As well as being gratifying, reader response to this column is often helpful, educational and enlightening. In the past year, for example, reader comments about these columns expanded on my topics, offering tidbits of information not generally known which otherwise might never have been recorded.

Many of the topics in this column reached print only because people were willing to talk about their interests, hobbies and fields of expertise. At times I must have been a bit annoying to people like Louis Comeau, Leon Barron, Joe Patterson and Marie Bishop for constantly asking questions and borrowing from their files and scrapbooks. Without the assistance of these four history buffs and avid collectors, and without the input of dozens of other readers, many of the columns on local history could never have been put together.

In addition to appreciating the assistance of people who have interesting hobbies and a wealth of local folklore at their fingertips, I value the letters, telephone calls and comments from readers. So let’s start the New Year off on the right foot by saying thanks to everyone. I look forward in ’98 to talking with you about local history and folklore, interesting trivia and your hobbies.

I mentioned Ivan Smith of Canning in this column before. One of Mr. Smith’s interests is the history of local telephone and power companies. Thanks to Smith, much of this history is posted on the Internet. If you’re on the ‘net, look under Nova Scotia history (http://alts.net//ns1625/) and you’ll find an enormous amount of info on these topics. And it’s constantly being updated and added to as Mr. Smith continues his research.

When I wrote a column recently expressing surprise about finding my father’s war record on the Internet, Mr. Smith called to make an interesting observation. Posting war records on the Internet is important, Smith said. He referred to the history of Canada’s World War One black battalion, which he has referred to extensively at the Nova Scotia history site. “Black participation in this war is denied in certain quarters,” Smith said, “but posting it on the Internet authenticates it.”

Smith’s point is that the posting of the enlistment papers of over 600,000 Canadians who fought in the first war reinforces Canada’s participation and makes us aware of the country’s contribution.

A history of the community Scott’s Bay is currently being prepared and William Poole is seeking the assistance of anyone who may have information on the shipbuilding period from the mid 1800s to the turn of the century. I assume anything on the history of the Bay, in addition to the shipbuilding period, would also be welcomed by Mr. Poole.

“I am working on a … paper outlining the history of Scott’s Bay and continuing to the present day,” Poole writes. “My starting document is a historical record written by Abram Jess, circa 1940s.”

Sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to reading the completed book. Readers who can help Mr. Poole can reach him via telephone at 902-582-1229 or e-mail him at poole@ns.sympatico.ca.

Comments on this column can be addressed me at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.

The origin of some surnames is obvious. Baker, Smith, Fowler and Brewer, for example, are family names that must have originated because of occupations.

On the other hand, there are family names with spellings that offer no clues to their origin. In Riverside Cemetery at Hantsport, for instance, is a headstone marking the resting place of Esther and Mary Coalfleet, mother and daughter, who died during a shipwreck along the coast of Nova Scotia. The couple froze to death when on January 3, 1881, the Hantsport barque Happy Home, captained by Hiram Coalfleet, capsized after striking a ledge in a storm 14 miles off Yarmouth.

Coalfleet is an unusual surname and it is unique to Nova Scotia and Hantsport in particular where it is believed to have originated in the 18th century. Captain Hiram Coalfleet was the grandson of Peter Coalfleet, who is said to be the first person to carry this name. The story of Peter has been passed from generation to generation and while some of the details are unclear, it appears he was orphaned when a small fleet of coal barges from England were wrecked during a winter gale on the coast of Cape Breton.

The story goes that after the gale subsided, Micmacs discovered baby Peter strapped to his dead mother in wreckage that was floating off shore. Word of the coal fleet disaster and the succor of baby Peter by the Micmacs spread, reaching the authorities in Halifax who had the boy removed to this city. Here is how Hattie Chittick described Peter’s rescue and the origin of his unusual surname in “Hantsport on Avon,” her 1964 history of the town:

“Many years ago a fleet of coal-barges, from Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, was wrecked off Nova Scotia, near Chebucto, in a heavy gale. A piece of wreckage was seen by some Indians from shore, who put out and got it. They found to their surprise it was part of the boat’s house and in it was a woman with a tiny child bound to her chest. This woman was dead and after her burial …. they took the child and cared for him until one Edward Barker, who had heard of the tragedy, went to Halifax and brought the child to Half-Way River (now Hantsport), giving him the name Peter Coalfleet, the last part of the name having been suggested by the circumstances.”

Thus began the Coalfleet line, a family that for several generations played various roles in Hantsport’s history and its connection with the era of sailing ships. While Peter apparently never went to sea, his sons and grandsons became master mariners. In Chittick’s book is a list of Hantsport master mariners and there are eight Coalfleets. Several of these were the sons of Peter, the balance grandsons or great grandsons. One of those named in the list was Hiram, Captain of the Happy Home, and he is known to be a grandson of Peter.

Another grandson, Abel, who was Hiram’s brother and sailed with him for a while as mate, is included in Chittick’s list of master mariners. Abel was sailing with Hiram on the Providence when the latter pulled off a spectacular sea rescue, receiving recognition for his feat in 1869 by the Governor General of Canada.

While preparing this column I did a quick search of the telephone book, looking for the Coalfleet surname. I was unable to find it.

St. Clair (Joe) Patterson of Hantsport has been researching the Coalfleet family for years; Patterson tells me the last of the Coalfleets died in Hantsport in the 1960s and the surname is no longer carried. Hopefully Patterson’s work on this illustrious and unusual family name will one day be published.

The first exercises by the Black Watch at Camp Gagetown, New Brunswick, were held in the mid-50s. During the exercises a number of old, abandoned farms were discovered inside the Camp boundaries. Eventually the farms were demolished but not before soldiers used them for bivouacs.

On an attic floor in one of the old farms a soldier from Kentville found piles of letters with 19th century postmarks. Out of curiosity, and to pass time, he began to read the letters. One was most interesting and the soldier put it in his knapsack. When he returned to Kentville he gave the letter to me and I’ve held on to it for over 40 years; the contents of the letter is the topic of this week’s column.

Written by a man who signed his name J. J. Maguire, the letter was mailed from Boston to St. John, New Brunswick, in September of 1887. The recipient was a man identified only as “Friend Charles,” and its contents tell us Maguire had swindled his employer (a Mr. Dodge) and was asking for help in covering up his misdoing. While telling Charles of his plight, Maguire also gives us a glimpse of life in that period and the price of such things as strawberries and freight costs.

“I have seen Mr. Dodge and he says that he wants a statement from you for what berries that you shipped to him this season,” Maguire writes. Then he gets to the purpose of his letter. “Now Charles, you can send in with your statement a small lot (of berries) on some back date. You might put a lot say on one day previous to the first lot you shipped.” Maguire added that his employer was “all bothered upon his books and won’t know the difference.”

The reason for falsifying records? Maguire had been on a binge in St. John and had spent some of his employer’s money while carousing with a friend. And he wanted Maguire to cover the money he had spent with a fake invoice which he supposedly had paid while in St. John. “The last Saturday I went down there I went through a lot of money. I got full that night and it went from me one way or another. Now you can help me by billing in 14 crates from Hoyts on the date previous to the first lot you shipped from there.”

In his letter Maguire spells out to the penny exactly how Charles can help him. Invoice the 14 crates of strawberries at four cents a box or $1.28 a crate, he requests. This will total $17.92 he goes on and when you add 36 cents a crate for freight charges between Boston and St. John ($5.04) and 32 cents a crate for packing and hauling ($4.48) the total of the false invoice will read $27.44. Which gives us a fair idea of what a night on the town costs 110 years ago.

Over the years I’ve occasionally taken Maguire’s letter (now tattered and flimsy) from my files, read it, and speculated on what might happened as a result of his carousal over a century ago. Did Charles foolishly help his wastrel friend, who, by the way, reveals in his letter that he owes money to several people in St. John and promises to cover it.

I treasure my intriguing old letter – because of Maguire’s pitiful plight, because I will never know the outcome of Maguire’s attempt to swindle his employer, and for the brief glimpse of life in the 19th century that it provides.

In a way I empathize with Maguire who closes his letter with a final appeal for help: “Charlie, do the best you can (and) everything will be all right.”

The young soldier-to-be signed the “attestation paper” signifying he was willing to serve overseas in the Canadian Expeditionary Force for one year or as long as the war between Great Britain and Germany lasted. By signing he swore he would be “faithful and bear true allegiance” to King George the Fifth. The date on the document was February 5, 1916. The First World War was just over two years old when he enlisted at Kentville. He was 22 at the time.

It’s difficult to explain how I felt when the computer screen brought up the enlistment papers my father had filled out and signed when joining the Army 81 years ago. At first I was surprised and amazed that I could find his war records. It was a bit eerie looking at his handwriting and a detailed physical description.

I was even more amazed – you could say thunderstruck – upon discovering that the First World War records of over 600,000 Canadians soldiers are on the Internet. With a simple keyboard entry, a few clicks of the mouse, the personnel files of the National Archives are there for anyone to read. Once you know your way around the Internet, finding a relative or anyone who served in the war and looking at their personal records is as easy as typing a name.

What is surprising is that the information I discovered on the Internet appears to breach the Privacy Act. Under the stipulation of the Privacy Act, access to service records or release of personal information about individuals is not permitted without the written consent of the individual concerned. If an individual is deceased, only members of his immediate family can obtain his service records.

Write the National Archives of Canada and what I’ve spelled out above about the Privacy Act is exactly what they will tell you. With the onset of the Internet, however, it appears that the Privacy Act no longer applies. The records of some 600,000 Canadians soldiers, which are now available worldwide to anyone with a computer, indicates this must be the case.

I don’t know how you feel about this or even if it is something we should be concerned about. While there appears to be nothing sinister and such easy access to Internet information may be welcomed by many, it does hint at what the future could be like. Two years ago when I hooked up to the Internet I accessed business sites without reminders that any personal information I might transmit was available to anyone with a computer. Nowadays I am constantly reminded that there are computer crooks out there and it isn’t wise to email bank account or charge card numbers. The Internet may seem perfectly safe but it isn’t. And you can expect to read more about computer crime as use of the Internet becomes more widely spread.

Getting back to the records of Canadian soldiers being on the Internet, I mentioned that this type of information would be appreciated by some. I’m sure anyone doing genealogical research will eventually find those 600,000 plus war records helpful. And undoubtedly this is one of the reasons, and perhaps the only reason, the National Archives made this information easy to obtain.

However, I still wonder if the Privacy Act has been ignored or if the Act even exists anymore. Perhaps the wildfire spread of the Internet has made it obsolete.

When Hurricane Edna devastated this area in the summer of 1954, one of its victims was a schooner that for nearly three decades had plied the waters of the Bay of Fundy.

Dubbed the “FBG,” the two-masted auxiliary schooner Fred Boyd Gibson Green was moored on the west side of Kingsport wharf on the evening of September 9 (11?). The hurricane winds split the hull open and ripped the deck from the FBG, throwing it on the beach. The schooner came to rest onshore less than 100 meters from were it had been built 26 years before.

The FBG was built in Kingsport in 1928 by master shipbuilder Fred Green and mariner Boyd Gibson, standing in stocks where the parking area is today at the head of the wharf. Launched the following year and captained by Gibson, the FBG carried cargo for over a quarter-century from Parrsboro and Joggins to Minas Basin ports such as Canning and Windsor and up the Bay of Fundy as far as Grand Manaan and Deer island. The FBG never left these waters while it was in service.

For decades after it was totaled by Hurricane Edna the FBG lay rotting on the Kingsport beach. It was here that I first saw its skeleton. The sea, sun and winds eventually wiped away all traces of the ship, but not before I became familiar with its remains; clambering over it over as a teenager, I imagined all sort of things about pirates, buried treasure and exotic cargoes. The truth about the FBG, I eventually learned, was a lot less glamorous. During its lifetime the schooner was used mainly as a carrier of coal and fertilizer. Its most exciting adventure was the honeymoon cruise of Captain Gibson and his new bride across the Basin to Parrsboro for a load of coal.

Puzzled over the FBG’s designation as an “auxiliary schooner” I asked local marine history buff Leon Barron for an explanation. “This means the FBG also had a 10 h.p. engine and didn’t depend entirely on its sails for power,” Barron said. As well as possessing a copy of the FBG’s certificate of registration, Barron has collected a number of interesting tales about the ship. Leon told me, for example, about the FBG’s connection with another sailing craft, the Hattie McKay. Built at Parrsboro in 1896, the Hattie McKay was wrecked on Medford beach in 1927 a few miles from Kingsport, possibly in a storm similar to the one that did in the FBG. The engine from the Hattie McKay was salvaged and used in the FBG.

After the FBG was wrecked Captain Gibson removed and stored what was left of the rigging, gear and woodwork. Some of this salvage was used in the construction of a sailing ship at Parrsboro in the 1960s. Retired Captain and boatbuilder, Alden Coffill, used the steering wheel from the FBG when he constructed “The Sou’Wester,” a 70-foot two-masted schooner that was launched into the Minas Basin in 1970. Later sold and rechristened the “Freedom,” the ship now runs out of New York as a charter boat.

This summer a downsized replica of the FBG was started at Avondale in Hants County. Using the original plans for the FBG the Avon Spirit is identical except for its length which is 10 feet shorter. The Avon Spirit was officially launched and christened in August and then put back in the boathouse for completion. Next summer the Avon Spirit will be cruising the waters of the Minas Basin, perhaps retracing some of the old routes sailed by the FBG.

The FBG was the last cargo schooner operating in Nova Scotia; with its demise it could be said that the age of commercial sailing ships in Nova Scotia came to an end. The old FBG still sails on, however. In the Avon Spirit, in the Freedom, in the hearts of men for whom the age of sail was a golden era.

Nova Scotia never claimed, like Britannia, that it ruled the waves, but this province can boast of once being a commercial sea-going power.

At one time Nova Scotia vessels sailed to ports world-wide. This was in the days of sailing ships and the major role played by Bluenose vessels has been chronicled in numerous books and documents. What perhaps hasn’t been adequately recorded is the hazardous life Nova Scotia’s mariners faced on the oceans of the world. Many of the sailing ships out of Nova Scotia ports had tragic ends. In the hundred or more years that Nova Scotia was a major shipping power, many vessels foundered and were lost; exactly how many went down at sea or were disabled on foreign shores will never be known.

Some records of Nova Scotia shipwrecks are available, however. Falmouth writer John V. Duncanson has compiled a detailed account of more than 250 Bluenose vessels that were shipwrecked or disabled in United States coastal waters between 1875 and 1914. Released this month by the West Hants Historical Society, the book will be a welcome addition to Nova Scotia sea lore and a handy reference that will be well thumbed by marine history buffs.

To compile this account of Nova Scotia vessels Duncanson accessed the records of the United States Life Saving Service which was established in 1871. Mr. Duncanson spent several of his winters in recent years pouring over the annual reports of the Service. This in itself was a chore since the reports were housed in several States, Florida, Alabama and Illinois, for example, and had to be tracked down.

Thankfully, the records kept by the US Life Saving Service were detailed. As a result, Duncanson was able to include in his account the names of vessels, home ports, voyage destinations, the names of captains, crew and passenger numbers. The account also includes the cargoes carried by the vessels, estimates of damage and the total number of persons lost or saved.

Readers will undoubtedly find the second part of Mr. Duncanson’s book the most interesting section. The chapter on statistical information is bare bones and dry. The second part is a mini-history of each vessel Duncanson listed in the statistical section. The narratives are matter of fact but they reveal the horrors and hardships that often befell Nova Scotia seamen in the old days.

Typical examples are the fates of two vessels out of local ports. The barquentine Albertina from Windsor, sailing from New York in 1904, went down off the coast of Massachusetts and the crew of 10 were lost. The schooner Bill Baxter out of Canning, disabled off of Rhode Island in 1875, went down with a loss of $7,360., a small fortune in those days. The crew of six were saved.

There are similar accounts of vessels built in small shipyards along the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin and its tributaries. Vessels with names that leave no doubt about their place of origin; schooners such as the Pereau, Sam Slick, Avon and Harold Borden, for example. While it was incidental, Mr. Duncanson’s inclusion of a shipmaster (Captain) index will undoubtedly be on help to anyone researching their mariner ancestors.

Duncanson’s book, which hopefully is the first of a series of two or three similar undertakings, is available from the West Hants Historical Society, PO Box 2335, Windsor, NS B0N 2T0. E-mail address: whhs@ednet.ns.ca