Drive along Brooklyn Street from Kentville and a couple of kilometres out you’ll pass through what today could be considered a forgotten community.

Known at one time as Brooklyn Corner – there are people who still call it by that name – the community exists but is difficult to find on current maps, county directories and county tax rolls. In his book on Nova Scotia place names, Charles Bruce Fergusson mentions Brooklyn Corner, but along with West Brooklyn and Brooklyn Street, he lumps it under the write-up for Brooklyn.

However, the community hasn’t been completely forgotten and a historical researcher has made sure of that. Digging into files at the Kings Courthouse Museum and conducting extensive interviews, Linda Hart compiled material enough to write a book about Brooklyn Corner. The book, A Place to Belong, was recently published and is available at the Kings County Museum.

Basically, Hart’s book is more of a genealogy than a historical treatise. Hart gives genealogical accounts of more than 50 families who once lived in or still have descendants in Brooklyn Corner. This was quite an undertaking since, based on the genealogies in the book, Brooklyn Corner appears to encompass parts of Coldbrook, Lakeville and Billtown. This must have made it difficult for Hart to determine where these communities ended and where Brooklyn Corner starts. Even Fergusson, in his account of place names, was vague about Brooklyn’s location, noting only that it was four miles west of Kentville.

Genealogy basically is the tracing of descendants from your ancestors down to you, but in another sense, it’s also a linear history of your family. Looked at it this way, Linda Hart has done some excellent work in recording family histories starting in some cases with Planter grantees in the 1760s. The oldest family line in the book is the Rands. Thomas Rand received a grant in 1764 and his descendants settled in Brooklyn Corner. Other Planter descendants, such as the Eatons, Newcombs and Bishops settled in the community as well.

In addition to the genealogies, Hart also includes some history of the houses along Brooklyn Street. Hart says she started at least 20 years ago collecting facts and the lore floating around the community about the houses and it makes interesting reading. There are other nuggets as well; the story behind the famous Antoft Gardens, for example, which at one time was the best-known nursery in the Annapolis Valley.

Shedding light on one of our lesser known communities makes Hart’s book a valuable addition to the history of Kings County. I recommend it to readers who enjoy a mixture of genealogy, family lore and local history in their books.

Linda Hart signing a copy of her new book.

In Blomidon Rose, Esther Clarke Wright devotes an entire chapter to the various meanings of the word “gaspereau,” one of them being a fish. This fish, notes Wright, was an important part of the Acadian diet and was one of the reasons why they settled near the Gaspereau River.

What Wright left unsaid was that another fish was equally important with the Acadians in settlements around the Minas Basin. The Habitant, the Canard River, the Cornwallis River, the Avon River, as well as the Gaspereau River, had tremendous runs of shad in the spring; these were harvested and salted down by the Acadians, providing an important addition to their winter food stock.

In the Minas Basin, the shad was always more abundant than gaspereaux, yet it is rarely mentioned in historical accounts as an important food source of the Acadians. Nor do we read much about the importance of shad in the post-Acadian period. History, for the most part, is about people and events, historians rarely chronicling the harvesting of fish when more important events are taking place. Yet, to a degree, the shad is an important historical fish, if only because the Acadians and other settlers depended on it for sustenance.

Various documents exist that tell us the Planters and others who settled around the Minas Basin took advantage of the shad’s abundance, often netting them by the hundreds of thousands in a single year. In his book on early Kings and Hants County history, for example, Henry Youle Hind wrote that in 1787 over 100,000 shad were taken from the Canard River and 120,000 a few years later from the Habitant River.

In reports as early as 1683, shad were described as one of the most abundant fish in the Minas Basin. Writing of the Cornwallis River in 1782, Judge Deschamps said, “in July and August this river affords abundance of fish called shad.” So abundant were shad that settlers often harvested those stranded in pools at low tide. There are records of fixed shad nets extending for over a mile across the mud flats from the mouth of the Cornwallis River towards the Canard River.

Fast forwarding to today, those once abundant schools of shad that were a vital source of sustenance for the early settlers are long gone. All around the Minas Basin and in the Bay of Fundy, right up to the early 1900s, countless thousands of shad were harvested annually. But overfishing on major spawning rivers such as the Cornwallis and Avon, along with pollution and dam building ruined the fishery.

There’s no requiem for the shad, no historical treatises. Only government statistics on catches and entries in family journals record how important and how abundant they were in the colonial period.

Today, when Granny wants to talk to her grandsons in Toronto and in California, she goes to their Facebook pages, clicks on the camera icon and a minute or two later is having a face to face conversation with them. She can talk with them as long as she wants to, all day if she wishes, and won’t be billed a single nickel for the call.

What a contrast with the time Granny was a teen living in a community about five miles from Wolfville. When she wanted to talk with a friend that lived a kilometre or so down the road, she went to a big boxlike telephone that was on the wall in her kitchen; to call she turned a handle on the side of the phone, cranked out a pre-arranged combination of short and long rings, hoping her friend would answer and others connected to the line wouldn’t listen in. If she wanted to call Kentville or Wolfville, or any other nearby community, she had to push a button on the side of the telephone, then crank the handled to connect with an operator who would put the call through. Granny’s parents were then billed for a long distance call, which could be anywhere from 20 to 50 cents.

Granny’s parents were on a private line, or what was better known as a mutual or party line. As Granny recalls, there were no more than seven or eight other households she could reach without connecting with an operator. This was in the early 1940s; while telephones had been around for decades and decades, they were still relatively new at this time in many rural communities, in villages such as Canning and Port Williams and in towns like Wolfville, Berwick and Kentville.

In fact, at the time Granny started using the telephone for the first time, there were private telephone companies in many of the larger communities in Kings and Hants County. At first, most of these companies were connected to the Valley Telephone Company and eventually to the much larger Nova Scotia Telephone Company.

While there were central agencies, such as the Valley and the Nova Scotia Telephone Company, the onus to connect to them was on the community. Private telephone companies often were set up, some with less than a dozen subscribers. In Granny’s community, for example, the residents purchased the wiring, cut and set up their own poles, strung the lines and connected eventually to an agency with headquarters in nearby towns. This was a common practice in many communities if they hankered for communication with the outside world – the “outside” often being towns you reached only by horse and wagon and by walking.

Between 1905 and as recently as 1960, for example, private telephone companies existed in Kings County communities such as Scots Bay, South Alton, Blue Mountain, Blomidon, Canaan, White Rock, Sheffield Mills, Waterville, and Welsford. There was a similar scenario in Hants County. In the late 19th century the Hants & Halifax Telephone Company, operating out of Windsor, allowed private phone companies that were set up in outlying communities to hook up with them. But first these community companies had to establish and maintain their own lines, and at their own expense.

Crank ‘em up! Telephones such this were common in many rural communities well into the 20th century. Local calls were made by cranking out pre-arranged short and long rings.

Part two in a series saluting the historical writers of Kings and Hants County.

Glen Hancock (1919-2011) In the obituary saluting Dr. Hancock it was noted that the Wolfville native was first and foremost a writer. Hancock began writing and successfully selling short stories for Western and Mystery magazine while in his teens. After achieving degrees from Acadia University, the University of Toronto and Edinburgh University, Hancock followed a career in journalism and at one time wrote a syndicated column that ran in 35 newspapers. While he was a public relations adviser for Imperial Oil, Hancock founded the School of Journalism at the University of Kings College.

When he retired to Wolfville, Hancock wrote My Real Name is Charley in 2000, which was a memoir that also provided often amusing historical glimpses of Wolfville. Hancock followed this up in 2004 with a book about his wartime experiences, Charley Goes to War, and was working on a semi-historical book at the time of his death.

Hancock also wrote a series of columns for The Advertiser, many of them in a historical vein. He also taught short story and article writing at Acadia University, giving many aspiring local writers their start in journalism.

Henry Youle Hind (1832-1908) One of the most interesting writers of historical books in the Valley, Hind was British born but spent his late years in Windsor. As well as being an author, Hind was a teacher, professor, geologist and explorer. He spent much of his career working as a geologist, mapmaker and surveyor in little explored areas of Canada. He also published a series of scientific articles promoting Canada’s natural resources.

Hind came to Nova Scotia as a consulting engineer for the provincial government. In retirement he settled in Windsor where he was on the board of governors of Kings College in the 1880s and he wrote a history of the college.

Hind is best known for a book published in 1889 by the Hants Journal. Titled originally as a Sketch of the Old Parish Burying Ground of Windsor, the book was much more than a treatise on a graveyard. Actually there’s a lot of little known 17^th and 18^th century history about Hants and Kings County in the book. Hind writes, for example, about the Acadians, the Planter settlements and about the various dykeland catastrophes.

Hind’s book was reprinted in 1989 by Lancelot Press, again with a misleading title, An Early History of Windsor, Nova Scotia. A history of Windsor it is not and a better title might be Sketches of Early Kings and Hants County. The book is available from the West Hants Historical Society.

New Minas historical writer Daphne Frazee has three historical books in publication, two with a Gaspereau Valley theme. Frazee grew up in the Gaspereau Valley where her father, Dean Gertridge, worked the family farm. In her bio Frazee says that she “fell into the role of local historian.” After a history of White Rock appeared, interest was high in producing a similar work on the Gaspereau Valley, Frazee says, but no one stepped forth to do it. That’s when she decided to take on the task.

Frazee’s first book, Looking Back — A Portrait of Gaspereau — was self published in 2002. Her next book — A Second Look — was on the same theme and was published the following year. These books, which were combined into a single volume in 2004, were illustrated with numerous photographs from past days in the Gaspereau Valley.

In 2007, Frazee wrote Charles H. Wright — Building Memories. Wright, who was Frazee’s grandfather, partnered with R. A. Jodrey in establishing the Minas Basin Pulp and Power and in pioneering the building of electric power companies in this area. Wright designed and built many of the fine churches and other buildings that grace Kings County. In 2007, Frazee launched a community magazine called the Gaspereau Valley Gazette, which is still going strong and will celebrate its 10^th anniversary this spring.

Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977) Including a distinguished scholar and university administrator the likes of Dr. Kirkconnell in a series on local historical writers may seem irreverent at first but let me make my case. Dr. Kirkconnell is internationally acclaimed as a translator, writer and scholar, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and on numerous occasions was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize; he served as president of Acadia University from 1948 to 1964.

Despite his scholarly pursuits and administrative duties, Dr. Kirkconnell found time to write and co-write a couple of historical books. Along with B. C. Silver, Kirkconnell researched and compiled a book called Historic Homes (of Wolfville). Kirkconnell also wrote The Streets of Wolfville, 1650-1970.

Kirkconnell’s finest local history book — and my favourite historical work, I must add, is Place-Names in Kings County, which was published as a paperback in 1971. As per its title, the book explains the origin of many historical county place names. In the text, Kirkconnell harks back to some of the original Mi’kmaq and Acadian place-names and explains how many Planter place-names came to be. The book is really interesting and is a worthy addition to every amateur historian’s bookcase.

Like many people, I often wonder how street names originated and why once common place names disappear. Let’s take Lanzy Road immediately north of Kentville which runs west from Nichols Avenue/Road to Aldershot Road and a community name associated with it, Landsey Corner. How did people arrive at Lanzy as a road name and why did Landsey Corner disappear from usage? And what’s the connection between Lanzy and Landsey? The following column attempts to answer these questions.

On October 9, in 1913, The Advertiser carried a notice advertising an auction sale at Landsey Corner near Kentville. The sale would be held at the residence of Mrs. Eb. Landsey.

When I read the advertisement (which came from the archives of Kentville historian Louis Comeau) I assumed Landsey Corner was one of those place names “near Kentville” that for one reason or another had long gone out of local usage. The reference to the sale site as Landsey Corner, without any explanation as to where it was other than near Kentville, establishes that it was a recognized community name. I figured as well that it was an estate sale and Mrs. Eb. Landsey was a widow.

It was obvious also from the advertisement’s content that Eb. Landsey – we have to assume it was the late Eb. Landsey – had been a prosperous farmer. Listed in the advertisement were farm implements “comprising ploughs, harrows, mowing machines (and) garden tools.” Household furniture and effects were also being auctioned. On the block as well were the farm’s livestock which consisted of three horses, three cows and a pair of working oxen along with harness and wagons.

The advertisement in The Advertiser was significant in several ways. Gary Young has been researching the early landowners and roads in various areas north and northeast of Kentville – Aldershot, Pine Woods, Oakdene Avenue, Campbell Road and Middle Dyke Road, for example. The newspaper clipping helped to confirm what he’d discovered about the Landseys who were African Nova Scotians and early residents of land immediately north of Kentville, especially along what became known as Lanzy Road.

The Eb. Landsey mentioned in the auction sale was Ebenezar Landsey (1851-1913) whose ancestors, among other possibilities, may have been with the Loyalists that arrived here around the time of the American Revolution. Lanzy Road (also spelled Lanzie in municipal records) is named after his relatives. The Landsey farm was situated about where Lanzy Road, Campbell Road, Upper Church Street and Oakdene Avenue converge on Nichols Avenue/Road. This is the area that was once known as Landsey Corner. Ebenezar Landsey died early in 1913, hence the dissolving of his estate via the action sale. His widow apparently departed from this area shortly after Ebenezar’s death.

The Landsey family, writes Gary Young, was among the first inhabitants of African descent living in the area north of Kentville known as Pine Woods. The road on which many Landseys lived – Lanzy Road – was once known as Shadow Street. Young writes that Landsey is found today only in the name of a road, and that by the 1920s male Landseys either had died or had moved out of the area.

As suggested by the auction advertisement, Landsey was successful as a farmer, a livelihood curtailed when new roads were put in. Today the highway cuts through what was once the Landsey property. Much of Landsey’s land was expropriated when road changes were made around his farm. The changes provided a direct route north to communities, farm lands and the Minas Basin, eliminating the huge twist in Upper Church Street.

Now you know some of the story about Lanzy Road and Landsey Corner. What I haven’t gone into is the Landsey connection with some of the early settlers who were granted land in areas north of Kentville, the Chipmans and Belchers for example, the latter a slave owner. That, as they say, is another story and it’s a complicated one.

This advertisement, which ran in The Advertiser on October 2, 1913, wrapped up the estate of Ebenezar Landsey of Landsey’s Corner near Kentville. The Landseys were prominent African Nova Scotians. Shortly after the auction sale, the Landsey surname disappeared from Kings County. Lanzy Road is named after them.

For generations rural areas of the Valley were served by general stores; “general” in the sense that the stores stocked things families generally needed in the period when communication was difficult and travel usually restricted close to your own community.

At one time every community had a general store. This was the era when horses and oxen were necessary to eke out a living, when eight out of 10 people worked on farms and word of mouth was the way the news got around.

Typical of those old general stores was one that opened at the crossroads in White Rock well over a century ago. Exactly when it first opened for business is difficult to determine but it’s believed that Leslie Eagles had a store in White Rock before 1900. According to Bert Young in his book My White Rock, Eagles sold his store to John Cohoon, who then sold it to Ralph Anley Ells shortly after WW1 ended.

The R. A. Ells General Store served the community of White Rock for almost 70 years. Ells bought out the Cohoon store in 1919 and it was operated by him until his demise in 1976, and then by his son Anley until it closed in 1988.

Like most of the old general stores, Ells was a place where men would sit around the mandatory woodstove afternoons and evenings to discuss local news. Ells tells me people came expecting to find groceries, beef and pork (which for a time Ralph Ells peddled in a Model T Ford truck) clothing, footwear, dishes, dry goods, heating oil and over-the-counter cough syrups, liniments and rubs. The store contained the only post office in the area, an excuse for men to sit around and chat while waiting for the mail to be sorted. The store catered as well to the motoring public, offering Texaco gas from the pumps out front.

Anley Ells said the store “sold everything a farm family might need.” In many ways it was a miniature Wal-Mart of its time. Add 1930s, 40s or 50s décor along with the brown paper bulk packaging of many necessities and you have an idea of what the Ells store was like to shop in. If farm folks wanted overalls, work pants or rubber boots, for example, then this was the place to go. If people wanted molasses in a jug, or kerosene and stove oil, they brought their gallon containers in and had them filled. With a school just up the hill from the store, one of the display cases was always well stocked with penny candy.

For a while a second store serviced the White Rock community. Ora Scott’s store was located opposite Ells, on a corner of the crossroads. Opening in 1949, the store catered to a different clientele than Ells, offering some groceries but catering mainly to people looking for flour and feed, which was delivered countywide. According to Viola Pick, Ora Scott’s daughter, the store was in business until the late 1970s when it was converted to an auto repair shop. In 1991 the property was sold and became part of Longs mill.

The closing of these White Rock stores, especially the Ells store, likely was tied in with better transportation, better roads and the arrival of big box stores. “Our store was a victim of changing times,” Anley Ells says, which is likely true. The Ells store was one of the last of its kind in Kings County.

Hanging on a wall in the White Rock community centre is an oil painting of a long ago log drive on the Gaspereau River. The painting is one of a few remaining records of a period when a grist and lumber mill operated on the Gaspereau River in White Rock.

This was the S. P. Benjamin Mill which opened in 1885, employing 50 to 75 men summer and winter in the 15 years it was in operation. In effect, the mill was a tiny community in itself. On the site besides the grist and lumber mills was a boarding house with a full-time cook, a blacksmith shop and stables for horses and oxen. The entire operation was tucked into an area on the left bank of the river immediately above the White Rock bridge.

Looking at the Gaspereau River around White Rock today, it’s difficult to believe there actually were log drives. However, Wolfville entrepreneur S. P. Benjamin, who in the late 19^th century owned or leased thousands of acres of woodland around the river and around Gaspereau Lake, needed access to the Minas Basin for his timber after it was harvested. The Gaspereau River was conveniently nearby. Obtaining permission from landowners along the river to cart timber over their land, Benjamin went about building a sprawling mill. Every winter, for nearly two decades, timber was harvested and hauled to vantage points along the river. In the spring the logs then were dumped down the bank into the river and an old fashioned log drive followed.

What were those logs ultimately used for? Any references I found about Benjamin’s mill mention only that it was a grist and lumber mill but it is often confused with a pulp mill which was lower down the river. For a story I did In 1965 I interviewed Raleigh Eagles whose father had worked for Benjamin; Eagles told me that Benjamin’s was solely a grist and lumber mill. Another source, a story in a Wolfville newspaper published in 1937, mentions S. P. Benjamin hauling millions of board feet of lumber, using horses and oxen, from his mill to Port Williams. From the Port, says this source, the lumber was shipped worldwide.

Bert Young (1911- 2004) was the artist who more than half a century ago painted the picture of the log drive found in the White Rock community hall. In the picture, working to keep the logs moving down the river with peaveys, are his father Walter Young and Howard Smith.

A long ago log drive on the Gaspereau River. The drives were a common sight on the river for at least 15 years beginning circa 1885.

Mack Frail’s interest in history first began when boyhood friends told him about rock foundations around Centreville that were sites of Acadian homesteads. Around the sites were willows, Daphne and other plants the Acadians brought here from France.

Around Centreville also was other evidence suggesting a one time Acadian presence: Old roads (one often referred to as the “Old French Road”) a mill site rumoured in local folklore to be of Acadian origin, and ancient changes in local waterways also believed to be the work of the Acadians, all of which further whetted Frail’s interest in Centreville’s history. Two historical writers, Eaton in the history of Kings County and Erskine in The French Period in Nova Scotia refer to Acadian homesteads in Centreville, further confirming what Frail already suspected.

Mack Frail writes about the Acadian settlement and other aspects of Centreville’s history in a book he began compiling a decade ago. The book was recently published and it’s an important addition to the history of Kings County. Frail points out that Centreville has “somehow failed to be properly recognized for its history,” and he sets out to correct this in his book. It’s a task that he accomplishes admirably and the book is an excellent historical read.

Centreville, says Frail, may have been one of the earliest Acadian settlements in Kings County. The area was an ancient Mi’kmaq foraging and camping area as well, which Frail tells us about in his book. He traces the history of Centreville from the Mi’kmaq and Acadians up to fairly recent times. Some solid documentation from the Planter period exists in the provincial archives and Frail accessed these records to flesh out Centreville’s role in the history of the county.

In effect, Frail expands upon what is the token mention of Centreville found in Eaton’s History of Kings County. As well as including details on the Acadian and Planter period, his book looks at farmsteads, mills, inns, churches, roads, schools and some of the stores that served the village so well over the years. There’s a tantalizing bit of Irish history connected to Centreville as well – the Irish cemetery and a nearby somewhat mysterious Irish settlement, for example.

All in all, this is an excellent historical collection; and a comprehensive read as well since it shines some historical light on areas such as Centreville that typically are neglected by mainstream historians.

A Centreville native Max Frail is a regular contributor to the Centre Post where he writes about farm life.

For the most part, the writers who have researched and compiled the histories of communities, villages and the towns in Kings and Hants County are little known and rarely celebrated outside their immediate areas.

But without the efforts of these writers – often they devoted years researching – most of their work would never see the light of day. These writers deserve to be recognised much more than they are. With this in mind, I’d like to profile those “local historians” in an occasional series beginning this week. I welcome input for the series; if you are aware of a Kings or Hants historian that should be recognised, please contact me.

Larry Sinclair Loomer (1930-2003). Born in Windsor, Loomer was noted as a historical writer, artist and antiquarian. Early in his career Loomer worked as a journalist for several Maritime newspapers. While he authored and published books on art, his main interest appears to have been Hants County history. He has three historical works to his credit. His book, Windsor Nova Scotia: a Journey in History is a brilliant retelling of Windsor’s history and the period when Kings and Hants were a single county. This is one of my favourite historical books and Loomer is one of my favourite historical writers. I recommend his Windsor book to anyone who likes history served with humour and irony.

John S. Erskine (1900-1981). A teacher in the Annapolis Valley for many years, John Erskine was noted as a keen student of natural history and was a published writer on the botany of Nova Scotia. Erskine liked to investigate archaeological sites as well; his life long study of Acadian sites resulted in a book entitled The French Period in Nova Scotia, A.D. 1500-1758. In effect, this is a historical and archaeological survey of the Acadian period. In the book Erskine identified many Acadian homestead sites in Kings County. The book, a paperback, is out of print but occasionally copies shows up at yard sales. Copies can also be found in the archives of the Kings Historical Society.

Ernest L. Eaton (1896-1984) Born in Upper Canard, Kings County, Eaton was a Professor of Agronomy and Senior Horticulturist with the Department of Agriculture. He was a devoted historian as well and wrote many invaluable papers on the Planters, early Kings County farms and the dykelands, several of which were published by the Nova Scotia Historical Society. Most of his historical research is unpublished and is held privately. However, Eaton’s historical articles can be found on the Internet at: http://nseaton.org/Eaton/Library/E.L._Eaton_Archive.html.

Marie C. Bishop (1929-2011) Born in the United States to Canadian parents, her family returned to Coldbrook when she was three and eventually settled in New Minas. Bishop was noted early in her career for the crafts she created. While she was a paraplegic since age eight, she was active in various Valley organizations and clubs throughout her life. Her interest in history resulted in her compiling several books. Two of her best known works are The Pioneers of Canaan (1994) and Memories of Coldbrook (1999). Bishop was also one of the major compilers of genealogy for the four volume Tangled Roots, a Bishop Family Association publication.

Douglas E. Eagles (1927-2008) One of the most prolific historical writers and researchers in the Annapolis Valley, Douglas E. Eagles was born in North Grand Pre, Kings County, attended school in Wolfville and graduated from Acadia University with an Honours B. Sc. Degree in 1948.

Eagles has four major publications to his credit, most of which can be found in the provincial archives and in museum collections. Eagles’ major works include: A History of Horton Township (1975) A Genealogical History of Long Island, also Eagles Families of North America (1982) and Lockhart Families of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Besides these works Eagles has at least eight historical papers to his credit, all either privately published or stored in the provincial archives and in local museums. Among these papers are works on several Kings County churches, papers on Horton Township records (deaths, births, marriages) and the cemeteries of Horton Township.

When the French made a coasting craft in Louisburg in 1604, they didn’t realise it would one day be hailed as a Canadian first.

“Reliable sources” record that this pioneering event took place in Cape Breton, writes Gordon Hansford* in the introduction to his 1953 Master’s thesis on shipbuilding. Based on this, Nova Scotia can “technically claim the first shipbuilding in Canada and New England,” Hansford concludes.

From this starting point Hansford takes an in depth look at shipbuilding. He conjectures that Nova Scotia’s early prominence in shipbuilding was partly due to its long, greatly indented coastline, which induced people to look to the sea for a living. There were other factors that led to this prominence, of course, but the marine environment was a key element.

For a long time Kings County, which included present day Hants County, was one of the most productive shipbuilding areas in Canada. Reading the thesis courtesy of Hansford, I was amazed by how many prominent shipbuilders once thrived in Kings/Hants and the great number of superbly crafted sailing ships that came out of their yards.

For a time, the coastline in and around Canning, Kingsport, Wolfville Hantsport and Windsor were the chief shipbuilding areas and its shipbuilders were known all over eastern Canada and beyond. While there were shipyards of various sizes all along the Bay of Fundy, Minas Basin coastline, these were the most productive areas.

Some of the noted shipbuilders early on were the Bigelows, Coxes and the Churchills. Hansford says that the two Ebenezers – Ebenezer Bigelow and Ebenezer Cox – operated in Kingsport and Canning and their names for a long time were synonymous with local shipbuilding. In Canning and in Kingsport ships were being built as early as 1790.

One of the most prominent builders was Ezra Churchill of Hantsport. As Hansford notes, Churchill was known as one of the largest ship builders and ship owners on the eastern coast of Canada. Another prominent ship builder and owner was Shubael Dimock of Windsor. Hansford says Dimock began building ships in 1867, noting that while he made Windsor a shipbuilding centre, there was activity all along the coast in places like Noel, Cheverie, Walton and other small Hants communities.

So there you have it. In the golden age of sail, in Kings and Hants County, shipbuilders turned out countless hundreds of ships, making this area renowned in Canada, the United States and well beyond. Hansford admirably chronicles that era in his thesis and I hope this short review of his work will stir readers into looking up the likes of Ebenezer Cox, Ebenezer Bigelow, Ezra Churchill and Shubael Dimock.

*A Wolfville native. Gordon Hansford taught in Kings County schools for 30 years. Retired, he lives in Kentville. Hansford is the creator of the Annapolis Valley tartan for which he was recently honoured. His thesis, quoted here, was a requirement for a Master of Arts degree, which he received at Acadia University in 1953.

** “Ships,” as used here, is a generalization. Actually, when it comes to sailing vessels, ships refers to three-masted vessels, while other two and three masted vessels, depending on how their sails are rigged, are known as barques, brigs, brigantines, schooners, etc.