I barely touched on some of the more interesting aspects of the Bay of Fundy’s Isle Haute when I wrote about it here two weeks ago. For example, Isle Haute, or high island, was aptly named by Champlain since its stupendous cliffs tower some 300 feet above the ocean. Due to these rugged cliffs there are only a few points where access to the island is possible.

As noted, I based my column on marine historian Dan Conlin’s Nova Scotia Museum curatorial report, prepared following an expedition to the island in 1997. In the report Mr. Conlin included details about the manned Isle Haute lighthouse which existed there for almost 80 years. Following are some of the highlights of the lighthouse history.

As shipping traffic increased in the Bay of Fundy in the 19th century, it became obvious that a lighthouse was necessary on Isle Haute. While first suggested in 1855 and “strongly recommended by the Royal Navy in 1857” due to a hazardous ledge west of the island, the lighthouse on Isle Haute wasn’t erected until decades later.

The lighthouse was established on the island in 1878 and its first keeper was Leon Card. This was a 53 foot, four storey wooden tower with an attached dwelling. From the shore to the lighthouse Card constructed a mile-long road “on a grade that will permit stores etc. to be hauled to the station.” The keeper cleared and cultivated fields around the lighthouse, built a wharf and shed and a 33-foot schooner.

One would think life as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island would be a dreary, lonely existence with little work to do and little if any recreation. However, Conlin’s account tells us Card and his family, wife and daughter, joined him on the island and they ran a productive farm. “The island eventually proved quite productive with regular exports of sheep, cattle and hay leaving the island in boats and barges,” Conlin says. There was even a short-lived experiment by a New Brunswick company to set up a fox farm.

Card and his family did have periods of serious isolation. In wintertime ice, tides and storms cut them off the mainland for weeks at a time. The keeper created a system of communication with fires which could be seen from Advocate, the nearest mainland community. “One fire meant all was well,” Conlin writes. “Two fires meant someone was sick, while three meant a doctor was needed. Four fires meant a death.”

Ironically, Conlin says, the isolation of winter was replaced by large numbers of visitors in summertime. “At the time when the Bay of Fundy was ringed by busy fishing and shipping ports, the island provided an ideal gathering place for Sunday picnics and special outings known as ‘Bay Parties’.

“At the turn of the century up to 300 people would arrive on the island on a single day with July 12 gatherings organised by the Orange Lodge fraternal order. A gathering took place in 1881 when two boatloads of guests arrived on the island for the marriage of the keeper’s daughter, Ida Card.”

Human occupation of the island came to an end in 1956 and was replaced by an automated light, Conlin says. Today a solar powered light serviced by the Canadian Coast Guard now warns mariners of the hazardous reefs around Isle Haute.

Some North Mountain streams flow along old fissures in the bedrock and their “narrow ravine-like valleys” are locally known as vaults, notes the Natural History of Kings County; given as an example of this geographic feature is well-known Sheffield Vault near Glenmont.

Sheffield is probably mentioned in the Kings County natural history because it’s a local landmark. People often speak of the Sheffield Vault area as if it were a community and at one time there was a highway sign informing drivers there were in its vicinity; this and the fact that the municipality uses the Vault as a boundary line for several polling districts tells me that it is more than an unusual geological feature of the North Mountain landscape.

Curious about the possible relevance of Sheffield Vault I followed up a lead provided by Leon Barron. Leon told me that in addition to a government wharf on the Bay of Fundy at its mouth, Sheffield Vault once held a locally owned business, a water-driven lumber mill. Barron also said that possibly there was a second mill there or nearby that operated using steam power.

One of the people Barron directed me to was Harley Corkum of East Hall’s Harbour. Harley has been living on the North Mountain since 1938 and when he was a boy he heard talk about an “up and down sawmill” located in the Vault. “We called this the Walter Brown dugout and it was farther down the (Vault) brook,” Harley said. “I was told that the brook was dammed up and the mill was operated with water power.”

While he grew up in the Hall’s Harbour, Vault area over half a century ago, Harley never saw the mill in operation. “That was before my time,” he said. “When I was growing up there was little left of the mill.”

Leon Barron also suggested Derek Wood of Centreville as a possible source of information on Sheffield Vault and its old mill. Mr. Wood told me that his great grandfather, Stephen Brown operated the mill. While he was unable to recall how long the mill operated in the Vault or when it first began operating, he was able to date its demise.

Wood was told by a relative, Charlie Brown of Kentville, that the mill “washed out in a freshet, a spring thaw, in 1912.” The mill was never replaced after being destroyed by flood waters, but Wood say some of its timbers were used later to build a barn for his grandfather.

Wood tells me the mill was situated on a waterfall near the Bay of Fundy. “There’s a little falls with a five or six foot drop abut three-quarters of the way down the Vault to the shore,” he said. “This made the headwaters for the mill.”

Wood also remembers that his great grandfather “dug a road into the Vault so they could come haul lumber up from the mill and logs down to it. As kids, we called this the dugout,” Wood says, apparently because the road was “dug out of the side of the Vault.”

A government wharf was once located at the mouth of Sheffield Vault and Wood remembers seeing the old pilings. The wharf was accessible by a road that Wood believes ran “through the old Munro place” and traces of it are still visible.

That a wharf was once required in this area is puzzling. Did it serve the Vault mill or was it a fisherman’s wharf? Apparently there were several roads leading to the area of the Vault wharf and possibly the area thrived commercially a century or more ago. Perhaps future research will turn up proof that Sheffield Vault was more than a geological quirk on the North Mountain.

“Beware of what you find on the Internet about the island,” historian Dan Conlin wrote when e-mailing recently. “A lot of people claim there is treasure on the island when there is meagre evidence, and making this claim attracts destructive and illegal treasure hunting.”

Conlin, the curator of marine history at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, undoubtedly speaks with authority when it comes to Isle Haute. In [1997] Conlin wrote a report on Isle Haute (Nova Scotia Museum Curatorial Report No. 90) covering the history of the island, which included island’s folklore and the various attempts to find the treasure said to be buried there.

Mr. Conlin has a long association with Isle Haute, visiting it first when he was a Boy Scout. He describes the island, which is visible from hundreds of miles of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick coastline as an arresting, mysterious landmark that “lies on the Bay of Fundy like an overturned canoe or the capsized hull of a sailing ship.”

On Conlin’s remark about the Internet, I searched and found 5,040 web sites devoted to or mentioning Isle Haute. Buried treasure was a topic in the dozen or so sites I scanned. However, the history of the island is more interesting than the efforts to find its mythical trove of pirate gold.

As Mr. Conlin points out in his report, Isle Haute (high island) was discovered by Samuel Champlain when he explored the Bay of Fundy in 1604. Champlain mentions the island in his journal which was published in 1613 and later republished in Acadienesis. Champlain gave the island its present name. Of course, the island was well known to native people. According to Silas Rand, the Mi’kmaq called the island Maskusetkik, a place of wild potatoes. A 1955 archaeological study refers to a 1724 gathering of Mi’kmaq and Maliseets on Isle Haute in preparation for a raid on the fort at Port Royal; thus it appears that the island was well-known and often used by native peoples.

While it appears to be distant, remote and mysterious, Conlin points out that a study of Isle Haute shows that it was once far from isolated. “In the days when everything moved by water,” Conlin writes, “Isle haute was at a cross-roads, where the Bay of Fundy splits, and was often visited by Europeans over long periods of time” when it served as a shelter and watering place.

Conlin says that Champlain or his crew explored the island, noting “many of the features that can still be seen today,” including its fresh water spring and salt water pond. The island was later charted by Des Barres, in recognition of the “significant amounts of trade and fishing taking place on the Bay of Fundy.”

In the mid-19th century shipping on the Bay of Fundy had increased to the point that a lighthouse was proposed for Isle Haute. First proposed in 1855, the lighthouse wasn’t constructed until 1878. The arrival of the lighthouse altered the island, Conlin writes. A mile-long road was constructed from the beach to the lighthouse, which apparently stood on the highest point on the island, and fields were cleared where cattle and sheep were raised and an unsuccessful attempt at fox farming was made.

Human occupation of the island ended in 1956 when the lighthouse was automated.

In August of 1927, high winds sweeping through this region caught the schooner Hattie McKay anchored off Medford beach and destroyed her. “She was a victim of an August Gale,” local marine historian Leon Barron says. “August Gale is what they called hurricanes in the old days,” he explained.

There’s quite a story behind why those great windstorms were called August Gales rather than simply hurricanes; it all began with a ferocious gale that swept through the Atlantic provinces some 130 years ago.

One of the most devastating hurricanes to strike this region since the French first established a colony here in the 1600s, it was the mother of all windstorms. Known as the August Gale of 1873 and the great Nova Scotia cyclone, the storm left a wide swath of destruction in its wake and affected generations of Maritimers. Such was its impact that for generations it was used as a reference point in personal histories. One can find records indicating, for example, that people sometimes proved their age when apply for Old Age Pensions by relating their birth date to X years before or after the storm of 1873.

After the great storm of 1873, the term “August Gale” was applied to the hurricanes that often lash this region in late summer. Those with a nautical bent or an interest in marine and sailing ship history generally speak of an August Gale with awe, almost as if it were an entity rather than simply a high force wind.

Since the August Gale of 1873, Atlantic Canada has been ravaged by other hurricanes that created widespread destruction. The hurricanes of 1892, 1906 and 1926 were hailed as August Gales by seafaring people, for example, since they destroyed ships, wrecked shoreside property and killed people at sea and ashore

However, the 1873 storm, the hurricane that led to coining the phrase August Gale, undoubtedly was one of the most destructive of all. “It’s destructive power was extraordinary,” reads a website dedicated to weather calamities. “Ravages of the storm include 1200 vessels, 500 lives, 900 buildings and an untold number of bridges, wharves and dykes. Property losses were conservatively estimated at 3.5 million, an amount equivalent to $70 million in 1990.” Another website put the loss of life in the Maritimes at “upwards of 1,000.”

One website called the 1873 storm the “Great Nova Scotia Cyclone.” At the height of the storm, gale forces winds were simultaneously ravaging all areas of the province. The Valley’s apple industry was in its infancy at the time so its effect on farming may not have been serious; however, Minas Basin vessels and shoreline facilities definitely felt its force.

Besides becoming a timeline identification mark, the 1873 hurricane helped change the way weather was monitored in Canada. Due to a failure in the telegraph system, Nova Scotia had no warning that dangerous gale-force winds were sweeping towards them. One website devoted to the 1873 storm said that the lack of warning and the widespread damage caused by the storm motivated politicians to implement a better storm warning system; this system was later put into use in the Maritimes.

The tomb of a long-dead mariner uncovered accidentally near the Bay of Fundy shore; a copper scroll possibly from the 17th century with a map and arcane markings; a rough map in an old book indicating that somewhere along the shore in Kings County lies a shipwreck with a chest containing gold.

These are the elements of a tale told to me recently by Lewis Hazel, the son of a man who was a local legend, treasure hunter Josh Hazel. Hazel is one of a few men rumoured to have found buried treasure in this area. I wrote about Hazel in the February 25 issue of Regional Magazine. The story of Hazel’s long and eventually successful search was based on interviews with Lewis Hazel.

Like others in his time, Josh Hazel had been captivated by tales of buried treasure circulating around the Bay of Fundy. As I related in the article, Hazel eventually discovered a small cache gold coins in the Black Hole area. During an interview with Lewis Hazel after the Regional Magazine article appeared, I learned that his father had discovered a map in an old book indicating the Black Hole area was a good place to search.

After the Black Hole find, Josh Hazel concentrated his search for buried treasure on the Minas Basin shore. What turned him in this direction was the discovery by Lewis of a burial site on his Black Hole property. As Lewis tells it, he was clearing a logging road and in the process dynamited a large rock that was in the way. Beneath the rock, Lewis found a tomb or crypt of rectangular shape had been cut into a ledge. There was evidence, Lewis says, that someone had been buried there. “You could see an outline where the body had laid and a few pieces of clothing still remained,” he said.

At the grave site, Lewis discovered a stone cross and a large copper plate or plaque containing an inscription and a map. “The inscription was in a language we didn’t know,” Lewis said, “but my father, working with a partner, had it translated in the States.”

According to Lewis, the inscription on the plate told about a ship being pursued up the Bay of Fundy into the Minas Basin where it apparently went aground during a storm and was abandoned. The plaque contained two dates, 1651 and 1682; it also indicated that the ship’s captain was buried at the site and that the ship contained valuables. A rough map on the plaque showed what appeared to be the Cape Split and Minas Basin shoreline and there were indications that the ship had foundered on what Josh Hazel concluded was the Habitant River.

Lewis Hazel hopes one day to write a book, or have a book written, about his father’s lifelong career as a treasure hunter; the story of Josh Hazel’s two-year search of the Minas Basin shore for the Habitant River shipwreck will then be told in its entirety.

Lewis Hazel told me some of the story and its amazing conclusion, but research needs to be done before it can be put into print.

History buffs can tell you why we’re called New Scotland; and they can also tell you that we missed becoming New Ireland by a whisker. Without a doubt, there’s a strong Gaelic element, Scottish and Irish especially, in Nova Scotia.

Of the two “Gaelic peoples” the Scots prevail of course. When you look at place names and politicians in Nova Scotia, for example, you’ll generally find more Scottish than Irish connections. Statistics from the Federal Census of 1961 indicate Nova Scotia had the third highest number of people in Canada whose ethnic origin was Scottish. According to the Census, Nova Scotians whose ethnic origin was Scottish were almost double the number who claimed Irish ancestry.

In case you’ve wondered how much of a Scottish connection there is in Nova Scotia here are a few facts and figures from my trivia file. Getting back to the Census, Scots are (or were in 1961) more numerous in Ontario and British Columbia thanthe Irish and British; in this province, however, Scots are in second place behind the British.

In the 1961 Census, 3,702 Nova Scotians said Gaelic was their mother tongue; most of this 3,702 lived in Cape Breton.

At the time of Confederation the Scots and Irish outnumbered people of English origin and played a big role in the formation of Canada. Of the 34 Fathers of Confederation, some 20 were Scots.

If Sir William Alexander had succeeded in establishing a Scottish colony here in 1621, or shortly thereafter, the Bay of Fundy would now be known as Argall Bay; Cape Breton Island would have become New Galloway.

Nova Scotia has 75 place names based on Scottish surnames, and some 116 place names brought over from Scotland; in addition there are at least 16 place names that were coined using Scottish surnames – Currie’s Corner, for example.

Rev. George Patterson’s history of Pictou County names John MacKay as the young piper who was on the Hector, which landed in Pictou in 1773. Scott Williams, in Pipers of Nova Scotia, says MacKay’s arrival began our 225 year association with the bagpipe. However, MacKay may not have been the piper’s surname; one source say it was MacKenzie, another Fraser.

A proposed 115,000 acre township in Hants County to be called “Douglass” was to be settled by a battalion of the 84th Highland Regiment. The plan fell through when the soldiers, who were Scots fighting on the side of the British during the American Revolution, failed to take up their land.

One of the first prominent Scottish families in Nova Scotia may have been the Melansons who took up land when Sir William Alexander attempted his colony here. The Melansons, Pierre and Charles, apparently chose to remain with the Acadians when Alexander’s colony floundered.

Who was the first Scot in Canada? No one knows for sure but possibly the first mention of a Scot in this country was made in the writings of Champlain. When he returned to Quebec from France in 1618, Champlain found that a “Scotch Huguenot” had succumbed to the winter.

In 1770 there was hardly a Scot in Kings County, Watson Kirkconnell notes in his 1971 book on local place names. However, Kirkconnell says, the 1971 telephone directory listed 476 “Macs” and almost as many lowland Scottish surnames.

This area is a hotbed of amateur historians. Pick any major community, village or town and you’ll find that a committee or an individual has researched, written and published its history.

Looking at towns, for example, Wolfville, Kentville and Windsor have excellent published histories. And for examples of fine community histories, one need look no farther than the well-researched histories of Port Williams and Greenwich.

Even where no published histories exist, one can find various papers, essays and other historical manuscripts on local communities in the files of the Kings County Museum and at Acadia University. Some community histories, Habitant and Kingsport, for example, are out of print and are available to the public only at the Kings County Museum.

Eaton’s Kings County history contains historical overviews of various towns and communities. However, Eaton was conservative (one could say prudish) and you won’t find anything racy or off-colour in his work. Eaton stuck to the cold, hard facts, usually abstaining from anything that might offend or suggest that historical figures had clay feet.

For off-colour, irreverent glimpses of local history we have to look to histories that don’t pretend to be formal works. One is a rare history book I’ve mentioned here before, W. C. Milner’s The Basin of Minas and Its Early Settlers, published in Wolfville about 90 years ago. Milner had a penchant for digging out irreverent and sometimes scandalous tidbits on our early communities and he included many of them in his book. Here are a few examples, the first a glimpse of early Wolfville.

“Before the main street was opened from Mud Creek west, Col. Bishop, Messrs. Barss and DeWolfe lived on the Ridge Road near the stile. On that road was located the first jail in the vicinity of the old R. C. cemetery. There was also an R. C. Church in the cemetery lot. It was destroyed by fire about 1878. A young man named Benjamin who did not possess a very sound mind set fire to it.

“The story goes that he was greatly attached to a young woman to whom the priest would not marry him. This preyed on his mind and in a moment of frenzy he committed the act. He was taken in charge by his friends and sent to the Asylum in Halifax.”

On early Port Williams which in its heyday was a major port: “Old King Alcohol disputed with the Temperance Society the rule of the town, five bars being in operation at one time. This was largely the result of this being a seaport town.”

On early Hantsport: “A tradition is floating that Peck’s Bad Boy was born here and was inoculated with the mischief that worried all the elders of the town and disturbed the serene spirit of the ministers, when one morning every householder was amazed and puzzled to find livestock gone and replaced by someone else’s on his farm, necessitating the town being kept busy in assorting and distributing horses, cows, hens, sheep and pigs.”

On early Canning: “In the due march of events, Canning possessed a magistrate in the person of Judge John Wells. Justice was dispensed in the Judge’s kitchen, subject to the veto of madam. There was a power above the Judge…. It was called the Sheepskin Court, perhaps because no dog was allowed to bark there.

“The consequence of Canning as a part of the world was greatly increased when Elias Burbidge, the village smithy, added a hotel, duly licensed to enable customers to change their breath.”

The closest Kings County, and perhaps the Annapolis Valley, ever came to a gold rush may have been in 1861 when the precious metal was discovered near Wolfville.

Little is known about this discovery. Eaton’s Kings County history has an intriguing one-line reference which mentions the finding of gold “in a small brook which runs into Halfway River, about six or seven miles south of Wolfville.”

This is the only space Eaton devotes to the gold find and what resulted from this discovery is left to our imagination. Obviously it wasn’t a major find or we’d have references to it in our history books. Recently I scoured over a dozen community histories and there was no mention of gold finds or prospecting. However, there must have been a period when “gold rush fever” hit Kings County. The mini-find at Halfway River undoubtedly spurred a rush of prospecting in this area.

The discovery at Halfway River coincided with what’s regarded as Nova Scotia’s first authenticated gold strike. In 1858, at Mooseland, one Captain L’Estrange found gold in quartz rock. Not much came of this discovery but two years later, in the same area, John Pulsifer’s discovery of gold in a quartz boulder started the first gold rush in Nova Scotia. It’s probable that the discovery of gold in Mooseland spurred the exploration of other areas and perhaps lead to the find at Halfway River.

We can surmise as well that the Mooseland find lead to the successful search for gold in other areas. Over the next year other discoveries were quick to follow the Mooseland find – at Tangier, Lawrencetown, The Ovens, Wine Harbour, Sherbrooke (Goldenville), Waverley, Country Harbour, Isaacs Harbour and Gold River.

Since the discovery at Halfway River doesn’t appear to merit mention in the history books, it’s safe to say that Gold River, which rises near New Ross, is the only area close to Kings County where a find was made. But don’t think for a moment that efforts haven’t been made to find gold in this area.

In fact, people are actively searching for gold in this and adjacent counties. Their number is small and they’re a close-mouthed group, but these prospectors definitely exist and their aim is to find the gold they believe lies in the beds of local streams. The method they use is called panning.

Over the years this group of gold seekers has panned the South and North Mountain streams. One prospector tells me that the likelihood of a find is small but that doesn’t stop him from trying. “A few flecks of gold amounts to a fair payoff,” he said. “Gold is currently selling at $350 US an ounce.”

The prospector said that most of the stream in this area have probably been checked out over the years and recently he has been zeroing in on the seashore. He’s panned at The Ovens. He has dreams of panning the shores of Sable Island, he says. “There was a scheme in the 18th century to pan the sands of Sable but it fell through,” he said.

If you’re interested in panning for gold or would like to read about the history of gold exploration in Nova Scotia, contact the Department of Natural Resources for a copy of the booklet, Gold in Nova Scotia.

He’s probably one of the most knowledgeable history buffs in the county; and if you don’t believe it, try to stump Leon Barron on anything pertaining to sailing ships, lighthouses, the railway and general history trivia.

Leon is also a country and western music fan and he has a considerable store of knowledge about singers like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow and Wilf Carter. This was demonstrated when I asked Leon if he had seen a recent news release in the papers about the death of Hank Snow’s widow. The release noted that Minnie Snow was a Kentville native, but Leon said this was an error. “She was an Aalders from Aldersville,” he said.

Leon pointed out another error in the release, which said that Hank Snow was a native of Brooklyn, Hants County. Some sources give Snow’s birthplace as Milton, Queens County but this is also a mistake, Leon said. Snow himself claimed Blue Rocks, Lunenburg County, as his birthplace, which he noted on his first LP album.

For those who dispute that Nova Scotia was a Canadian super power during the age of sailing ships, Barron’s extensive store of marine trivia says otherwise.

In any given year from 1873 to 1888, for example, Nova Scotia had at least double the number of vessels on the official registry books than any other province or territory. Picking one year at random, 1883, the province had 3,037 vessels registered, New Brunswick 1,107 and Quebec 1,739.

Leon’s files also show that Nova Scotia was the leading shipbuilder in the sailing vessel era as well. In the years 1874 to 1888, for example, Nova Scotia’s annual output was usually almost double that of any other province or territory. In 1883, for example, the province built and registered 202 vessels; in this year New Brunswick was in second place with an output was 72, Quebec third with 42.

Between 1874 and 1888, many hundreds of vessels were built and never registered in the province of origin. In Barron’s files these are shown as “new vessels built in Canada, which proceeded to the United Kingdom under a Governor’s pass without being registered.” While the records don’t tell us where they originated, undoubtedly the majority of these vessels came from Nova Scotia shipyards.

In the same period, Nova Scotia also lead the way in vessel tonnage, that is, “number of tons on the registry books,” signifying that the province not only constructed more ships, but apparently built them larger when it came to carrying capacity.

Looking For Information

I’ve quoted from her book, the history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, extensively in this column, and I think it’s about time that Marguerite Woodworth herself was recognised and celebrated. I’d like to devote a column to Ms. Woodworth and I’m looking for biographical information and perhaps some personal glimpses.

Readers who knew Ms. Woodworth or may have information, even of the most trivial nature, are invited to contact me. I can be reached by writing this newspaper, via e-mail at edwingcoleman@gmail.com or by telephone at 902-678-4591.

In 1971 Watson Kirkconnell published the results of his research on Kings County place names, remarking in this pioneering work that often the origin of some communities was obscure.

The gentleman that he was, the late and beloved Dr. Kirkconnell avoided mentioning a number of well-used place names that had derogatory or otherwise unpleasant connotations. Among them was the area immediately north of Kentville known for generations as “Yoho,” and still referred to as such by older residents of the community of Meadowview.

It was bad enough growing up in Aldershot, as I did, during the war years. Like Meadowview, Aldershot was another community whose residents were looked upon as second class by some Kentville citizens. Why we were is a mystery, but there definitely was a stigma attached to being from Aldershot or Yoho. As a result, Meadowview replaced Yoho and many residents who live in that nebulous area known as Aldershot now give Kentville as their postal address.

Unlike Aldershot (Aldershot Camp) the origin of Yoho as a place name is a mystery. However, Rebecca Crouse of the Kings Historical Society is determined to learn how the community got the Yoho name and why it was looked upon as being derogatory. Ms. Crouse is currently delving into land grant records and other historical material in hopes of finding an answer to these questions.

If anyone has information on Meadowview/Yoho, they can reach Ms. Crouse at the Kings County Museum in Kentville (902-678-6237); or you can e-mail her at famhist@ns.sympatico.ca. In the meanwhile, here are some of the facts Ms. Crouse and I have unearthed regarding Yoho, and some of the questions she is asking.

Eaton’s Kings County history refers to the area that eventually became Yoho and Aldershot Camp, the Pine Woods. “Across the river from Kentville, on the main roads that run North,” Eaton writes, “for many years have stood some small scattered houses, owned and occupied by people of the African race. This Negro settlement got the name it has always borne, the ‘Pine Woods,’ or as now, ‘The Pines’.”

Ms. Crouse has found references to a land grant in Cornwallis, dated 1838, to one George Bear and Eaton notes that the surname Bear was associated with the Pine woods. In 1873 and 1886 land grants in the Pine Woods were made to James Landsey and Ebenezer Landsey; Eaton says that the Landseys were among the chief families living in the Pine Woods.

One section of Meadowview, Knockwood Hill, was named after a Mi’kmaq family. I’m only guessing, but the fact that Mi’kmaqs and blacks dwelt in the Pine Woods may have resulted in anyone living in this area being looked down upon. In other words, racial prejudice may have labelled future residents of Yoho/Meadowview as undesirables. When I was a boy in the 1940s, for example, the worst insult you could give anyone was “you act like someone from the Pines.”

Re the Landsey land grants, Eaton says that this family was long-time dwellers in the Pine Woods area. Is it possible that Landsey eventually became Lanzie, the name of the road that runs through what was once the Pine Woods?