A meadow and a ford, the ford a crossing on Bass Creek, the surrounding land an expanse of meadow wrested from the wilderness by the early settlers.

In 1855 the residents of Bass Creek decided that the meadows and ford should be combined to change the name of their community to Medford. Besides, Bass Creek was a common and unimaginative place-name and in the early 19th century there were more than a dozen or so Bass Creeks, Bass Rivers and Salmon Rivers in the province. Something more dignified and fitting was called for.

This explanation for the origin of Medford’s name was given in a history of the community compiled by the Women’s Institute and published in this paper in 1951. The explanation is suspect, however. Watson Kirkconnell’s study of place-names in Kings County, published as a booklet in 1971, suggests that Medford isn’t of Nova Scotian coinage; it was a place-name familiar to the New England Planters, Kirkconnell said. There are eight Medfords in the U.S., Kirkconnell noted, and the name probably came from Massachusetts.

Kirkconnell most likely is correct, but I prefer the Women’s Institute explanation for Medford’s origin. One of the first areas where land grants were given to the Planters, Medford may have been settled as early as 1770 or 1780, and the origin of its name really doesn’t matter. What is more interesting is how Medford has changed over the years, changes that can be linked to the demise of sailing ships as vehicles of commerce and the decline of the Minas Basin fishery.

The early settlers of Medford carried surnames that will be familiar to anyone who has studied Annapolis Valley history after the expulsion of the Acadians. There were Eatons, Harringtons, Huntlys, Bigelows, Cox’s, Parkers and Weavers among the first Planter and Loyalist settlers in Medford. The Institute history tells us that Jason Huntly, Ebenezer Eaton and a “Mr. Harrington” were the first to receive land grants in Medford. Their grants appeared to comprise most of what today is greater Medford.

Like many of the early settlements along the Minas Basin, Medford’s principal occupation was fishing along with some shipbuilding. The building of ships may have become a major industry early in the community’s existence. “Shipbuilding was carried on quite extensively and a number of ships large and small were built here in 1800 and later,” the Institute history says.

As was typical of the Planters and Loyalists wherever they settled in Nova Scotia, education and religion were priorities in early Medford. Land was granted to post-Acadian settlers as early as 1760 and by approximately 1775 Medford had its first school.

Because of its proximity to the sea, (and obviously because it was the era of sail) marine navigation was taught in the first school and a number graduates became sea captains. The Institute history mentions that early Medford captains were David Loomer and Abraham Coffin. Other sea captains turned out by the Medford school were James Lombard, Frank Barkhouse, Edgar Bigelow, James Burns, Lyman Parker and Clement Barkhouse; most were descendants of Medford’s early settlers.

You won’t find Medford indexed in Eaton’s History of Kings County and I was unable to find evidence that a wharf existed there. But according to the Institute history, the now sleepy community of summer homes briefly held a place of prominence along the Minas Basin. Eventually overshadowed by Kingsport and Canning in shipbuilding, Medford was forgotten by would-be developers with the arrival of the railroad.

However, Medford was one of the first communities to have telephone lines erected – which say the Women’s Institute was still owned by the residents in 1951.

“How often have I sat and listened as a boy to my relatives and friends telling of (Acadian) money found in different places in Kings and Annapolis Counties,” A. L. Morse wrote in a letter penned in 1935.

This is how Mr. Morse introduced his topic, Acadian treasure, in a letter to the Berwick Register. Mr. Morse went on to give an account of how his ancestors unearthed a pot containing coins or gold secreted by the Acadians during the Expulsion. As you will note when you see excerpts from this letter below, the Acadian treasure was found by Mr. Morse’s great-grandfather. In other words, the account he gives is supposed to be true.

Nova Scotia is rich in tales of buried treasure, by pirates, by visitors from foreign shores, by religious and semi-religious groups and, of course, by the Acadians. During the turmoil of the Expulsion say some of the local folk tales, the Acadians, expecting to return, buried prized possessions. Many of these possessions, which in some cases were small fortunes in coins, supposedly still lie buried in various parts of Kings and Hants County near Acadian homesteads. Another common folk tale tells of these secret hoards being discovered and bringing instant wealth. Mr. Morse’s tale of his great-grandfather’s find is in this vein.

Stories of Acadian treasure can be found in various areas of the Valley. I reviewed an unpublished history of Sheffield Mills in this column a while back, for example, and the writer mentioned an “Acadian treasure mound.” References to Acadian treasure are not uncommon in the stories and community histories that have been published over the years. It’s a given that if there was once an Acadian settlement in an area, there’s also a legend about buried treasure. Even though the Acadians were for the most part simple farm folk with few earthly possessions – and certainly no hoards of gold and jewels – people like to believe that they hid great treasures at the time of the Expulsion.

The possibility does exist, however, that a few Acadians were wealthy and it’s also possible that this wealth was hidden and never recovered. The fortune discovered by Mr. Morse’s great-grandfather may have been the savings of several Acadian families who pooled and hid the few coins they possessed.

How much of a fortune in Acadian coins did Mr. Morse’s ancestor discover? We are never told but Morse gives us plenty of details on the actual discovery. His great-grandfather is plowing one day, using a team of oxen that once belonged to the Acadians, and the plow struck something solid which at first was thought to be root. “It proved to be the bail of a huge iron pot which caught the point of the plow …. and brought the team up very suddenly,” Morse wrote.

Morse’s great-grandfather quickly discovered that he had found something of great value. According to Morse his ancestor sat on the pot to hide its contents and sent home the neighbor’s boy who was working with him. “My ancestors, young married people, as soon as possible unearthed the pot,” Morse continued, “the contents of which enabled them to erect a fine house.”

Morse added that when his great-grandparents died, which would most likely be late in the 18th or early in the 19th century, they left property valued at $12,000. This was a considerable sum for the time and gives credence to Mr. Morse’s tale about the discovery of Acadian treasure

In the late 1940s and the early 1950s horses and wagons were used to deliver milk in Kentville and the immediate area. Both of the dairies that started in Kentville in the 1930s – Jordans and Cornwallis – delivered milk using one-horse wagons that were designed especially to carry dairy products.

Whatever it’s a sign of, I don’t remember the horse and wagon the Cornwallis Dairy used. With Jordan’s Dairy it’s another story. Doll, a magnificent palomino mare, hauled the Jordan wagon for years and I recall many pleasant experiences associated with this horse.

For example, the driver of the wagon never objected when we hitched rides on the wagon. Occasionally he’d let us climb up on Doll’s back and ride the route.

One of our biggest thrills was the all-day trip to the blacksmith’s shop in Centreville. Every two or three weeks Doll would have to be shod and if that happened on a Saturday, the driver would let several of us kids accompany him. It was the highlight of the summer. The five-mile trip seemed to take forever and along the way we all took turns at driving the wagon.

I always wondered what became of Doll and the milk wagon driver after Jordans switched to truck delivery. Doll retired to a farm where she lived out her years. The driver, Eric Ackman, worked for Jordans and Cornwallis Dairy for about 40 years, retiring in 1984.

Jordan’s Dairy was founded by Joe Jordan in 1932 and at first it was a one-man operation with milk being delivered by bicycle. After Laurie joined him, Joe expanded the dairy and by its third year the operation had 16 cows. One of Laurie’s earliest tasks was herding the cows to and from the pasture with a Sable Island pony.

In 1937 the Jordans built a pasteurizing plant on west Main Street and the dairy became known as Parkview. The name was changed in 1940 and the dairy continued in operation until 1966 when it was sold to Acadia Dairy of Wolfville. When it changed hands the dairy was the largest in the Annapolis Valley, operating with 10 trucks that serviced an area from Hantsport to Middleton. Jordans is believed to have been the last family owned and operated dairy in Nova Scotia.

As the guest speaker at the Kentville Gyro Club, police chief Del Crowell talked about the changes that have taken place in policing since he was a rookie in Yarmouth.

When he became a policeman two decades ago, Crowell was handed a uniform and a gun and in is words, “was pointed to Main Street.” Training took place on the job. The police car in his Yarmouth days could only be driven 30 miles a week and had no radio. Contact was made by turning on a special light located on various power poles. The constable checked in when he saw the light was lit up.

In contrast, Crowell said, police forces around the province today are highly trained and many officers are graduates of recognized academies. Kentville, for example, has one of the most highly trained police forces in eastern Canada.

Communications have changed as well. The signal light on a power pole that Yarmouth used has evolved into a complicated computer system that can tap into any police information pool in North America.

Crowell touched briefly on the old days of policing in Kentville when Roop Davis patrolled the town on a bicycle. Everything has changed swiftly, he said. When Davis patrolled Kentville, World War One was still fresh in everyone’s mind. No one knew that another more devastating war was only a few decades away; a war that would give us atomic bombs and the beginning of space travel.

I often wonder what people in their 80s and 90s think about all the changes that have taken place in their lifetime. Most of today’s older generations are undoubtedly like my father. When he as a young man in the first war he fought on horseback with sabre and pistol. Air warfare was in its infancy and the first tanks rumbled harmlessly through no man’s land and were temporarily discarded. The vagaries of the weather determined the results of gas warfare.

Later, when my father served at Camp Aldershot during the second war, the tank had been perfected, the first jet plane appeared and the first atomic bomb was dropped. In my father’s sunset years the primitive V2 rockets of the Germans became sophisticated space missiles that would send men to the moon. The computer age arrived and exploration of our solar system began.

Like many men and women who grew up on farms, my father lived through wonder after wonder. Someone wrote that in the past five decades there have been more changes than in all of man’s history. While true or not, the changes that have taken place in my father’s lifetime must have been mind boggling for him and his contemporaries. Like most people of his generation he remembers when Kentville when wars were fought on horseback, when Kentville was patrolled by a policeman on a bicycle, when the atomic age arrived and when the first man was landed on the moon.