I find it unusual that one of the most influential and industrious Planters settling here in the 1760s is ignored in Eaton’s Kings County history.

In 1760, reads the Benjamin family genealogy, Obadiah Benjamin of Connecticut received a grant of 500 acres in the original township of Hortonville (Horton). Before he died some 45 years later, Benjamin had amassed a large estate and was by far one of the most successful of the New England Planters.

Eaton includes Obadiah in his list of original Horton grantees (giving the grant date as 1761) and this is the only mention of this illustrious gentleman. Surely Eaton was aware of Obadiah’s accomplishments since some of the enterprises he started were still in operation when the history was compiled.

What were Obadiah Benjamin’s accomplishments and why name him as one of the most successful Planters?

Obadiah Benjamin apparently was a miller by trade; shortly after settling here he traded some of his Horton Township grant for property on the Gaspereau River where he built a couple of mills. Benjamin parlayed these mills into a sizeable estate and when he died about 45 years after settling in Kings County he was a wealthy man. The evidence that he was indeed a man of affluence is found in the Benjamin family genealogy, which can be found at the Kings County Museum.

“When Obadiah Benjamin died… he had a considerable estate,” reads the section of the genealogy devoted to him. “He established a grist mill and saw mill on the Gaspereau River and gave a farm to each of his four sons.” The genealogy continues with its sketch of Obadiah by quoting from his will, thus providing an intimate glimpse of this Planter pioneer’s wealth.

“His will dated November 6, 1806, leaves to the eldest sons Stephen and Caleb, 20 shillings each, having provided both of them on farms with marshlands. To son Abel the lot of land where his house stands together with the Grist Mill and sawmill together with the water privileges next to Jacob Benjamin’s land.

“To the fourth son Obed, the sum of 160 pounds by sons Abel and Jacob (and) already received marshland. Fifth son Jacob, all farmland (and) buildings where I now live. To daughters Lydia Parker and Elizabeth Kinnie (besides what I have already given them) all household furniture of any kind, plus 20 pounds to be paid by my sons, Abel and Jacob, and one cow each.

“To his wife Deborah Strong (his first wife, Mary Hurd, had died in 1786) one half of a house, namely kitchen and east parlour with household furniture; also a good riding horse and saddle and two-year-old red heifer.”

A postscript: The Benjamin genealogy records that Obadiah and Mary Hurd are buried in the “old cemetery on Highland Avenue, Wolfville.” There is no old cemetery on Highland Avenue. Obadiah and Mary Benjamin are buried in the old Horton-Wolfville Burying Ground on Main Street, facing Highland Avenue. James Doyle Davison’s book on the burial ground, What Mean These Stones, contain a brief sketch of Obadiah. It’s interesting to find that Benjamin once owned the land that’s now centre square in Kentville.

When a monument was erected to Perez Coldwell several years ago, various newspapers chronicled the 1852 boating accident that resulted in the loss of seven lives and lead to coining the now familiar term “six precious souls from Acadia and a man from Gaspereau.”

Almost as if it is an afterthought, the newspaper articles mention the sole survivor of the boating mishap, George Benjamin of Gaspereau. In every account I’ve read of the incident, some of which date back more than 50 years, Benjamin is mentioned in passing, usually as a footnote; other than this mention, he is generally ignored.

But what of George Benjamin? What became of the other man from Gaspereau who survived that terrible day on Minas Basin in the summer of 1852?

There is evidence that George Benjamin’s life changed drastically after the tragedy. This was brought to my attention by Richard Skinner who with a bit of detective work, discovered Benjamin’s fate after the Minas Basin drowning. But some background first.

In a column last June I quoted from W. C. Milner’s Minas Basin history, offering some of the off-colour glimpses the author included in his work. One excerpt mentioned that a man named Benjamin, “who did not possess a very sound mind,” burned down a church in Wolfville around 1878. Benjamin was “taken in charge by his friends,” the account concluded and “sent to the asylum in Halifax.”

As a descendant of the Benjamins, Richard Skinner was curious to know if this was the same man who had survived the Minas Basin accident. He determined first that the Roman Catholic church in Wolfville had been destroyed by an arsonist around the year given by Milner. Judy Forsythe has written a history of the Wolfville Catholic church, an update based on an earlier work by David Young; and this gives the year of the fire as 1875 and names Charles Benjamin as the arsonist. Forsythe and Milner write that Benjamin set fire to the church when a priest refused to approve his marriage, said Benjamin apparently being “of unsound mind” at the time.

All accounts of the Minas Basin tragedy give Benjamin’s first name as George; Forsythe’s history of the Wolfville church gives Benjamin’s first name as Charles. However, they apparently are the same man and two sources confirm this.

The first is the extensive Benjamin family genealogy on file at the Kings County Museum. In the genealogy of Planter grantee Obadiah Benjamin, one of his descendants sired a son, Charles. Quoting from the genealogy, “Charles Thompson Benjamin was the sole survivor of an expedition on Minas Basin on June 7th, 1852, when ‘six precious souls from Acadia and a man from Gaspereau’ were drowned. Charles Thompson is believed to have died at the provincial asylum at Dartmouth.”

The second source is an obituary dated June 6, 1901, from the Berwick Register: “Charles T. Benjamin of Wolfville died at Mount Hope Asylum (in Dartmouth) on Monday of heart failure. He was 72 years of age and had been insane a great many years. He was the only survivor of the Minas Basin tragedy of 1852 when Professor Chipman, Rev. E. D. Very, four students and ‘a man from Gaspereau’ were drowned’.”

Undoubtedly overcome by the terrible accident, Benjamin apparently became unstable. Sadly, eight lives were lost in the 1852 accident on Minas Basin, the final victim being claimed decades later.

Kingsport’s most famous native son undoubtedly is Ebenezar Cox, 1828-1916; for a 30-year period beginning around 1864, Cox designed and built some of the finest sailing ships in Canada. At the very least, Cox ranked among the best as a shipbuilder and if he wasn’t first in Canada, he was number one in the Maritimes.

The Cox shipyard was located in Kingsport no more than a stone’s throw from the rejuvenated wharf and new marina. Cox is famous for having turned out some 30 schooners, brigs, barks and barquentines from his shipyard, a shipyard noted for producing some of the largest sailing ships in Canada.

Among the many outstanding ships that came from the Cox shipyard was a series quaintly named the K ships, the “K” obviously standing for Kingsport. Each of these ships, 10 in all, were given names beginning with the letter K, Katahdin and Kelverdale, for example.

The K ships of Kingsport were constructed between 1876 and 1890. Cox built them in partnership with Peter R. Crichton and Wolfville shipbuilder and merchant C. Rufus Burgess who also was involved with the Cornwallis Valley Railway. Crichton and Burgess apparently financed the building of the K ships and in his later years Cox may have been in the employ of one or both these gentlemen.

One of the odd things about the K ships of Kingsport, besides the unusual series of names, is that most met with violent ends, either as a result of submarine attacks or as victims of catastrophic weather. A number of the K ships ended their days sailing under foreign flags.

The last K ship built in the Cox shipyard was the barque Kings County, which was launched in 1890. Marine historian Leon Barron says the Kings County was one of five or six of the largest sailing ships built in Canada. Due to her size, Barron said, she had to be loaded and offloaded at moorings well away from shore.

Before the Kings County, Cox built the ship Karoo of 2031 tons. Launched in 1884 with C. Rufus Burgess as the major shareholder, the Karoo later sailed under a Norwegian flag.

The ship Kambira, 1952 tons, was launched in 1882, again with C. Rufus Burgess as the major shareholder. The Kambira was abandoned at sea in off Uruguay in 1905. The barque Kelverdale, 1132 tons, was launched by Cox the pervious year and was financed mainly by Peter R. Crichton. In 1903 the Kelverdale was sailing under a Spanish flag.

In 1880 the barque Kedron, 1160 tons, came down the ways at Kingsport and C. Rufus Burgess was the majority shareholder. In 1894 Kedron was under a Norwegian flag. The barque Katahdin, 1145 tons, was also launched in 1880 with Peter R. Crichton as a shareholder. Katahdin was abandoned at sea in 1904 while under a Norwegian flag.

The 1099 ton barque Kelvin was launched from Cox’s shipyard in 1879, again with Crichton as the major owner. The Kelvin was condemned and sold in Buenos Aires in 1899. Crichton financed the ship Kingsport, 1161 tons, that was launched in 1878. The Kingsport was wrecked near Buenos Aires in 1897.

The first two ships built by Cox in the K series, the Barque Kentigerm, 1877, and the barque Kingsport, 1876, were destroyed by German U boats in 1916.

During the Kings Historical Society lighthouse tour on August 24, Leon Barron will participate by giving a talk on the history of one of the old lighthouses that once stood on the Habitant River at long vanished Borden’s wharf.

It was a logical, appropriate choice for a speaker. Few local residents know as much about Bay of Fundy and Minas Basin lighthouses as Barron. In many years of research, he has gathered a near-encyclopaedic collection of lore on local lighthouses. That may seem to be an exaggeration. But when I met Leon recently he brought along two huge folders containing local lighthouse history and other marine lore. The folders represented only a fraction of the lore he’s found in the Journal and Proceedings of the House of Assembly.

Talking with Leon and reading the file, I discovered that we’ve had lighthouses on the local shoreline for over 150 years. To be exact, it was in the year 1848 when the first lighthouse was erected in Kings County. This was at Black Rock and Barron tells me it was “the first lighthouse east of Digby Gut.” The second lighthouse in this area was constructed at Horton Bluff a few years later, in 1851.

Barron said that at the time the Black Rock lighthouse went up there was “a lot of controversy for a long time on where it should be located.” When the government was looking at lighthouse sites, Barron said, some of the locations suggested were Black Rock, Isle Haute and Partridge Island near Parrsboro, which was then part of Kings County.

“There was a lot of wrangling and arguing, by sea captains, pilots and such over where to place lighthouses in this area,” Barron says. “I remember one story about the proposal to place a light on Partridge Island. This sea captain or pilot opposed it, saying it ‘would do nobody any good and would be an entire waste of taxpayer’s money’ and a lighthouse was never built there.”

Barron points out that a logical place for a lighthouse would have been Cape Split, but one was never built there. “There’s nothing in the old records (of the provincial House of Assembly) to indicate a light at Cape split was even suggested,” Barron says. “Instead, they built a lighthouse on Isle Haute, apparently figuring that a sea captain coming up the Bay of Fundy could see this light and use it to avoid the treacherous shoreline at Cape Split.”

While talking with Barron I made a few notes on local lighthouses. On the Isle Haute lighthouse, for example, the House of Assembly records indicate it was first proposed in 1840. When it was finally built in 1878, its first keeper Nelson Card (not Leon Card as I erroneously reported last week) received a salary of 100 pounds yearly.

The first lighthouse keeper at Horton Bluff was Robert King. King’s yearly salary was exactly half of that received by the keeper on Isle Haute. We can only speculate that the Isle Haute keeper was paid more because it was considered more hazardous, and certainly a more isolated, location than Horton Bluff.

As recently as 100 years ago there were two lighthouses on the Habitant River channel below Canning. They apparently weren’t all that far apart but they serviced two wharfs, one connecting with Saxon Street, the other with Canard Street which at the time weren’t joined as they are today.

I barely touched on some of the more interesting aspects of the Bay of Fundy’s Isle Haute when I wrote about it here two weeks ago. For example, Isle Haute, or high island, was aptly named by Champlain since its stupendous cliffs tower some 300 feet above the ocean. Due to these rugged cliffs there are only a few points where access to the island is possible.

As noted, I based my column on marine historian Dan Conlin’s Nova Scotia Museum curatorial report, prepared following an expedition to the island in 1997. In the report Mr. Conlin included details about the manned Isle Haute lighthouse which existed there for almost 80 years. Following are some of the highlights of the lighthouse history.

As shipping traffic increased in the Bay of Fundy in the 19th century, it became obvious that a lighthouse was necessary on Isle Haute. While first suggested in 1855 and “strongly recommended by the Royal Navy in 1857” due to a hazardous ledge west of the island, the lighthouse on Isle Haute wasn’t erected until decades later.

The lighthouse was established on the island in 1878 and its first keeper was Leon Card. This was a 53 foot, four storey wooden tower with an attached dwelling. From the shore to the lighthouse Card constructed a mile-long road “on a grade that will permit stores etc. to be hauled to the station.” The keeper cleared and cultivated fields around the lighthouse, built a wharf and shed and a 33-foot schooner.

One would think life as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island would be a dreary, lonely existence with little work to do and little if any recreation. However, Conlin’s account tells us Card and his family, wife and daughter, joined him on the island and they ran a productive farm. “The island eventually proved quite productive with regular exports of sheep, cattle and hay leaving the island in boats and barges,” Conlin says. There was even a short-lived experiment by a New Brunswick company to set up a fox farm.

Card and his family did have periods of serious isolation. In wintertime ice, tides and storms cut them off the mainland for weeks at a time. The keeper created a system of communication with fires which could be seen from Advocate, the nearest mainland community. “One fire meant all was well,” Conlin writes. “Two fires meant someone was sick, while three meant a doctor was needed. Four fires meant a death.”

Ironically, Conlin says, the isolation of winter was replaced by large numbers of visitors in summertime. “At the time when the Bay of Fundy was ringed by busy fishing and shipping ports, the island provided an ideal gathering place for Sunday picnics and special outings known as ‘Bay Parties’.

“At the turn of the century up to 300 people would arrive on the island on a single day with July 12 gatherings organised by the Orange Lodge fraternal order. A gathering took place in 1881 when two boatloads of guests arrived on the island for the marriage of the keeper’s daughter, Ida Card.”

Human occupation of the island came to an end in 1956 and was replaced by an automated light, Conlin says. Today a solar powered light serviced by the Canadian Coast Guard now warns mariners of the hazardous reefs around Isle Haute.