek decided that the meadows and ford should be combined to change the name of their community to Medford. Besides, Bass Creek was a common and unimaginative place-name and in the early 19th century there were more than a dozen or so Bass Creeks, Bass Rivers and Salmon Rivers in the province. Something more dignified and fitting was called for.

This explanation for the origin of Medford’s name was given in a history of the community compiled by the Women’s Institute and published in this paper in 1951. The explanation is suspect, however. Watson Kirkconnell’s study of place-names in Kings County, published as a booklet in 1971, suggests that Medford isn’t of Nova Scotian coinage; it was a place-name familiar to the New England Planters, Kirkconnell said. There are eight Medfords in the U.S., Kirkconnell noted, and the name probably came from Massachusetts.

Kirkconnell most likely is correct, but I prefer the Women’s Institute explanation for Medford’s origin. One of the first areas where land grants were given to the Planters, Medford may have been settled as early as 1770 or 1780, and the origin of its name really doesn’t matter. What is more interesting is how Medford has changed over the years, changes that can be linked to the demise of sailing ships as vehicles of commerce and the decline of the Minas Basin fishery.

The early settlers of Medford carried surnames that will be familiar to anyone who has studied Annapolis Valley history after the expulsion of the Acadians. There were Eatons, Harringtons, Huntlys, Bigelows, Cox’s, Parkers and Weavers among the first Planter and Loyalist settlers in Medford. The Institute history tells us that Jason Huntly, Ebenezer Eaton and a “Mr. Harrington” were the first to receive land grants in Medford. Their grants appeared to comprise most of what today is greater Medford.

Like many of the early settlements along the Minas Basin, Medford’s principal occupation was fishing along with some shipbuilding. The building of ships may have become a major industry early in the community’s existence. “Shipbuilding was carried on quite extensively and a number of ships large and small were built here in 1800 and later,” the Institute history says.

As was typical of the Planters and Loyalists wherever they settled in Nova Scotia, education and religion were priorities in early Medford. Land was granted to post-Acadian settlers as early as 1760 and by approximately 1775 Medford had its first school.

Because of its proximity to the sea, (and obviously because it was the era of sail) marine navigation was taught in the first school and a number graduates became sea captains. The Institute history mentions that early Medford captains were David Loomer and Abraham Coffin. Other sea captains turned out by the Medford school were James Lombard, Frank Barkhouse, Edgar Bigelow, James Burns, Lyman Parker and Clement Barkhouse; most were descendants of Medford’s early settlers.

You won’t find Medford indexed in Eaton’s History of Kings County and I was unable to find evidence that a wharf existed there. But according to the Institute history, the now sleepy community of summer homes briefly held a place of prominence along the Minas Basin. Eventually overshadowed by Kingsport and Canning in shipbuilding, Medford was forgotten by would-be developers with the arrival of the railroad.

However, Medford was one of the first communities to have telephone lines erected – which say the Women’s Institute was still owned by the residents in 1951.

On December 8, 1911, the schooner Hibernia sailed out of Hantsport bound for Barbados with a cargo of lumber. A few days after it sailed the Hibernia ran into rough weather. A series of storms left the Hibernia helpless and foundering; drifting for 29 days in severe winter weather, the crew of the Hibernia was near death when rescue finally came. That rescue was called “miraculous” by the newspapers of the time.

The story of the Hibernia has been told before in various annals and it is one of many marine disasters that have involved Nova Scotia’s sailing ships. There is a Kings County connection to the Hibernia shipwreck, however, a connection that will be of interest to local marine history buffs.

The master of the Hibernia when it left on its fateful voyage to Barbados was Capt. Charles McDade. McDade was born in Hall’s Harbour in 1864. The mate on the vessel, and also a Sea Captain, Charles Barkhouse, was born in Medford; the cook on the Hibernia was Medford native George Edmund Parsons.

This past October, Capt. McDade’s grandson, Garnet McDade of Hantsport, was guest speaker at the Wolfville Historical Society. His topic was the last voyage of the Hibernia. Using Mr. McDade’s research material and the files of marine buff Leon Barron, Kentville, here’s a brief look at what happened to the Hibernia.

The Hibernia was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sailing ships built in this region when Nova Scotia mariners were acknowledged masters of the sea. The three-masted schooner was built in Maitland by Osmond O’Brien & Company and launched in 1902. For almost a decade the Hibernia plied the oceans for the O’Brien family. Then came the final voyage out of Hantsport late in 1911. An account of the voyage by Capt. Charles Barkhouse was printed in the Anglican Church “Parish magazine.” (Apparently the Parish of Hantsport where it is noted that Mr. Barkhouse was “a faithful parishioner… and superintendent of our Sunday School.” Excerpts from the Barkhouse account follow.

“While the (Hibernia) was in the Bay of Fundy she encountered strong head winds with blinding snow and, after a week’s strenuous time, they were able to make Beaver Harbour (New Brunswick) where they were held wind bound for eight days.”

Setting sail the day after Christmas when the winds seemed favourable, the Hibernia again ran into stormy weather. A heavy gale “accompanied by a high, dangerous sea” battered the Hibernia and on December 27th a huge wave swept away part of the stern.

“To save the vessel from foundering,” the Parish magazine account continues, “the crew manned the two hand pumps…. There seemed every hope that the damage to the vessel could be repaired… but the same afternoon another big wave broke on board tearing away (more) of the stern, together with the wheel and the afterdeck. At the same time the three mast went by the board and the deck was level with the water.”

Only the Hibernia’s cargo of lumber kept her afloat. On January 8th another huge wave struck the ship; the wave “split the deck in two parts, carried away the afterhouse and swept overboard all the ship’s stores.”

After being battered by one storm after another, the Hibernia drifted helplessly. On January 16th a rescue attempt by a steamer failed due to the high seas and the Hibernia was left to its fate. Food and water gone, the crew gave up. Capt. McDade wrote a final letter to his wife, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Rescue came on January 17th, however, when the British steamer Denis sighted the Hibernia and was able to remove the crew. One month after McDade returned home his “final letter” was delivered to his wife. The bottle with his note had washed ashore in England.

Perhaps because it’s a third or fourth generation reproduction, the old map is confusing and difficult to read even with a powerful magnifying glass. For example, it’s difficult to determine whether the surveyor who produced the map of Horton Township 180 years ago described a road near Sheffield Mills as running “over the dyke passing the Baptist Meeting House and then over the mountain,” or as a road that passes the meeting house and has no connection with the dykes.

Whatever the mapmaker’s intent, we can see that in 1818 many of the roads in this area had no names and were often associated with prominent establishments (i.e. a meeting house or church). In some cases, references are to geographic features. For example, the area on the hill immediately north of Kentville is called the Black Forrest, a reference perhaps to the prominent stands of pines along Cornwallis Street (the “Pine Woods”) that Eaton mentioned in his Kings County history.

But before I tell you about more quaint references, a bit about the map. Actually, it’s maps. In 1818, one John Harris was commissioned to survey and produce plans of the Townships of Cornwallis, Horton and Aylesford. This he proceeded to do in November and December of 1818 and through January, 1819. Copies of the maps were obtained in Halifax by Richard Skinner, who has spent many hours pouring over them and translating much of the almost indecipherable handwriting.

I tried reading some of the writing on the maps with a magnifying glass and soon gave up. Thanks to Mr. Skinner’s efforts, however, I can pass along some of the quaint and curious descriptions of the area running roughly from Aylesford east to the Hants County border. You will find the designations amusing but keep in mind that in 1818 some areas had no official names and roads were often described by who lived along them.

“Up the Gaspereau (River) to the settlement at New Canaan” is one example of the designation for a road leading south from Wolfville. Other roads are designated simply as leading “to the Church’ or “to the town.” While Kentville is not named (one section of the map is missing) the location of the courthouse in the town is marked. The road leading from the courthouse is simply marked “from the courthouse;” another is designated as the “road to Cornwallis Town Plot,” while another is marked as “road from the post road.” A “good publick (sic) road over the mountain” is another amusing inscription, while another road has the designation “through a good settlement.”

In 1818 the Cornwallis River had still retained its Acadian name, at least on official documents. Both the Horton Township map and the Cornwallis, Aylesford Township map name the river as the “Cornwallis Dix Habitant.” The Acadians referred to the Cornwallis as the Grand Habitant and the river at Canning as being the lesser Habitant.

Richard Skinner mentioned that I would be amazed by the number of taverns shown on the old maps. Both taverns and churches are given prominence, which is a commentary of some sort on those times. I found half a dozen taverns on the maps, the majority of them outside Wolfville towards the Hants County border (probably because this was a heavily travelled area on the way to Windsor and Halifax).

Just south of Wolfville near the Post Road at Halfway River is a tavern, the name illegible. East of this, on the “road from Windsor by way of Mt. Dennison to Horton” are three more taverns; two are identified as Geo. Brown’s Tavern and Witter’s Tavern, while the third appears to be named Hare’s Tavern. Wolfville has Fowler’s Tavern, which is shown near a meeting-house, and in Kentville Peck’s Tavern was apparently noteworthy enough to be indicated on the map.