If you want to learn about wooden sailing ships of Minas Basin or Bay of Fundy origin, printed sources are available; the building of sailing ships along these shores has been chronicled in several books.

Or even better, if you enjoy intimate accounts with personal details on the builders, you should talk with people whose hobby is the collecting and compiling of information about ship building. People such as Leon Barron, South Alton, or St. Clair (Joe) Patterson, Hantsport, who can tell you a great deal about the wooden ships that were built around here over the past century or two.

Through a lifelong interest in wooden ships, Barron and Patterson have amassed an amazing amount of facts and figures, most of which is at their fingertips. Patterson, who retired as manager of Basinview Village in 1985, has been collecting and filing away information on the wooden ship industry on the Minas Basin and Avon River for 30 years. Patterson calls his work “one of my hobbies.”

In this column recently I mentioned a scrapbook book excerpt that told about a sailing ship – the Kent – that was built on the Cornwallis River in Kentville around 1845. Joe Patterson’s database shows the Kent being built at Horton in 1847, not on the Cornwallis. In other words, the information in the newspaper clipping was an error. Patterson tells me a ship was built on the Cornwallis River, possibly in Kentville’s town limits, and it was called “The Kentville.” The year of construction and launching? Patterson has been unable to dig out the exact dates but he tells me evidence indicates it was in the 1870s or early 1880s.

As well as correcting an error, the update on the Kent and The Kentville are mentioned to illustrate what I said about people like Patterson and Barron. People like these two marine history buffs have a wealth of information in their files and data bases. There are other people with similar interests who have also dug into various aspects of local history. Unfortunately, some of their findings will never be published.

Like Mr. Patterson, Leon Barron is also retired and now has more time to devote to his history hobby. For 40 years Barron has been collecting information on his favorite topics, wooden sailing ships and the Dominion Atlantic Railroad. Recently he has been assisting on a private project spearheaded by Cathy Margeson, Kentville, which is the identification of every wooden sailing ship constructed in Kings County.

Margeson and Barron have succeeded in identifying over 600 ships to date over a 200 year period and the project is far from being completed. Barron tells me that a lot of historical records have yet to be researched.

Undoubtedly the results of this project will eventually be published as a pamphlet or book and available to the public. If you’re into local history you should find the Margeson-Barron research interesting. Barron tells me, for example, that they have confirmed the dates of the first and second vessels built in Kings County. The first, a small schooner, was built in 1790 in Cornwallis Town Plot; the second in 1800 at Canning.

Barron is also working on compiling a list of shipwrecks in the Minas Basin. While many of the shipwrecks have been identified in books about Nova Scotia marine disasters , Barron says the list is far from being complete. His research will be a welcome addition to local folklore.

In the spring of 1896 Sheriff Stephen Belcher issued a legal notice wrapping up the affairs of a deceased Kings County resident. Belcher ran an advertisement in a unidentified County paper advising the public of a property sale. On another page a merchant offered nickle alarm clocks for $1. in an advertisement with the quaint heading, “What Think Ye Of This?”

Without Sheriff Belcher’s dated legal notice I couldn’t have determined the age of the tattered pieces of yellowing newspaper I found recently. While housecleaning I came across the scraps of newspaper in a filing cabinet that has been in a corner of my basement for decades. The partial pages had no dates or identification but the advertisements indicated it was a Kings County newspaper. Which one I don’t know. One hundred years ago the County was served by at least four and possibly up to six newspapers. Wolfville, Berwick, Canning and Kentville each published a paper at the time and the latter two may have had more than one.

Amateur historian/collector Louis Comeau tells me that researching local history requires much detective work and a lot of luck. Comeau says it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with seemingly unconnected pieces of information. Get enough pieces (i.e. facts) and they should tell you something about a particular period in the past.

Old newspapers usually provide plenty of clues about life in bygone days, even when they’re tattered, incomplete and unidentifiable. The fragments of my old newspaper ooze complacency and a total lack of urgency. The quaint ads invite you to visit this or that store but there’s no rush; come in when you have the time. Even the medicinal advertisements with their preposterous claims for a host of ills and chills are mellow.

Even if I hadn’t been able to date this newspaper, there were plenty of clues that it was printed in the horse and buggy days. Chas. McDonald, Wheelwright, tells us that 100 years ago he was prepared to do an outstanding job of repairing or painting one’s carriage. Jas. Handley was offering “ox rigs” and the finest of harness and reins, “handmade by Nova Scotia leather workers of long experience.”

Around the time my old paper was printed the Nova Scotia Prohibition Convention was held. In the paper was a notice from Rev. E. J. Grant urging Kings County residents to vote only for candidates who supported a prohibitionist platform. Rev. Grant spoke of muzzling the rum trade and the “sad fact (that) dastardly demon rum was much a part of politics and business.”

When Rev. Grant wrote his missive to the electors of Kings County, various parts of the province were “dry.” The Canadian Temperance Act (Scott Act), had been in force for almost 20 years. Under the Act any city or county could, with the support of only one-fourth of its electors, opt to ban the sale of alcoholic drinks. This explains the campaign by Rev. Grant; he wanted Kings County to go dry, which it apparently did for a time.

My old paper refers to an upcoming national plebiscite on prohibition; this was held two years after my old newspaper came off the press. The “wets” won, by the way. I looked it up after the old paper titillated my interest and learned that only a small percentage of Canadians voted for national prohibition in 1898.

Rev. Grant and his supporters must have been flabbergasted since in 1896 Kings County was deeply into the temperance movement. It says so in my old newspaper.

Judging from the comments, phone calls and notes from readers about recent columns, there is a lot of interest in local history. The columns about Boot Island and the “lost history” of Canning brought an unusual number of responses from readers who had information about these topics. I was surprised that people know so much about the history of places like Canning and Boot Island and so little of it has been written down. Obviously much local history exists only as recollections and family stories that are passed from generation to generation.

Most interesting were the notes and telephone calls from people whose relatives had lived on Boot Island. Several readers supplied the names of families who besides the Leon Cards had lived on the Boot. The Hutchinson, Nowlan, Biggs and Allen families were mentioned by readers. These families had farmed on Boot Island at some time over the last 100 years; undoubtedly there were other families who in the centuries after the Acadian expulsion had made the Boot their home but no written record of them is believed to exist.

Marion Schofield called to tell me that her grandparents, David and Abigail Hutchinson, started married life on Boot island and had a sheep ranch there in the 19th century. Mrs. Schofield wasn’t sure about the exact dates of their occupation but she said it was prior to 1870, the date her father was born.

Several readers mentioned that Boot Island was profiled briefly in a book about island life in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. None of the callers could remember the title of the book but a letter from Thelma Duncan revealed its name and author.

“I wondered,” Ms. Duncan wrote , “if you have read Paradise or Purgatory by Allison Mitchum, which was published (by Lancelot Press) in 1986. She has a good chapter on Boot Island (with) the history of the Biggs and Allens who lived there prior to the Cards.” Ms. Duncan added that she has a special interest in the Boot which she looks upon from the patio of her home on the Oak Island Road in Avonport.

One reader told me several tales about the treacherous tides in “The Guzzle,” that infamous stretch between Boot Island and the main shore. One of them was about a team of oxen and a wagon filled with produce being swept along the shore by the rush of water, eventually reaching land well below their destination point. I have also confirmed that at least one Valley resident was born on the Boot. An interview with one of these people will be the topic of a future column.

A former lifelong resident of Canning, the late Ira Cox, is one of the persons who has written a history of this village. John DeWolfe of Canning called to tell me he is in possession of the Cox history, which has never been published, and has kindly agreed to let me look at it. Hopefully I’ll be able to review the Cox manuscript in this column. I believe Mr. Cox covered Canning history for a period of well over 100 years.

I was told recently – I was given the approximate location actually – that New Minas contains a Micmac burial site. Information anyone might have about this or other Micmac sites in New Minas (Oak Island, for example) would be appreciated. Perhaps the “Micmac factor” in New Minas will also be a future column topic.

“My mind will go back to the many different horses I drove and the different quirks some of them had. Like the black mare Dolly, who every time we stopped at a (watering hole) managed to pull her bridle off, no matter how securely it was buckled on. Also old Harry who we had to stop watering on the road because he insisted on trying to roll in the water. Another common sight at the time was to see whole sets of wagons wheels soaking in the brooks; hot weather would dry (the wheels) out, so they would be dropped in the water for a few days.”

These observations about horses and wagons are among the many glimpses of farm life Alex Middleton offers in a recently completed autobiography. Middleton’s book, Down Through The Years, is filled with homey revelations such as these, which while seemingly trivial, let us glimpse times that are gone forever. Beginning with his arrival in Sheffield Mills with his family in 1929 when he was 13, Middleton takes us through the rough and tumble life of a farm lad growing up in Kings County between the two world wars. Besides telling us about life on the farm when there were few machines and work was done by man and beast, Middleton also writes about bootlegging, rum running, horses and oxen, rafting lumber on the Bay of Fundy, the hoboes and drifters of that period, the men who turned farming into big business.

These were the horse and oxen years in Kings County and one day people will value the account Alex Middleton has written about those times. It is a wry, rough account, written humorously with no pretensions or preaching. But what a wonderful, detailed account it is! Straightforward, a dash of saltiness, a story straight from the heart and the farm that touches on all aspects of rural life.

A few of us will easily identify with the times Alex Middleton writes about. But like me, most people who read this account will be amazed that there was so much work and little time for recreation. In the winter there was skating, the occasional card party and through winter the weekly dance. “They were held at a different house in the village every Friday night,” Alex writes. “The ladies brought a plate for the lunch and the men paid for the music. This was usually a fiddler and a young man or two accompanying him with a guitar or mouth organ.”

When Alex was a lad the temperance movement was still strong; this and prohibition in the U.S. made rum-running and bootlegging not only profitable but common. In one amusing anecdote Alex writes about a successful attempt to bring a shipload of liquor into Kings County. The police were tipped that on a certain high tide a cargo of alcohol would be brought ashore in Scots Bay. “There was a boat out there all right but it didn’t come in,” Alex writes. “It just stayed offshore long enough to hold the cops while the real (shipment) was being unloaded in Canning.”

Then there’s the prominent Aldershot bootlegger who avoided the police for years by hiding rum in the hollow legs of a table. And the bootlegger who hid booze in his vegetable garden. “When his customers wanted a pint they had to buy (vegetables) for camouflage whether they wanted them or not.”

As I mentioned, Alex’ book is full of such anecdotes and funny asides. Unfortunately, his book isn’t for sale. Only 10 copies were printed. However, if you wish to read about the trials, tribulations and good times of farm life as Alex Middleton lived them, visit the Kings Courthouse Museum. A copy of his book has been deposited there.

Through her interest in genealogy and as a compiler of family and community history, Marie Bishop has collected a massive amount of information on local history. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with it all,” she said when I visited her New Minas home recently to look at one of her scrapbooks.

I wanted to suggest I hire a truck to take all her files home, but I contented myself with borrowing the scrapbook she had invited me in to see. Marie said it was one of her better scrapbooks and I’d probably “find interesting things in it.” Which, to make an understatement, was an understatement. While brief, the scrapbook was a treasure chest of historical nuggets. Among them, for example, was ….

A sketch of Wolfville in 1869 by B. O. Davidson who tells us the town was a great shipping and ship building center in its heyday and recalls seeing vessels from the West Indies, South America and the U.S. tied up at the wharves. “At one time I counted sixteen of these vessels at their moorings,” Davidson wrote. “In early days many vessels were built here at shipyards on both sides of the creek.”

When Davidson first visited Wolfville in 1869 the town had “no paved streets or sidewalks, no street lights.” Ox-teams were common in that period and at harvest time were “parked by the roadside for a considerable distance waiting their chance to unload.” From Davidson’s sketch we learn that Wolfville at the time was headquarters for the newly arrived railroad. The railroad headquarters were moved to Kentville after a dispute with Wolfville landowners, Davidson said. We can probably surmise correctly that this dispute and the railroad move led to Kentville being the major center in this area.

From Marie’s scrapbook we learn that a ship – the Kent – was built in Kentville, possibly right in the downtown area, and launched into the Cornwallis River in the summer of 1846. An excerpt from a sketch written in 1907 tells us the Kent was built on a grassy area just across the town bridge but there was no indication if it was the north or south side of the river. The excerpt hints the Kent, which was built by James E. DeWolfe, had a short, unsuccessful career. Perhaps a reader has more details on the Kent and would like to enlighten us.

The scrapbook tells us that in 1846 three of the four merchants operating in Kentville sold rum. “The great event of the week was the arrival of the mail coach from Halifax. “It brought the farmers in and served as an excuse …. to patronise the Crown Inn and the Kentville Hotel and replenish the little brown jug.” Mentioned in the excerpt is George Bear, the “great colored orator and philosopher who would (speak) to the crowd from his rostrum, the scales at the corner of the Red Store.” Readers having any facts on the life of Mr. Bear – he appears to have been an interesting man – are invited to contact me.

From the scrapbook we learn that the original Planter name for Port Williams- Terry’s Creek – came from John Terry who with the Lockwood family first settled in the area. Colonel John Burbidge, one of the first settlers after the expulsion of the Acadians, is mentioned in detail in the Port Williams sketch. Burbidge was ahead of his time in his treatment of slaves, freeing them in 1790, and was a pioneer in the introduction of several varieties of apples and pears. Direct descendants of Burbidge still live in this area.

Some 50 or 60 years ago, the story goes, a longtime Canning resident decided to write a history of his village. The history was said to be based on old records, interviews with other longtime residents and the writer’s involvement in the affairs of Canning for over half a century. The history was completed in the early 1950s but has never appeared in print and few people have read it.

Depending on whom you talk to, this history of early Canning has been destroyed or is gathering dust somewhere in an attic. The author passed away in the early 1960s and at the time of his death the history wasn’t completed.

Is the lost Canning history fact or fiction? The dates given may be off a bit but I believe an account of Canning from the late 19th century through the early 1900s was probably written; and it probably has been stored away somewhere and forgotten.

It’s even possible there may be more than one Canning account. Writer/researcher Marie Bishop, who is best known for the in-depth community histories she has penned, told me recently that she heard about the existence of two histories of Canning. Like me Ms. Bishop has heard the stories about the accounts being written – with one of them now in the hands of a relative – and she has the name of at least one possible author.

Not all of this is conjecture or rumors. When I was working in the Canning area for this newspaper some 25 years ago I heard that a Canning history had been written and I was directed to the door of a gentleman who was then in his 80s. Yes, he told me, he had been working of “a paper about Canning for years.” I was told I couldn’t see his work at the time but I would be invited back later when the history was in order.

The invitation never came. Several years later the old gentleman died; and when I inquired about his history several months after his death, no one knew anything about it.

In a way it’s too bad that this account, or perhaps the accounts, of Canning aren’t available. At one time Canning was a thriving village and was probably one of the major shipping, ship building and commercial centers in this part of the Annapolis Valley. I don’t believe an in-depth history of Canning has ever been compiled and there’s no doubt that many of the old records have been lost. The personal account(s) mentioned above would be invaluable in fleshing out a history of the village.

There undoubtedly are interesting bits and pieces of Canning’s past in newspaper files, museums and in personal accounts that people have squirreled away or misplaced. A few short histories and various photographs of Canning have appeared in The Advertiser from time to time, most dealing with ship building or the great fires that ravaged the village in 1866. In my files, for example, is an excellent profile of the village written by Doreen Roberts and published in this paper in 1978. This article has a concise report on the Canning fires and an overview of the village.

Various authors, some of them prominent, have mentioned Canning in their writing, Esther Clark Wright being one example. Ms. Wright mentions Canning at least half a dozen times in one of her better known books, some of it disparaging.

Future generations will read Ms. Wright’s remarks about “poor Canning” with its rotting wharves and pretentious forefathers. The village deserves better treatment. Perhaps one day, when all the lost accounts are found, a future historian will be more kind.

A reader once asked me about the correct spelling of Boot Island, observing that she had seen several versions of the name in print. She wondered if Boot Island is only a commonly used colloquialism and if it actually had an official name.

After being stranded there on a stormy, bitterly cold night in November over 30 years ago, Boot Island has a special fascination for me. As a result of that misadventure I started a file that I call Boot Island Info. Anything about the Island that I came across went into the file, which really was no more than a haphazardly collected, totally unorganized folder with bits and pieces of information.

Boot Island apparently is a corruption of the French name for the area, which wasn’t an island when it was so named, and it has been spelled in various ways – Bout, Boute and Beaute, for example. There may be a Boot Island mystery, the Island may have held a sheep ranch and it apparently was the home of a fox farming enterprise. These and other tidbits are in my folder but let’s look first at the origin of the Island’s name.

The old maps of the Minas Basin indicate that in the 18th century Boot Island was part of the mainland and was a prominent island-like point. The French name for this area was L’Isle au Bout. In his booklet on Kings County place names, Watson Kirkconnell says this translates in “the island at the end (of Long Island in the Grand Pre area).” Upon hearing the Acadians pronounce the name of the area, it was a simple matter for the Planters to start calling it Boot Island.

Boot Island was occupied at one time. I was told that the Dewolfe family once owned island the Boot and farmed there but was unable to confirm this. However, Wolfville native Gordon Hansford says that the Leon Card family farmed on the Boot in the 30s and were the last people to live there. Mr. Card and his ox team were a familiar sight around Wolfville. Card brought the oxen from the Boot into town to sell produce, walking backward coming and going with the team.

According to Hansford, Mr. Card operated a registered fox farm on Boot Island and lived there for about a quarter-century. Gordon tells me that in the files at Kings Courthouse Museum is a certificate for the Boot Island Fox Farm Company.

Nowadays Boot Island is a lonely, almost barren wildlife refuge that is slowly and surely being destroyed by the Minas Basin tides. Kentville owes it crow invasion to the destruction of the Island. At one time an estimated 25,000 crows roosted on the Boot. The dispersal of this roost by natural forces hasn’t made Kentville taxpayers happy.

Is there a Boot Island mystery?

The late Hants County author, Edith Mosher, said there is. When I corresponded with Ms. Mosher in the fall of 1996 about a wartime tragedy she asked me if was familiar with the “Boot Island Mystery.” Later, in a telephone conversation, I asked Ms. Mosher about the mystery and she promised to write and send a copy of her research on this subject which would be a topic in an upcoming book.

I never received that letter. Ms. Mosher passed away that year before she could write. Since then I have asked many people if they were familiar with the Boot Island Mystery. All replies have been in the negative.