Eva Urban, Avonport, remembers Edson Graham, the photographer who captured many early 1900s Valley scenes on film.

A superb photographer of the likes of another famous Nova Scotia artist with the camera, A. L. Hardy, Graham’s greatest claim to fame may simply be that he preserved for future generations Valley scenery and a lifestyle that have long vanished. In a recent column on Graham, I recalled that he delighted in shooting seascapes, ox teams, covered bridges and that like.

Urban, who is nearing 90, worked for Graham as his assistant in his Wolfville studio from 1930 to 1942. After her marriage, Urban continued to work for Graham “at busy times.” There were periods, Urban said, when she supervised as many as five girls who had to be called in to help Graham with clerical work and printing. “He was the photographer for Acadia (University)” Urban remembers. “That’s why we were so busy at times and needed extra people. All the students had their pictures taken there; freshmen, the debating team, the football team, all the groups would come down to have their picture taken for the yearbook.”

Graham’s Acadia Studio was located on the north side of Main Street (a photograph of the studio can be found on page 79 of the Wolfville history, Mud Creek, which places it opposite the mouth of Gaspereau Avenue). Urban recalls that a reception area, small studio, workshop and darkroom were on the ground floor; upstairs was a larger studio with different scenery backdrops.

“He was a perfect gentleman, quite formal and hard to get to know,” Urban recalls of Graham. “He called me Miss MacIntosh (her maiden name) all the time, never Eva once all the years I worked for him.”

Urban has several photographs of the interior of Graham’s studio that she cherishes. One is of her standing in his studio, another of Graham himself. Graham passed away in 1956, living out his retirement years with a widowed sister in Florida, but Urban says that he came back to Wolfville on several occasions. “He came down to visit me here in Avonport when he was home,” she said, “and I was so pleased to see him. I guess because I wasn’t working for him anymore he wasn’t so formal.”

As mentioned in the previous column on Graham, the photographer’s first contact with Wolfville began when he became the manager of the W. W. Robson studio. Robson apparently ran a photography business in both Windsor and Wolfville. In the Wolfville history, Mud Creek, it is noted that in 1904 Robson “had increased his photography work in Wolfville from two days to four, in consequence of having received so much assistance from Wolfville merchants after the disastrous Windsor fire.”

The brief biography on Graham in An Atlantic Album states that in 1905 he moved to Windsor and lived there for 45 years. However, the various references in Mud Creek indicate a life-long association with Wolfville. In the history, Graham is listed as a member of the Wolfville Chamber of Commerce in 1939, a charter member of the Wolfville Rotary Club (1935) a charter member of the Wolfville Historical Society (1941) and a Wolfville town councillor in 1919 and 1920. In 1940, notes the history, Graham had completed 35 years in the “photography business (and) changed the name of his establishment to Acadia Studio.”

(My thanks to Roscoe Potter, Wolfville, for directing me to Graham’s former assistant, Eva Urban and for providing information on the photographer).

“How to lose 24 pounds of fat (and) at the same time gain in physical vigour and youthfulness,” the ad heading read.

This patent medicine notice, which appeared in an issue of The Advertiser 71 years ago, promised that a product called Kruschen Salts, as well as banishing fat, would rid the body of poisonous wastes, tune up the liver, kidneys and bowels, and in addition bring clear skin and “vivacious eyes that sparkle with health.”

Simply buy a bottle of Kruschen Salts and take a half teaspoon in hot water before breakfast and all these health benefits would be yours. On the same page, an advertisement for Sargon Pills promised similar health benefits and included a testimonial from a county resident who found that this medicine “put my liver in fine shape and got my bowels as regular as a clock.”

Look through any newspaper in the first half of the 20th century and you’ll find similar advertisements. A few generations ago people apparently were obsessed with health and with body functions. In one Advertiser issue from the 1920s, I counted five patent medicine ads on a single page and eleven in an eight-page issue. In most ads, the theme was the same – immediate (and miraculous) health benefits simply by taking pills, salts and tonics.

Amusingly, a few of the patent medicine ads contained sly innuendoes about cures for “health maladies” that the television ads for Viagara refer to openly. Advertisements that promised to “restore youthful vigour,” “return physical vigour and youthfulness” and “bring back the full blush of young manhood,” were certainly referring to something other than restoring the capacity to milk cows vigorously.

We should remember that less than a century ago health care was almost non-existent and people used home cures and patent medicine to treat common ills. One didn’t go to outpatients with the cold or the flu. The shelves of nearby general stores were the pharmacies and the doctors as often as not were the peddlers who sold patent medicine.

It wasn’t all that long ago either that medicinal cures for common ailments were cooked up in the kitchen. People of my generation will remember grandma boiling a mixture of vinegar, sugar and onions, sometimes as a spring tonic but mostly to treat a cold. I remember drinking this concoction half a century ago and it didn’t taste all that bad. I also remember that warmed up goose fat was rubbed on my chest when I had a cold.

Like most households in my boyhood days, it was a given that Minards Liniment was kept over the kitchen sink. No household was without it. Minards claimed to be good for an amazing number of human and livestock ills and as far as I’m concerned, it was literally true. There were a few competing liniments on the market but nothing cleared the head and chest or eased aches and pains like Minards. As one who was slathered with Minards when I was a boy, I’m a walking testimonial to its effectiveness.

Another cure-all usually found in the kitchens of my boyhood was Epsom salts. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary explains that this is a preparation used medicinally as an anti-inflammatory and a purgative. A purgative it was indeed – and fast acting. My father used to pass me a catalogue along with a glass of water containing a teaspoon of Epsom salts. “Drink this,” he’d say. “The outhouse door is open.”

“It is interesting to note that Chief Davis used a two-wheel bike when in need of fast transportation about the town,” Mabel Nichols wrote of Kentville’s third policeman in her book, The Devil’s Half Acre.

One of Kentville’s longest serving police chiefs, Rupert Davis patrolled when Kentville gained the reputation of being a wide open town – where, said Nichols, “lawlessness was rampant.” Nearby, wrote Nichols, there were 14 licensed bars where trouble was constantly brewing but which Davis controlled with fearless enforcement of the law.

Nichols portrays Chief Davis as a fine, fearless policeman who faithfully served the town for 37 years. His term of office ran from 1894 to 1931. Davis succeeded Thomas H. O’Grady, 1894-1931, who in turn had taken over from Robert Barry, 1887-1888, Kentville’s first police chief after incorporation.

Chief Davis was also the Nova Scotia Temperance Act inspector for Kentville and he apparently fulfilled his duties in this office with great zeal and dedication. The following tribute to Davis, from a 1938 edition of The Advertiser, indicates how dedicated he was as an enforcement officer:

“Rupert Davis has for over half a century been one of the best known and well liked men in the Valley. During the years he was Chief of Police, Mr. Davis was particularly active in warring on those breaking the law through selling liquor, and has a long series of successful raids to his credit. In one of those raids $50,000 worth of liquor was taken and the resulting court action was even carried to the Privy Council in England. In this again he had a triumph to his credit, the case being decided in his favour.”

It may have been Davis’ strict enforcement of the Temperance Act regulations that led to his demise at the hands of persons unknown. On December 26, 1938, Davis was “struck by an alleged hit-and-run auto driver” while riding his bicycle. Davis was 80 at the time and had been retired for six years. Davis was in critical condition, an Advertiser news story said, having “sustained a broken left arm, other injuries and severe shock.”

When The Advertiser reported Davis’ critical condition, the person or persons responsible for the hit-and-run were unknown. Police Chief John Brown, who had succeeded Davis, was investigating the incident and The Advertiser said he had sworn to “find the guilty party if it takes weeks, months or years.”

I don’t believe an arrest was ever made or any charges laid in the Davis incident. I scoured following editions of The Advertiser and Wolfville Acadian without discovering what Chief Brown had accomplished in his investigations. It appears that the person or person responsible for the death of Davis in the hit-and-run were never brought to justice.

I believe, however, that it was known at the time who was responsible for Chief Davis’ death. Several years ago during a conversation with the late Gordon Burton we were talking about Kentville in the 1930s and 40s when Davis’ name came up. Burton told me that Davis had deliberately been run down by two local bootleggers who “had it in” for him. Burton told me where the incident occurred, the type of vehicle the bootleggers were driving, and he said the hit-and-run was deliberate.

Burton also gave me the names of the men in the vehicle and told me which one was driving. I assumed that since Burton knew so many details about the incident that the bootleggers had been caught. It was only later when looking for information about Davis that I discovered this wasn’t so.

It was high tide at Harbourville at some time in the 1920s, and the photographer took the picture when a ship, sails unfurled, rested at quayside.

When I first saw the photograph I thought it was another example of the superb artistry of A. L. Hardy (1860 – 1935). Hardy was renowned for capturing countless Annapolis Valley seascapes and landscapes with his camera; his works are cherished because they preserved images of a time when the railway was a novelty and beasts of burden still plowed our fields.

However, that moody image of Harbourville at full tide wasn’t Hardy’s work. Years after I first saw the photograph I learned that it was the work of Edson Graham, a contemporary of Hardy who lived and worked in Windsor and Wolfville for at least four decades after 1900.

Edson Graham is not as well known as A. L. Hardy and it can be said that literally, he worked in the latter’s shadow. However, Kentville photographer Larry Keddy rates Graham and Hardy as near equals. “While Hardy may have had a slight edge, they were both technically superb,” Keddy says of the two photographers.

Like Hardy, Edson Graham apparently delighted in capturing images of the Annapolis Valley in the days of sailing ships, ox teams and covered bridges. Many of Graham’s photographs recorded an era in the Valley long gone and have a nostalgic tinge that appeals to many. Decades after Graham retired and moved out of the province, his prints of landscape photographs were still being sold by a local studio.

Larry Keddy rates Edson Graham as a superb photographer who “turned out really great work” and deserves more recognition. Graham was profiled in the 1985 Nimbus publication, An Atlantic Album (subtitle: Photographs of the Atlantic Provinces before 1920) by Scott Robson and Sheila Mckenzie. That Graham rated inclusion in this book is indeed a tribute to his artistry and professionalism with a camera. The profile salutes Graham’s work both as a landscape and portrait photographer and is reprinted here with permission of Nimbus Publishing.

“Professional photographer, Windsor and Wolfville, N.S. Born at Debert… 1869. Spent his teen years in the U. S. learning photographic skills…. Returned to Nova Scotia to operate West End Studio, Truro, for a few years. Moved to Windsor and became manager of the Robson Studio, Windsor and Wolfville; purchased the business when Robson left for Windsor, Ontario. In 1905 Graham moved to Windsor, N.S., where he lived for 40 years. Known for landscape photographs; also a portrait photographer, especially of the students at Acadia University. Published postcard photographs of the university. In 1935 he won the highest award for tinted photographs at the Provincial Exhibition. Died December 1956 at Daytona, Florida.”

A few details on Graham’s life can be found in the Wolfville history, Mud Creek (published in 1985 by the Wolfville Historical Society and edited by James Doyle Davison). These references, nine in all, indicate that Graham must have passed most of his working life in Wolfville, rather than Windsor.

The first reference to Graham in the history is mention of an announcement in 1904 that W. W. Robson would re-open his photographic studio with Edson Graham as manager. “Edson Graham, who had completed thirty-five years in the photography business, changed the name of his establishment to Acadia Studio,” reads a reference from the year 1940. Graham is listed as a member of the Wolfville Chamber of Commerce in 1939, a charter member of the Wolfville Rotary Club (1935) a charter member of the Wolfville Historical Society (1941) and a Wolfville town councillor in 1919 and 1920.

It’s difficult to imagine some 5,000 people crowded around a tiny shipyard by the Kingsport wharf 110 years ago to witness the launching of a ship. Yet in 1891 when the partnership of Ebenezar Cox and C. Rufus Burgess completed “Nova Scotia’s finest square-rigger,” Canada, at least 5,000 men, women and children came from all over the province to attend the launching ceremonies.

Writing in her 1980 Kingsport history (Kingsport By The Sea) Cora Atkinson described the launching of Canada as a great social event. The ladies of the Congregational Church of Kingsport and area were kept busy providing dinner and tea for the occasion, Atkinson said. The Cornwallis Valley Railway had been operating between Kingsport and Kentville for about a year when Canada was launched, explaining why in pre-automobile days so many people were able to reach Kingsport for this special event.

Atkinson gives the year of the launching of Canada as 1890 but this is an error. Two other sources, Frederick William Wallace in his book, In the Wake of the Wind-Ships, and Stanley Spicer in Masters of Sail give the year of the launching as 1891. References to Canada at the Old Kings Courthouse Museum in Kentville also establish the year of the launching as 1891. Except for this minuscule slip, Atkinson’s chatty book records what Kingsport was like in the era of sailing ships and is a valuable contribution to the area’s history.

Several books tell the story of master shipbuilder Ebenezar Cox. As mentioned in last week’s column, the definitive In the Wake of the Wind-Ships is one of the best sources of information on Nova Scotia sailing ships and shipbuilders. Stanley Spicer and several other authors draw heavily on Wallace in some of their works.

Few history books are totally error free, however, and the Wallace book is no exception. On Ebenezar Cox, Wallace writes that he “passed away in 1916 at the ripe old age of ninety-five years.” Cox was 88 when he died. He is buried in the older section of the Habitant Cemetery near Canning and according to Leon Barron, his headstone shows that he was born on December 18, 1828 and died September 8, 1916. As further confirmation of his age, we have the 1871 census, on file at the Kings Courthouse Museum, which shows that Cox was 42 at the time.

In one of the books I treasure most, Blomidon Rose, Esther Clarke Wright draws on the writing of William Frederick Wallace to pay tribute to the shipbuilding skills of Ebenezar Cox. It is an excellent tribute running to nearly three pages; unfortunately Wright repeats Wallace’s error on Cox being 95 at the time of his death. Reaching such a grand old age, Wright says erroneously, is typical of people who lived beside the Habitant River.

The Canada was one of the finest sailing ships built by Cox and his partners; Stanley Spicer writes that it was one of Canada’s largest square-rigged vessels. William Frederick Wallace notes that with the launching of Canada wooden shipbuilding had “reached its latter day apex” in this country. Steel ships were rapidly replacing wooden vessels at the time Canada was launched and Wallace suggests that it was built “rather late in the day.”

After the Canada Cox built several more smaller sailing ships, the last according to Wallace in 1893. Cox would have been in his 65th year and Wallace intimates that he retired from shipbuilding at this time. However, future research may show that while Cox was not involved in day-to-day shipbuilding after 1893, he was consulted on the design of later ships to come out of Kingsport, Canning and other Minas Basin yards.

He was hailed in his time as Nova Scotia’s master builder of sailing ships. Today Ebenezar Cox is recognised as the builder and designer of some of the finest sailing ships ever to come down the ways in Canada. The Cox shipyard was located in Kingsport and hopefully current plans to rejuvenate its old wharf and highlight its history will include a tribute to him.

For approximately a 30-year period beginning in 1864, Ebenezar Cox “designed and supervised the building of some 30 schooners, brigs, barks, barquentines and ships averaging 1000 tons each,” including some of the largest sailing ships built in Canada. This quote is from the book, In the Wake of the Wind Ships, by Frederick William Wallace, and is the resource usually referred to when Nova Scotia’s shipbuilding history is reviewed. Wallace devotes several pages in a salute to Ebenezar Cox, putting his work into perspective, and it’s likely that without his research much of what the shipbuilder accomplished wouldn’t be recorded.

In a recent column I noted that Eaton’s Kings County history has scant mention of Cox as a shipbuilder. This is a surprising omission. Eaton must have been aware of Ebenezar Cox since in his day his name was synonymous with shipbuilding. In fact, Cox was active in shipbuilding in the 20years before 1910 when Eaton said he was compiling and researching the Kings County history.

Ebenezar Cox was born in 1828 into a family with shipbuilding traditions. His father Joseph had married the daughter of another famed shipbuilder Ebenezar Bigelow Sr., after whom Cox was named. Bigelow was descended from a Cornwallis Planter whose original land grant is said to have included all of what is now the community of Kingsport.

Ebenezar Cox operated a shipyard and a dry-dock on Kingsport beach, on a piece of the Bigelow grant that we surmise was a wedding gift to his father. According to marine buff Leon Barron, who has an immense file on Cox and the Kingsport wharf, the Cox shipyard and dry-dock were located just west of the wharf. Barron’s research has found that Cox, in partnership with one of his brothers, William, and his brother-in-law, Joseph E. Woodworth started building ships at Oak Point, later renamed Kingsport, a year before work on the wharf was started.

According to Barron the partners placed their shipyard a short distance west of where Kingsport wharf would rise, operating it from that site from 1864 to 1870. William Cox withdrew from the partnership within a year or two of its formation. Ebenezar Cox and Woodworth built a dry-dock in 1898, locating it between the wharf and shipyard. From 1870 to 1893 Cox and Woodworth built ships out a yard farther west up the beach. Barron says that this latter shipyard was originally built by Cox’s grandfather, Ebenezar Bigelow, a major shipbuilder in his own right who operated later in Canning. Bigelow apparently was first in building ships at Kingsport, with Cox following in his grandfather’s footsteps.

Wallace said Woodworth financed the Cox shipyard. Woodworth was later financed by Charles W. Berteaux and after retiring, replaced in the partnership by Peter R. Crighton and later C. R. Burgess who retained Cox as a shipbuilder and ship designer. In his tribute to Cox, Wallace wrote that “thirty vessels aggregating almost 30,000 tons in thirty years was this man’s contribution to the Nova Scotia fleet. To have turned out so many splendid vessels in a little spot tucked away in an elbow of the Bay of Fundy is certainly a matter that calls for historical record.” I am glad, Wallace said, to give Cox, Woodworth, Crighton and Burgess the “honour that is their due.”

If they could stop laughing after reading it, the people who produce the “Company’s Coming” cookbook series might call it quaint and curious. I can’t think of any more suitable words to describe the cookbook the good ladies of Toronto and other “chief cities and towns of Canada” contributed to in 1894.

Actually, it’s more than a cookbook. Besides containing over a thousand “tried, tested, proven” 19th-century recipes, the Home Cook Book also has an advice section for women on housekeeping, etiquette and “social observances.”

From our perspective today, the words of wisdom offered to 19th-century housekeepers in the Home Cook Book are not only quaint but chauvinistic as well. Imagine the terrible uproar if the following from the book’s housekeeping hints was published in a newspaper today: “No matter how talented a woman may be, or how useful in the church or society, if she is an indifferent housekeeper it is fatal to her influence, a foil to her brilliancy and a blemish to her garments.”

“Success in housekeeping” said the editors of the Home Cook Book, “adds credit to the woman of intellect and lustre to a woman’s accomplishment.” In other words, her place is in the home, baking, sewing, cleaning and so on. From the tone of the advice the editors condescendingly offer, it seems women’s lib in 1894 consisted of the freedom to bake any kind of pie the lady of the house wanted to.

This amusing male viewpoint on a woman’s role in the 19th century is rampant throughout the old cookbook. “Women were bred to do housekeeping as part of a ladies duty” is another mild example of what can be found in the book. “There is no earthly reason why girls, from eight to eighteen, should not learn and practice the whole round of housekeeping, from the first beating of eggs to laying carpets and presiding at a dinner party,” is another.

Before getting into the recipes that the ladies of Canada contributed, the editors of the Home Cook Book spell out exactly what, besides cooking, is expected of women in the way of household duties. “She is responsible for the health of the household and must allow no scent of decay.” “She must see that fires are started as early in the fall and kept as late in the spring as the weakest, chilliest of her family desires.” “She must look after the clothing from a hygienic view” and see that “her children and family are warm enough and cool enough.” She must never be “satisfied with anything but the nicest cooking.” And, of course, she must account for every penny and not “dare to call such work low.”

Some of the recipes in the cookbook are as quaint and curious as the household advice. In the section on sauces for meat and fish we find “tomato mustard,” and “goosebury catsup.” There’s a delightful page of recipes on pickling cherries, plums, apples and peaches in vinegar and sugar. “Tongue toast” apparently was a popular breakfast dish late in the 19th century. Yes, cow tongue was boiled, minced and served hot on toasted bread!

Fried bread in batter was another old-time breakfast delight. Fish Relish, made with the roe of shad, herring or cod looks tempting – this was likely submitted by a Nova Scotia housewife. I didn’t know one could fry squash (or even want to) make a potato pudding or a stew from calf liver.

There were several recipes for “Suet Pudding,” each using (ugh!) anywhere from a cup to a pound of raw beef suet. This pudding sounds terrible but it’s tasty. My mother brought the recipe for suet pudding over with her from the old country and I ate it many times.

In a talk on life in earlier times, a local botanist said in effect that to effectively understand and study the Acadians and Planters one should look at the plants they cultivated for food and medicine.

This observation is undoubtedly accurate but what does it tells us about the Gaspereau people who in 1889 “raised and manufactured into pickles 15,000 barrels of cucumbers”? Or about the 19th-century farmers who cultivated the Aylesford bogs, in 1890 harvested 400 bushels of cranberries and less than a decade later increased this harvest to 10 times that much?

Can we assume the references in Eaton Kings County history to pickles and cranberries indicate a sour disposition among our farmer ancestors?

Despite the botanist’s astute observation, not really. Eaton is simply telling us that in this region cucumbers and cranberries were important crops in earlier days. In a commentary on fruit growing, we learn from Eaton that cucumber growing was important and that as early as 1892, J. Spurgeon Bishop “shipped the first carload of cranberries from Kings County,” and later was harvesting 5,000 barrels a season.

The early settlers first called this bitter fruit “craneberries,” perhaps because the curved stems of the vine resembled the neck of a crane. The settlers apparently learned that cranberries were useful from the Mi’kmaq who used them as food and to make a dye for various crafts. Eaton only has a few brief references to cranberries but the story of this old-time crop can be found in a book written by Robert A. Murray and published by the Cranberry Growers Association.

Released this spring, Nova Scotia Cranberry History Development looks at the pioneer growers in the province beginning in 1872. “It is fascinating to read the recorded details of the early development of Nova Scotia cranberries,” Murray writes in the book’s forward and anyone with an interest in history and its agricultural connection will agree. After all, from the Acadians onward, agriculture greased the wheels of society. We were once a country of farmers and our prosperity was once measured by the success of crops such as the Gaspereau cucumbers and wetland cranberries.

Like Murray, I found the records he presented of the pioneer cranberry growers fascinating. We learn for example that four of Nova Scotia’s cranberry sites have been farmed for over 100 years. In his research, Murray found documents dating back to 1866 which indicated pioneer cranberry growing started here in Kings County. Murray lists 29 pioneer cranberry sites that were in operation before 1900 and of these 12 were in Kings.

Murray also discovered that Valley people have bragging rights when it comes to cranberry cultivation. The first commercial cranberry planting in Canada took place in 1872 at Melvern Square. The pioneer grower was William McNeil who heads list of the 29 pioneers along with Henry Shaw, Waterville, and the farmer Eaton mentions in his history, J. Spurgeon Bishop, Auburn.

Many of the Valley’s Cranberry pioneers were of Planter stock. Planter descendants such as Bishop, Eaton and Woodworth were among the pioneer cranberry cultivators and can be found on Murray’s list – and, of course, on any list of pioneer fruit growers and farmers in this region.

(Anyone interested in Murray’s history of cranberry growing can find a copy at the Old Courthouse Museum in Kentville.)

“I am a descendant of William Gould and his wife, Susan Kezia Coldwell,” Keith Terceira wrote in a recent e-mail message from Arkansas. “As one of your columns portrayed, he was a Kentville jailor and he was also listed in the Eaton family history as a Kings County Deputy Sheriff.

“William and Susan are buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Kentville,” Mr. Terceira continued, noting that his line came from Gould’s son, Sydney. In this letter and in a second letter a few days later, Mr. Terceira commented further on William Gould and other earlier residents of this area with some family lore and an interesting insight on how family names can change.

I always appreciate receiving letters like this from readers. Quite often the people mentioned in history books, such as Eaton’s Kings County history, are little more than words printed on a page. But when readers such as Mr. Terceira write and talk about their ancestors, those printed words suddenly become people who once lived, laboured and died here. Such letters often spur me to dig a bit deeper into local history books to see if I can flesh out some of the people readers have brought to my attention.

Take William Gould, for example.

Mr. Terceira wrote that as a Deputy Sheriff for Kings County and the Kentville jailor, Gould served under Sheriff John Marshall Caldwell. In Eaton’s Kings County history Caldwell is listed as High Sheriff for the County from 1885 to 1881, which gives us dates for some of Gould’s period of service. Gould married Sheriff Caldwell’s cousin – “even in the 19th century it paid to have family contacts,” Terceira writes – and apparently stayed on as jailor after the former’s death in 1881. The county jailor immediately after Gould may have been my great uncle, John Coleman; according to local history books and family records, Coleman’s term of service began in 1896 and ran until 1928.

William Gould may have the distinction of being the first Kings County jailor and the first Town Crier for the county and perhaps for the town of Kentville. Mabel Nichols in her Kentville history, The Devil’s Half Acre, refers to Gould as possibly the first county jailor: “One, if not the first, jail keeper was William Gould (and his wife) who for 21 years kept the jail under Sheriff Caldwell. Mr Gould was also the Town Crier, who with his ‘O-Yes – O-Yes’ opened, adjourned and closed the court.” Nichols also confirms that John Coleman assumed the position of jailor in 1896.

Assuming that both Eaton in his Kings County history and Nichols are correct with their dates, William Gould may have been Kings County jailor from 1875 on. (Actually, I believe it was earlier). If Mabel Nichols is correct, Gould apparently became jailor about 20 years after John Marshall Caldwell was appointed High Sheriff. If Sheriff Caldwell influenced Gould’s appointment as jailor (or as Deputy Sheriff) because of family connections he apparently was slow with his patronage. On Caldwell’s death in 1881 (he died while in office at age 80 if Eaton is correct) Gould may have continued on as jailor, an indication that he merited his position and that he and his wife ran a good jail.

William Gould may have been Kings County jailor, a Deputy Sheriff and the Town Crier at the time of his death but this is highly unlikely. According to Mr. Terceira, the Oak Grove Cemetery records indicate Gould died in 1883 when he was 82 years old.

P.S. I hope readers enjoy this look at a 19th-century jailor. I apologise for the confusion about conflicting dates, etc., and I remind readers that existing records were used to prepare this column.

I believe there’s only one place in the Valley where a guy can get a haircut and learn a lot about local history for five bucks.

Tucked away in the former post office building on Main Street, the barbershop Reynolds Carty has operated in Canning for 43 years has a collection of documents, posters, photographs and historical tidbits one usually finds in a museum. Waiting for a haircut, you can peruse those walls and discover what the area was like in the days when Canning was a thriving shipbuilding and commercial centre.

On the walls is a list of the sailing crafts built by one of the Annapolis Valley’s most prolific and perhaps least known shipbuilders, Ebenezar Cox. There are 23 ships on the list, including two of the largest constructed in the Valley, the 2061 ton Kings County and 2030 ton Canada. Cox was active over approximately a 30-year period beginning in 1864, but receives no mention in Eaton’s Kings County history in a summation of important 19th-century shipbuilders.

Canning can justifiably lay claim to having been the largest and busiest commercial centre in Kings County in the 19th century, thanks perhaps to its shipyards and a shipping port. A list on Carty’s wall – the Canning business directory for 1864 – contains 17 merchants. At the time Canning could also boast of having four physicians, a druggist and a dentist. Two blacksmiths, a cooper, a tinsmith, shipwright, jeweller, harnessmaker and two carpenters rounded out the tradesmen operating at the time in Canning. The list was compiled by local historian Bruce Spicer.

Nearby on the wall, also compiled by Bruce Spicer, is a list of “firsts” and other notable events in Canning’s history. The list leads off with the first ship built in the village, the Sam Slick by Dr. William Baxter. The date this ship was built is unknown but it must have been prior to 1850. Eaton’s history says that from 1850 to 1875 the shipbuilders in Canning were Bigelow, Northup, Harris and Connors. Next on the list is the date of the first of a series of fires that devastated Canning, July 15, 1866. Another fire almost wiped out the village a year later.

In its peak, Canning had three hotels, the Waverly, Canning House, the Ottawa House, seven taverns, and one constable who must have been busy.

Old photos on the barbershop walls: A view of the Blenkhorn Axe Factory, Canning’s major industry for over a century; view of the crowd gathered for the unveiling of the Borden monument in 1903; view of the early Kingsport wharf. Also on the wall is a copy of an early 1900s photograph showing workers standing outside the Canard Fruit Company. A patron left the photocopy for posting with the hopes that the men could be identified. (And some have been.)

And speaking of fruit companies, all the old warehouses that were built along the railway line have for the most part disappeared along with the tracks. In the barbershop are mementoes of the glory days when the apple was king in the Valley. There were a great number of fruit companies (apple companies actually) in those days and they slapped special labels on the barrels in which apples were shipped. A number of original apple barrel labels are posted in the barbershop with names such as well-known apple exporters Geo. A Chase and R. W. DeWolfe.

Several of the early paintings of Kingsport artist and old-time fiddler Ron Goodwin are on display in the shop. And posted around the walls are my favourite mementoes of past days: Patent medicine ads guaranteeing cures for maladies unheard of today.