In Valley Gold, Anne Hutten’s history of the Valley’s apple industry, the author writes that a Gravenstein tree in Lakeville, Kings County, bore fruit for over 150 years. Planted in 1799, the tree was productive, Hutten said, until succumbing to a brush fire.

Is this a fact or is it simply something somebody told someone, a story that was passed along over the generations? Is it folklore, in other words?

Hutten offers no documentation on the age of the Gravenstein, so it might be folklore. Yet apple trees do live 100 years and more. One apple tree, believed to be the oldest in North America, says Google, died in 2020 at the age of 194.

Harking to the words of the first editor I worked with, never accept anything as a fact without some documentation. If there’s no documentation, he said, then indicate that what you are writing about is folklore or fiction – especially if you are writing about history. To repeat myself, if it looks like something somebody told someone, then it might not be accurate and could be a fairy tale.

Even documentation, or what appears to be documentation, can be misleading and here’s an example.

In 1971, Parks Canada released a study by Lois Yorke on the history of the Minas area from 1675 to 1755. Yorke writes that the Mi’kmaq “tenure” in Minas was well-established “since large tracts of cleared land were found by the first French settlers.”

To me, this intimates that the Mi’kmaq cultivated land for farming purposes, which flies in the face of everything I’ve read. My understanding is that the Mi’kmaq were a nomadic people, with summer and winter grounds, and they never practiced agriculture. This is what I mean by statements sometimes being misleading.

Yorke’s source is the History of Grand Pre by John Frederic Herbin. His source isn’t given, so is the statement that the Mi’kmaq cleared wild pieces of land a fact, or is it folklore?

I also question the statement that a pear tree on the edge of a golf course in New Minas is over 230 years old and is still standing. The so-called Bishop Pear Tree supposedly was planted in 1786 by the family of an early Planter.

Now, for starters, except for a unique variety called the Endicott, the life span of ordinary pear trees rarely exceeds 50 years. At least, that’s what arborists claim, and this is backed by Google.

So I ask you, where is the documentation on the Bishop tree? In a column in 1993, I wrote that the tree’s age is based on information published by the Bishop Family Association. Is this claim based on written documentation, on records that have been kept generation after generation? Or is it something somebody told someone, a tale preserved, like Hutten’s old Gravenstein tree, by word of mouth?

In closing, here’s an example of how documentation can be correctly used:

Lois Yorke (mentioned above) notes in her paper that while exploring here in 1606, Champlain discovered “an old, rotting cross on the north shore of the (Minas) Basin, evidence of early religious infiltration among the nomadic Indian tribes.”

Yorke’s source is Eaton’s History of Kings County. Champlain kept extensive journals on his explorations here, and this was Eaton’s source. We can safely assume this anyway since most of Champlain’s journals were translated into English and were available to scholars like Eaton.