Every spring an old friend collected dandelion greens for his grandmother. This was many years ago but I recall his grandmother calling the greens her spring tonic. “Grandmaw has to have her greens,” the friend used to say, “and they have to be picked when the plant is young.”

My friends dear old granny insisted on having dandelion greens in the spring and collecting of them was a ritual with near-religious overtones. While granny didn’t realize it, what she sought in the greens was probably a mega dose of vitamin A. In Stalking the Healthful Herbs, Euell Gibbons notes that the dandelion is the best-known source of vitamin A among the green vegetables. Another reference book on wild plants says dandelion greens are also high in vitamin C.

My friend’s grandmother knew little about vitamins but “folk instinct” told her that dandelions were a good cleanser and she ate them. Like other folks of her generation, granny occasionally looked to wild plants to “right the winter wrongs,” as they used to say. Relatively harmless greens such as those of the dandelion were often called upon to act as spring tonics and were probably more palatable than cod liver oil.

Nowadays we look with amusement on some of the beliefs and superstitions of past generations, especially those regarding medicinal plants. However, I know that at least one wild plant is good. Take the Teaberry, for example.  When we were kids we picked and ate these berries for their wintergreen flavor. The friend who collected dandelion greens also gathered Teaberry leaves for his grandmother. She dried the leaves and made a tea, which I once sampled.

When you hear about the wild plants natives and settlers used for food, teas, and medicine, it’s best to be skeptical and leave the sampling to more adventurous souls. There are various wild food guides that tell you this or that plant is safe, but I wouldn’t trust them. That being said, here are a few other wild tonics and teas my friend’s dandelion eating granny and people of my grandparent’s generation told me about. Keep in mind that the following is based on folklore, superstition, and hearsay, and are to be taken as such.

Now a common weed in this area, Yarrow (the pinkish, purple variety) was introduced by the Acadians. I’ve read that the Acadians used Yarrow to treat throat and respiratory ailments. White Yarrow is a native plant. A tea made of dried Yarrow is said to have been used by the settlers as a tonic and stimulant. Some sources say that in the Old World Yarrow was used to treat wounds, call up the devil, to cast spells and make love charms.

Burdock, another common weed, was used by our ancestors as a food and as medicine. The seed and root were used by folk doctors as a blood purifier and tonic. Poultices of crushed were once used to treat poison ivy and insect bites.

We have several varieties here but I believe it was red clover that was singled out as a cure for athlete’s foot. Folk doctors are said to have used red clover, brewed as a tea, as a sedative. I remember a tea with red clover as the basic ingredient being called “gossip tea,” supposedly because it loosened the tongue.

Wild strawberry tea: sounds interesting and I recall my old friend’s granny talking about it. The leaf of the wild strawberry is high in vitamin C and this may explain the folktale that dried leaves of this plant were a great winter tonic when steeped as a tea.

When Cathy Margeson stops digging into old records and archive files – in the past year alone she’s made 14 trips to the [Maritime] Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax – she will have compiled a list of over 600 sailing ships that were built in Kings County, some dating back to the 1700s.

However, that research may never be completed. “There’s no deadline. It’s one of those projects that are ongoing and we’ll probably leave the file open,” Ms. Margeson said. “There will likely be other additions to the list in the future.”

As chairperson of the Kings Historical Society history committee, Ms. Margeson has been involved in many similar community projects. None have taken quite as much time as the sailing ship compilation, however. Ms. Margeson told me recently that she has been working on the project for at least a year. The file folder containing the results of her research is a good two inches thick and its size confirms what I’ve long heard about Kings County – that shipbuilding was once the area’s main industry.

Just over a century ago, in fact, Nova Scotia was the leading shipbuilding province in Canada and every seaside nook and cranny in Kings County literally hummed with the shipwright’s saw. “At Scots Bay, Hall’s Harbor, Baxter’s Harbor, Black Rock and French Cross (Morden) many vessels have been built, while at Canning and Kingsport there have been a great many more,” Eaton writes in the History of Kings County, giving 1790 as the date when the first sailing vessel was built.

Later historians would confirm Eaton’s estimate of Canning and Kingsport as important shipbuilding centers. At one time Kingsport was the site of one of the largest shipbuilding operations in Nova Scotia. In a 30-year-period Ebenezer Cox – touted as one of the “Maritime’s great master builder” – turned out at least 30 schooners and other sailing vessels averaging 1,000 tons each from his Kingsport yard.

In Canning, a monument marks the site of Ebenezer Bigelow’s shipyard. Eaton calls Ebenezer Bigelow the “first shipbuilder of importance… who began to build vessels in 1800.” The Bigelow yards were productive until the second decade of the 20th century, turning out many fine vessels that put Canning on the map.

To the Cox shipyard in Kingsport goes the honor of producing some of the largest sailing vessels in Canada, however. In 1890 a four-masted bark of 2,061 tons, the Kings County, was built in the Cox yard. The Kings County was one of only two four-masted schooners built in Canada. In 1891 Cox built the 2,137 ton Canada, one of the country’s largest square-rigged vessels.

During the era of sail, ships from Nova Scotia carried cargo around the world. Foremost among these merchant ships were vessels built in Kings County, not only in the Cox and Bigelow yards but in obscure byways such as Town Plot, Horton Landing and the upper reaches of the Cornwallis River. The names of those vessels, their builders, tonnage and other details are now known, thanks to the Old Kings Courthouse Museum assistant curator, Cathy Margeson.

Unfortunately, Margeson doesn’t believe there would be enough interest in the sailing ship compilation to make it viable as a book. However, her work will be on file in the Kentville museum for anyone interested in looking at it. The file may also be available later on computer disk.

The patrician-looking gentleman stared into the distance when A. L. Hardy took his photograph near the turn of the century. The occasion was an outstanding autumn day afield and the gentleman celebrated the event by donning his best corduroy suit, a stylish hat, and having his picture taken. A dozen or so years ago I wrote a column about the old time photograph, describing the scene and elaborating on what the picture revealed about the period the gentleman lived in.

The name of the gentleman wasn’t identified on the photograph and there seemed to be no way of discovering who he was. I showed the photo to several long-time area residents and hobby historians without luck. The editor of this paper published the photo asking readers for help but no one was able to make a positive identification. I wasn’t looking in the right places, however. A file existed on the gentleman and he turned out to be a distinguished Valley Doctor who was born in Kentville.

While flipping through scrapbooks at the Kentville museum recently I came across a sheet containing a photocopy of the old photograph; beside it someone had written, “It is, indeed, Dr. W. B. Moore!”

Most current residents of this area will not recall Dr. Willis B. Moore. In his day, however, Dr. Moore was hailed as a medical pioneer and eminent practitioner. At the time of his death at the age of 84 in 1939, Dr. Moore was lauded in an editorial as “another of that band of devoted pioneers in medicine who ministered to the people of this Province in the face of hardships which, to the modern practitioner, would seem almost impossible to bear.”

The editorial referred to Dr. Moore’s distinguished medical career which spanned a period over half a century long. After graduation from Dalhousie University, Dr. Moore flirted briefly with a career as a ship’s surgeon. In 1880 Moore was appointed house surgeon at Victoria General Hospital, a post he held for three years. Following this, Dr. Moore returned to the town of his birth where he was to live and practice until his death.

“Dr. Moore was born in Kentville, son of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Moore,” his obituary of April 13 reads. “His father was for many years a member of Parliament. The youth received his education at Horton and Pictou academies before going to Dalhousie to take his M.D. degree.”

Other obituaries and salutes in Dr. Moore’s file spoke of a practice that extended well beyond Kentville even though his office and residence was located there for at least half a century. “For over 50 years Dr. Moore had practiced in Kings County,” reads one newspaper excerpt. “His untiring good nature and ability as a physician impressed all with whom he came in contact and it was said … his field of practice extended from Yarmouth to Halifax,” another reads.

“Typhoid, diphtheria, tetanus, pneumonia – not even a beginning had been made in their conquest when this man began his work of ministering to the sick and injured,” another tribute said. “And there are thousands who can testify to the ability and skill which were his in spite of the universal lack of scientific knowledge.”

Dr. Willis B. Moore… distinguished, a pioneer, a long-time medical practitioner of exceptional skill and devotion, “a good citizen, a faithful doctor with widespread interests.” All are attributes of a once unidentified gentleman who posed in his Sunday best for a Hardy portrait. Isn’t it unusual, to say the least, that few remember him today.

You can glean a lot from old newspapers – what grandpappy paid for butter and eggs, what life was like in the horse and buggy days, and so on.

People like to read the old papers. On the other hand, the newspaper directory a friend discovered in the library at Acadia University would probably turn most people off. However, since the directory added to his database on historical Kentville, Louis Comeau was excited by his find. “I found an 1871 directory of North American newspapers at Acadia,” Louis said. “It has a section on Kentville and the Valley. You should have a look at it.”

Look at it I did. I was in the University library the next afternoon. And on the shelf beside the 1871 directory I made another discovery, a later edition of the same publication dated 1903. The directories were compilations of U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines, which at first glance seemed to contain dull, trivial, totally useless, out-of-date information.

At second glance I realized the old directories were more than lists of newspapers and magazines. The publishers, a New York company, were thorough in some ways, providing population statistics as well as a list of newspapers and magazines published in Nova Scotia during the 1870s and the early 20th century. Before radio and television, newspapers were the most important means of communication. The fact that a town published its own paper hinted at its commercial status and importance.

Thus we learn from the directories that some of today’s sleepy little byways were once prominent centers in the 19th century. In the late 1800s, for example, newspapers were published in Hantsport (the Advance with a circulation of less than a thousand) Bear River and Parrsboro.

Prominent centers such as Kentville, Wolfville and Windsor each had two newspapers in this period. The 1871 edition of the directory shows only one paper was published in Kentville. This was the Star, a four-page issue published on Thursday with 700 circulation. However, the 1903 edition which listed papers published in the 1890s gives two Kentville papers, The Advertiser ( 1,520 circulation) and the Western Chronicle with a readership of 1,908.

No doubt an indication of their prominence at the time, Windsor and Wolfville also boasted two newspapers in this period. Windsor had the Hants Journal, a Wednesday issue and the Tribune, published Friday; both papers had a readership in excess of one thousand.

Wolfville’s two papers were the Acadian, a Friday paper, and the Acadian Orchardist, published Tuesday, with both papers having a circulation of more than a thousand. Acadia University’s publication, The Athenaeum, was also being published in this period.

The old directory tells us that many of the weekly newspapers being published today in the Annapolis Valley existed 100 years ago. As well as the papers already mentioned, (The Advertiser, Acadian and Hants Journal) the Berwick Register, Bridgetown Monitor, Middleton Outlook (now the Mirror) Digby Courier, and Annapolis Spectator were being published a century ago.

In the 1890s Nova Scotia also had seven daily newspapers; only one has endured as long as the Valley’s weekly papers.

In 1881 the Nova Scotia Historical Society included in its publications the journal of an early Annapolis settler, John Witherspoon. The journal was tattered, incomplete and in places indecipherable. However, John Witherspoon lived through a turbulent period in our history and the Society believed his observations and impressions were worth preserving.

In the autumn of 1757, John Witherspoon had the misfortune to be cutting wood near the fort at Annapolis when a band of Micmacs raided the area. Taken prisoner, Witherspoon was sold to the French and carried to Quebec. Witherspoon spent two years in Quebec until he was liberated by Wolfe and his journal, written in tobacco juice, records that period.

On the journey to Quebec, there was a brief period of freedom when Witherspoon and several other prisoners seized a canoe and fled into the wilderness. Pursued by the Micmacs and the French, the escapees were taken only because Witherspoon’s companions found alcohol and drank themselves into a stupor. “How easy we might have got ofe (off) had it not been for strong drink,” Witherspoon lamented in his journal.

While his spelling in places was atrocious, Witherspoon’s journal tells us he was intelligent and a keen observer. He lived at a time when hunger and disease were rampant in village, town, and city, and Witherspoon often refers to the terrible living conditions. In an entry dated March 19 (1758) Witherspoon writes: “I understand the smallpox is in Canneday (Canada) of which a great number have died. This sore and contagious disease the French call pockot. As to the number of dead I do not rightly hear, but some say seven hundred. Here is three sore calamities on this people at once, the sword, famine and pestilence.”

Subjected to starvation rations in Quebec, Witherspoon’s health deteriorates rapidly. Oddly, he takes a friendly attitude towards his captors. Describing almost unbearable conditions, he sympathizes with the people who hold him since they seem to be suffering as much as he is. “One almost every day see’s men executed for deserting from their colours and, indeed, these men’s living is so mean I do not wonder at it; and their work very hard, their allowance is the same as the prisoners, one pound of bread and half of pork per day.”

Quebec is under siege during the latter part of Witherspoon’s internment and as the battle for Quebec culminates Witherspoon writes that “my flesh is clothed in worms and clods of dust, my skin is broken and becomes loathsome.” Witherspoon describes the various skirmishes which he can witness from a distance through the prison bars. Then came the news that Wolfe and Montcalm had been killed. “These two Generals fell near about one and the same time and died very near together,” Witherspoon wrote in his journal.

Soon after this entry, Witherspoon is released but we are unable to read of his rejoicing. The last pages of his journal are incomplete or missing.

John Witherspoon returned to Annapolis and to his farm. There he raised a family and apparently lived a long and happy life. This note by the Historical Society gives us an inkling of his life after his release from the dungeons of Quebec:

“In the census for 1769 he (Witherspoon) is enumerated, and in the census of 1770 as at Granville, the master of a family of eight persons, one man, three boys, one woman and three girls, all Protestant and Americans; had 2 oxens, 3 cows, 3 young cattle, 5 sheep and 2 swine.”