Since the Cornwallis Town Book records that John North married Mary West on October 12, 1770, we can assume that he emigrated here from Birmingham, England, before that year. In his Kings County history, Arthur W. H. Eaton doesn’t concern himself with the date of John North’s arrival in Nova Scotia. However, in his family sketches Eaton does tell us that North’s first child by this marriage was William; and it is William North who is the topic of this column.

Born in 1771, William North farmed all of his life in Kings County. He married Lois Strong when he was 26, sired nine children, and apparently lead an uneventful, quiet life. However, William was not an average 19th century man of the soil. His penmanship, spelling and bookkeeping indicate he was well educated in a period when formal schooling was scarce.

William North reveals others things about himself, his business acumen for example, in a farm ledger he kept for most of his working life. North’s ledger was discovered in the attic of his old home in the Sheffield Mills-Atlanta area. The first entry in the ledger is dated 1814 and was made when North was 37 years old; the last entry is dated 32 years later when William North was in his 69th year.

At first glance North’s old ledger appears to be little more than a mundane record of farm commerce in the early 19th century. But as we read the yellowing pages and look at the simple entries, life as it was in our great-grandfather’s day is vividly described. “Settled (an account) by road work,” reads one entry, for example. Which tells us that in North’s day there were no paved highways and landowners were responsible summer and winter for maintaining the piece of road that skirted their property. We learn that the barter system, trading goods for goods, services for services, greased the wheels of everyday living, and that without bartering life would have been difficult.

Basically, North’s ledger is simply a record of the goods and services he provided to his neighbors and the goods and services received in return. While the goods and services are assigned a value in pounds, shillings and pence, apparently no great amounts of cash changed hands. On one side of the ledger we see, for example, that North supplied Oliver Thorp with flour, pork and wheat; provided in returns for such goods were “one days chopping,” “one day fencing,” “two days carting dung,” and so on.

Miscellaneous entries, taken from the ledger at random, tell us much about farm life in North’s day. North kept his ledger in a period when both horses and oxen were the beasts of burden; thus we find entries such as “gray mare folded” (foaled), and “to mending yoke.”

Other simple entries are also revealing. The goods commonly traded were hay, oats, turnips, potatoes, butter, flour and pork. The services provided are indicated by such entries as “for mowing orchard,” ” two days digging potatoes,” “for 30 lbs. clover seed,” “for one days dressing flax.” Cider and rum may have been frowned upon by the temperance societies of North’s day but we find entries such as “for one barrel cyder (cider),” “to making one barrel cyder,” and “for 1/2 gallon rum.”

Other entries that give us a glimpse of life North’s time: “Paid by wife in tallow fat,” “wood lent for school (one cord),” “to one stear (steer),” “making two pairs womings (sic) shoes.”

If you trace your ancestors back to farmers in this area, your great-grandfather’s name may be in the ledger and he may have traded with William North. In the ledger (to mention a few) we find accounts for William Chipman, Samuel Woodworth, Cyril and Isaac Newcomb, Jeddiah Ells, John Rockwell, Lemuel Rogers, Caleb Foot and Enoch Scofield. Families with these surnames still farm in this area.

Almost everybody collects something. Stamps, coins, books, badges, Canadian Tire money, marbles, full-color car ads from the 50s and 60s and old wood carvings, for example, are a few of the things I can think of offhand that friends collect.

When it comes to collecting I’m no exception. However, what I collect can’t be placed in display cases, hung on walls or held in your hand. As for the value of my collection, well literally it’s worthless; no one would pay you one red cent for it and it’s the kind of collection that doesn’t appreciate. My collection is one of a kind and I doubt that anyone has one like it.

After this build up, I’d better tell you what I collect. To start with it’s connected with learning to play the bagpipes when I was a teenager. I started my collection one day when our band was tuning up in a field in Waterville; while we were tuning a spectator walked over and announced that he was a lover of pipe music. “By the way,” he said casually, “I’ve been a piper for over 50 years.”

We were awestruck, impressed. Wow, imagine someone piping for over 50 years. Then came the punch line: “Let me introduce myself,” the man said to our pipe-major. “I’m George Piper.”

If that brought a groan, how about this bagpipe joke. A piper is stomping up and down the hallway of an apartment building late at night, playing his pipes. One of the tenants shouts, “Cut out that infernal racket.” The piper obligingly removed his boots and continued to play.

Obviously what I collect is piping stories and jokes. I have scads of them, all relating to that fine musical instrument the Scots claim and the Irish invented – or at least introduced into Scotland. I’ve been gathering piping stories and jokes for decades and if I don’t have them in my collection, then I probably heard them somewhere. Piping jokes are like Newfoundland jokes; they go around and around and are retold and reinvented again and again and again.

My favorite bagpipe story, a slightly gruesome but supposedly true tale, involves a piper and the great London plague of 1665.

During the peak of the plague people were dying by the score. Every morning, the plague accounts tell us, “death carts” made the rounds of London streets picking up the dead and taking them to a mass burial site.

It was the misfortune of a piper to be in London when the plague struck. Attempting to escape the hardships of life in Scotland, he ran into harder times in the great city. With a miniature set of bagpipes, the Scot roamed the streets of London with his dog, playing tunes and begging for money. The piper was soon starving. The few people left in London when the plague was at its peak were mostly poor and money was scarce.

Roaming the streets one day with his bagpipes, the piper was offered some grog. He had gone for several days without food and the grog was too much for his empty stomach. The piper collapsed on the street and it was assumed that he was dead. When the dead-cart came along he was thrown in, pipes and all; on the way to the burial site other corpses were piled on him.

The piper’s dog, following the dead-cart and barking shrilly, is said to have aroused him. He stood up in the cart among the dead, still too intoxicated to realize where he was, and began to play his pipes. The piper, it is said, did not catch the plague despite his nearness to the dead. A statue of the piper stands today in a London museum to commemorate this event.

I’ve been told that it contains minor inaccuracies, but that is to be expected in a work as extensive as Eaton’s History of Kings County. “After all, Eaton worked alone in writing it and was unable to check out all his sources” a reader explained when he mentioned finding a trivial error in Eaton’s book.

If you read Eaton’s history thoroughly you will discover that in one sense he didn’t work alone in compiling his work. In several instances, Eaton quotes earlier historians and researchers extensively. In his chapter on the Acadian French, for example, Eaton’s discussion on the origin of roads in Kings County is mostly based on a manuscript researched and written by Dr. William Pitt Brechin.

In his preface as well, Eaton acknowledges that a number of people were of great help when he was writing his history. What Eaton says in the preface is that he literally picked the brains and used the research of some prominent people of his time, such as Robert William Starr, Dr. Benjamin Rand and Harry Piers. Eaton also leaned heavily on a number of amateur historians, most of which are acknowledged in his preface.

The researcher/historian Eaton quotes from most is Dr. William Pitt Brechin, 1851 – 1899. The Brechins are included in Eaton’s chapter of family sketches; from these sketches, we learn that Dr. Brechin was a third generation Nova Scotian. Brechin’s great-grandfather, James, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Eaton doesn’t tell us when James arrived in Nova Scotia, only that he died in Halifax or Chester around 1796. His son and grandson remained in Nova Scotia. The grandson, Major Perez Martin Brechin who was born in Halifax, married a Kings County woman and sired William. Dr. Brechin was born in Cornwallis, and likely was raised on an original Planter land grant since his mother was a Harrington.

Eaton tells us nothing of Dr. Brechin’s life other than that he graduated at the Harvard Medical School, practised medicine in Boston and died there suddenly on December 10, 1899. It is obvious, however, that Dr. Brechin never lost contact with his native land. Brechin was a keen student of Annapolis Valley history and a historical writer. Confirmation of this is given in the preface to Eaton’s history:

“In the preparation of family sketches the well known newspaper articles, now in scrap books, of the late William Pitt Brechin, M.D., of Boston, have been of great assistance. Dr. Brechin was an indefatigable genealogist of Cornwallis families.” Eaton goes on to mention that the “vital records of the Cornwallis Town Book” were the original source “from which a very considerable part of Dr. Brechin’s material was drawn.”

As mentioned, Eaton leans heavily on the work of Dr. Brechin in his discussion of the early road system in Kings County. Further on Eaton again refers to Brechin’s research on the so-called massacre at Bloody Run or Moccasin Hollow, west of Kentville. According to Brechin’s findings, a small party of British troops was ambushed and slain in this area by the French and Micmacs.

Brechin’s interest in local history may have been stimulated by his boyhood surroundings. Eaton writes that the farm of Brechin’s father, Perez, was situated in an area steeped in Acadian history. Eatons says, for example, that “near the willow trees on the easterly side of Mr. Perez M. Brechin’s farm… it is said an Acadian blacksmith shop stood.”

Other than the references in Eaton’s history, Dr. Brechin has received little recognition for his pioneer historical work. Some of his historical work was published in various periodicals, but if Eaton is right, all that might exist of it today lies in yellowing scrapbooks.

In 1860 the Secretary of the Board of Statistics wrote that this would be “a first attempt to make a complete census (in Nova Scotia).” The reference was to the census of 1861 that was started on March 30 of that year. Using county residents as census-takers, this was the last independent enumeration of the province before Confederation.

When the last census was taken a decade earlier, Nova Scotia’s population was 276,117. The count in 1861 was 330,857, an increase of nearly 20 percent. Nova Scotia’s population was growing rapidly and most of the increase was taking place in rural areas. In Kings County alone the population had increased by almost one-third since the 1851 census; Kings County was the second highest growth area in the province between 1851 and 1861.

The census of 1861 produced more interesting information than population counts, however. The census revealed the gruesome statistic that between the census years there were more male deaths than female – 12 percent more, in fact. The main cause of death was tuberculosis and diphtheria but the census showed that other contagious diseases had also taken their toll.

A census that counted that counted heads and includes a survey health problems? Apparently, that’s the way they did things in the 19th century. Head counts, death rates, farm and industry surveys, a cataloguing of occupations… these things and more were in the copy of the census I found recently at Acadia University. And while the statistics are dull and the facts and figures only apply to life as it was over 100 years ago, they put our great grandfather’s period in perspective. Besides that, some of the information gathered in the census is amusing.

In 1861, for example, seven people in Nova Scotia gave their occupation as matchmakers and at the time there were only five registered dentists and 170 registered physicians. One quarter of the male population told the census-takers they were farmers (with some fishing on the side) and one gentleman was a full-time ice dealer. It was the time of wooden ships and iron men, so it isn’t surprising that Nova Scotians had 3,118 vessels registered in the shipping trade; and a count of 5,242 mariners and 1,112 shipwrights was to be expected.

Horses were the main mode of transportation and along with oxen, were used as draft animals in farming and lumbering. So it isn’t surprising that in 1861 a total of 1,518 men (and possibly a female or two) worked as blacksmiths. In 1851 Nova Scotians owned 13,138 horses; by 1861 this number had increased to 41,927, mainly the census returns said “because they (horses) were starting to replace oxen.”

Potatoes were the main farm crop in the period from census to census – the returns indicated a 100 percent increase in the growing of potatoes between 1851 and 1861. There were over 2,000 mills operating in the province in 1861, of which 414 were grist mills and 77 carding mills. Most of the mills ran by water power but there were a handful of steam mills and one wind mill that ground grain commercially.

Another commentary on the times (and perhaps a comment of sorts on the drinking habits of Valley people) were the number of temperance halls registered in the province. The grand total was 49 province-wide and of these eight were located in Kings County and nine in Hants County.

Just after the census was taken, 14,392 Kings County residents said their ethnic origin was English, there were 3,755 residents of Irish origin and 1,841 Scots; the number of French (Acadian?) in the county was a mere 281. In Hants County during the same period 8,589 people said they were English, 5,728 claimed Irish origin and the Scots numbered 5,051; only 186 people said they were of French origin.

A reader who occasionally writes via e-mail used a phrase I had never heard before: He referred to the postal service as “snail mail.” You will have to agree that a letter delivered by the post office is “snailish” compared to e-mail. Through the internet you can communicate instantly with people all over the world.

Most of the letters I receive electronically result from this column being posted on my website – which by the way is https://edwingcoleman.wordpress.com. I’ve given my website address again because readers often ask for copies of previous columns – that they “meant to save and forgot to.” Every column that has been published in this newspaper for at least the past two years can be found at my site; if you have access to a computer, log on and help yourself.

From my website columns I’ve received electronic mail from many areas of North America and as far away as Australia. I also receive many letters through the snail mail system, usually from Valley readers of this paper and occasionally from subscribers in other parts of Canada. Readers who write by e-mail slightly outnumber readers who use Canada Post; this doesn’t mean that computers outshine this newspaper when it comes to reaching the public. Most of the electronic mail comes readers who saw my website address in this column.

No matter if you e-mail or use snail mail, your letters are welcome. Occasionally I set letters aside, including those I print off from my e-mail box, and lose them in the pile of papers on my desk. I was guilty of doing this with a letter from John Williams of Sackville, N.B. Mr. Williams wrote over a month ago to tell me he enjoyed the nostalgia piece on the Dominion Atlantic Railway. Williams mentioned a two-volume book by Gary Ness – Canadian Pacific’s Dominion Atlantic Railway – which he thought railroad buffs would enjoy. Dr. Ness’ book is still available at local bookstores including the Box of Delights in Wolfville.

J. L. Harvie wrote earlier this spring about the part the Dominion Atlantic Railway played in his life when he was growing up in Hantsport. This was an interesting story; readers will enjoy Mr. Harvie’s look at life as it evolved around the railroad, which I plan to run in full in the next two or three weeks.

I mentioned receiving an e-mail letters from Australia. The writer was a former Valley resident who is writing a novel set here. She was interested in the infamous ice storm of two winters ago and its effect on the Annapolis Valley.

The writer also had a question about land grants in Nova Scotia after the Crimean War. My knowledge of these grants is … well, it amounts to nothing and I’m hoping a knowledgeable reader can help. Anybody know anything about land grants to veterans of the Crimean War?

Last week’s column was about Clarke’s history of the railway in Nova Scotia. In the column I said that I was unable to pin down an exact publication; none was given in the book but references indicated a possible publication date sometime in the 1920s. This may not be correct. Dr. Gary Ness tells me Clarke’s book may have been first published in 1916 and revised in later printings; this would account for the 1926 date given in the seniority list published in the book.

My thanks to Starr Williams who kindly gave me his copy of Clarke’s railway history. Many readers will remember Starr; he worked on the railway here in the 40s and 50s and operated an insurance business in Kentville. Starr now resides in Berwick and from my telephone conversations with him, he sounds like a young 82.

There’s no publication date in Will Clarke’s railway history but the text indicates the book was published around 1920. Clarke’s book is the first published history book of the railway in Nova Scotia, pre-dating Marguerite Woodworth’s Dominion Atlantic Railway history by well over a decade.

Woodworth’s book may be looked upon as the official history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway (D.A.R.); apparently Woodworth was commissioned by the railway to write this history. Clarke’s history book appears to have been written as a result of a life-long association with the railroad. Clarke was a railroad conductor and railroad history buff who upon retiring, apparently decided to use his leisure years to write a railroad account.

Both histories are invaluable contributions to railroad lore but they are as different as night is from day. Read Woodworth’s book for an in-depth, scholarly look at the D.A.R. and the political intrigues that lead to the eventual union of several railway companies. Read Clarke’s book if you want a chatty, casual look at railroading in the old days. Both books are factual, both are well-written; but of the two I prefer Clarke’s account because it has more in it about the day-to-day average workers who made the railway tick.

Here’s one example to emphasize this point: Woodworth’s book has 160 pages with 29 photographs. With one exception the photographs are tourist shots – hotels, scenery, ships, terminals, warehouses and so on. No railway personalities are depicted with the exception of an unidentified trainman who stands beside a locomotive.

In his 64-page account Will Clarke includes 21 photographs and 13 are of railroad people from the high and mighty to the ordinary trainman. With a couple of exceptions, all the railway men depicted in Clarke’s photographs are identified. In addition, Clarke also tells us what the going rate of pay was for railway workers in 1869. Engine drivers – $33.75 per half month; firemen $18.75 per half month. Lower down on the pay scale were woodcutters at $5.60 per half month. In comparison, station agents received from $200 to $400 per month.

Clarke calls his book a “History of the Earliest Railways in Nova Scotia,” and he says in a subtitle that it contains a list of “firsts and other interesting stage and railway facts.” One “stage fact” was mention that in 1816 a horse-drawn passenger coach with an inside capacity of six people ran between Halifax and Windsor twice a week. Clarke compared the stage coach schedule with the daily runs of the train between Windsor and Halifax when the railway was completed – the point being that the railroad revolutionized travel. To emphasize this Clarke described the terrible road conditions existing in the province before the railroad arrived.

Some trivia from Clarke’s fascinating account of the early railway in Nova Scotia: At one time there were covered bridges on the line – at Horton’s Landing, Hantsport and Bridgetown. And a footbridge (!) over the track at Doran’s Crossing, three miles east of Windsor; this bridge claimed the life of a brakeman who was riding on top of a car, one of the first railway fatalities. When the “missing link” between Digby and Annapolis was completed on July 27, 1891, Nova Scotia for the first time was connected from one end to the other by rail. The first “through train” from Yarmouth to Halifax ran on the same day the missing link was connected. In the early days of railway travel passengers could purchase “ale, porter and other intoxicants” in stations at Windsor, Kentville and Aylesford.

As mentioned in last week’s column a re-enactment of the old Nova Scotia pony express run of 1849 will take place in early autumn. Thanks to Ivan Smith of Canning, I have an update about the events that will take place to mark the pony express anniversary.

The celebration will involve numerous communities and organizations throughout the Annapolis Valley. The re-enactment of the run will see riders galloping through the Valley along #1 highway, which was part of the original route. As I mentioned, the organizers of the anniversary hope to include a proclamation from Queen Elisabeth, which will be carried by the riders participating in the re-enactment.

To give you an overview of the re-enactment and to answer questions you may have about the short-lived pony express, extracts follow from the update received from Mr. Smith.

Why a pony express in Nova Scotia in 1849? “The Associated Press (AP) had been formed in 1848 by six leading New York newspapers to pool their efforts in speeding international news, and had invested significantly in the extension of the telegraph from the U.S. to Saint John, New Brunswick. The challenge was to get the dispatches from the docks of Halifax to the telegraph office in Saint John in the least possible time. The answer: To run a ‘pony express’ overland to Victoria Beach on the Bay of Fundy and carry dispatches on a fast chartered steamboat to Saint John.”

The Celebration: “The Pony Express Sesquicentennial Committee has been formed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of this colorful event. A number of municipalities and historical organizations are represented along the route. Celebrations are expected at the dockside when the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 11 docks at Halifax on the 28th of September.

“A total of around 12 celebrations will occur along the historical route, with Hants County celebrating on the 30th, Kings County on the 1st of October, and Annapolis County on the 2nd of October. Town Criers will read messages and proclamations, (and) there will be historical exhibits.

“A highlight of the celebration will be a re-enactment run by horses and riders over the entire 144 mile route, with stops at various scheduled ceremonies. The accent throughout will be a safe run.”

The original Pony express run: “The route was along the old Post Road, roughly the route of Highway 1 today. The AP paid the then enormous sum of US$1000 for each of the 20 runs. The service started on the 21st of February 1849 and ended on the 15th of November 1849 when the telegraph was completed from Saint John to Halifax.

“The horses were the finest available and the run was made at high speed day and night. The 144 miles were covered by a relay of two riders, changing in Kentville, on a total of 12 horses for each run. The average time was eight hours for the run, so each rider covered about 72 miles in just four hours. For comparison, the Halifax-Victoria Beach trip takes around three hours by car today, using high speeds and limited access roads such as the 101.”

That the runs were made “night and day” made it a hazardous undertaking and the rider on the pony express had many mishaps. From the press release: “Horse and rider were lucky another time. A rider at night was astonished when his horse gave a mighty leap (of 18 feet) while crossing a stream at Lower Horton. What the horse had seen, and the rider had not, was that the swing bridge was not in place that night.”

If above all you desire a good reputation, a long life and happiness, then drink beer says the Nova Scotia Temperance Society.

The Nova Scotia Temperance Society of 1831, that is. The Society’s message, published in the Nova Scotia Almanac for 1831, advises people that one small beer a day can bring all the good things mentioned above. Drinking water rather than strong alcohol, said the Society, would bring health and wealth. And by drinking milk along with water one would achieve “serenity and composure of mind.”

Living up to its temperance name, the Society’s message in the old Almanac was that some alcoholic beverages were acceptable if used in moderation, or as they said in the Almanac “in temperance.” Wine in moderation, said the Society, brought strength, vigor and provided nourishment. Cider and Perry (in moderation of course) were also recommended since they brought one “cheerfulness and contentment.”

Not all alcohol beverages had health benefits or generated mental well-being, however. Nova Scotians were warned to avoid punch, grog, brandy, gin, etc., since they brought sickness in various forms. Among the evils one was susceptible to when imbibing these drinks was dropsy, epilepsy, apoplexy, various terrible swellings of the limbs and …. madness.

Curious and quaint best describe the warnings issued by the Temperance Society in 1831. Oddly, researchers have recently confirmed that wine and beer do have health benefits. Yet over 150 years ago the Temperance Society was telling people wine and beer provided nourishment and improved one’s general well-being. How did they know? And how did they positively know away back then that milk was so good for people?

The Temperance Society’s promotion of alcoholic drinks as healthful isn’t the only interesting item in the old Almanac. For example, did you know that in 1831 females outnumbered males in the Annapolis Valley? According to the Almanac, the population of Kings County in 1831 was 10,208 of which 4,756 were males; Hants County’s population was 8,627 and 3,901 were males. Annapolis County had the largest population in 1831 – 14,661 – and 7,152 were males.

Other trivia from the old Almanac: Between the census year of 1817 and 1831, Annapolis County was the fastest growing area in the Annapolis Valley. In this period Annapolis County’s population increased by almost 50 percent; in the same period Kings and Hants averaged a 35 percent increase.

Some of the surnames of Kings and Hants County dignitaries mentioned in the Almanac are of Planter and Loyalist origin and come from some of the first families to settle the Valley after the expulsion of the Acadians. In 1831, for example, George Chipman was high sheriff in Kings County, while in Hants County this office was held by J. Wilkins. Lt. Col. Henry Gisner (Gesner?) commanded the 1st battalion of the Kings County Regiment; the 2nd. battalion commander was Lt. Col. S. Dennison. The battalions of the Hants County Regiment were commanded by Lt. Col. W. H. Shey and Lt. Col. R. Smith.

Pony Express Re-enactment

If you’ve been following the news you are likely aware of the pony express, which operated in Nova Scotia for about nine months in 1849. A re-enactment of the running of the pony express across Nova Scotia is being planned for this 150th anniversary year in late September or early October. This should be an interesting salute to a little-known piece of Nova Scotia history. I understand there may even be a Royal Proclamation which will be carried by riders during the re-enactment.

In an Advertiser column several years ago, Harold Woodman wrote that with the coming of old age pensions “the county poorhouses, which had been the home of many old people, soon disappeared from the scene.”

We can assume from this observation that poor-houses were once a fact of life. In 1910 A.W.H. Eaton (History of Kings County) wrote that “for many years now Poor-Houses have existed in the three original townships (Aylesford, Horton, Cornwallis) of the county.” When Eaton wrote this there were at least five provincially operated poor-houses in this part of the Annapolis Valley. Three were located in Kings County, one in West Hants and one in Bridgetown.

As for the establishment of poor-houses in Kings County, it’s possible to be more explicit than Eaton. Thanks to a grant from the Kings County Agricultural Society, poor-houses were opened in Billtown, Greenwich and Aylesford late in the 19th century. Records of the year-to-year operation of these houses can be found in House of Assembly reports in the Nova Scotia Archives and the Kirkconnell Room at Acadia University. A brief description of the Greenwich poor-house is in the history of this community (Greenwich Times 1760 – 1968) by Edythe Quinn.

It appears that before the establishment of poor-houses the poor and needy (as Eaton calls them in his Kings County history) were often “farmed out” and “bid off.” Translated, this meant that men, women and children needing assistance were often boarded in private homes where they were required to work at farm labor and domestic chores. Eaton tells us that private homes, subsidized by county grants, operated as boarding rooms for the poor and were common in the 19th century.

The opening of poor-houses in the Annapolis Valley did away with the boarding house system of caring for the needy – a system newspapers called “wasteful, inefficient and ill-suited to looking after certain classes of the poor,” – i.e. people with physical and mental disabilities. In some cases, however, the poor-houses or poor farms as government reports called them, were worse than private boarding rooms. While government reports on early county poor-houses gloss over what life was really like in these institutions, enough was said to paint a terrible picture.

In 1891, for example, a government inspector, Dr. A. C. Page toured the poor-houses of Kings and Hants County and while he used phrases such as “prettily situated,” a “handsome and substantial” building, and “tempting accommodations,” the misery peeks through.

“The Horton (Greenwich) farm … is a very suitable one,” Dr. Page reported, “but the house is old and not well adapted to the purpose, being too small and having very poor sleeping accommodations. There are 22 inmates, seven of whom are children. The bedsteads are poor, rickety wooden contrivances, not fit for the purpose for which they are used, but on the other hand well calculated for the breeding of vermin.” Dr. Page concludes with, “No bath room. No bathing. No enclosed grounds. No pains taken to keep sexes separate.”

On the Billtown poor-house Dr. Page reports that while there are no violent or acute insane there are “several silly imbeciles.” The buildings there are very poor, Page notes, and there is no regular medical supervision, no bathrooms and no heat throughout the house. The poor-house in West Hants has 45 inmates, “two of them insane, 25 are children.” We can see from Dr. Page’s reports that in most cases these poor-houses were the last stop for the homeless and for people with physical and mental disabilities.

With consolidation of several railway companies and the incorporation of the Dominion Atlantic Railway in 1894, a single line ran through the province from Halifax to Yarmouth. Wherever possible, the line through the Annapolis Valley had been laid in the lowlands, in some places running near the Minas Basin shore where railroad builders found fewer natural obstructions.

In Kings County the turbulent Cornwallis River and a geological feature, the Cornwallis Valley, dictated where the rail line would run. This left a vacuum of sorts along the northern bank of the Cornwallis River from Port Williams to Kentville and from these communities north to the Fundy shore. The establishment of the Cornwallis Valley Railway (C.V.R.) from Kingsport to Kentville provided some service, but it was obvious that a major area in Kings County had been “left out” when it came to rail service.

Looking at the lay of the land, it was also obvious that running to Kentville on the D.A.R. and doubling back on the C.V.R. to reach the then major port of Kingsport was taking the long way around. A line crossing the Cornwallis River at Port Williams and running north to Canning was the direct and shortest route to Kingsport. Since bridging the Cornwallis River near Port Williams would have presented no major problems other than financial, why was such a rail line never considered?

Actually it was. On March 31, 1911, an act to incorporate the Blomidon Railway Company Limited was passed by the provincial government. The document of incorporation can be found in the 1911 Statutes of Nova Scotia; this document indicates that the new railway would connect with the D.A.R. at Wolfville, cross the Cornwallis River at Port Williams and service areas untouched by the current railway

From Port Williams the Blomidon Railway was to run to Canning via Starr’s Point and Canard. After connecting with the C.V.R. “at or near Canning,” the new line would run north to Cape Blomidon, passing first through Woodside, North Corner, Upper Pereau and Delhaven. The plan was to run the line to the top of Cape Blomidon to the site of the National Park and from there run to Scots Bay and then to Cape Split. Today an old trail of unclear origin runs from the park site straight through the woods to Scots Bay; perhaps it is the right of way hewed out of the forest by the fledgling Blomidon Railway Company.

A number of prominent professional men and merchants were named as the chief operating officers of the proposed line and it’s is obvious from this list that the Blomidon Railway was a serious undertaking. One of the officers, Kentville lawyer Harry H. Wickwire, came from a pioneer family that had long played a prominent role in Kings County. Another officer, Leslie S. Macoun of Ottawa, was the son-in-law of Sir Frederick Borden. Named also as officers of the line were Canning physician Archibald M. Covert and Canning businessmen Arthur S. Burgess and Halle Bigelow.

Rumored to have the blessing of Sir Frederick and with initial capital of a quarter million dollars, the plan to build the Blomidon Railway was far from a fanciful scheme.  It would have been a magnificent undertaking but looking back from our vantage point today, we know that the Blomidon Railway was never built.

The Company had two years from the date of incorporation to start work on the railway, and I assumed that newspapers in 1911 or 1912 would have some reference to it. I found nothing. Perhaps another researcher will discover why the Blomidon Railway never happened.