In his chapter on the coming of the New England Planters in his Kings County history, Arthur W. H. Eaton notes that seven members of the Woodworth family were grantees in the townships of Horton and Cornwallis; Eaton writes that all the Woodworths of Kings County are descended from one man, Walter Woodworth of New England.

The Woodworths also received grants in Hants County, in areas adjacent to the Horton and Cornwallis townships.  Many of the Woodworth descendants can still be found here and in Hants today, some of them still working land that was part of the original grants.  One such descendant is Church Street farmer George Woodworth, who not only is descended from some of the first New Englanders receiving grants here but may also have a special distinction.  George believes he may be the only one with the Woodworth surname still farming Kings County land granted after expulsion of the Acadians.

Actually, he says he isn’t farming land originally granted to his family circa 1795.  That distinction belongs to his father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc., who until 1937 farmed the original grant.  In 1937 Charles purchased the farm George now works on Belcher Street and the original grant land was taken over by a family member.

George Woodworth may be the only Woodworth still farming grant land in Kings County, as he says.  However, there’s an extensive Woodworth family scattered throughout Canada and the United States, many with direct links to the Kings County Planters through Walter Woodworth.

In 2005 a group of these “Woodworth cousins,” as they call themselves, started a tradition of holding a reunion every two years.  This year, for the first time in Canada, the reunion will be held in Kings County, right in the heart of the land where so many Woodworth Planters settled between 1759 and 1761.   George Woodworth will be there when the reunion starts on June 9 at the old Orchard Inn.  Included in the reunion, which runs for several days, will be tours of the areas their Planter ancestors settled and farmed.

During the reunion I expect those Woodworth cousins will visit the graveyards in Kings County where many of their ancestors are buried.  About 225 Woodworths ancestors lie in county graveyards from Lower Horton to Aylesford; most, if not all of them, are descendants of the Planter grantees who settled on land in Cornwallis and Horton townships.

Getting back to George Woodworth, he believes his ancestors may have arrived a year before the main influx of Planters.  George jokingly refers to his family as “pre-New England Planters.”  He tells me his ancestors belonged to one of three Woodworth families that arrived at the same time.  His people stayed here while the other Woodworth families took up land towards Berwick and on the North Mountain.

In a column in 2007, I wrote about a shipwreck in the Canard River in 1760.  This may qualify as the first recorded shipwreck in Kings County I suggested, citing as my source a historical thesis on early Minas Basin settlements, written in 1933 by James Martell.

My mention of the shipwreck was sketchy.  All Martell said was the ship, a brigantine, was delivering provisions for the settlers of Horton and Cornwallis in December, 1760; and the ship capsized going down the Canard River after completing its mission.  Running out at low tide, the brigantine struck a sandbar, was trapped in the mud and eventually was demolished by the rising tides.

Martell didn’t give the name of the brigantine; and I heard nothing from readers when I appealed to them for help in identifying the ship.  However, I recently learned that the brig was called the Montague.  With the brig’s name and the year it was shipwrecked, I had no trouble finding the Montague in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic’s shipwreck data base.  The Montague was listed as being a total loss, sinking after being trapped in the mud.  The cause of the shipwreck: “Judgement error.”

While I believe this is the Montague that was lost on the Canard River, there’s a discrepancy in the listing that made it seem doubtful at first. The location of the shipwreck given in the data base is Hortonville which, when you look at a map, isn’t near the Canard River.  There appears as well to be a discrepancy in the time of year in 1760 that the shipwreck occurred.

However, thanks to history sleuth Doug Crowell I can tell you more about the Montague and that long ago shipwreck.  The Canard River shipwreck is mentioned briefly in a 1915 article in Americana by Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, the author of the history of Kings County.  In the article, called Rhode Island Settlers on the French Lands in Nova Scotia in 1760 and 1761, Eaton writes that a “vessel that is conspicuously mentioned as bringing food to the settlers was the brigantine Montague (under) Captain Rogers, whose crew consisted of a mate, a pilot, and eighteen men.”

Eaton said the Montague, “after unloading provision for the people of Horton and Cornwallis, in her passage through the river Canard ran upon a bank of mud and was ‘overset so deep’ that she became a total loss.”

As well as referring me to this article, Doug Crowell said the Montague is mentioned in James Doyle Davison’s book on Handley Chipman, published privately in 1988 by the author.  Davison writes that the “Province Brig Montague, captained by Jeremiah Rogers, was one of the ships carrying provision and settlers for the townships of Minas and Canard (the names changed later to Horton and Cornwallis).  Davison confirms the Montague’s fate, writing that it “ran aground upon a mud flat, on her passage down the River Canard and became a total loss.”

An interesting footnote is the discovery by Doug Crowell that before she was commissioned by Governor Charles Lawrence to transport settlers and their provisions, the Montague was a privateer under Captain Rogers.  The website Three Decks, which is devoted to warships in the age of sail, notes that the Montague, nationality Great Britain, was a vessel of 90 tons with a crew of 20 and armed with 10 British swivel guns

So, somewhere on the Canard River, possibly lower down towards the Minas Basin, lay the bones of a British privateer cum Planter transport ship.  “Possibly” is the key word here.  Those treacherous tides that sweep the muddy reaches of the Canard River may have swept away every stick of the Montague long ago.  It’s also possible enough of the wreck remains to someday be found and identified.  Those infamous tides of Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy are notorious for revealing shipwrecks, covering them again as quickly as they uncovered them.

Looking at the Canard River today, you wouldn’t think it was navigable at one time by brigantines.  But before the Wellington Dyke was put in place, much of the Canard River at high tide was what has been described as an inland lake.   At one time, the Minas Basin tides swept up the Canard River for nearly eight miles above Wellington Dyke and smaller ships could sail up it.

“I can always remember coming home from school on the train, the old locomotive they had on there,” Bill Kennedy said, talking about the Cornwallis Valley Railway that ran for decades between Kingsport and Kentville.

“Sometimes they’d have a bunch of boxcars along with the passenger car.  They had to stop in Steam Mill on the return trip in the afternoon since there was a little grade there towards Centreville, maybe half way up.  They’d get part way up the grade and there they’d be, stopped.  So they’d have to take four or five boxcars up to Centreville first and then back down and pick the rest of the train up.  Once they got to Centreville it was downgrade to Kingsport, pretty well downhill all the way.”

Bill Kennedy was reminiscing about the time in the early 1950s when he took the train to the high school in Kentville.  Like many kids reaching grade 9 in schools along the corridor between Kingsport and Kentville, to take grades 10, 11 and 12 it was necessary to attend classes elsewhere.  The closest high school for kids living along the CVR line in those days was Kings County Academy in Kentville, and the train’s morning schedule – they called it the “school run” – made it easy to attend KCA.   Leaving Kingsport at 7:30, the train usually arrived in Kentville before classes started at the high school.

Kennedy took the train to school from Sheffield Mills for three years.  “I still remember those days going up to Kentville on the train,” he says.  “It was an interesting time.”

How many kids in Nova Scotia can say they took the train to school? I asked in a recent column on the Cornwallis Valley Railway. Not many, I bet.  I speculated that the train’s school run likely was unique.  Maybe it wasn’t but it was convenient at least.  The ride to Kentville took from an hour or so to about 15 minutes depending on where you got on the train. But once the train arrived in Kentville it was a less than a kilometre walk from the station to Kings County Academy.

“Sometimes it was a long day,” says another former KCA student from Kingsport who like Bill Kennedy, rode the train to school every morning to Kentville for three years.  “The train sometimes stopped at warehouses along the line to pick up apples and potatoes and the time it took to reach Kentville was affected by these stops.”

The former KCA student (name withheld on request) recalls that on the return trip from school she normally arrived in Kingsport around five o’clock.  “In the fall, at harvest time, when there were stops at warehouses, it could be later,” she said.

“In the morning the train picked up kids at every stop and when we reached Kentville we had a train full.  It was quite an experience, going to school on the train, and the kids today wouldn’t believe it.”

Another Kingsport resident who caught the CVR train to school in Kentville is Helen Burns.  What stands out in her memory was the big rush to catch the train leaving Kingsport in the morning.  “Everybody was always running late for it but the trainmen were good to us,” she says.  “They always made sure everyone was there before they took off, looking back at the last minute to see if anyone was running to catch up as the train was moving out.

“I remember that and I remember everyone was always carrying on while we on the train to Kentville.  Some of us would try to study on the way in.”

The return trips to Kingsport after school also stands out in Burns’ memory.  “It seemed to take a long time.  Sometimes, when it was apple harvest or whatever, they’d have to shunt all the freight cars off at the warehouses.  When this was happening it would take a long time to get home.   I don’t remember much about the morning trips taking a lot of time but I suppose they did at times.  I can’t remember exactly.”

Now, what about the school run in the wintertime.  Surely there were there problems getting to school during winter storms.   I asked Bill Kennedy about this and he doesn’t recall winter storms stopping the train in the years he took it to school.  “If there was any amount of snow they’d always run the plow, over here to Kingsport and back,” he said.  “I can’t remember the train ever getting stopped in the wintertime.”

Opening late in the 19^th century, the Cornwallis Valley Railway connected the bustling Minas Basin terminal of Kingsport with the rail line in Kentville.  At the start, the CVR train ran twice daily six days a week, Monday to Saturday and once on Sunday.  Between Kingsport and Kentville the train stopped at various communities along the way, where apple warehouses often were conveniently located.  The Weston branch, running west from Centreville, was added in 1914, connecting the railway with some of the top apple producing areas in Kings County.

Primarily built to serve the apple industry and provide a connection to shipping at Kingsport, the CVR’s daily runs also made it convenient for students attending Kentville schools.  In his website history of the CVR, Ivan Smith writes that the Monday to Friday trains served as the school bus of the time:  “Students from the Kingsport, Canning, Sheffield Mills area who wanted a high school education traveled on the train to Kentville to attend classes at the Kentville Academy; at the end of the school day the afternoon train took them home.”

Smith says the railway and school schedules were coordinated to enable students to attend a full day of classes.  On Monday to Friday, the train left Kingsport at 8:00am and arrived in Kentville at 8:40am.  The station was only a few minutes walk from the school, allowing plenty of time for students to make the 9:00 o’clock start of classes.  On the return trip the train left Kentville at 3:30pm, arriving in Kingsport at 4:15pm.

While at Kings County Academy, I was aware of what we called the CVR’s school run. A number of my classmates traveled on the train and the “train kids” stood out because their situation was unique.  How many kinds in Nova Scotia, or across Canada for that matter, can boast they took the train to school?

The CVR’s morning and afternoon runs were a reliable method of transportation for school students attending KCA, even though the train tended to be a bit poky at apple harvest time.  It seems the daily runs between Kentville and Kingsport were adequate to serve the general population as well. So it was a surprise when I found that in 1947 the railway supplemented the morning and afternoon trains with a bus run.  I discovered this leafing through the May 1947 issues of The Advertiser.  I found an advertisement in the papers informing the public of a combined bus and rail service between Kingsport and Kentville, with the first bus commencing May 1.

The advertisement published the schedule of the train and bus runs, advising passengers using the latter they could board at train stations in Kentville and Kingsport and would be “picked up and set down at all convenient points on the route;” meaning, I suppose, the regular train stops at stations such as Aldershot, Steam Mill, Centreville and so on.  There was no change in the train schedule and train and bus tickets were to be interchangeable.

The bus run was scheduled to run from Kentville to Kingsport beginning in late morning and returning in the afternoon. It was short-lived, however.  By 1949 the bus was gone.  It hasn’t been forgotten entirely, however, and is remembered by many seniors who lived along or near the old CVR line.  Surprisingly, not one source I looked at regarding the CVR line history mentions the railway bus; apparently as far as historian and railway buffs are aware, the bus never existed.

So, comes the question, why did the railway start a bus run?    One answer may be that trains were too slow for a public that wanted faster connections between towns and villages in the area served by the CVR.

It’s interesting to note that when the Dominion Atlantic Railway cancelled the CVR bus, a train run with the identical schedule the bus used quickly replaced it.    Historian Ivan Smith pointed this out in recent correspondence.  Short-lived as it was, the bus was not a complete failure, Smith notes.  “It seems there was enough business for the bus (running on its late morning eastbound, returning early afternoon westbound) to justify running the train instead of the bus.”   It was, Smith says, “a rare example of replacing an existing bus service by a railway passenger train in rural Nova Scotia.”

Saxon Street isn’t the longest continuous road in the county – Brooklyn Street claims that honour – but it’s historically interesting and may even be considered a curiosity.

First of all, let’s ask why the road is there?  Originally it might have been a trail used by the Mi’kmaq to reach fishing grounds on the upper Minas Basin, the area around the mouth of the Habitant and Canard River; a road later found useful by the Acadians and Planter settlers.

If so, it would seem that Canard Street, which reaches deep into the heart of land favoured by the Mi’kmaq – areas later settled by the Acadians and Planters – would be a more direct route to the head of the Basin.  Most likely, Canard Street became a major thoroughfare because it was a straight forward, high ground trail between two rivers, a trail that led to major, year around Mi’kmaq food sources; also, it conveniently followed a shoreline the Acadians and Planters eventually would heavily dyke.

Saxon Street, on the other hand seems to be superfluous.  It appears to be an unnecessary trail for the Mi’kmaq since it reaches the same area that Canard Street serves.  However, when you take a closer look, Saxon Street is a direct link between Mi’kmaq fishing grounds on the Bay of Fundy and fishing ground on the Minas Basin.  Saxon Street T-junctions with Highway 359 in Centreville and by turning north on this highway from Saxon Street you can travel directly to the Bay.

From Centreville, an area favoured by the Mi’kmaq and Acadians, to the Minas Basin the distance, using Saxon Street, is 11.3 kilometres – an easy one-day walk most of the year, in other words.  Recently I drove the entire length of the street starting in Centreville, crossing Sherman Belcher and Gibson Woods Road, which likely were Mi’kmaq and/or Acadian trails at one time.  Just past the Gibson Woods Road, Saxon Street dips into a hollow and the stream flowing through it runs into the Canard River.

This stream (I don’t know its name) has the distinction of being the first, or one of the first sites the Acadians dyked in Kings County; you can still see faint traces of the dykeing on the upstream side where it crosses under Highway 341 by the Newcombe Branch Road.

Farther along, Saxon Street crosses Middle Dyke Road, so named due to Acadian dykeing where this road crosses the Canard River.  Saxon Street continues on into Hillaton, an area that was part of a Planter grant.  Here, Saxon Street runs parallel to the Habitant River, then crosses Highway 358 and eventually dips down to the Minas Basin shore.  Here, possibly in the early 1800s, a wharf was built to give farmers access to the Minas Basin.  Old-time documents tell of mile long lines of wagons filled with potatoes at harvest time, waiting on Saxon Street for access to the wharf.

Just up over the rise east of Pickett’s Wharf, Saxon Street T-junctions with Canard Street in Lower Canard.  For most of its 11.3 kilometres Saxon Street runs through country of historical significance.  According to the late Ernest Eaton, Saxon Street  was once called Washington Street – after whom it isn’t known – and even earlier was known as Bently or Bentley Path.  David Bentley was a Cornwallis grantee and this may explain the old name for the road.

And for you history trivia buffs, the community we call Hillaton today, through which Saxon Street passes, was once known as the village of Saxon Street and earlier, the village of Washington Street.  Saxon Street may have had some of the early Kings County Irish settlers dwelling along it at one time.  As for whom the street is named after, I don’t know.  Perhaps more knowledgeable readers can tell us.

On February 22 in 1888, some 36 citizens of the recently incorporated town of Kentville met in Chipman’s Hall to organize a “Fire Company”.

The minutes of that first meeting 125 years ago, of the Kentville Volunteer Fire and Protection Company, were recorded by R. L. Masters who was appointed secretary.  Those minutes are still extant; reading them, you’ll find that present were Calkins, Websters, Eatons, Ryans, Starrs and Nearys, all names among others synonymous with the future prosperity of the town.

Actually, you can read those minutes if you wish.  They’re preserved intact in the fire department’s museum along with various souvenirs, handwritten documents, photographs, old firefighting equipment and other artefacts the fire department collected and preserved since 1888.

Yet while the fire department had carefully been saving its records from day one, it apparently wasn’t until 1998 – the 100^th anniversary of the department – that serious thought was given to organising and cataloguing everything and creating a museum.   At the time, most of the collection was simply occupying storage space.

During a period of renovations in the anniversary year the department decided it was time to make room for a museum.  A museum committee was formed with Art Hamilton as chairman, John Durno and long-time firefighters William Horton and Starr Williams.  In the book published to celebrate the department’s 100^th anniversary, Art Hamilton notes that “being new at this sort of thing,” the committee wasn’t sure where to begin.  Assisted by Art Pope, who was curator of the Kings County Museum at the time, the committee started by sorting and numbering photographs collected over the years.

According to the anniversary book, the museum first occupied limited space set aside over the washrooms.   Now, 25 years later, the museum is on the ground floor in spacious quarters and much of the historical material the department amassed in the past 125 years is on display.   From what at first must have been a hodgepodge of memorabilia, the museum has evolved into a magnificent display of firefighting equipment.

I can attest to this after a recent tour of the museum with Cathy MacKenzie.  For the past eight years, MacKenzie has been working part-time at the fire department museum putting some finishing touches on the museum collection. One of the pieces of firefighting equipment MacKenzie showed me was a 1929 ladder truck, used by the department from 1930 to about 1949.  There’s quite a tale behind the truck.  Originally purchased by the department in 1930, the vehicle saw service until 1949 when it was placed with the Nova Scotia Sanatorium fire department.  Sold in 1963 to the Port Medway fire department, the vehicle eventually ended up in Waterloo, Ontario, where it was restored by Don Edwards.  In 2011, Edwards donated the vehicle back to the Kentville fire department where it can be found today in showroom condition.

One of the oldest pieces of fire fighting equipment in the museum is a hand drawn hose cart.  Purchased in 1888 and used until 1920, the hose cart required four men to pull.  Like the 1929 ladder truck, the hose cart stands gleaming in the museum, looking brand new, like it just came out of the factory.

Showroom Condition – The 1929 Stewart ladder truck with Art Hamilton, left, and Carl Knox aboard. The ladder truck, which was restored to like new condition, is on display at the fire department museum. The truck was in use about 20 years before being turned over to the N.S. Sanatorium fire department. (Ed Coleman)

Cathy MacKenzie stands in the section of the fire department museum housing old hose wagons. The wagons were in use at least 100 years ago and were hauled to fires by hand. (Ed Coleman)