Just over 100 years ago, when he was still in his teens, Alexander Robert Stirling (1900-1996) took over the family farm in Greenwich and eventually devoting much of his life to growing fruit. Within a few years of taking over the farm, Sterling was operating a dairy – the Willow Hollow Dairy in Greenwich. On the same site he constructed a warehouse with an apple grader and this was his start in growing and marketing apples. Stirling soon was shipping apples to Maritime ports and as far away as England, all apparently within a decade or two of his taking over the family farm.

Looking back today, one has to be astounded by what Stirling accomplished in his lifetime. This is an amazing story, one only partly covered by the Stirling Fruit Farms website which notes that he opened his first roadside market in the 1940s. According to a historical sketch on Greenwich and environs in files at the Kings County Museum, the first market was located just inside Wolfville’s town limits, on the Greenwich side. The sketch, actually just a few notes, is credited to “Mrs. Burpee Bishop.” Edith Quinn’s book on the history of Greenwich (published in 1968) also contains detailed information on Stirling, which along with Mrs. Bishop’s sketch and interviews I conducted is the main source for this column.

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While reading early deeds on property in Kings County, historian Gary Young discovered that road names sometimes originated with the prominent people who lived on them.

Take Oakdene Avenue in north Kentville, for example. In his research, Young learned that the avenue once was referred to as Barnaby Road simply because only Barnabys lived on it. Young found that some deeds he looked at also called the avenue Westcott Road, due to a blacksmith named Westcott having a shop at its far end.

I’ll have more later on the prodigious amount of research Young has done on the origin of roads and the history of areas such as Pine Woods and Aldershot. For now I’d like to concentrate on a hill and a road in Kentville’s north side that deserves recognition. Actually, this is a challenge to the Kentville Historical Society and Kings Historical Society. Is it not possible for these societies to recognize that according to old deeds, historical documents and newspapers, Kentville’s infamous Gallows Hill and Cornwallis Street were once known as Joe Bell Hill and Joe Bell Road?

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