In 1816 one Isaiah Smith sent a petition to the government asking for aid in establishing a stage coach run from Halifax to Windsor.

At the time there were only two good roads in the province. Termed “great roads,” one ran from Halifax to Truro, the other from Halifax to Windsor and on to the Halfway River near Hantsport. These roads were full of ruts, holes and wash-outs and during spring and fall were almost impassable. Lesser roads were in much worse condition.

Smith’s petition for aid was granted by government and he was awarded 100 pounds, provided he run the stagecoach service for one year. In his petition, Smith said he would provide two coaches, sleighs for winter and 12 horses. Apparently, he was prepared to run his coach service even if the government refused aid. Well before he received the government grant, Smith had purchased his equipment and was advertising an upcoming stagecoach service in the newspapers.

Isaiah Smith began his first run on the 14th of February in 1816. At 2 p.m. that day the first coach left Halifax. The coach accommodated six passengers at a charge of six dollars each and carried small parcels at a reasonable rate. The inaugural run of some 45 miles took nine hours.

Initially, the coach from Halifax to Windsor ran once a week. In the spring a semi-weekly service began. In a paper read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society in 1936, R. D. Evans reported that in May a twice weekly run was started, the coaches now carrying eight passengers. “Quick service” (!) was maintained, Evans said, “by a change of horses every 15 miles.”

Thus began the first stage coach service in Nova Scotia; apparently, it was so popular that one “Mr. Todd” immediately began a competing run from Halifax to Windsor. In 1828 another competing line opened, the Western Stage Coach Company, which ran three times weekly in summer and two or three times a week in winter. By this time the run from Halifax into the Valley had been extended as far as Annapolis.

Imagine hopping on a stage coach in Halifax in 1828 and taking at least 16 hours to reach Annapolis. What do we do it in today, well under three hours at the very least via the 101? R. D. Evans said that the Western Stage Coach Company was committed to a 16-hour run but “this was an absurd provision which had to be ignored in actual practice.” The run, he said, was closer to 20 hours.

Until the railroad arrived, the stage coach lines were the only “existing connectors” and Evans put it between the main towns and villages in the Annapolis Valley. From Halifax the stage coach lines eventually ran in all directions – to Truro, Pictou, the South Shore and to Yarmouth. In the meanwhile, roads were slowly improved but they were still hazardous in winter and spring and would continue to be so until long after the automobile’s arrival.

The Acadians have been described as an innocent, peaceful and ill-used people, most historians agreeing that their expulsion was cruel and unnecessary. If you look at early accounts of the post-expulsion period, however, you get a slightly different view.

In Henry Youle Hind’s book, which I quoted from last week, there are various accounts of clashes between Acadians and the militia. As mentioned before, the book was supposed to be a history of an old burial ground in Windsor, but Hind covers a lot of Kings County history around the expulsion period. If you take his accounts as gospel, then it appears the Acadians were more militant and less peaceful than they’ve been portrayed.

A few quotes from Hind’s work illustrate this point. Hind sympathised with the Acadians, noting that the history of their deportation has “not been yet been fully or truthfully told.” It is a “heartrending story when the details are gathered and fitted together,” Hind writes, and then goes on depict some Acadians as dangerous to the health of the young Planter settlements around Minas Basin.

“The minutes-of-council… states that it had recently been discovered that the ‘said Acadians had collected and concealed in secret places in Kings County, in this province, a considerable quantity of ammunition for small arms.’ This shows the necessity which existed for ample precautions.”

Hind writes that “on account of the (hostile) Indians and Acadians,” it was necessary to build a blockhouse in Piziquid or Windsor to protect settlers in the townships of Horton, Cornwallis, Newport and Falmouth. He later writes that it was difficult to keep enough soldiers in the area to protect the new settlers and “many who arrived soon returned to their homes in New England, Rhode Island and New Jersey in consequence of the fear of the Indians and wandering Acadians.”

Such was this fear that the government found it “indispensably necessary for the safety and security of the settlers to send 130 Acadians from Kings County to Halifax under a guard of the militia of the county.” This was in 1762 when the new colony of Planters was still flexing its wings. Shortly after the forced march to Halifax of the 130 Acadians, martial law was declared in the province, and every healthy male was called up to serve in the militia.

What, you may ask, were 130 Acadians, some of whom apparently were able bodied men, doing in the province long after the expulsion? There’s another tale to be told here, one in which male Acadians were held as prisoners at Fort Edward in Windsor and forced to work as labourers.

Actually Hind writes that 320 Acadians were held at Fort Edward “nearly seven years after the expatriation movement in 1755.” Most were women and children, Hind says. He hints at some hanky panky when it came to “victualing” the Acadians held hostage at Fort Edward; several hundred more Acadians than were actually held at Fort Edward being shown on a food list, for example.

“It must suffice for the purpose of this brief retrospect, to state that large numbers of the Acadians… escaped to the woods and joined their allies, and in numerous instances family connections, the Indians, taking with them many cattle. Each year their strength was increased by accessions from those who stealthily returned from the New England or southern provinces, or by refugees who have fled to the woods in the devastated region about Grand Pre, the rivers Canard and Habitant…

“The duties of the troops from the close of 1755 to 1765 were arduous and painful. The Acadians and the Indians appear to have been hunted down as a necessary, though distressing, precautionary measure.

“Those of the Acadians who were not killed were kept as prisoners when taken, many of them voluntarily surrendering in order to escape starvation.”

You won’t find these post-expulsion glimpses of the Acadians in popular history books such as Eaton’s Kings County history, Will R. Bird’s Done at Grand Pre or the history of Grand Pre by Herbin.

In fact, I took these quotes from a most unusual source, a book you’d never expect would have any history of early Kings County or of the Acadians. Before I tell you what that book is called and where you can obtain it, here’s another fascinating tidbit from it about this area:

“The forests were rich in fur-bearing animals and moose. The rivers teemed with fish, and the sea was alive with many species of marine animals not found at this day in the Basin of Mines, or only discovered at rare intervals.

“In 1766 the Indians alone bought into… the Trader’s store at Cornwallis (Kings County) 1000 Beaver, 50 Otters, 80 Fishers, 300 Martins, 300 Mink, 100 Muskrats (and) 50 Bear skins.

“In the Canard River alone, the Rev. Hugh Graham records an average of 85,000 shad taken each year, beginning with 1787. The number he gives as subjoined: 1787, upwards of 100,000; 1788, 100,000; 1789 about 70,000; 1790 about 70,000 (for a) Canard River yearly average (of) 85,000. In the Habitant (Canning) River, 1789, 120,000; 1790, 70,000. The average annual catch of shad in Cornwallis this period amounted to about 135,000 barrels.”

So where did I find this detailed historical data, which while mundane is interesting?

In 1889 one Henry Youle Hind took it upon himself to write a Sketch of the Old Parish Burying Ground with the aim of seeking to preserve the same. His work was reprinted in 1989 under the title An Early History of Windsor, Nova Scotia.

As you can see from the quotes I’ve taken from Hind’s book, it’s much more than a Windsor history. In fact, it’s also more than a sketch of an early Windsor cemetery. Hind writes about the Acadians, the Mi’kmaq and the Planters in Hants and Kings County and there are glimpses you won’t find in other historical books about thepost-expulsionn period. Where, for example, will you find that the 1784 “muster” (or census) taken in the Kings County townships of Horton and Cornwallis found there were “91 men, 37 women, 44 children above 10 years, 27 children under 10 years (and) 37 servants” for a total of 237 persons.

Hind’s book is found in local libraries and can be purchased from the West Hants Historical Society.

In an October 15 column, I mentioned that a 1914 map indicated the existence of a community near Canning called North Corner. Later, Canning historian Ivan Smith wrote that he had a 1928 map showing a place called “Norths” in the area where Wilf Carter’s family once lived. Smith said he wondered what this name meant until he saw the October 15 column. “Your column clears this up,” Smith wrote, “assuming that the location ‘Norths’ agrees with the location of ‘North Corner’ you referred to.”

I quoted Mr. Smith in a follow-up column on October 29, noting that his e-mail letter appeared to solve a mystery. Actually, as I found later, I made a wrong assumption. Norths and Norths Corner (North’s Corner) are not the same place. Leon Barron, who grew up in the area, tells me that Norths where Wilf Carter briefly lived and North’s Corner are separate places about two miles apart on the same road.

Neither Norths nor North’s Corner were recognised as communities, Barron says. “Community” being used here in the sense of a place having a school, recognised boundaries and so on. However, Norths and North’s Corner were place-names since they are shown prominently on the 1914 map and on the 1928 map. Most people think of North’s Corner as being part of Woodside, Barron said, adding that “Norths is basically Upper Pereau.”

Leon Barron also told me that North’s Corner is shown as an address in today’s telephone book. Look up Ms. Bessie North in the Canning section, Leon suggested, and you’ll find that it gives her residence as North’s Corner. Which I did, finding that Leon was right. I also called Ms. North and asked her if she knew anything about the origin of North’s Corner. She explained that her family has lived on the corner, in the house she now occupies, for over 100 years. Over the years, Ms. North said, three families of Norths have occupied the house, which was built by her great-grandfather, Silas Patterson, over a century ago. She added that Patterson was one of the top carpenters in his day and built houses that are still standing in Port Williams and Wolfville.

Finally, I looked up Norths and North’s Corner in the bible of place-names, Charles Bruce Fergusson’s Place-Names and Places of Nova Scotia. North’s Corner isn’t in this book, probably being too small to rate a listing even though it was important enough to show on the 1914 map.

It’s a different story with Norths, which is listed in the Fergusson book, and it appears that it was once an important community. Fergusson writes that this “rural area is located about three miles north of Canning,” and it was “probably named for the North family who were early residents.” Fergusson adds that settlement began in this area shortly after Cornwallis township was granted to the New England emigrants in 1761, making it one of the earliest communities in Kings County.

Apparently, both the Norths and North’s Corner place-names originated from the concentration of North families in these areas. One wonders why Norths disappeared as a place-name and today is called Pereau or Pereau Road while North’s Corner is still in use, if only as an address.