When St. Patrick’s Day rolls around next year I’ll be able to celebrate it appropriately on an Irish musical instrument. By that time I’ll have a set of Irish or Uilleann bagpipes, which should arrive here late this year.

Until the pipes arrive I’ll have to settle for observing St. Patrick’s Day the way many people do who have Irish ancestors: A meal with Irish flavour, some home-made Irish music and, of course, the wearing of a patch of green to proclaim that not that many generations ago our ancestors lived in Ireland.

As I’ve mentioned here before, the Valley isn’t noted for its Irish connections. Before and after the potato famine, Irish immigrants came to Nova Scotia in fair numbers. However, the Valley received few of these people. There were tiny pockets of Irish settlements around Kings County, but nothing like areas such as Halifax and Colchester County which received great numbers of immigrants thanks to the plan of one Alexander McNutt of County Donegal who hoped to make New Scotland into New Ireland. In 1760 McNutt was promised a large grant from the crown on the condition that he settle Irish people in Nova Scotia.

Still, if you look around, you’ll see there is an Irish element here. Some of Kentville’s most prominent early citizens are of Irish extraction, for example. One of them was Henry Magee who is said to have left Ireland in 1771. As a result of remaining loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution, Magee was given a large land grant in this area. Magee settled in Kentville where he opened a general store and operated several mills. While he is said to have been Kentville’s first merchant, few people remember him today.

One of Kentville’s earliest mayors had an Irish surname. Kentville businessman James Ryan served two terms as mayor, the first in 1894, the second in 1913. Ryan’s son, Robert, had an outstanding military career; his brother Walter made his mark in the electrical engineering field in the States.

On a lesser scale, one of the county’s longest serving jailers was of Irish extraction. My great uncle John Coleman, whose grandfather came from Cork, served as jailer from 1896 to 1928.

Now how can there be a more Irish surname than Nowlan? And who among us of the older generations doesn’t remember George Nowlan? He first served as MLA for the riding of Kings County and from 1948 to 1965 represented Digby-Annapolis-Kings in the federal government, rising to the position of finance minister in the Diefenbaker government.

According to the census of 1881, Blue Mountain, the community south of Kentville on the New Ross road, was settled by a handful of Irish families. Some descendants of these settlers still live in the area. North of Kentville in Sheffield Mills is an old homestead that may have been first settled by an Irish family. Donald Dodds tells me the dwelling on this site is known locally as the “Irish house.” Patrick Barnes, a potato famine immigrant gave us one of the few Irish place names in Kings County, Paddy’s Island, near Medford.

One could say that along with several other families, the Parker name is synonymous with Hall’s Harbour. One of the reasons, of course, is Parker’s popular general store by the wharf which has been catering to people since 1905.

However, the Parker association with Hall’s Harbour goes farther back than 1905. Hutchinson’s Nova Scotia Directory for 1864-65 indicates that four Parkers, of which three were sea captains, sailed out of Hall’s Harbour in the mid 19th century. Even earlier than that, Thomas Parker built one of the first homes in the harbour.

Recently Richard Parker talked about the early days of Hall’s Harbour at the February meeting of the Kings Historical Society. A native of Hall’s Harbour and a descendant of Max who opened the general store, Mr. Parker taught history for 29 years in Queens County. Since retiring, he has been busy working on the history of Hall’s Harbour. He said he hasn’t collected enough material yet to write a comprehensive history, but from what he presented at the Historical Society I’d say he’s well on his way.

During his talk Mr. Parker discussed how Hall’s Harbour got its name. It’s surprising that anyone would name a port after a scoundrel but this is the case. In 1779 Kings County native Samuel Hall led a group of New Englanders bent on terrorising and looting the countryside. After one successful foray the raiders were sent packing by the local militia – but not before they had buried treasure of some sort, which they failed to recover. Apparently, the raiders used what was to become Hall’s Harbour as their base. No one has explained why the people of Kings County perpetuated Hall’s name by naming the harbour after him.

One of Hall’s Harbour’s most famous sons was Ransford Bucknam. Ransford was the grandson of Samuel Bucknam, the first man to settle in Hall’s Harbour. The Bucknam’s were seafaring people and Richard Parker said that Ransford followed the family tradition. Through a lucky set of circumstances Ransford rose to become a pasha and admiral of a small Turkish fleet. While he apparently never saw fit to return to the place of his birth, Hall’s Harbour claims Ransford Bucknam as its own.

The most interesting aspect of Richard Parker’s talk was the revelation that there ‘s some truth to the tale of treasure being buried in Hall’s Harbour. However, if you think it’s still out there waiting to be found, Mr. Parker said that there are clues indicating it’s too late.

One Sylvanus Whitney, who is listed as a Hall’s Harbour merchant in Hutchinson’s directory, may have found the treasure trove of gold. In 1830 Whitney opened the first store in Hall’s Harbour. Whitney left the area in 1880, moving to North Dakota. When Whitney died he left $60,000 in gold coins. This was confirmed by another Kings County native, Mr. Parker said. This was Milledge Roscoe, who had moved to North Dakota with Whitney and had acted as his executor.

Could Whitney have accrued so much gold at his tiny shop in Hall’s Harbour? Probably not. Also, Whitney left Hall’s Harbour a year after the New England raiders had supposedly failed to recover valuables they had hidden. We will never know if this was the gold Whitney left in his estate.

In [a recent] column (Search turns up wrong Woodworth) I wrote that the Marguerite A. Woodworth buried in the St. John’s cemetery on Church Street may be the author of the D.A.R. history.

After the column appeared a reader called to confirm that St. John’s cemetery did indeed hold the remains of the author. The reader has a copy of Ms. Woodworth’s obituary from a provincial newspaper indicating she was buried there. To my surprise, the reader said a copy of the obituary was on file in the Kings County Museum. I had already looked at the Museum’s obituary records, some dozen books containing hundreds of obituaries, and had found nothing. However, a search by Museum curator Bria Stokesbury discovered the obituary in documents that hadn’t been catalogued.

I now have a copy of Ms. Woodworth’s obituary and the author of the D.A.R. history is no longer quite the mystery that she was. With the obituary in hand, I also had the names of Ms. Woodworth’s parents and quickly found their obituaries in the Museum files. Marguerite’s father, Dr. Percy C. Woodworth, was a distinguished gentleman in his own right and more on him later. Here is the gist of Marguerite’s obituary from a 1967 daily newspaper:

“Miss Marguerite A. Woodworth, 67, 77 Belcher Street, died at Blanchard Fraser Memorial Hospital after a brief illness.

“Daughter of the late Dr. Percy Woodworth and Carrie (O’Key) Woodworth, she was born in Kentville and educated at Acadia University. She studied music and art for ten years in France. In earlier life Miss Woodworth was purchasing agent for the Dominion Atlantic Railway and later was commissioned to write a history of the D.A.R. Prior to World War 11 she was a private secretary in Saint Joh, N.B. Retiring in 1953, she moved to Kentville.” Burial, the obituary concluded, was to be in the St. John’s Church cemetery.

The obituary stated that Marguerite was survived by only three cousins, all of whom resided in other countries. However, her father’s obituary gives the name of one of his cousins as a survivor, Ney A. Woodworth of Kentville, and this should have been included in Marguerite’s write-up. Dr. Woodworth’s obituary also tells us that Marguerite had a brother who was “killed while serving in the United States forces in Vera Cruz.”

Marguerite Woodworth’s long stay in France where she studied may be explained by a family connection. According to Dr. Woodworth’s obituary, Carrie Woodworth’s sister was married to “a famous French barrister.”

In 1911 Marguerite’s mother died in France. Dr. Woodworth died in 1927 in Kentville. In his day, Woodworth was a renowned athlete in his early days – “one of the best football players in the Maritimes and a speed skater of international fame” reads his obituary. Just after he graduated, Dr. Woodworth took part in an expedition to the Arctic.

In a paper read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society in 1888, D. Allison called it one of the “most important documents” ever prepared on the history of early Nova Scotia. The document he referred to is the “General Return of the Several Townships in the province.” In effect, this was a form of census and its value lies in it being prepared in 1767, just over a decade after the expulsion of the Acadians and less than a decade after the arrival of the Planters.

The years immediately following the expulsion of the Acadians was “one of the most formative epochs” in Nova Scotia history, Allison writes. The survey or general return for this period is important, he says, for the light it shed on those years, supplying “valuable information respecting the (Planters)” and “some light on the interesting question of Acadian repatriation.”

Students of early Nova Scotia history will find that the General Return contradicts historians such as Haliburton and Murdoch. At least this is what Allison implies. Apparently, the General Return was lost in government archives for a long period and was unknown to Haliburton and Murdoch when they wrote their histories of Nova Scotia – Haliburton in 1829 and Murdoch before 1895. Some of the statistics compiled in the return also contradict Acadian population numbers at the time of the expulsion.

According to the General Return, for example, the Acadians on the eve of expulsion “in the territories now comprising Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island certainly did not exceed 10,000.” Allison said that some authorities placed the number even lower than 10,000. He quotes other sources giving higher numbers but casts doubt on them, in summary concluding that the entire Acadian population in 1755 numbered 9,000.

In contrast, current websites on the Acadian people give various population figures, one at 15,000 at the expulsion of which 12,000 were deported; another website said the Acadian population exceeded 10,000 of which just over 8,000 were deported. A Nova Scotia government publication on provincial history gives the number of Acadians deported as 6,000.

Oddly, another website sponsored by the provincial government says that by 1764 some 23,000 expelled Acadians had returned to Nova Scotia. Where did all the Acadians come from you may ask, since none of the figures quoted above re the expulsion came close to this number. Also, in Haliburton’s Nova Scotia history the entire population of the province, including Acadians, was estimated to be 19,120 in 1772.

In his report, Allison says that 12 years after the expulsion the Acadian population was estimated to be less than a thousand. The census of 1881 found this number reaching nearly 29,000; but, says Allison, this figure is “considerably too large (since) they include several thousands of French extraction, but not of Acadian descent.”

Her history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway is a monumental work, I stated in last week’s column when asking if anyone could help in my search for information on Marguerite Woodworth.

Calling this work “monumental” in my opinion is an understatement. Ms. Woodworth starts her history in the period well before Joseph Howe conceived the idea of a railway between Halifax and Windsor. From the stagecoach period to Howe’s crusade for a railway and the passing of the Railway Act in 1854, Woodworth details the trial and tribulations of getting a railway started. She ends her account in the early part of the 20th century, saluting along the way the many pioneers who made the railway possible.

This is the historian I said I’d like to know more about. To me, Woodworth is a bit of a mystery person, and this is why I asked readers for assistance.

Following my request for information, I received a telephone call from a reader who told me that Marguerite Woodworth was a Kings County native and had several surviving relatives in the Church Street and Port Williams area. I was given the names of two nieces and a nephew, two of whom I know. The caller gave me Woodworth’s birth and death date, 1899 – 1967, and told me she was buried at the Chipman Corner cemetery.

From the nephew, I learned that Ms. Woodworth had been a school teacher in Kings and Digby County, had married late in her senior years and had been interested in local history. Woodworth had done a lot of research on various old homes on Church Street and in Port Williams, I was told.

At this point I was delighted. Finally a picture of Woodworth the historian was emerging. It was only after I stopped at the Chipman Corner cemetery to look at Woodworth’s tombstone that some doubts crept in. The cemetery stone read “Margaret E. Woodworth, 1899 – 1967, and gave her married surname. This was either the historian with the first name misspelled or someone other than the author.

After leaving the cemetery I talked with Margaret E. Woodworth’s niece. She confirmed that her aunt wasn’t the author of the railway history. Later a review of burial records at the Kings County Museum revealed an unusual coincidence. A Marguerite E. Woodworth rests in the St. John’s cemetery a few miles east of the Chipman Corner cemetery. Like Margaret E. Woodworth, Marguerite E. Woodworth was born in 1899 and died in 1967.

I have yet to confirm that the Woodworth is the St. John’s cemetery is the author of the railway history. However, I have a few more leads to follow and eventually I hope to have a biographical sketch of Marguerite Woodworth.

One of the reasons for “Nova Scotia’s past prominence in… shipbuilding lies in her geographical position,” and in upheaval in the North American political scene, Gordon Hansford said in a paper he wrote as his Masters thesis.

Mr. Hansford’s thesis is a history of shipbuilding in Nova Scotia in the period from 1800 to 1900. In his introduction, he says that the province’s lengthy coastline and its great tracts of timber contributed to it becoming a leader in both marine commerce and shipbuilding. Hansford points out that Nova Scotia’s rise to prominence was aided by the American Revolution which led to “withdrawal of the New England States from the West Indies trade.”

I had the privilege of reading Hansford’s 1953 thesis, and I found its exploration of Nova Scotia’s rise to shipbuilding and seafaring fame an excellent historical overview. Of particular interest was the section on shipbuilding in Kings County. It’s amazing how involved this area was in shipbuilding. As I observed in a recent column, it’s a shame that our local museum doesn’t have a permanent exhibit on shipbuilding, celebrating, for example, the famed shipyards of Canning and Kingsport; both shipyards turned out world class craft including some of the largest tonnage sailing ships in Canada.

From Hansford’s thesis we see that shipbuilding in Kings County began as early as 1786 when William Baxter came to Cornwallis. “He was a Doctor of Medicine and later something of a shipbuilder,” Hansford writes. Baxter built a small vessel at Canning and some time after, Joseph Northup, Edward Lockwood, Edward Pineo and Ebenezer Bigelow formed a partnership there and built a 200-ton vessel dubbed the “Sam Slick.”

Hansford’s paper then takes us to 1847 when a shipyard known as the “Wash Bowl” was opened in Canning by Elias and Arnold Burbidge and C. R. Northup. Later, in 1867, Ebenezer Bigelow began building in earnest, becoming perhaps the most productive and best-known shipbuilder and designer of ships on the Minas Basin shore.

When you think of shipbuilding in Kings County usually Ebenezer Bigelow and Ebenezer Cox come to mind. However, Hansford tells us there many other builders, who perhaps while not as well-known as Cox and Bigelow, produced first-rate sailing ships. Among them were W. R. Huntley, C. Lockhart, and D. R. and C. F. Eaton.

Even unlikely shipbuilding areas, such as Kentville were active. Hansford records at least two ships being built inside the Kentville town limits, “near the bridge” in 1813 and 1846. Wolfville had its share of shipbuilders as well, Hansford naming W. D. DeWolfe, W. A. Cox and J. E. Harris among them. Even the tiny port of Hall’s Harbour had a shipyard, turning out several ships including the barque Ella Moore in 1869, which made a record-breaking run from Belfast to Nova Scotia in 1893.

Coast to Coast, a board game with a railway theme, was copyrighted in 1922 by the Canadian Games Company of Ontario.

Using dice and discs as markers, the object of the game was to move across the board from one end of Canada to the other, stopping off at various railway stations along the way. One of the stops in the old game was the Dominion Atlantic Railway station in Kentville.

Marie Bishop, New Minas, has the game (on loan from a friend) and as a lady with a historical bent – she’s authored a couple of local history books – she’d like to know more about it.

As mentioned the object of the game was to travel from point to point across Canada starting in Nova Scotia and traversing the board to British Columbia, or vice versa. Besides the Kentville railway station the board has other starting points or stations in Nova Scotia, at New Glasgow and Halifax, for example.

Obviously, the game never caught on or they’d still be selling it in stores today. Marie has already done some research on the game and the company that made it but to date hasn’t had much luck in finding anything. I’ve conducted an internet search but there’s nothing on the ‘net on the company or the game [update: Coast to Coast, Canadian Games Company]. Obviously, the game is a “collector’s item.” So as a long shot I contacted an association in the States that has antique and board game collectors under its umbrella. No luck there yet but the association passed my query along to its members and I’m waiting to hear back.

Why the interest in the old game? Let’s just say that it’s unusual and why not dig into its history. If a reader – perhaps a railway buff – has any information about the game we’d like to hear from you. Maybe there’s a Kentville or Kings County connection with the game’s creator.

I’m still looking for information on Marguerite Woodworth, the author of the history of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, which was published in 1936. I’d like to salute Ms. Woodworth and prepare a biography as a permanent record of her historical accomplishments. Her D.A.R. history is a monumental work and is perhaps the only detailed history of the railway in Nova Scotia. Recognition of Ms. Woodworth as a historical writer is long overdue.

I believe there are readers out there who can tell me about Ms. Woodworth. Even the most trivial facts about her life would be welcome. As it stands now, Woodworth is a bit of a mystery, to me at least, and I’d like to know more about her. Readers who have any information are urged to contact me. You can reach me at 902-678-4591; my e-mail address is edwingcoleman@gmail.com. You can also write me care of this newspaper.

Another writer I’d like to know more about is Clara Dennis, so if you have any info please call. In the 1930s Dennis wrote several books and was a combination travel writer, explorer and historian. Clara Dennis, 1881-1958, travelled from one end of Nova Scotia to the other, exploring out-of-the-way places, interviewing their residents and offering up historical tidbits.

One of Dennis’ books, Down in Nova Scotia, was published in 1934 with a foreword by Robert Laird Borden. Every little “nook and cranny” in the province was explored and the work apparently was so popular that some 25 years later its style was imitated in travel books by Will R. Bird.

Kings County has a few place names of Irish origin and perhaps a couple of famous sons with Irish surnames. If you look in the telephone directory under Kentville, Wolfville, New Minas and so on, you’ll find more than a handful of surnames that are Irish in origin. Take my surname, for example. There are a lot of Coleman’s in the Kentville section of the telephone book, most of whom have a common ancestor, a man who came from the County of Cork, Ireland, in the 18th century.

However, when compared to other nationalities, the Irish presence in Kings County is minuscule. You won’t find the word “Irish” in the index of Eaton’s Kings County history, for example. Eaton dwells mainly on the New England Planter, and to some extent the Acadian element in Kings County. He does acknowledge the Irish origin of some early Kings County families, however, among them Sommerville, Manning and Allison.

While there is no concrete historical evidence to confirm this, folklore has it that there were pockets of Irish settlements in several areas of Kings County. These apparently consisted of a few families of Irish origin who landed first in New Brunswick. According to folklore, Black Rock, and the general area around Atlanta and Hillaton once were tiny bastions of the Irish. Because of their Catholic faith, so the tales go, Irishmen were unwelcome on the Valley floor and had to settle away from the main towns and villages and on the North Mountain.

Watson Kirkconnell acknowledges some but not much Irish presence in Kings County in his booklet on place names. From Kirkconnell we find that Paddy’s Island near Medford was part of the farm of one Patrick Barnes who came to Nova Scotia from Ireland during the potato famine. Kirkconnell doesn’t have much more to say about Irish place names. About Irish surnames in the county Kirkconnell writes in effect that there is almost a complete lack. “From Halifax and Colchester counties,” Kirkconnell says “we have repaired our almost complete lack of Irish surnames.”

From Charles Bruce Ferguson’s Place Names and Places of Nova Scotia we learn that the southern end of Kings County has a community with an Irish name. This is the community of New Ross Road, the name undoubtedly taken from the nearby Lunenburg County village of New Ross. Ferguson writes that New Ross was derived from an Irish town of the same name. Dempsey Corner at the west end of the county is listed in Ferguson’s book but he fails to mention that it is named after Roger Dempsey, a native of Ireland.

Turning to Mabel Nichols book, The Devil’s Half Acre, we find that a number of Irish sons were prominent in Kentville’s early days. A native of Ireland, Henry Magee, was one of Kentville’s earliest large scale entrepreneurs. Magee is said to have built the first store in Kentville and had several mills in the county.

Late last year the county lost another of its railway veterans and the passing of John DeWolfe, a former engineer on the D.A.R., brings a question to mind. Kentville at one time was the hub of the Dominion Atlantic Railway and due to the railroad, the town attained great prominence in the Valley. Kentville may owe its existence to a ford on the Cornwallis River, as E. J. Cogswell wrote in 1895, but there’s little doubt that the railway built the town and made it prosperous.

Given the important role the railway played in Kentville’s existence, and the fact that the Valley’s past prosperity was due to the railway, why is there no permanent exhibition recognising this at the Kings County Museum? From what I’ve seen of the various souvenirs, artefacts, photographs and written material stored at the Museum, such an exhibit could easily be put together.

Along the same line, Kings County at one time was a major shipbuilding area. The shipyards of Canning and Kingsport, along with smaller county yards, once turned out sailing ships that were among the best in Canada. In fact, Nova Scotia was famed for its shipbuilding and for its seafaring men who ventured worldwide, and this area, Kings County, in particular, led the way.

We have a great shipbuilding and seafaring tradition and there should be a permanent exhibit celebrating this fact. The Kings County Museum is the logical place for such an exhibit, which perhaps could be at the very least be a photo display along with a short history of our shipbuilding industry.

It was described as a 148-page book containing 158,000 words; and according to a news story in The Advertiser‘s 1937 issue of February 25, it was supposed to have been published on this date. The book was called The Romance of Railroading in the Land of Evangeline.

I mention this book in the hopes that a reader may have some knowledge of it. The railway buff who told me about The Advertiser news story wasn’t familiar with the book, and perhaps it never saw print. If it was published and you know something about it, please give me or Leon Barron a call.

With the new year underway, I’d like to recognise and thank the many people who contributed historical information for this column. I’m especially indebted to Leon Barron for some of the more interesting columns on the railway and shipbuilding that have appeared in recent years. Bria Stokesbury and Cathy Margeson of the Kings County Museum were especially helpful in digging out pertinent information when I was working on special projects. Frankly, without the assistance of Leon, Bria and Cathy it would have been impossible for me to report on some of the more interesting aspects of county history.

My thanks as well to the many readers who called and wrote me last year. Many of my historical columns resulted from readers taking the time to provide me with interesting information on local history. Your input was appreciated and I hope to hear from all of you again.

Reader response to my column on cellars and roads of Acadian origin in the village of New Minas has been tremendous and also educational. As the result of telephone calls, for example, I’ve learned that the site of an Acadian cemetery, homestead sites and an Acadian mill in the village have been roughly pinpointed.

By “roughly pinpointed” I mean that the approximate but not the exact location of these sites is known. During the upcoming Acadian celebrations, some of these sites will be identified on a pamphlet currently being put together. The pamphlet will be distributed during the celebration and will contain a map indicating areas where Acadians may have worked, lived and were buried in and around New Minas.

It would seem from information I received recently that New Minas was much more important as an Acadian settlement than historians realise. Grand Pre as an important Acadian centre has been heavily promoted over the years and rightly so. However, not enough attention has been paid the settlements on the Canard and Cornwallis River. The Canard area was a major settlement area replete with a church, at least one mill and possibly even some minor shipbuilding; New Minas may have had a church and a mill as well.

The Acadian presence on the Cornwallis River at Port Williams, New Minas, Kentville and as far as upriver as Coldbrook, while not entirely ignored, has never been promoted as much as Grand Pre has Eaton’s Kings County history skims over the Acadian presence around Canard, New Minas and Kentville. Oddly, a history of the old burial ground in Windsor has more about Acadian settlements in this area than Eaton’s work.

Getting back to responses from readers about the Acadian presence in New Minas, I’ve been told that an Acadian cemetery may have been located at the bottom of Jones Road. A couple of readers told me there were Acadian homestead sites near the elementary school. There is a mini park in the hollow behind the elementary school and there may have been an Acadian mill on the stream there. This may also have been the site of a Planter mill. In more recent times, the brook in the hollow was the site of a fish hatchery dam.

There may have been an Acadian mill on the border between New Minas and Kentville. At the mouth of the research station ravine, a mini aboiteau controls the tidal flow of the small stream that runs into the Cornwallis River. The mill may have been located there or just upstream in the ravine and it may have been powered by the tidal waters.

Thanks to leads from readers, I’ll have more later on the Acadian presence in New Minas. In the meanwhile, my thanks to Sam Milne who called to fill me in on the rink once located in New Minas. Sam tells me he worked as a rink rat there. As mentioned in an earlier column, the rink was located near the senior citizen’s complex. Sam said the rink was relocated to a site near Vail’s Laundry and was closed in the late 1940s or early 1950s.