Cornwallis and Horton (later Wolfville) acquired their settlers from Connecticut in 1760 and became two of the most populated townships in the Annapolis Valley26 (see Map 7). Large numbers of Loyalists later came to the area, as did a few Yorkshire families who had previously settled in Cumberland County. Having been caught in the line of fire during the American Rebellion, men like Nathaniel Smith and his family had left their farms in Fort Cumberland in 1778, hoping for better conditions in Cornwallis. Smith sold his property and stock, for which he obtained five hundred pounds, but he felt as if he had “[fallen] into the hands of worse plunderers than those that break [into] houses and rob shops.”27 In 1775 he had owned more than 1,500 acres of land in Cumberland, but four years later, after falling victim to the swindlers, he was only able to rent land in Cornwallis, and a small amount at that.
By Nathaniel’s time the area was “pretty thickly settled in many places where there [are] rivers, marshes and intervales, and in many places along the shores by the Minas Basin and the Bay of Fundy.”28 The Cornwallis that Lord Dalhousie observed thirty years later had a small Anglican congregation, this being a region where Baptists were in the ascendancy, and the Established Church of England “was scarcely entitled to a name.”29 He was appalled by the people “living poorly or chiefly upon rum … they are idle, insolent and quarrelsome. All in debt … they are strongly tinctured with Yankee manners, ideas and principles — canting and preaching constantly, they have no thought of religion or morality. The state of agriculture is wretched.” However, Lord Dartmouth had to admit that, however poor they were, they could each afford to have a “horse and gig or shay at the church service of the Established Church and that of the Anabaptists; we counted 70 of these buggies hung up to the rails or trees nearby.” 30
Meanwhile, his lordship found Parrsboro, on the opposite side of the Minas Basin, more to his liking. He greatly approved of James Ratchford, who had the entire township under his thumb: “Keeping a shop for every sort of supply the whole population is individually indebted to him. Selling his goods at enormous profit, he makes money of those that pay their accounts and, of those that do not, he takes mortgages on their lands, and takes that in payment.” 31 Lord Dalhousie believed that ordinary people needed to be controlled by someone in authority, irrespective of how much they were exploited, placing him somewhat at odds with the egalitarian ideals of the New World!
The New Englanders, and Loyalists who poured into the rest of the Annapolis Valley, founded new communities at Annapolis, Granville, and Wilmot, townships with some of the finest land in the region32 (see Map 7). When he passed through Wilmot nearly six decades later, Lord Dalhousie was enraged by the defiant manner of the local people: “They stood and stared at us, as we passed, with the utmost American impudence.” He greatly disapproved of their freehold grants, since it made every man think that he “is laird here” and “fostered a dangerous levelling mentality.”33 He was shocked to find that a member of the Assembly dressed like a common labourer in his own home. Where was his coat and waistcoat? But dress codes and social etiquette were not high on his host’s list of priorities. As is apparent, Lord Dalhousie never came close to understanding the harsh realities of pioneer life.
George Ramsay, ninth Earl of Dalhousie. He was lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia from 1816 to 1820, and afterward governor general of Canada until 1828.
Annapolis Royal had an unusually high proportion of Anglicans by 1871, as well as a substantial Methodist congregation, possibly signifying a stronger than average English presence. The first Anglican church had been founded in 1764 and nearly thirty years later a second church had been built at Wilmot. On a tour of the province in 1791, Bishop Charles Inglis had preached “in the new church, which was the first time that divine services had been performed in it.”34 Having previously enjoyed the blueberries at nearby Aylesford (later in Kings County) 35 Bishop Inglis was in high spirits, but his mood changed when he met the “infirm” local minister, who stumbled through prayers at the inaugural service:
Hitherto Mr. Wiswell officiated in the School House or in a private home on the mountain … and to my very great surprise he had neither gown or surplice…. I told him I would have read the prayers myself rather than let him officiate without his clerical habit … his excuse was that he had but one gown and it was at Aylesford in St. Mary’s Church.36
Holy Trinity Anglican Church at Middleton (previously Wilmot). It was established in 1789.
Meanwhile, the Methodists of Annapolis Royal had built themselves a chapel by 1894 capable of accommodating four hundred people, and another at Granville that could house one hundred. This despite the fact that the congregations often went without a minister for up to six months at a time.37
New England fishermen and their families settled along the south shore at Yarmouth, Barrington, and Liverpool in the early 1760s (see Map 7), but with the arrival of around five hundred Loyalist families just over twenty years later, the instant town of Shelburne sprang up and the new county divisions of Yarmouth, Shelburne, and Queens suddenly appeared (see Map 5). Although Shelburne’s growth had been dramatic, its demise was equally spectacular, as Lord Dalhousie observed thirty years later:
Bringing with them very large property in money they [Loyalists] built fine houses, neglected the more immediate objects of new settlers, the clearing of land for food, or the establishment of fisheries, for which the situation of the settlement was admirably adapted, and having very soon wasted and squandered their funds were obliged to fly back to America leaving large grants of land untouched to this day, but laying still as the property of these individuals. Now, Shelburne is the picture of despair and wretchedness…. The large homes rotten and tumbling into the once fine and broad streets, the inhabitants crawling about idle and careworn in appearance and stuck in poverty and dejected in spirit.38
A Methodist missionary ruefully noted how “the population of the town has exceedingly decreased, so it does not contain one tenth of the inhabitants who settled in the year [17]83.”39 “The neat Methodist Chapel, capable of holding 400 people,” was a very sad reminder of better times.40 However, Yarmouth fared much better, having attracted Massachusetts settlers from 1761, Acadians six years later, and large numbers of Loyalists.41 The Cheshire-born Loyalist Joseph Bond certainly did well here. Having first gone to Shelburne, he swiftly moved on to the town of Yarmouth, where he practised as a physician for twenty years. When he died, he left a homestead of sixty acres, various properties in Yarmouth, including a wharf, and three thousand acres of land.42
The New England advance continued into Falmouth and Newport in 1761, when Rhode Islanders founded communities there. And Windsor’s first Anglican church materialized by 1764, soon after its New Englanders arrived.43 Loyalists went on to found King’s College at Windsor in 1789, the oldest degree-granting institution in the Atlantic region. An exclusively Anglican college, it was visited in 1801 by Bishop John Inglis, who welcomed the consignment of books that had just arrived: “It will be a respectable beginning for our library … unquestionably it [the College] will be the best and most reputable seminary of learning in North America.”44 But when Lord Dalhousie came in 1817 the college had a leaky roof and only fourteen students. “The state of the building is ruinous; extremely exposed by its situation,