Prepared by E.L. Eaton in January 1961
Personal Papers, shared, but not published
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Under the French regime the
village of
Canard was relatively populous and during the first century of the
English occupation business and local industry followed somewhat the
same pattern. For many years Upper Canard was a close commercial
rival of Kentville and only when the railway from Windsor to Annapolis
became a reality did the present shire town finally attain its definite
supremacy. With the Parade and School Farm as a centre, the
enterprising Dickey family was in a fair way to accomplish for Upper
Canard what the DeWolf's did first for Wolfville and then for
Kentville, and Hugh L. Dickey Red Store attracted regular patronage
from places now as seemingly remote as New Ross. This store was
located on the property now occupied by Leverett Webster. just west of
his driveway. Other stores and small industries also sprang
up. MacRae's shoe shop employed a staff of six.
In the allocation of land in Cornwallis Township 400 acres was set aside for school purposes. Farm lot Number One in the Thirteenth Division was a part of this grant, and remained as public property for about 140 years, when it was sold in three parts to nearby farmers. The moneys realized were invested in a trust fund the income from which continued to be used for school purposes, until absorbed by the municipality along with the local schools. The origin of the old public cemetery is obscure. No mention of it has been found in any of the early records, but it appears to have been used for this purpose early in the English occupation, and it seems likely to have been set off from the public lands, either the Parade or school farm, by general consent. At some time a massive dry stone wall was erected on the north, west and south. The stone wall on the north was cleared away and the stones used to build the driveway for the barn of Leander Eaton senior, near Canard Corner, upwards of a century ago. The stones from the remaining two sides were hauled to Kentville around 1946 and used in the rip-rap wall where the highway skirts the Oaks cemetery. Removal of the west wall brought the private Harris-Dickie cemetery in and a new extension was provided in 1948 by K.L. Ells and E.L. Eaton, west of the old cemetery and south of the Harris-Dickie area. There appears to have been no provision for a highway from this corner to Shefield Mills as Lot Two in the Thirteen Division, draughted by Hesekiah Cogswell, and 30 rods wide, was bounded on the east directly by the school land. It would be less than strange, therefore, if the public land were not drawn on to provide this useful link between the growing community of Sheffield Mills and the dyke lands along the Canard. This road is said originally to have continued through what is now the public cemetery, toward the Middle Dyke. This was abandoned in favor of a path farther east, through the cemetery, the site of the present road. Graves on the east of this road have long since disappeared. Other trails across the Parade have now been reduced to one short-cut from the Middle Dyke toward Sheffield Mills and two others which give access to the Baptist Church property in the middle of the Parade. In recent years community groups have set a demonstration block of red pine, Scotch pine and Norway spruce along the east of the Parade and have landscaped that part of the Parade between the church and the main highway. The portion of the Parade at the rear of the church is used as a school playground. The farm lots in the Twelfth Division, like all those along Canard Street, were originally bounded on the north by the six-rod highway known as Washington Street, Saxon Street or more recently Hillaton, and ran southward to the dyke land. Within these divisions most of the "one share" farm lots were 24 rods from east to west. Of the ten lots in the Twelfth division, two were half shares, two were a share and one half and six were one share. Although many changes of ownership and boundaries have taken place, parts of nearly all the original boundaries are still discernible, and several of them mark present property lines. It is possible, therefore, to relate the existing homes directly with the original draughts. Present Homes and Original
Draughts in the Twelfth Division
On the south side of the highway, Robert Starr resides on Lot Ten and Roland Lockhart owns Lot Five. The four intervening lots are now divided among three owners and have long been cultivated in such a way as to obliterate the original boundaries. The original plan of the dyke lots along the Canard River resembles nothing so much as an old fashioned crazy quilt pattern. Guided, as the surveyors were, by a strong sense of fairness, dyke, bad dyke, broken dyke and salt marsh were each apportioned in irregular scattered patches that can only have been a nightmare to those who laid them out. The marvel is that in the two centuries that have passed, disputes over boundaries were so rare as to be practically unknown. An early provincial "Act of Common Fields" provides a simple method of grouping these small parcels of land into larger units which are enclosed by one fence and, in matters of common interest, are administered by a committee elected by the proprietors. The farm economy of the community has always been closely linked to the dyke lands. Dyke hay, fed to livestock and the manure applied to the upland, was the main source of extra fertility for this otherwise light, infertile soil. Following the first aboiteau on the Nesbitt or Sheffield creek near Upper Dyke, numerous other pieces of salt marsh were enclosed by the French settlers. The last and most ambitious of these French works was the Grand Dike, a part of which forms the road from Canard or Jaw Bone Corner toward Port Williams. This superseded all the smaller structures up stream but most of them may still be traced. The present aboiteau on the Canard River, known as the Wellington Dyke, was begun in 1817, finished in 1825, at a cost of slightly over £20,000. It is said that of every ten loads of fill put in the river, nine washed out. The entire cost was levied on the new land recovered from the sea, which lies east of the present paved road, less than one square mile. The long list of foreclosures and sheriff sales on record in the county office supports the tradition that this project bankrupted the generation which built it, and is silent evidence that, then as now, engineering works which involve the tides sometimes cost more than estimated. From the Parade the original highway ran beside the present homes of Kenneth L. Ells, Levi E. Borden and Oscar Starratt, there being no public road where the paved highway now exists directly west from the Parade to Upper Dyke. This New Road, a name by which it was known for many years, was opened as a result of a petition to the Court Sessions in May, 1766. Some sort of path was evidently in use across it as the petition complained that it was "now closed as a pent" by Doctor Samuel Willoughby, who owned Lot Number Five in the Thirteenth Division for a short period. In Upper Dyke Village, the farm lots are parallel to the road running north to Gibson Woods. The lots cut diagonally across the highway from Upper Dyke to Centreville, resulting in irregular shaped properties where they are intersected by this highway and by the one running westerly to Steam Mill. Benjamin Kinsman, the original grantee of this name, received Lot 9 in the Fifteenth Division. His son Nathaniel, a shoemaker, in 1777 bought Lot 6, the share and a half draught of Ebenezer Bill, owned briefly by Dr. Samuel Willoughby. For many years this was known as the Rupert Ells farm, more recently occupied by F.M. (Ted) MacDonald. Another son, Ebenezer, acquired Lot 5, originally draughted in two parts by James Johnstone and Elisha Parker, and also Lot 4, the grant of William Canady. This property, still in the direct Kinsman line, is owned by William A Kinsman, father of Kathleen and Donald. In repairing a part of the dwelling a few years ago the date 1778 was uncovered and although no record of purchase was found in the Registry of Deeds, this is probably fairly close to the date. Ebenezer Kinsman acquired smaller parts of Lots 7 and 8 south of the road to Steam Mill Village, granted to Samuel Bruster and John Porter respectively. Many properties around Upper Dyke were subdivided at an early date, and several stores and small industries springing up, among them a pottery operated by Tommy Rider. Hesekiah Cogswell, who draughted Lot Two in the Thirteenth Division on the west side of the road which leads from the Baptist church toward Sheffield Mills, is said to have complained because the highway cut diagonally rather than square across the farm - the present road from the "Burying Ground Hill" toward the Middle Dike. He was later given as compensation three acres on the south side of the six-rod highway, a part of or near the Westhaver farm. Recent property transfers make no mention of this lot and it has evidently passed to some other owner, by right of possession, if by no other title. A matter of interest to the whole community, and no doubt a juicy morsel of gossip, centred around the First Minister's Grant, Lot 5 in the Tenth Division. This property at Canard or Jawbone Corner, on the east of the highway leading toward Canning, 44 rods wide and extending from the dyke land on the south about to the MacGowan Brook which flows through the farm of Elmer Lantz. Reverend Beniah Phelps, the first clergyman, espoused the revolt of the American colonies, thereby becoming so unpopular among his parishioners that he resigned and returned to New England, first, however selling the property and pocketing the proceeds. Apparently the church and cemetery were not included in the sale as the latter continues to be used as a burial place. The following details are known of the properties in this part of Upper Canard school section. Thirteenth Division
Fourteenth Division
Fifteenth Division
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