The New England Planters who settled in Nova Scotia during the early
1760s brought with them their familiar pattern of land division, the
town or township, which also became the unit of local government.
In general, the surveys for each township were made with precision, and
reliable maps were drawn. Unfortunately, the original map or plan
for Cornwallis Township has disappeared. There is a tradition
that it was lost in a house fire, from which records of the Registry of
Deeds were, happily, rescued. These books are kept today in the
registry office at Kentville, along with subsequent deed volumes and
later maps of the country.
Cornwallis Township, like Horton
Township from which it is separated
mainly by the Cornwallis River (Habitant River on early documents), was
to contain one hundred thousand acres. Cornwallis was assigned
one
hundred and fifty settlers, Horton two hundred, reflecting the
importance given to the visible Grand Pre dyke. Only later did
the Horton grantees realize that Cornwallis had practically as much
dyke land, more widely distributed and thus more accessible. A
feeling of deception is said to have remained in Horton for many years.
Beginning at the mouth of the
Cornwallis River, following the river to
Kentville, then south-westerly in a line parallel to the
Horton-Falmouth line to the Aylesford Township border, thence northerly
to the Bay of Fundy, then east and south by the Bay of Fundy and Minas
Basin to the place of beginning, Cornwallis Township indeed possessed
many advantages. Divided among one hundred and fifty individuals,
each proprietor was thus given the theoretical allowance of six hundred
and sixty-six and two-thirds acres. The general survey is said to
have begun in 1759. Louisburg had been captured the year before;
Quebec and Montreal were still in French hands; hostile Indians and
French were a very real threat; and so, protection of the new settlers
was essential. The typical township was composed of a compact
town site that could be easily defended, with ten-acre lots nearby for
food production, farm lots slightly removed, remote wood lots, a common
field for pasture of milk cows, a parade ground, and land allotted for
a
church and school.
The earliest Cornwallis book in
the Registry of Deeds is largely filled
with transfers of property among the original grantees. The
motive seems to have been a personal one, for the most part, as there
is little evidence of land speculation, and few, if any, new names
appear. Such transfers were commonly expressed as "on the draught
of," giving the grantee's name, and the land was usually further
described by a numbered "lot" in a numbered "division," the latter
terms not being defined in the document and therefore evidently being
well understood at the time. It is naturally assumed that these
numbers refer to a missing master plan or map, without which it is very
difficult to be precise in individual locations. Many persons, in
their search for family links, have interpreted the inclusion of the
word "homestead" in subsequent documents in same way it applies to the
settlement of the prairies in the past century, only to discover that
such loving descriptions go back only two or three generations, or
in other words, less than half the period since the first
allocations were made. Obviously the ancestors lived, but
where? Here, then, was a problem to challenge the skills of even
the most ardent crossword or jigsaw puzzle fan.
A more detailed study of the
early deed records revealed that the
divisions were numbered from one to fifteen, and the lots from one to
ten. Thus when the owner of, say, lot four in the fifth division
was shown as the immediate neighbor of the owner of lot five in the
fifth division, it became evident that the division must be the larger
unit and that it was made up of lots. With this hint, the search
moved to the Department of Lands and Forests and the Public Archives of
Nova Scotia, both in Halifax, and each eventually became something of a
gold mine of information.
In the Department of Lands and
Forests was found a neat, well-preserved
book, entitled "Cornwallis Land Survey 1761,"
1
a rare item
and
treated as such. A visit to the carefully indexed files in the
Archives turned up the original 1765 assessment roll for
Cornwallis.
2 The former bounded
each projected farm
lot in
detail and assigned a division and lot number. The latter listed,
for the most part, the names of the original grantees as given by
Eaton.
3 However, although Eaton had
arranged the names
alphabetically, there was no such attempt evident in the assessment
roll. Surely they must have been drawn up in some sort of order,
but what? They proved to have followed division and lot. A
comparison with a modern assessment roll showed one surprising
difference which provided a useful clue. In the assessment roll
for 1765 the acreage or value was not given and the amount of the taxes
revealed marked uniformity. The great majority of grantees were
billed for 4s.4d., a few for half this, several for 6s.6d., and one for
a whopping 13s. A comparison with the land allocations as given
by Eaton,
4 showed that 2s.2d. was the tax
on a half share,
4s.4d. was
for one share, and 6s.6d. for a share and a half. Later it was
discovered that the 13s. was a three-share lot, held jointly by two
persons.
Curiosity now thoroughly whetted,
a drafting board and tools came into
play. Actual dimensions were taken from the land survey book
mentioned earlier. Soon there emerged fifteen beautiful jigsaw
pieces, but, unlike the usual jigsaw parts, each had three straight
sides. It was the fourth, irregular side which finally led to
their exact position. Each was known to face a tidal estuary and
this irregular side was the shore line. Where on a present day
map of the same scale could a corresponding shore line be found?
As every puzzle fan knows, there is only one place for a moveable piece
and patience is usually rewarded. There was a place every one of
the fifteen divisions. After this it became relatively simple to
fill in the space allotted for each lot within the divisions and
Registry of Deeds provided the name of each owner. Thus was
recovered the long lost plan of the Cornwallis Township farm
lots.
Attention could now be given to the master design for the township.
In Cornwallis the town plot,
consisting of half-acre lots, was near the
ferry to Horton, at the mouth of the Cornwallis River. There were
three parade grounds, spaced within convenient walking distance from
the farms, for quick assembly in case of attack. One was at the
town site, the house presently (1981) occupied by Mr. Jack Marriot
being the old officers' quarters; another was at Chipman Corner, across
the road and to the south of the old cemetery; the third was at Upper
Canard on the site of the present Baptist Church. The ten-acre
garden plots were located from Starrs Point to the present village of
Port Williams, while the 44-acre farm lots faced the tidal estuaries of
the Little Habitant, Canard and Cornwallis Rivers. Dyke lots in
these tidal areas were divided in an attempt to give each settler a
fair share of what was described as "dyke, bad dyke, broken dyke and
salt
marsh." The land classed as dyke was still protected from the sea
and was immediately ready for crops. Bad dyke referred to poorly
drained areas, covered by the sea at very high tides and supporting an
unattractive cover of stunted trees, alders, viburnums, rushes, sedges
and coarse grass. Broken dyke was land formerly reclaimed but no
longer protected from the sea. Salt marsh had never been
reclaimed. All were measured and laid out with great precision.
The actual allocations were made
by drawing lots, with three men as
supervisors: Captain Eliakim Tupper Jr., Captain Stephen West and
Captain John Newcomb. Each of these three received a share and a
half, perhaps because of the added responsibility. Naturally, a
few of the farm lots which were found to have wet or poor land and were
thus not attractive were rejected, so that additional lots were laid
off beyond the boundaries of the original divisions, notably at the
west ends of Belcher Street and Church Street, and between Kingsport
and Pereau. Since the drawing of lots took place in 1761, when
the Seven Years' War was coming to a close, there was no longer so
great a need for elaborate protection for the settlements. As a
result, the ten-acre plots and the half-acre town lots were rapidly
consolidated into holdings of more appropriate size, while many
settlers proceeded to establish themselves on their 44-acre farm
lots. Land between Canning and Sheffield Mills, originally
designated as woodland, was recognized as desirable for clearing, as
was land west of Kentville, west of Centreville and between Kingsport
and Pereau.
It will be seen from the attached
list of grants that only 125 of the
intended 150 farm lots in the fifteen divisions were taken up by the
original grantees, while 140 names appear on the assessment roll for
1765. Of these 125 occupied lots, four were not taxable and were
therefore omitted from the assessment roll: the glebe, the first
minister's lot, the school and the common. The remaining 19
persons were assigned land in areas previously intended as woodlots.
A few other changes appear
between the land survey of 1761 and the
assessment roll of 1765. The name of John Bartlett, who received
lot 5 in division 7, a single share, is gone from the 1765 list and "a
part of Bartlett's" appears for each holding of Simon Porter, John
Newcombe and Handley Chipman. There are two persons by the name
of Hammond on the assessment roll, John Arnold and Archalaus, although
only the latter is listed by Eaton among the grantees, as receiving a
share and a half. The tax of 4s.4d. for John Arnold and 2s.2d.
for Archalaus would have covered that area and suggests a relationship
between the two men. The allocations of a half share, division 6,
lot 6, to Thomas Handley Chipman, the adjoining full share, division 6,
lot 7, to Handley Chipman and the remaining half share, division 7, lot
1, to Handley Chipman, together with "the part of Bartlett's" earlier
mentioned, are consolidated on the assessment roll as the property of
Handley Chipman and taxed for two and a half shares. No ready
explanation can be found for the Wickwire allotments. There is
only one person of this name, Peter Wickwire Jr., on Eaton's list of
grantees and only one is in his "Family Sketches".
5
However,
according to the survey plan, Peter Wickwire Sr. received a one share
farm lot, division 4, lot 2, while Peter Wickwire Jr. received a one
share farm lot, division 1, lot 2. On the assessment roll, only
one Peter Wickwire appears and he is assessed on two shares.
The approximate location of the
19 names on the assessment roll for
1765 but not on survey plan for 1761 has been traced with
difficulty. Although apparently recorded at the time, many of
these additional lots lack boundaries that are easily recognized
today. None of the settlers of that time were strangers to each
other, and to be bounded by a neighbour on one or more sides would have
been thoroughly clear. Originally intended in whole or in part as
woodland, compared to he carefully surveyed farm lots, these additional
allocations seem irregularly laid out and poorly described. A
further variable was introduced when extra acres were added to make up
for what was regarded as poorer land. The numbers assigned to
these additional lots are of little help in locating the properties,
since they were scattered around the perimeter of the previously
surveyed area, and were often at a considerable distance from each
other.
The assignment of wood lots was
entirely different. Each man was
free to search for a suitable block, and if no one else had claimed it,
he could then engage a "lot layer"
6 to
mark the
boundaries. Any
one "pitch," as the procedure was known, was limited to two hundred
acres, but many were for much less. Later, the grantee might
select another lot and have it bounded in the same way. Such
marks as "a popple tree," "a clump of birches," "a sloping willow," or
a "spring at the head of a vault" became vague with the passing years
and it is not surprising that some lots were lost in the next few
generations. It is probable, too, that many people did not bother
to acquire their entire allotments. After all, the timber had
little value, and frequently the only available land was at least a
day's journey from home. According to Eaton
7
the last
"pitch"
was made by the Hon. Samuel Chipman on Cape Blomidon in 1873.
A generation after the Planters,
when the sudden influx of Loyalist
settlers arrived, very little unoccupied good land remained and the
grants the newcomers received, generous as they may have seemed on an
ordnance map of the time, offered little advantage for permanent
settlement. This was true not only in Cornwallis Township, but
also in the other townships surrounding the Minas Basin, the Annapolis
Basin, and down into the more arable parts of the south shore of the
province. Those who succeeded in becoming established on farms
did as others have done in our generation: they worked, saved, rented
and finally purchased. Notable among the few who did so was Henry
Gesner, father of Dr. Abraham Gesner, inventor of the distillation of
petroleum, who assembled land near Chipman Corner, and Abraham, twin
brother of Henry, who located in Granville Township, Annapolis County.
There have been both
consolidations and sub-divisions of property in
Cornwallis Township during the past two centuries. Nevertheless,
many of the property lines laid out in the 1760s remain distinct,
well-recognized boundaries. From these it is possible to locate,
with some certainty, many of the sites chosen by the original Planters
for their first dwellings.
The long tables which follow
present in consolidated form information
on the 121 grantees and 4 non-taxable properties, derived from the
sources earlier mentioned, which were covered by the land survey of
1761. The shorter table refers to the 19 additional persons
mentioned in the assessment roll of 1765, who did not receive land in
the fifteen divisions. Following these tables is a series of five
maps showing farm lot divisions in Cornwallis Township. These
diagrams were prepared from the author's draft copies through the
courtesy of Michael J. Power, research technician, and Frederick
Gibson, cartographic draftsman, Nova Scotia Department of Lands and
Forests.