Except for a few small groups of Acadians who took to the woods to escape the expulsion and bands of roaming Mi’kmaq, the dykes and uplands of Kings County lay vacant between 1755 and 1760. The history books tell that when the Planters arrived they found the abandoned ox carts and “at the skirts of the forest they saw many bleached skeletons of sheep and horned cattle that the winter after their owners left had died of starvation and cold.”

The quote is from Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton’s Kings County history and it seems to indicate that the livestock of the Acadians was abandoned after the expulsion and left to perish. Eaton also writes that some of the livestock of the Acadians had been confiscated to pay for the cost of the expulsion. And, he says, most of the dwellings and outbuildings of the Acadians were destroyed, some 206 houses and 237 barns in Canard, Habitant, and Pereau alone.

A booklet published in 2002 by the Societe Promotion Grand-Pre tells us that one of the reasons Lt. Col. John Winslow compiled a list of Acadians living in Grand-Pre was to find out “how much livestock (bullocks, cows, young cattle, sheep, hogs, and horses) there was to be confiscated in the name of the British King.” It would seem then that there was a move afoot to profit from the expulsion.

In other historical accounts of the expulsion, however, we’re told that while some Acadian livestock was confiscated and apparently shipped to New England, much of it was left to roam free. Some of it perished undoubtedly, but a couple of historical works hint that some of the Acadian livestock was rounded up and driven elsewhere just after the expulsion. Local folklore also has it that German settlers in Lunenburg County took advantage of the situation, “raided” Kings County and helped themselves.

By chance, I found that this is a fact. Reading M. B. DesBrisay’s Lunenburg County history recently, I came across an account of the expedition to Kings County to collect Acadian livestock and drive it to Lunenburg.

“On July 30^th, 1756, Captain John Steignfort, with fifty armed men, went from Lunenburg to the Basin of Minas, and drove away 120 head of horned cattle and a number of horses, being part of the confiscated property of the French Acadians. The party returned to Lunenburg September 3^rd with sixty oxen and cows, the rest having perished on the way – all the horses included.”

Calling it a “raid” is probably erroneous. Since the livestock was later divided up by a draw conducted by the military, it appears the whole affair had the blessing of provincial authorities.

If you have a surname such as O’Sullivan, LeBlanc or VanOostrum, determining your ancestral home shouldn’t be a major problem.

But what if your surname was Turtle, Cornfoot or Rattlebag? Or Pigfat, Craze and Suckbitch? These are legitimate surnames (that I found while looking into books on surnames at Acadia University) and somewhere in the world there probably are people who answer to them. However, determining their ethnic origin might be a problem. Unlike names starting with “O’, “Mac” or “Van,” there’s no clue to what their ancestry might be.”

For the most part, surnames derive from localities, occupations, physical appearance and so on. However, this doesn’t explain how some surnames originated. Take, for example, Turnipseed, Windmillyard, Windgate and Windhouse. I copied these names from a book on British surnames. According to the book, they can still be found today in the telephone phone books of Great Britain.

I found other unusual surnames in the British book that give absolutely no clue to how they might have originated: Demon, Clutterbuck, Greedy and Hardmeat, for example. Also Hogwood, Steer, Bracegirdle, Bonefat and so on.

Let’s take one of the surnames mentioned above – Rattlebag – to see the process by which unusual surnames are created. In A Dictionary of Surnames, Mark Antony Lower writes that Rattlebag can be found in documents from the time of Edward 1 and was applied to a man who was a rather tight-fisted moneylender.

We have – or I should say had – an unusual surname that originated in the Annapolis Valley and is unique to Nova Scotia. This is the surname Coalfleet, a name that was carried by several generations of Hantsport area families before dying out.

The story goes that this surname was given to an infant boy who was the sole survivor when a fleet of coal barges was wrecked off our coast in a winter gale. The boy’s name was suggested by the circumstances of his rescue. He became Peter Coalfleet and he sired several generations of seafaring Coalfleets who sailed out of Hantsport.

The story of Peter Coalfleet can be found in Hantsport on Avon, Hattie Chittick’s 1964 history of the town. Historian St. Clair (Joe) Patterson, who has been researching the Coalfleet family, told me that the last of the Coalfleets died in Hantsport in the 1960s.

Windrow, says the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, is a noun meaning a “line of raked hay, sheaves, etc., laid out for drying by the wind.

Windrow also happens to be a surname; it’s also a rare surname, possibly one of the rarest in Canada if you can take Statistics Canada at its word, and it happens to be found right here in Kings County.

Lowell Windrow of Canaan Avenue, Kentville, discovered just how rare his family name is when he was contacted by Statistics Canada in 2003. At the time there were only three people in Canada with the Windrow surname. Two weeks ago Lowell was talking with Statistics Canada and they told him that his was now the only family in Canada with the Windrow surname.

Besides being rare, the Windrow surname also has historical connections with this region. In 1816 the British government was busy disbanding military regiments that had been formed during the War of 1812. Among them were the Nova Scotia Fencibles, led by Captain William Ross, and the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles. These regiments were disbanded in Halifax during June and July of 1816. The officers and soldiers of the disbanded regiments were given land grants in what was then known as Sherbrooke and later New Ross. Among the grantees was the great great grandfather of Lowell Windrow, one Captain William Windrow who served with Ross and who settled in an area known as Glengarry about two miles south of New Ross proper.

In her history of New Ross, published in 1966, Caroline Leopold mentions the Windrow surname twice. Once in the list of the early settlers of New Ross (Glengarry is considered to be part of greater New Ross) and in a note that hints that the surname began to disappear early on in the community: “Of the Windrows, a name one time prominent in the community, some of whom settled in Glengarry, but one remains.”

Lowell Windrow tells me there was another Windrow who was in the military with Captain William Windrow and he was a relative. This second Windrow, first name unknown, also settled in the New Ross area but his line has disappeared. However, Lowell has what he believes is a medal once worn by this Windrow. He also has two swords that belonged to Captain William Windrow.

After talking with Lowell Windrow about his family, by the way, I visited Acadia University and consulted nearly 20 books devoted to surnames in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. I failed to find the Windrow surname and I have to conclude that it is indeed rare. An Internet search turned up two Windrows – you can usually depend on the ‘net to come up with something – and both were in Texas.

In the era of the sailing ship they were sometimes called “August gales,” a deadly combination of high tides and high winds that often wrought widespread destruction. This mix of high tides and high winds cause “storm surges,” a rapid rising of tide waters well above normal levels. One of the most notable storms of this nature was the Saxby Gale in October of 1869. Notable because it was predicted, the Saxby Gale cut a wide, destructive swath through the Atlantic provinces and is still talked about today.

Sometime late in 1909 one of those notorious gales struck the Minas Basin. Myrtle Coffill, who is 97 and resides in Wolfville, says that according to family memories, the gale came in August and was accompanied by “a very high tide.” The gale brought tragedy for the Coffill family, destroying a ship Myrtle’s father-in-law Williard Coffill had tied up at Kingsport wharf and killing Williard’s brother, William.

The ship was the Hornet, which according to Myrtle Coffill was built by Williard Coffill in Mill Creek, a tiny harbor along the shore near Blomidon. Myrtle Coffill tells me Williard lived in Mill Creek and may have had a couple of partners when building the Hornet, one of them possibly a Kings County farmer named Starr Eaton.

I found the Hornet in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic shipwrecks database where only a few details on the ship are given. The Hornet is listed as a schooner with tonnage of 26. I take it from the database that the shipwreck of the Hornet occurred early in 1909, but this conflicts with what is remembered by Myrtle Coffill and her son, Robert of Delhaven. “I’m pretty sure it was August when the Hornet was wrecked,” Robert Coffill says.

The database states that the Hornet was a “total loss,” and that the cause of the shipwreck was “unknown.” Robert Coffill confirms that the Hornet indeed was completely destroyed. “My father said you could pick pieces of the ship up in your arms the morning after the storm,” Robert Coffill said. As for the cause of the shipwreck being unknown, Myrtle and Robert concur that a combination of gale winds and high tides destroyed the Hornet.

William Coffill lost his life during the storm when he and Williard attempted to get the Hornet to safety after the gale hit. The Hornet was tied up at the Kingsport pier when the gale swept across the Minas Basin. Robert Coffill told me that Williard and William were “trying to fend the ship off the wharf “ where she was being pounded by the winds. “They were trying to get something between her and the wharf. He (William) went down between the ship and the wharf and was killed.”

There are few facts to be found on a long ago Cornwallis River shipwreck, I wrote in this column [last week]. I was wrong.

In the piece on the schooner Whisper, which was wrecked on a sandbar in Port Williams, I quoted people who remembered the folklore about the ship. Sometimes all that exists about past events is folklore. But when it comes to Nova Scotia shipwrecks, a large database exists that I was unaware of.

I have Maritime Museum of the Atlantic marine history curator Dan Conlin to thank for directing me to a new online shipwreck database – “On the Rocks: The Nova Scotia Museum Maritime Heritage Database – and for supplying details on the fate of the Whisper. Mr. Conlin said the database records some 5000 shipwrecks and you can search by location as well as ship name. The database doesn’t have every single shipwreck. In some cases, Conlin said, the information is “very basic,” but it’s a good place for researchers to start.

The bottom line is that besides the folklore I collected on the Whisper, I now have some of those cold, hard facts I said couldn’t be found. Surprisingly, some of that folklore was accurate, especially the folklore that says the Whisper came to grief on the muddy banks of the Cornwallis River. Mr. Conlin tells me that database records indicate the Whisper was wrecked by stranding on October 19, 1923 at Port Williams. “That usually means you get stuck somewhere perilous,” Conlin said, “and then the tide goes out causing damage and destruction to your vessel.”

Since the shipwreck of the Whisper on the Cornwallis River is in a way unique, sailing ship buffs may be interested in some of the details on the ship that Mr. Conlin unearthed: “Whisper was a small schooner, 31 tons, 53 feet long, 15 feet in breadth, built in 1896 in Pubnico by Peter Amero. She was registered in Yarmouth (official number 103704) with Jerome D’Entremont listed as owner.”

Folklore has it that the Whisper was owned by Williard Coffill when the shipwreck occurred. I was told this by family members and will attempt to confirm it.

The Whisper is not the only Cornwallis River shipwreck, by the way. Dan Conlin tells me that in 1889 there was another shipwreck on the river just outside Wolfville. I’ll have details on this shipwreck in a later column. A tragic shipwreck took place in Kingsport in 1909 and I’m currently collecting folklore on it. I’ll have details on this incident as well in a future column.

Several years ago I noted in this column that many shipwrecks on our coast have gone unrecorded, and except perhaps for lore passed down in families, their stories have never been told.

Since Historian Dan Conlin of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic says there have been at least 10,000 shipwrecks on our coast and possibly as many as 25,000 in the last 400 centuries, my comment seems reasonable. These numbers are estimates, Conlin says, which to me indicates there are thousands of shipwrecks that never have been recorded.

Among those shipwrecks must be included The Whisper, a little two-masted schooner out of Kings County. The Whisper has the distinction of being a shipwreck in an area where such events rarely occur – upstream on the Cornwallis River. I first heard about The Whisper several years ago when I wrote a story about a shipwreck discovered in Wolfville harbor. When The Advertiser published the story, several people called to tell me about a schooner that was destroyed on the Cornwallis River during a storm. The details were vague. No one could give me a date or the name of the ship, or what caused the shipwreck. Eventually, I was contacted by a former resident of Port Williams who passed along some local lore about the schooner.

Harold Gates, who now lives in Canning, was just out of school when he started to work for George Chase in Port Williams. For a five-year period in the 1930s Gates worked during the fall as a timekeeper-checker when Chase was exporting apples. During that period, Gates occasionally would see the remains of a ship protruding from the south bank of the Cornwallis River.

“We used to see the hull of this old wooden ship come up once in a while and we’d laugh about it,” Gates said. “The old Whisper beginning to showing her tail, we’d say. It was down near the first bend in the river, about 150 yards below the wharf.

“The story we always heard was that she was tied up at the wharf and they had the sails up to dry them out. The Captain and his helper were eating dinner and this storm came up and broke the ship from its moorings. The wind blew her to the far shore and she toppled on a sandbank.”

The damage to The Whisper was so severe they never repaired her, Gates said. “They just left here where she was, stuck in the muddy bank of the river.”

Eventually, the erosive tides of the nearby Minas Basin buried The Whisper. The tides uncovered her and then covered her over and over again until only remnants of the ship were left; eventually, even this disappeared. However, those remnants kept the story of The Whisper alive. Today that story still exists in county folklore – and only in folklore, which I discovered when I tried to unearth some facts about The Whisper.

There are few cold, hard facts to be found, in other words. I’ve determined that the ship was owned by Williard Coffill of the Delhaven/Pereau area who had The Whisper built, that at the time she was wrecked she was in service carrying freight to and from ports on the Bay of Fundy and Minas Basin. In an interview with Myrtle Coffill, Williard’s daughter-in-law, I was told that possibly The Whisper was wrecked about a century ago. Myrtle, who is 97 and is clear-headed and mentally alert, added that the shipwreck occurred when her husband was six years old, hence the estimate that it was in 1907.

As shipwrecks go, the destruction of The Whisper on the Cornwallis River in the last century wasn’t that spectacular an event. However, it’s part of the sailing ship lore of Kings County, and in particular of Port Williams. I hope to unearth more details about the shipwreck and if readers have anything to contribute, please contact me.

Highway 341 runs roughly north from Kentville for several kilometers before turning east at Upper Dyke. At some point in Upper Dyke the highway becomes Canard Street, an unofficial local name for the approximately seven-mile stretch that ends at Porters Point.

The western end of Canard Street is known as Upper Canard and the eastern section as Lower Canard. Where Upper Canard ends and Upper Dyke begins is a mystery to me but I’ve always assumed the division line is just beyond the rise north of the Canard River around where Lakewood Road forms a T-junctions with Highway 341.

C. Bruce Fergusson, in Place-Names and Places of Nova Scotia, recognizes Upper Dyke as a community. Fergusson tells us the correct name of the community is Upper Dyke Village and says it received the name because it was the Acadian dyke that was the “furtherest upstream on the Canard River.”

Actually, this dyke was on a tributary of the Canard River and if you know where and what to look for, traces of it can be seen today. This dyke, and undoubtedly an aboiteau, was located just east of the John Newcombe property. The stream that was dyked now runs through a culvert under Canard Street (or Highway 341 if you wish) and Newcombe Branch. If you stand where Newcombe Branch forks away from Canard Street and face north, you’re looking at the location where the Acadians built one of the first dykes in this area. Some local historians claim this was the first Acadian dyke but it wasn’t. Brent Fox in his book on the Wellington Dyke correctly places the first local Acadian dyke in Steam Mill, approximately where a railway bridge once spanned the Canard River.

At one time the dyke by the John Newcombe property was literally at the head of the tide. It appears that the Minas Basin tides backed the Canard River waters up the tributary. In other words, Upper Dyke, especially the area beside just below Newcombes, was at the head of the tide. In the history of Canard Street, compiled by Elizabeth Rand and published in 1997, the author mentions the tides backing the Canard River up to the Jan Struik (now Ian Newcombe) property. This property, which is immediately east of John Newcombe, wouldn’t have been part of the original Planter grants, Rand says, since it “would have been flooded by the tides… before the aboiteau was begun by the Acadians.”

The next time you drive through Upper Dyke and cross the brook by Newcombe Branch, stop for a moment and consider how the mighty Minas Basin tides once peaked there. In your mind, picture what it would have been like there at high tide when the Acadians arrived. Look carefully and you’ll see that the tributary in Upper Dyke was a natural place for the Acadians to begin dykeing and laying an aboiteau. The tributary between Newcombes and Struiks runs through a hollow and the apparent ease in dykeing it must have been obvious to the Acadians.

I’m not surprised that the Acadians started dykeing first on the upper part of the Canard River at Steam Mill. As mentioned, the site of the Steam Mill dyke has been placed at the railway bridge, long since removed, just above Highway 359. This area would have at the head of the tide as well and the lay of the land must have made it easy to dyke.

Here’s a question for you history buffs: What part of Kentville was once known as Redden Row and why?

Louis Comeau, author of the book Historic Kentville, will have no problem answering this question instantly. But not so this history buff. Ask me about Redden Row before I received electronic mail recently from Kings County Museum curator Bria Stokesbury and I would’ve been baffled – even though Louis Comeau mentions it in his book.

In case the question left you as brain locked as me, here’s what Stokesbury wrote: “How many people know that Main Street Kentville used to be called Redden Row after William Redden?” Stokesbury mentioned that a photograph of Redden Row had just been donated to the Museum, which prompted her note, and she thought the story behind it might be of interest.

It certainly is. William Redden (1815-1894) was at one time one of Kentville’s leading citizens. So prominent was he that Arthur W. H. Eaton included a personal sketch of William in his Kings County history, noting that he was a builder, farmer, miller, and trader. A large part of residential Kentville owes its existence to Redden, said Eaton, a reference to the fact that William built a large number of houses along Main Street. The material growth and prosperity of Kentville was to a “marked degree” identified with Redden reads his obituary.

Eaton and other historical writers also pay tribute to Henry Magee, another prominent Kentville citizen and one of its first settlers. Magee, who died in 1806 at age 67, also was Kentville’s first major businessman, and is said to have built the town’s first store and grist mill near Mill Brook.

William Redden and Henry Magee are part of Kentville’s little known Irish element. Magee was born in Northern Ireland, while William was one generation removed from the auld sod, the son of a Dublin man, James Redden. As I said, the influence of a few Irish immigrants on Kentville isn’t recognized. Better known are the Websters, Chipmans, Pecks and Masters. The Moores, another influential early Kentville family, are also of Irish origin, as are the Ryans who once were prominent in Kentville politics and the militia.

Descendants of James Redden and the Moores still live in Kentville and the vicinity. Redden Avenue in North Kentville is named after one of James Redden’s descendants; this street name may be the only remaining reminder of the Irish influence on the early development of Kentville.

“If you aren’t good you might find nothing but a lump of coal in your stocking on Christmas morning,” my mother used to say when we were growing up.

I discovered later that we were the only kids in the neighborhood threatened with lumps of coal if we weren’t good at Christmas. Apparently, this was how kids in the region of Great Britain where my mother grew up were cajoled into keeping out of mischief. My mother came to Nova Scotia from Kent as a war bride in 1918 and she brought with her a few Christmas customs unheard of in our neighborhood.

For many years we received modest gifts from our parents on Boxing Day, for example. I was in my teens before I discovered that no one else around us observed the British custom of gift giving on Boxing Day.

Christmas dinner was a bit different at our house as well. Like most people in the 1940s, we usually enjoyed the traditional goose for Christmas dinner. This remained the custom in our house long after the goose dinner was replaced by the now ubiquitous turkey dinner. Christmas dinner was always held at midday and the dessert always was home cooked mincemeat pie. The mincemeat for the pie was homemade as well, many of the ingredients coming from our own garden. I don’t believe anyone makes mincemeat the way my mother used to, and I don’t think anyone would want to in this fat-conscious era. My arteries shudder when I remember all the suet that used to go into its making.

This is an aside, having nothing to do with our celebration of Christmas, but I must tell you that when the goose was being cooked, a lot of fat was rendered from it. The fat wasn’t wasted. Stored in jars after it cooled, it was later mixed with wintergreen oil or Minard’s liniment and used as a chest rub for colds. A chest rub was also made by mixing the goose fat with a juice obtained by boiling onions in water. In other words, memories of our Christmas dinner often lingered on through the winter.

Fruitcake was another Christmas staple at our house, and it was always served during a light evening meal on Christmas day evening. The fruitcake was homemade and was concocted from scratch. I recall that it was a dark, really heavy fruitcake and it always had almond flavored icing. You can buy dark fruitcake with almond icing today but it doesn’t compare to the homemade cakes that came out of our old woodstove oven.

Because my father was a hunter, we always had some kind of wild game meal around Christmas time. Usually it was venison, a roast or chops. If my father was successful and managed to bag a deer, some of the meat was used in preparing the mincemeat for the pies. I’m not sure if it’s a tradition or simply a way of making sure all of the deer was used, but the mincemeat was always made from neck meat. The meat from the neck was carefully preserved and set aside especially for the mincemeat.

Later, as my brothers and I learned to hunt, black duck, grouse, and rabbits were added to our holiday wild game dinners. Having a wild game dinner around Christmas time and especially at New Years was a family tradition, one many of us with hunters in the family still observe today.

This was our Christmas in the 1940s and 1950s and for the most part it’s celebrated the same way today. What has changed perhaps is the way Christmas is actively, almost aggressively promoted as an occasion to exchange gifts and never mind the real reasons for celebrating.

Gordon Hansford of Kentville, a retired schoolteacher, served in the RCEME, the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, during World War 2. Just before Christmas in 1945 Hansford was hospitalized in England with complications from pleurisy. While he was there, a German prisoner of war arrived at the ward he was in. This is Hansford’s tale of what occurred when word spread that an enemy soldier was being treated in the hospital along with Canadians.

The ward in the 24^th General Hospital at Horley in the south of England was in a state of unrest. It was the day before Christmas and the 30 Canadian servicemen in the ward, many of whom had been wounded in action, weren’t happy when they heard that the patient they’d just brought in was a German soldier; one that perhaps not that long ago had been shooting at them.

“Everyone wanted to know who he was when he was carried in on a stretcher with a head wound,” said Gordon Hansford. “We were curious. We figured he might be from one of our own units and we could catch up on the news. We asked a nurse what Canadian outfit the new arrival was from and she said he was a German soldier. He had been in a prisoner of war camp but his wound gave him trouble, she said, so they brought him here.

“Nobody was pleased to hear that. Some of the Canadians in the ward were really angry. Let’s face it. There were men there from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders; some of their compatriots had been murdered by the 12th SS, and there were a lot of bad feelings towards the Germans.”

There was still tension in the ward on Christmas Eve, Hansford recalls, but the next day when he took out a flute he had been carrying around everything changed. “Since it was Christmas Day we had a nice dinner. After dinner, everybody sang and I played along with my flute.”

Without thinking about it, Hansford decided to play a traditional German Christmas song, O Tannenbaum. As the notes wafted through the hospital ward, the German soldier sat up in bed and started to sing in his native language. “He had a wonderful voice and it brought a hush to the ward. Then I played Silent Night and he sang the words to it in German. Everybody in the ward including the nurses joined in the singing. At the conclusion of this song we all clapped.

“Then this big Sergeant from the North Novies got up from his bed and limped over to the German soldier. The Sergeant was in bad shape but he made it to the soldier’s bed and placed a chocolate bar on his bunk. ‘Merry Christmas, Jerry,’ he said, ‘We’re glad that you’re here.’

“At that, everybody who could get out of bed went over to the soldier’s bunk and gave him something, gum, cigarettes, things like that. Everyone shook hands with him and wished him a Merry Christmas, some of them attempting to say it in German.”

Hansford can still see the German soldier sitting upright in his bed, his blanket covered with gifts, tears running down his face. In a poem he later wrote, Hansford said, “I knew then that a feeling of peace and good will to all men was there in that ward on Christmas Day in 1945.”