“I know where New Minas is, but where’s old Minas?” a friend asked when I mentioned the village is celebrating its incorporation.

It wasn’t a serious question, but it’s difficult to answer. While there obviously was an area once known as Minas (otherwise there couldn’t be a “new” one) historians aren’t sure exactly what area it comprised. Two historians, Arthur W. H. Eaton (History of Kings County) and John F. Herbin (History of Grand Pre) say that the exact limits of Minas are difficult to define.

Actually, Eaton quotes Herbin in noting that Minas, or Mines as the French are said to have called it, may have included all the lands bordering the counties four rivers – Pereau, Canning (Habitant) Cornwallis (Grand Habitant) and Gaspereau. Eaton adds that Minas may have at one time also included the Acadian settlements around Windsor and what is now the town of Kentville.

We’ll leave it up to professional historians, the people with history degrees, to determine the old-time boundaries of Minas. In the meanwhile, since the village is celebrating its 40^th anniversary, here from a variety of sources are some folklore and facts about New Minas.

Most historians agree that it was the French who first referred to this general area as Mines (les Mines). However, Charles G. D. Roberts, in a tourist and sportsman’s guidebook he wrote in 1891, says Portuguese explorers left their mark on this area in such names as Blomidon, Bay of Fundy and Minas. (Quoted in Ivan Smith’s Nova Scotia History Index website). The inference is that Minas is of Portuguese rather than French origin, which is doubtful.

In Hutchinson’s Nova Scotia Directory for 1864-65, the entry for New Minas shows the village then had 68 residents, 21 with the Bishop surname. The majority of residents were listed as farmers. At the time, New Minas had two blacksmiths, a shoemaker, a marblecutter, a tanner, a millwright, a tanner, a carriagemaker, a watchmaker and a couple of carpenters. Henry Strong is listed as merchant in the village and there was also a way office with Abraham Seaman as the keeper. (Sources: Milner’s The Basin of Minas and Its Early Settlers and the Ambrose Church map of Kings County).

“The Mines is a settlement about four or five years old,” M. Gargas wrote in 1787; this must be an error in the year since most historian state that the settlement began “about 1680.” The quote is from Milner’s book mentioned above and he gives his source as Canadian historian Dr. W. Inglis Morse who studied “national records in France.” Milner follows up with a Gargas census of Mines in 1687-88, which shows that the area then had 163 residents with one priest, a church and a mill.

According to Gargas, Mines was then comprised of 26 houses. Livestock numbered 130 cattle, 70 sheep and 40 geese. At the time, some 45 acres of marshland was under cultivation.

In contrast to Hutchinson’s Directory, quoted above, the business directory in the Ambrose Church map, dated 1864, only lists 14 New Minas residents. Ambrose Church charged a fee for listings in his directory, which probably explains the huge difference in his and the Hutchinson figures.

“About an hour ago I went (to your railway website) and just kept on reading and reading,” I wrote Internet historian Ivan Smith when we were “chatting” back and forth via e-mail recently.

The local train schedules posted on Smith’s website brought back memories of the time some 60 years ago when I had a newspaper route that involved trains. My route consisted of picking up a bundle of daily newspapers from the morning train from Halifax, then taking the train to Camp Aldershot to hawk them.

I wrote Ivan Smith that I was mixed up about how I could pick up newspapers from one train and then immediately after, take the train to Camp Aldershot. “Surely,” I wrote, “the train that came up from Halifax didn’t make the run north to Aldershot, Steam Mill, Centreville, and so on, but it’s confused in my mind. I was just a kid then, not in my teens. As I recall, there was little time between picking up my papers and jumping on the train to Aldershot Camp.”

I was in a sort of unique situation, but I didn’t know it at the time. I had a wartime newspaper route requiring two railway lines to make it work. I didn’t realize this until Ivan Smith explained how the railway was operating two lines.

“The train from Halifax did not go northward to Aldershot, Steam Mill, Canning and Kingsport. The train from Halifax continued westward along the Valley, toward Yarmouth. There was a separate train from Kentville northward to Kingsport. The Kentville, Aldershot, Steam Mill Canning, Kingsport train ran on the Cornwallis Valley Railway, which was owned by the D.A.R. The C.V.R. trains were scheduled to connect closely with the D.A.R. trains. When a D.A.R. passenger train arrived at Kentville, a C.V.R. train was ready, standing at the station on a separate parallel track, about 20 feet north of the D.A.R. main line.

“Passengers could get off the just-arrived D.A.R. train, walk across the platform and get on the waiting C.V.R. train. Meanwhile, the D.A.R. conductor would be keeping a close eye on his train, which was scheduled to hold at Kentville for 15 minutes, so there was lots of time for arriving passengers to get off and departing passengers to get on. There would even have been time for a passenger to get off and buy a sandwich at the station restaurant.

“You would have got your newspapers from the baggage car, and walked across to the waiting C.V.R. train. There was no fear the train would leave without you. If the incoming train from Halifax happened to be late for any reason, the C.V.R. train would wait until it arrived so that passengers could make the connection. The train crews in those days were careful that nobody was left behind.”

Isn’t it odd how you suddenly remember things clearly, once someone tells you what you should remember? In other words, once Ivan Smith told me how the wartime trains ran north from Kentville, I recalled doing exactly what he said. I paid the princely sum of 10 cents for the train ride north to Camp Aldershot. Not a lot maybe, but it cut into the 70 or 80 cents I generally made every day if I sold all my papers.

In the Kentville history she wrote in 1979 for the Board of Trade, Heather Davidson says that when the railway arrived in the town, a resident on hearing the shriek of the engine exclaimed, “O, Lord, have mercy! I hear Gabriel’s horn.”

Ms. Davidson gives her source for the quote as Clarke’s History of the Earliest Railway in Nova Scotia. Sure enough, this story is there and the author of the railway history, W. W. Clarke, tells it this way:

“An amusing incident is told concerning the appearance of the first engine on the D.A.R. which landed at Elderkin Creek (immediately east of Kentville). A …. citizen hearing the shriek of the engine whistle was seized with fear and fell into the culvert near the jail, shrieking “Oh Lord, have mercy! I hear Gabriel’s horn.”

Possibly one of the first history books on the Dominion Atlantic Railway (predating Marguerite Woodworth’s D.A.R. history by about a decade) Clarke’s book is a chatty work which along with railway history, includes various humorous events in the D.A.R.’s early days. My favorite story is the tale about how a railway manager dealt with the countless people who besieged him, seeking free passes on the train. Clarke says the manager made up a card he passed out to anyone mooching for a free ride. The card read: “Bible against Free Passes – Thou shalt not pass. – Num. 20:18; None shall ever pass. – Isaiah 34: 10; Suffer not a man to pass. – Judges 3 28; The wicked shall no more pass. – Nahum. 1:15; This generation shall not pass. – Mark 13; Though they roar they cannot pass. – Jer. 5: 22.”

Older Valley residents have heard of the “Blueberry Special,” a D.A.R. train said to move so slowly you could get out along the way, pick blueberries and hop back on again.

There may be a kernel of truth to this – if Clarke’s story about a passenger who had time to get off the train and milk a cow is true. The way Clarke tells it, a passenger was “moved to pity by the incessant wail of a baby” whose mother had forgotten a supply of milk. At a stop, the passenger hopped off the train and “vaulting a fence proceeded to milk a cow grazing in a neighboring pasture.” He returned to the train with a “generous drink” for the baby.

And finally, Clarke says the railway wasn’t strict on who or what boarded the train in the early days. He writes, “Oldtime travelers recall the days when the trains stopping at Windsor Junction would be boarded by the goats which provided milk for a number of the Junction homes. Walking through the cars, the goats would visit the passengers in the quest of something to eat.”

What’s interesting about an old, tattered, ink stained country store ledger that’s little more than a list of almost 400 customers and their mundane, long ago purchases?

Well, if you were Mack Frail and working on a history of Centreville, it would be a whole lot interesting. “It’s a wonderful document,” says Frail, “and for me a step back into the past.” The ledger came from Ron and Bernice Ward’s General Store in Centreville and is over 150 years old. The account book was kept by Reuben Thorpe, one of the store’s early proprietors.

Mack Frail has been poring over the ledger and for starters, he’s made a list of every person who shopped at Thorpe’s store in 1878. Frail tells me the customer list he’s compiled has made his research on Centreville history easier. From the genealogical side, it’s also helpful for anyone who wants to check on long ago Centreville and area residents.

The old ledger is interesting in other ways as well. Actually it provides glimpses of everyday living in Centreville, and by extension, in Kings County in the late part of the 19^th century. For one thing, the various necessities people purchased in those days is revealing. Mack Frail has compiled a list of what some of Reuben Thorpe’s customers bought at his store and they reflect living conditions at the time. Bottles of ink, snuff, milk pails, chimney lamps, and flour by the barrel, for example, are only a few of the things Thorpe’s customers required in 1878.

The prices Thorpe’s customers paid for the necessities of life in 1878 are also interesting. At the time you had to lay out 55 cents for a gallon of molasses, six cents for a pound of codfish, 18 cents for a pound of butter, and 10 cents for a can of mustard. Frail tells me the barter system was used at the time as well and Thorpe’s ledger indicates his customers exchanged cords of wood and eggs for groceries, clothing and so on.

Undoubtedly, many of the 397 patrons of Thorpe’s store in 1878 were Centreville residents. Thus the customer list complained by Mack Frail reinforces a belief that Centreville once was a dominantly Irish settlement; or to put it another way, that Centreville had a pocket of Irish immigrants in the early days. We can find Kellys, Brenans, Colemans, Kavanaghs, Haggertys, Lynch, Sullivans, Magees, Foleys and other Irish surnames in Thorpe’s ledger.

Of course, the Bishops, Rockwells, Bills, Bests, Bordens, Chipmans, Rands, Woodworths and other family names from the early days in Kings County, of which many are descended from the Planters, are represented in the old ledger as well.

In his book on building the Wellington Dyke (published in 1990) The Advertiser’s Associate Editor Brent Fox writes that as well as colossal amounts of soil, stone and wood, some 4,260 loads of brush was part of the construction material that was required.

While this is speculation, the odds are that while some of this brush was spruce boughs, much of it was the speckled alder. It’s a well known fact that in their early years in Kings and Hants County, the Planters, having problems with the dykes and aboiteaux, eventually turned to the Acadians for guidance. And surely the Acadians would have passed on what they had discovered in generations of dyke building: That one of the most suitable and hardiest of materials for dyke building was abundant and was close at hand – the alder tree.

For most people the alder is an insignificant bush that grows in damp areas, old fields and on the edges of dykelands. Yet few trees have played as varied a role, albeit a minor one, in colonial and farm life as the alder. From the day the Acadians arrived in Kings County, and possibly even before that with the Mi’kmaq, many uses were found for the alder, an amazing variety of uses, in fact, and it seems the alder may have been indispensable.

I’ve been collecting information on alders for years and my “alder file” is bulging with facts and folklore on the tree. Here’s some of the more interesting stuff (with sources given were possible):

Because alder roots bear nitrogen-rich nodules, drained alder flats can be quite fertile and suitable for raising leafy vegetables. It is said that the best way to clear an alder-bed is to fence it, let one or two pigs root about it for a summer, and then remove the dead stems. Department of Lands and Forests bulletin #37. Trees of Nova Scotia, by Gary Saunders.

The Acadians, our first good farmers, made sabots for their feet out of alder wood. Alder wood does not warp. French people, back home, have been wearing them for years … Acadians in Nova Scotia were uniquely adept at constructing dykes, strong enough to withstand the Fundy tides, the highest and mightiest in the world. Acadian dykes are banks of clay and mud, reinforced with stones and alder trees. Elsie Churchill Tolson, Nova Scotia Historical Quarterly.

The preferred wood for producing the charcoal used in making gunpowder in the old days was alder. The History of Guns and Gunpowder by George J. Cleveland, 1960.

Alder is popular as a material for electric guitar bodies. It is used by many guitar makers, notably the Fender Guitar Company, who use it on top quality instruments. Wikipedia.

Historical writers Marguerite Woodworth (History of the D.A.R) and Hattie Chittick (Hantsport history) both tell the story about the problems the railway had in 1869 when attempting to build a causeway between Hantsport and Mount Denson. When the causeway was destroyed again and again by the Minas Basin tides, the railway finally turned to “descendants of Acadians” who built a causeway that stood. The causeway was constructed of Avon River clay, stones and alder bushes.

The smoking of gaspereaux, or alewives if you wish, has been a tradition in the Gaspereau Valley for generations. One of the most popular woods used in the smoking process are green alder boughs. Article in The Advertiser, 1968, by Ed Coleman.

A valuable quality of alder wood is that it is excellent for making such things as are kept constantly in water …. An example cited is piles for piers. Hard to imagine, since alders are spindly, but since the wood is capable of withstanding long immersion in water, wharves have been built on alder woodpiles. Elsie Churchill Tolson.

In Place Names and Places of Nova Scotia, Charles Bruce Fergusson gives one of the early names of Berwick as Congdon’s Settlement. In the history of Kings County, Arthur W. H Eaton writes that Berwick’s early name was Congdon’s Corner. A map of Cornwallis Township, prepared in 1818-19 by the Surveyor General, shows the place where Berwick is located as Condon’s Corner, which was likely a misspelling of Congdon.

Now, determining if Condon’s Corner, Congdon’s Corner, Congdon’s Settlement and Berwick are various names for the same place may not seem important. However, on the map of Cornwallis Township dated December 1818, January 1819, is reference to a scheme to physically connect the Cornwallis River with the Annapolis River, and determining if Condon’s Corner and Berwick are one and the same is relevant.

If you accept the Surveyor General’s map as accurate, it indicates that a scheme was proposed in 1818 or earlier to build a canal connecting the Cornwallis River and the Annapolis River. The Township map clearly shows the route the canal would take and indicates it would start close to Condon’s Corner; inscribed on the map is a line reading, “Proposed canal from Annapolis River to Cornwallis River.”

Richard Skinner pointed out the reference to the canal when I was talking with him recently about the old Cornwallis Township map. I must admit that this was the first I’d heard of the canal and my first thought was that it was strange. Why a canal connecting the two rivers? Of what use would it be – military, commercial, for transportation of people and farm goods or what?

The old map indicates the canal would run from the Cornwallis River, then head in a westerly direction and pass north of the “Great Caraboo Bog,” which is near Aylesford. Once it passed the bog, the canal was supposed to head southwest into Aylesford Township and eventually connect with the upper part of the Annapolis River.

Connecting the Cornwallis River with the Annapolis Rover via a canal would be a costly undertaking, even in the early 19^th century. Such a canal would connect Minas Basin with the Annapolis Basin and perhaps this is why it was proposed. Of what benefit such a connection would be is a mystery to me. However, digging such a canal must have considered, else it would not have shown up on the Surveyor General’s map of Kings County.

Since it was included in the official Township map, can we assume the proposed canal had the blessing of the provincial government? Was it a government project that was briefly considered and then forgotten? And one more question: Why, in all that has been written on the history of Kings County, has no mention been made of a proposed canal connecting the two rivers? After all, it would’ve been a major project for its time.

The answers to these questions may lie in a dusty file somewhere in the provincial archives. Meanwhile, if anyone has information on the canal, something in family lore for example, I’d like to hear from you.

Hundreds, possibly even thousands of ships may have been built along the Bay of Fundy and around the Minas Basin shore during the age of sail. Many of those ships were registered and can be found in marine archives, but there was a period when marine registries such as the one at Windsor didn’t exist. In other words, there may be no official records of some of ships that were built in tiny, now forgotten ports and many are remembered only in family records and folklore.

Given the time frame when these ships were being built – the early Planter period to the first decade of the 20th century – researching and compiling records would be a difficult, time consuming task requiring dedication, perseverance, and a lot of detective work

Obviously, Hantsport marine historian Joey St. Clair Patterson has that dedication and perseverance in abundance. Next month, Patterson will release Hantsport Shipbuilding 1849-1893, a book he wrote after nearly a quarter century of research into shipping and genealogy records. Patterson began working on his book after he moved to Hantsport in 1985.

The title of Patterson’s book is a bit misleading, but that’s to the reader’s gain. Yes, the book is all about Hantsport shipbuilding, with particular emphasis on the renowned shipyards of the Churchill family. But before getting into the shipbuilding, Patterson covers the early history of Hantsport in detail with biographies of its founding families, many of whom were seafarers as well as shipbuilders of renown.

Patterson’s book is also a record of shipbuilders outside of the Hantsport area. While telling the story of Hantsport shipbuilding, he writes about the shipyards of Kingsport, Canning, and the shipyards great and small in other seaside communities around the Minas Basin and Fundy shore that turned out more than a few famous sailing crafts.

Nova Scotia was once known world wide as a country of hardy seafarers and shipbuilders. I never understood how Nova Scotia earned this reputation, but Patterson’s work explains it to some extent. Those hardy seafarers and the wooden ships that carried them around the world are brought to life by Joey Patterson. Page after page of seafaring lore, the stories of the men behind Nova Scotia’s shipbuilding era, make up a book that marine history buffs will cherish.

As I intimated, this is really two books in one: A history book, about Hantsport and its founders, and a book about marine lore and sailing ships. You’ll enjoy both aspects of the book.

(Patterson’s book launching will take place on August 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Hantsport Memorial Community Centre.)

“Over 20 big vessels were built here,” Rachel Pineo-Corkum wrote circa 1950 in her history of Scots Bay. The Bay isn’t as well known for shipbuilding as Canning and Kingsport, so sailing ship buffs may want to investigate this interesting revelation. I’m guessing on the year she wrote this little known history, the guess based on a line reading, “nearly 200 years ago, about 1750, etc.”

Rachel Pineo-Corkum was a school teacher in Scots Bay and I believe the history was produced as a series of lessons for her students. I read the history recently – it’s in the Scots Bay file at the Kings County Museum – and it’s written in a style children could understand and follow. Ms. Pineo-Corkum may have gleaned some of her information for the paper from an earlier work by Abram Jess (The History of Scotts Bay (sic) dated 1941). However, as a resident of Scots Bay with close blood ties to many long time residents, she undoubtedly had access to some of the earlier history and folklore of the village; she undoubtedly wrote some of the history, in other words, by interviewing village people.

While Ms. Pineo-Corkum’s history is one of the earliest written on Scots Bay, she is unsung as a historian. Centreville historian Mack Frail notes that her history has “often been put to use,” but she receives little credit for it. Frail is Pineo-Corkum’s nephew and he’s put together a mini profile of her life, which is included in an article he recently wrote on Scots Bay.

Mack Frail says he doesn’t have all the details on his Aunt’s life but family folklore has it that her parents died when she was a child and she was left in an orphanage in the States. “A relative located her and brought her back to Scots Bay,” Frail writes, where she lived with his grandmother. “Aunt Rachel was a school teacher who married Hardy Corkum in 1918. As well as writing history, she wrote short stories that she sold to magazines. She was an accomplished artist, and was written about in magazines. I never heard that she sold her paintings, only that she gave them to friends and relatives, and many can still be found in local homes.”

In her Scots Bay history, Rachel Pineo-Corkum recounts some of the folklore about hunting and fishing from the early days of the village. She names the shipbuilders of Scots Bay, the Steeles, Tuppers, Lockharts, Ells, Newcombes and Thorpes, who still have descendants living here, and writes about the origin of the village’s name. While modest in length, her history is invaluable as a record of a Kings County outport. To repeat what Mac Frail said about the history, it is often quoted but Pineo-Corkum is never acknowledged as the author.

Let’s hope this will be rectified one day. Hopefully, Mack Frail will eventually be able to fill out the full story of this Scots Bay writer, and she will be recognized for the historian she was.

To say that Richard Skinner has an interest in old maps could be a bit of an understatement. After talking with him recently about an old map of Cornwallis Township, one of the original divisions of Kings County north of the Cornwallis River, I’d say his interest is close to being an obsession.

Skinner has been studying old maps for decades, and his interest in them started when he was a youth. “I found an 1864 Kings County (Ambrose) Church map in a dump and took it home,” he said in effect, “and that started it all.” He found the details on the map fascinating, since it showed the old county roads – “some that no longer exists” – and the people who lived along them.

After he developed an interest in genealogy, Skinner found that the Church map was an important tool in tracing families. However, his interest in old maps of the county really heightened when he came across a Cornwallis Township map that predated the Ambrose Church map of Kings County by over half a century.

Ambrose Church began producing maps of the various counties of the province around 1864. Church was commissioned by the provincial government and one of the first maps he produced was of Halifax County in 1865. While the map of Kings County is dated 1864, it actually wasn’t released publicly until nearly a decade later. In 1872, Church received a grant of $584 for the provincial government for completing the Kings County map and this usually given as the year it was published.

As mentioned, Church wasn’t the first to produce county maps. Early in the 19^th century, well before Ambrose Church appeared on the scene, the government had a series of county maps produced by the Surveyor General, Charles Morris. Working with the surveyor Charles Harris, Morris produced a Kings County map with an inscription indicating it was “made in the month of December A.D. 1818 and January 1819.”

Richard Skinner discovered the existence of this map over a decade ago and he found so many errors, misspellings and roads that don’t exist today that he set about updating and correcting it.

“It was incomplete and difficult to read,” Skinner says of the Cornwallis Township section of the map “and this was what really got me into researching maps. Canaan was spelled ‘Canan’, Canard was ‘Cannar’, Pereau is spelled ‘Piereau’, and so on. The map even shows a continuous road along the foot of Black Rock mountain that I’m sure doesn’t exist.”

Skinner is still working on updating the Cornwallis Township area of the old map. Mainly he’s reset the place names and corrected the spelling. “It’s a work in progress,” Skinner says. “The purpose of my work is not to replace the historic township map but to have a good copy to use in conjunction with it. That’s why I’ve spent so many hours pasting on words that are easier to read.”

At the same time, Skinner is on the lookout for other old maps. He’s heard of an old map of Berwick but hasn’t located a copy of it yet. “Every old map tells a story,” he says. “They show where the original churches stood, where the original Kings County courthouse was located, the old names for our roads and rivers.”

This is what’s so fascinating about old maps,” Skinner says. “There’s so much historical information that can be gained by studying them.”

When M. de Brouillan was appointed Governor of Acadia in 1701, he proposed that two major roads be constructed from the Acadian settlement in Minas. One was to run “10 leagues across the woods” to Port Royal. Once this road was completed, de Brouillan suggested that the Acadians occupying Kings County should “subsequently make a like one to Laheve.”

History tells us the Acadians started the road to Port Royal but never completed it. However, well before the Acadians arrived in Kings County, a track of sorts running towards what was to become the French settlement at Laheve already existed. Folklore has it that on their seasonal migration from the Minas Basin towards the South Shore in pursuit of fish and game, the Mi’kmaq had established a well-marked trail. The expansion of this trail may have been what de Brouillan had in mind when he proposed building a road from Minas.

If folklore is right and the Mi’kmaq established a path from Kings County, south towards the lake country and Chester Basin, then Highway 12, the road that connects Kentville to New Ross, was undoubtedly part of it. We can assume that what is known locally as the New Ross Road follows for the most part the old Mi’kmaq trail. Much later, when the settlement of New Ross was still young, a road from the settlement into the heart of Kings County was again proposed. In his history of Lunenburg County, M. B. DesBrisay writes that the road from New Ross to Kentville was first “deemed impracticable” but later was built. This apparently was shortly after the settlement of New Ross, or Sherbrooke as it was first called, was established in 1816.

This is the second time in his history that DesBrisay mentioned what was to become the New Ross Road. I quoted his other reference to the road at the beginning of this column, the reference to de Brouillan’s proposed road from Minas to the South Shore. In his Kings County history, Arthur W. H. Eaton also mentions de Brouillan’s proposal to connect Kings County with the French settlement on the South Shore. The Acadians, de Brouillan wrote, have engaged to work on the road once the harvest was over.

A history of the New Ross Road has never been written, but Ron Barkhouse says (in a 1990 paper) that if it ever was, it would be an interesting one. Such a history, Barkhouse says, would have to dwell on how Daniel O’Neil of New Ross made Nova Scotia’s first apple barrels in 1863 and the now legendary movement of New Ross trucks carrying the barrels to the Valley for over half a century.

Such a history would have to relate the role the New Ross Road played during prohibition, Barkhouse said, when it was the main thoroughfare for rum runners and such.

On a final note, DesBrisay in his Lunenburg County history indicates that in 1870 the New Ross Road was known as the Horton road, probably because it connected with Horton Township on the south edge of Kings County.