Found at the Kentville library in a box of used books selling for 25 cents each – a hardcover copy of Dr. Chase’s Recipes, 1862 edition. In excellent condition and no doubt a reproduction of the original.

An unusual book containing among other things, medicines once used to treat ailments common in grandpappy’s day. People of the older generations will recall the multitude of patent medicines once offered by Dr. Chase. Some of the older local newspapers I’ve looked at recently, the 1890 to 1910 editions of the Western Chronicle and Advertiser, for example, carried a host of the venerable Doctor’s advertisements, often two or three a page.

It really wasn’t that long ago that Dr. Chase’s Nerve Pills and Dr. Chase’s Ointment could be found on pharmacy shelves. Perhaps a few of his products are still being sold but I couldn’t find any when I called several drug stores recently. One pharmacist told me the nerve pills and ointment were the last products to carry the Dr. Chase name.

As mentioned, old Dr. Chase offered a great many treatments, usually for afflictions that had strange names and were curious in the sense of being uncommon or having exotic characteristics. In some cases, the “medical” concoctions were as curious as the maladies they treated.

Dr. Chase’s suggestion for treating “felons” (an old-fashioned term for inflammation around finger or toenails) is a perfect example: “Take a sweet oil, 1/2 pt., and stew a 3 cent plug of tobacco in it until the tobacco is crisped; then squeeze out and add red lead 1 oz. and boil until black; when cool add pulverized camphor gum 1 oz.”

Consumption (tuberculosis) was a common and deadly disease in Dr. Chase’s day and he offered a syrup as treatment. “Take tamarack bark, 1 peck, spikenard root, 1/2 pound, dandelion root, 1/4 pound, hops 2 oz. …” These ingredients were boiled in several gallons of water to which brandy and honey were added and the consumptive drank three or four glasses a day.

Following this recipe – and despite all the patent medicines bordering on quackery -there is a discussion about tuberculosis which reveals that Dr. Chase was ahead of his time. After admitting that the above syrup contained no ingredients “usually put into syrups for this disease,” Dr. Chase offers this sagacious advice for tubercular patients:

“First then, do not go south to smother and die; but go north for cool, fresh air; hunt, fish and eat freely of the roasted game; cast away care. Take a healthy, faithful friend with you to lean upon when needed in your rambles.”

On the subject of fat in the diet, however, Dr. Chase contended that a healthy lifestyle was impossible without it. Avoiding fat meat, butter, and oily gravies and substituting milk and eggs for them is a mistake, he said. “They (milk and eggs) constitute an imperfect substitute for fat meat, without which sooner or later the body is almost sure to show the effects of deficient calorification.”

If you found this amusing, Dr. Chase’s argument that chicken is worse than pork will leave you laughing: “Set a piece of pork before a lady; ‘Oh, horrible! The dirty, nasty, filthy stuff. Give us chicken, clean, nice chicken.’ Now this lady was no farmer’s wife or she would have observed that the habits of chicken are ten times more filthy than the hog, for even the hog’s leavings and droppings are overhauled by them, and much of it appropriated by ‘ladies meat’.”

(Built on the banks of the Gaspereau River above the White Rock bridge, the S.P. Benjamin grist and lumber mill began operations in 1885. The late Raleigh Eagles reminisced about the mill when I interviewed him years ago. Part two also includes reflections by Bert young, New Minas, who has written a book about his early days in White Rock.)

Part Two

The areas along the Gaspereau River and around Gaspereau Lake were the main sources of lumber for the Benjamin mill. S. P. Benjamin may have controlled thousands of acres of woodland when the mill was operating but it appears he wasn’t sure how much he actually owned. Raleigh Eagles remembers a story making the rounds when Benjamin sold his holdings to the Nova Scotia Light and Power Company. “Everyone was saying that when Benjamin sold out, the best he could do was estimate the number of acres he owned,” Eagle said.

Eagles also remembered the log drives down the Gaspereau River in the spring when the mill operated night and day. He told me about the teams of horses and oxen that hauled freshly milled logs through the Deep Hollow Road to Port Mills, “where they were loaded on schooners and shipped around the world.”

The haul through Deep Hollow, the most direct route to Port Williams, was made over a difficult and occasionally treacherous road. Before it was paved the road through the hollow was swampy and often had to be corduroyed – reinforced by laying poles crosswise – before horse and ox teams could traverse it. “At times even this didn’t help,” Eagles recalled, “and teams had to double up just to get through.”

Eagles said that ten teams of horses and “seven or eight yoke of oxen” were used by the mill at the peak of operations. Each team and yoke were expected to make two trips daily to Port Williams, a task that often took from dawn to dusk. These hauls, no more than one trip a day according to some, may have been made to Canning or Wolfville rather than Port Williams. There is some question whether lumber was being shipped out of Port Williams when Benjamin’s mill was in operation.

Lumber was hauled in what Eagles said the lumberjacks called “Dutch wagons,” so called perhaps because they were made on the South Shore. Eagles’ brother, Leslie, was a teamster with the mill and he often talked about the rigors of the daily hauls. The teamsters occasionally competed to see who could haul the largest loads. In one run, Leslie hauled 4,000 feet of finished lumber, a record that stood for years.

Dictated perhaps by a dwindling timber supply, S. P. Benjamin closed his mill after less than two decades of operation. In 1900 the mill machinery was dismantled and moved to Falmouth, a move Raleigh Eagles remembered as being unpopular at the time. “Those weren’t easy times,” he said, “and more than one family depended on the mill for their livelihood.”

Eagles told me there were other mills operating around White Rock besides Benjamins. This was confirmed recently by Bert Young who remembers that there were at least three small mills located along the Deep Hollow Road. In the 1920s Emery Schofield dammed the Deep Hollow brook and operated a steam mill on two sites. While he couldn’t recall details, Young said his grandfather Eagles operated a mill in the late 1800s at the northern end of Deep Hollow.

If you look upstream from the bridge spanning the Gaspereau River in White Rock, you can see the area once occupied by Benjamin’s grist and feed mill. The late Raleigh Eagles recalled many details about the mill when I interviewed him for this newspaper in the early 70s. I kept the notes of the interview and they are incorporated in the following two-part story on the mill.

Part One

During the latter part of the 19th century, White Rock was the site of a bustling enterprise known as the S. P. Benjamin Grist and Feed Mill. The mill was built along the banks of the Gaspereau River in 1885 and operated for 15 years.

Little trace remains of the mill today. The site where the mill sprawled along the Gaspereau River just above the highway bridge has filled in over the years and there are few signs to indicate that a major industry once operated there. Mr. Eagles recalls that for a decade or so after the mill closed one or two small buildings remained to mark the site but these were swept away during a spring flood.

While time has erased most traces of the Benjamin mill, many long-time residents of the area remember it well. Eagles, who was 80 when I interviewed him, recalls walking past the mill when he was a schoolboy in White Rock. His father and brother worked in the mill.

Bert Young, New Minas, recalls that when he started school at White Rock in 1917, parts of the dam and the mill’s cribwork were still visible. Young said that two bridges spanned the Gaspereau at the mill site when he was a schoolboy. Mr. Young recently completed a book about his early days in White Rock – as yet unpublished – and while he says it’s “mostly reminiscing,” the Benjamin mill is mentioned.

When I interviewed Raleigh Eagles he showed me two photographs which had been in his possession for over 50 years. One was of the mill, an imposing array of buildings along the south bank of the Gaspereau. The second photograph, a group shot, indicates from a head count that at least 50 men were employed at the mill when the picture was taken. While there’s no way today of determining how accurate this figure is, there’s no doubt that the mill was an important industry at the time. Eagles told me that as well as offering year around employment, the mill drew heavily on the countryside for supplies. Men and draft animals had to be fed and the lumberjacks supplied with the tools of their trade. “As a result, there was a flourishing trade in the area around the mill,” Eagles said.

According to Eagles, the mill was “nearly a self-contained community.” At the top of the hill was a boardinghouse with a full-time cook – where the cook used a barrel of flour a day making bread for the lumberjacks, Eagles recalls. Tucked into the bank at the bottom of the hill was the company store which supplied tobacco, clothing, and other basics. Bert Young tells me the store was located in the parking area just over the bridge looking south while the boardinghouse was on the old Messom property.

Also on the site was a blacksmith shop. In Eagles’ photo, this is shown snuggled up against the bridge with adjacent stables for horses and oxen. Above the stables stood the grist and lumber mills, the latter standing on the right bank of the river looking upstream. (Continued next week.)

At a yard sale recently a tattered paperback copy of Ernest Buckler’s book, The Mountain And The Valley, was selling for .25 cents; at a sale in the town library the same book, a well-used hardcover book club edition, was half a buck.

These prices aren’t unusual since the books of the renowned Annapolis Valley author have been re-issued over and over in various inexpensive editions. However, if you happen to own the hardcover first edition of Buckler’s, The Mountain And The Valley, you could ask much more for it than the yard sale price. A 10-year-old price list of first issue books showed that the Buckler book was selling for $75. And in the 10 years since this price list was published, this book had undoubtedly increased in value.

Another valuable Nova Scotia book is Marguerite Woodworth’s history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway. This book was published with a soft cover in 1936 and copies are scarce. The Odd Book on Front Street, Wolfville, recently had a copy on its shelves priced at $60.

While I have no idea of the going prices, some of the books of Thomas Raddall are sought after. The limited edition of Raddall’s history of the West Nova Scotia Regiment has increased in value since its release and copies are hard to find. Well, perhaps not hard to find, but try to buy one and see how much luck you have. A local book dealer has a waiting list for this history and a few other books by Raddall.

Other books by Maritime authors may be in the same category as books by Buckler, Raddall, and Woodworth. While they may not be “collector’s items” yet, the early editions of books by Esther Clark Wright may one day be valuable. Bliss Carman’s Low Tide On Grand Pre, especially the edition with his name misspelled, will bring upwards of $250. The edition with Carman’s name shown as “Carmen” was estimated to be worth $3,000 in 1989, which apparently was the going price at the time if a collector was interested.

The first issues of the works of Thomas Chandler Haliburton are unlikely to turn up at a yard sale. If you had an early issue of The Clockmaker you could ask for at least $700 for it and possibly more. In Book Collecting, a book about book collecting by Allen Ahearn, The Clockmaker was listed at $750 in the 1989 edition. The market price is undoubtedly higher now.

While this is speculation on my part, the early editions of books by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, Will R. Bird and perhaps even Theodore Goodrich Roberts and Clara Dennis will one day be valuable. You won’t find collectible books by these authors at flea markets or yard sales, however.

Postscripts

In a recent letter, Douglas Eagles of Sarnia mentioned an earlier Kings County commercial enterprise called the Boot Island Fishery. He didn’t have much information about the business but Mr. Eagles said that it operated on or near Boot Island.

I’d appreciate hearing from readers who have information about this enterprise or who may have heard about it. Any tidbit you have, confirmed or otherwise, would be welcome.

An E-mail letter from Bev Keddy, Halifax, notes that it would be “nice if all (my) columns on local history could be online for all to enjoy.” Your comments are appreciated, Bev. Hopefully all my history columns will be available on my website in the near future.

Richard Pierik also writes via E-mail. Mr. Pierik is interested in Kings County postcards and Nova Scotia bottles and currency. He has an interesting display on his website at http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/pierik-connors/page.htm.

The story of T. P. Calkin Ltd. begins with a New England Planter who was granted one share of land in Cornwallis, Garth Calkin said when he addressed the Kings Historical Society recently.

The Planter was Ezekial Calkin and it was his grandson, Benjamin, who founded T. P. Calkin, a firm that operated in the Annapolis Valley for 125 years. Garth Calkin was the firm’s last president before it was purchased by Sumners. A former Kentville Mayor and sixth generation Planter, Mr. Calkin spent his entire career with his family’s firm. In his address to the Historical Society he spoke about that career which began when he graduated from high school; but long before his graduation, as he pointed in his address, Calkins was already a household name and the firm had been catering to Valley people for several generations.

Benjamin Calkin opened the family’s first store on Main Street in 1847. “I wish I could tell you more about (this) business,” Mr. Calkin said, “but I was never told and apparently didn’t have enough interest to find out.” By 1867, however, the firm had moved to permanent quarters at the corner of Webster and Cornwallis Street and their inventory reflected the times. “For the blacksmith we stocked iron bars, horseshoe nails and shoes, even borax for the forge; for the wheelwright (we stocked) wooden rims, hubs, spokes, whiffletrees, shafts and all metal parts for carriages.”

Mr. Calkin joined the firm in 1924 and Calkin’s inventory and business methods at the time reflected the changes in society. Gone were deliveries by horse and wagon. The firm had several trucks on the road when Mr. Calkin took his place behind the counter of the family’s retail store as a 17-year-old clerk. By this time the blacksmith was on his way out and Calkin’s inventory was heavy on tools for farm and forest workers.

In 1926 Calkins set up separate retail and wholesale divisions and Kentville Hardware Store Limited was opened. Over the next two decades, Calkins opened hardware stores in Middleton and Bridgetown. In the meantime, the wholesale division had expanded across the province. When Calkins celebrated their 100th anniversary in 1947, the firm was operating a plumbing and heating supply outlet in Halifax and a year later in Dartmouth and Bridgewater. By this time the firm had close to 200 employees.

When Garth Calkin reached retirement age in 1972, the firm had, in his words, “become more of a distributor of plumbing and heating supplies and less of a hardware and building supplies business.” At this time Ontario manufacturers were opening factory outlets and selling directly to plumbing and heating tradesmen. To be competitive, Calkins were forced to either amalgamate with a larger firm or sell.

The sale of the firm to Sumners concluded the Calkin family’s association with a business that had endured since the day Benjamin decided he didn’t like clerking for someone else. The firm began in the days of the horse and ox, adapted to the advent of the automobile, flourished through two world wars, eventually succumbing when broad changes in business practice made some provincial firms obsolete.

Today Calkins – or “Corkins” as old-timers used to call it – is no longer the household name it once was but it is still remembered.

In the column saluting one of Kentville’s most prominent citizens, Dr. Willis B. Moore, I remarked that it was unusual so few people remembered him today.

While I meant that there was no “official” remembrance of one of the Annapolis Valley’s more eminent practitioners, several readers took me literally, calling to say they certainly remembered Dr. Moore.

One caller was Bev Eaton of Kentville who said Moore was his first physician. Eaton was four or five years old when he went to Dr. Moore’s Main Street office in the early 20s. He clearly recalls his office, Dr. Moore’s “great beard” and the large mounted head of a moose (which Dr. Moore probably bagged himself since he was a renowned hunter). “The best chair in the office was always occupied by Dr. Moore’s dog,” Eaton said. The dog likely was Dr. Moore’s favorite hunting companion, the animal that posed with Moore in the A. L. Hardy photograph.

Another caller -“please leave my name out” – who comes from an old Kentville railroad family and has lived in the town all her life, also remembers Dr. Moore. This caller, 84 years young, was treated by Dr. Moore when she was a girl. Like Mr. Eaton, she also remembers the mounted moose head in Dr. Moore’s office. Reminiscing about Kentville and a variety store called Wheatley’s, the caller said Dr. Moore’s office was situated on the south side of Main Street; her description would place Dr. Moore’s office next to the old Advertiser building (now a pub) on the site of what was once Joseph’s Restaurant.

From The 1890s

During the 70s The Advertiser ran a series pages from old Valley newspapers of the mid-to-late 19th century. Following are excerpts from these pages, the first an example of how fearless (or foolish) newspaper editors apparently were in the old days.

From the editorial page of the Western Chronicle, 1879, apparently regarding a long-running dispute about the legalities of a dam on the Gaspereau River: “Mr. W. H. … again comes to the fore to defend his abortion of a fish way at Gaspereau. His language is that of a blackguard, (and is) simply blatant, loud-mouthed boasting, a disgrace to the Department whose confidence he abuses.”

From the same issue, dated January 15, a report that in 1878 Kings County farmers exported a grand total of 224,518 bushels of potatoes valued at $138,744. Most of the crop was shipped out of the port of Canning.

We take electric power for granted most of the time but as you will see from the following, it was a novelty in 1893. From the Western Chronicle‘s December 6 issue: “Next Sunday evening, Dec. 10, St. James Church, Kentville, will be lighted for the first time with the electric light. Special offerings will be taken up both at the morning and evening services to defray the cost of the introduction. Suitable fixtures have been ordered from Toronto.”

Driven insane by an unprovoked beating, a young farm worker wandered around Kings County posing as the proprietor of a local business, reports the October 25, 1893, issue of the Western Chronicle and Valley Scribe. As well as describing the attack on the farm boy, the newspaper report reveals that the old name for Gallows Hill, the prominent rise of land on Kentville’s southern boundary, was Joe Bell Hill. Bell was either the man who owned a house at the bottom of the hill or the person hanged for murder on its peak.