Among other definitions, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary describes “vignette” as a “brief descriptive account, anecdote, essay or character sketch.” Including “historic” is this definition describes a series of booklets published over the past 23 years by the Kings Historical Society. Since 1989 the Society has published 11 Kings County Vignettes, the latest just off the press this month.

Since the first publication, which was compiled by the late Elizabeth Rand, the Vignettes series usually contained an average of a dozen historical stories about Kings County. Each Vignette in the series has sold well, if anything a testament that local history buffs appreciate what the staff and volunteers at the Kings County Museum have strived to accomplish: That is to publish a historically accurate booklet that’s not only interesting but economically priced (each Vignettes has sold for less than $10).

Just released, as I mentioned, the 11^th issue of Kings County Vignettes follows the standard set by the first volume. The eight essays in this issue run from stories about Camp Aldershot, the Nova Scotia Sanatorium and the legacy left to us by the Acadians. Gordon Hansford writes about Camp Aldershot as it was during World War 2. Two articles on the Nova Scotia Sanatorium by Jane Sponagle and Bria Stokesbury offer glimpses of what life was like for patients of the “San.”

Plants and Pioneers by Twila Robar-DeCoste and The Acadian Legacy in Kings County by Trevor Lloyd take us back in time to Acadian and pioneer times. Writing poetry that salutes people at the Kings County Museum and at the same time actually rhymes is a difficult task but Teresa Neary accomplishes this nicely with a poem about the Museum’s countless volunteers.

Bernice Taylor writes about the famed Covenanter Church at Grand Pre, which as she notes, is the oldest Presbyterian Church in the province. In her second article for issue 11, Bria Stokesbury, the Museum’s curator, covers the 25^th anniversary of the Museum.

All in all, this is another great edition in the Vignette series and the compiler, Helen Hansford, is to be complimented. Vignette number 11 is available for seven dollars at the Kings County Museum and at Chisholm’s Book Store in Kentville.

In 1907 a former Kentville resident living in Chicago figured he was too far along in years to ever visit the town again. Henry L. Ross, age 90, decided instead to write the town newspaper, describing Kentville as he remembered it about 50 years before the town incorporated. Following are excerpts from the letter he wrote to The Advertiser in 1907.

“I first became acquainted with Kentville in the 1830s. There was only one street, commonly called the Post Road. The merchants were Caleb Rand, James D. Harris, James E. DeWolfe and Dan Moore. The village lawyer (was) John C. Hall, the village harnessmaker Cunningham, the village blacksmith Silas Masters, the shoemaker Beech, the sheriff (George) Chipman.”

Before he described the Kentville of his youth, Ross mentioned a ship built on the Cornwallis River by James E. DeWolfe. “The residents can scarcely realize that 60 years ago from that spot was heard the sound of the carpenter’s axe and maul and the ring of the caulker’s mallet.” This was the barque, The Kent, built in 1846 and mentioned in Eaton’s Kings County history. The site of the shipyard was just across the bridge from the town library. Two ships were built there. Ross apparently worked on The Kent, noting it was launched in 1847 with a large crowd in attendance, “many coming by ox teams.”

Getting back to the letter, Ross says all the stores in town sold rum “with the exception of J. E. DeWolfe,” and all the farmers had “a little brown jug (of rum) in their closets.” Given its availability, rum must have been important in those days.

Describing Kentville in the pre-railroad days, when the stagecoach ran from Halifax through the Valley two or three days weekly, Ross says the “great event of the week was arrival of the Mail Coach from Halifax. It brought the farmers in and served as an excuse for a trip to the village, the purpose of which was to patronize the Crown Inn and the Kentville Hotel (to) replenish the ‘little brown jug’ than to get mail which they did not expect.”

As Ross says, Kentville had its share of “characters” in the time of which he writes. “There was John Hall’s father, a walking encyclopedia. There was old Dr. Webster, father of the late Dr. Billy, an old fellow who swore like a man o’ war’s man. There was old George Bear, the coloured orator who used to spout to the crowd from his rostrum, the scales at the corner of the Red Store.”

In 1932 a member of a pioneer Kentville family decided he would write a series of newspaper articles about the town. Leslie Eugene Dennison’s articles were published in The Advertiser over a period of about a year.

While mainly reminiscent in tone (Dennison said it was “Reminiscences of an ‘Upstreeter’ of the Beautiful Town Embowered in Blossoms) the articles describe Kentville in the late 1870s, the period leading up to incorporation. It was an interesting place at the time. In the downtown core, where banks and business blocks now stand, there were tethering posts and blacksmith shops; it was common for Kentville citizens to keep cows in pastures that are now parking lots.

“Kentville 60 years ago,” writes Dennison, “was a small country village. Its inhabitants were chiefly the descendants of the first settlers, with a few families of railroad officials and workers from the Old Country. Ox teams were common in the streets.”

Describing what eventually would become the town’s business core, Dennison said three blacksmith shops stood on lots now occupied by prominent buildings. “Thomas Cox had a shop on Church Street, near St. James Church. Otho Eaton had one on the south side of Webster Street, opposite the post office, and I do not remember the name of the blacksmith shop on Canaan Road.”

Blacksmith shops were necessary in Kentville’s pre-incorporation days. The automobile was yet to arrive and the horse and ox were the chief means of transportation and labor. Kentville’s blacksmith shops were “great gathering places for men from the nearby farms,” writes Dennison, since here besides shoeing horses and oxen, all sorts of iron work was carried on.

We learn from Dennison musings that Lee Neary was Kentville’s “first uniformed police chief,” that before Gallows Hill earned its grisly name it was called Beech Hill and Wickwire Hill at the town’s eastern edge was once Bishop Hill.

Kentville in pre-incorporation days obviously was much more than the country village Dennison that calls it. Dennison mentions the town had two newspapers, five hotels, five churches, several mills and 26 businesses offering a variety of goods and services. It appears that Kentville, on the verge of incorporation, was a thriving commercial center and at the time was the leading hamlet in the Annapolis Valley.