In the Maritimes, you’d be hard pressed to find a more strategic place than Amherst, Nova Scotia. It sits right on the edge of the Chignecto Isthmus. To the southwest lies the Bay of Fundy, with its world-beating tides. To the northeast is the Northumberland Strait, the body of water that separates Prince Edward Island from the mainland of North America, and acts as a protected passage for boats wanting to ply the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
If you want to travel by land through to the rest of Canada from anywhere else in Nova Scotia, or from Cape Breton, Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island, for that matter, the isthmus is pretty much the only way to go.
The earliest European settlers, those hard-working and God-fearing French peasants from the Loire Valley that came to be called “Acadian”, found the low-lying area of the Isthmus (called the Tantramar Marsh) very much to their liking, and painstakingly carried out a number of dyke-making projects, draining the marshes, and using a system of one-way culverts so that in a couple of seasons the rainwater would remove the salt and allow the planting of crops.
The French authorities also realised how important the isthmus was, since it was the only land route between Quebec and the French garrison at Louisbourg. So after the first siege of that outpost on Cape Breton Island, when it was returned to the French in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (in exchange for the city of Madras, India, no less!), the French military decided it would be a good idea to build a fort (Fort Beauséjour) overlooking the Chignecto Isthmus. They were spurred on, it also needs to be said, by the British constructing a similar fort (Fort Lawrence), on the south side of the nearby Missaguash River.
When you see aerial photographs of Beauséjour today it’s obvious that the French did a rather stylish job. Unfortunately, however, the five-pointed star of earthworks that supported the more frontier-style walls of vertical logs didn’t do quite as well in stopping the British. And the attack on the fort in 1755, under Col. Robert Monckton, marked the beginning of the war that would eventually result in the final conquest of all of French Canada.
The fall of Beauséjour (which the British renamed Fort Cumberland) is also famous (or more correctly “infamous”) for another reason. When Monckton and his men attacked, they found a number of local farmers in the fort. And after the defeat, these locals were told they had to sign an oath of allegiance to the British crown. They refused, quite rightly fearing reprisals from both sides, and the Brits countered by burning their farms. Thus began the expulsion (le Grand Dérangement) that would eventually lead to the forced deportation of tens of thousands of Acadians from areas that we now know as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Later, in the 19th century as Nova Scotia began to develop its agriculture and industry, Amherst really started to grow. Four of its citizens represented the colony in the deliberations leading to Canadian Confederation, and things really took off when the main railway between the province and the rest of Canada was built through the town. By 1908, Amherst’s industrial output was the highest of any area in the Maritimes, and unusual for smaller centres in the province, the town contained a number of substantial commercial buildings made out of stone. But because this is Nova Scotia, it also still has the required collection of late Victorian and Edwardian houses, mostly made from wood.
Amherst has suffered, as of late, from the downturn facing most of the province. And in keeping with the new Canadian tradition, a number of its imposing downtown buildings have fallen into disrepair, the consequence of the ubiquitous strip malls that sit out alongside the Trans-Canada Highway, the modern transportation link with the rest of the country that wends its way through the Chignecto Isthmus.
Amherst is a town of former glory, in a province that has seen better days. But for me it also happens to be the most important town in the country. Because this is where my first truly Canadian ancestor made his home, almost a hundred years before it became the sovereign nation we now know as Canada.
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It’s been estimated that the genealogy “industry” is worth at least US$1 billion a year world-wide, and it’s certainly a fascinating past-time for many. But of course much of the information people come up with is fairly ordinary. Apart from the tales passed down from generation to generation (and no doubt altered considerably by the human carriers of those stories on the way through), what we come to know about most ancestors is what has been recorded in public documents, such as births, deaths and marriages. You can usually find this sort of thing on the Internet, if you look hard enough (and are prepared to sometimes pay enough money to an ancestry website).
But the family “tree” that results from this type of quest is really the equivalent in nature of a deciduous one in the middle of winter. All the branches are there, but they’re not filled out with any leaves. When I look at these “trees”, with all their boxes and connecting lines, I can’t help myself. I see the deaths at a young age, or while giving birth, and the second and third marriages, and I begin to fantasize, trying to fill in at least some of the detail.
If you’re prepared to look harder, say for instance scanning microfilm of old newspapers, you might very occasionally find a story or two about a particular relation, especially if they managed to run afoul of the law. But generally, genealogy doesn’t really tell good stories. And as family tales tend to become quite frayed as they go back beyond about three generations, it’s almost impossible to know what really happened to most of our relations “way back when”.
There is, however, an exception to that generalisation, one that happens every so often, and when it does, particularly in a family that in later times couldn’t really be called “distinguished”, it’s like receiving a gift from the beyond. And that, I’m humbled to say, is what just happened to me in this ageing Nova Scotia town.
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Before she passed away in 2009, my mother (in her lovely handwriting) penned two pages outlining what she knew of her ancestry, all the way back to someone named Charles Baker she thought had been an Empire Loyalist, one of those residents of the American colonies who sided with the British, rather than the rebels, and as a result became a refugee following the war that created the United States.
Having never been to Nova Scotia, and certainly not knowing its history, I hadn’t really delved into the matter too deeply. I did make a stab at working through the family tree, mostly by using the excellent (and free, so long as you don’t want a print-out) Nova Scotia Vital Records website. I was able to go back to the mid-1800s, on both maternal sides. But unfortunately there was no record of this Charles Baker, since the website didn’t go further back into what must have been the 18th century.
When I got to Amherst, though, I decided to look into things a bit more thoroughly, mostly to see if I could at least find something tangible in the area (say a house, or a piece of land) that related to the Baker clan. And so I paid a visit to the Cumberland County Historical Society, and spent several mornings with its curator, Diane Shaw.
The Society has its headquarters in Grove Cottage, a house dating back to 1838 that once belonged to R.B. Dickey, one of those Amherst Fathers of Confederation. It’s well-loved and well-used, rather than stylishly preserved, and it contains some fun displays about the history of the local area, as well as a meeting room (they have a variety of heritage clubs in Amherst), a kitchen (much reduced from the original, but thankfully modernised), and a set of files and books. The files relate to the actual archives, which are truly historical documents in the original. They are housed under lock and key, using the best type of atmospheric control they can manage, in the old servants’ quarters upstairs.
When I explained to Diane who I was, and that I was looking for any information on Charles Baker, she said (very much to my surprise) that while she didn’t know anything much about him, she was very familiar with his name. You see, Diane is often called upon to research original land titles, and it turns out that in the late 1700s Charles was the county’s registrar of deeds. She had seen his signature hundreds of times, she said, and he had a very fine hand.
I also found a photocopy of a scroll Charles had written in 1827 (in wonderful penmanship, indeed) where he outlined his family connections. As he was 84 at the time, and everyone always had large families, a number of people were listed, including what would have been my great-great-great-great grandfather, his son Hance.
There were three other things, though, that really added flesh to the bones (or leaves to the tree). One was a fairly long document written by someone named Rev. Hibbert Baker, back in the 1940s, where he recounted stories told to him by his father and grandfather. Hibbert was a prolific, if somewhat flowery writer (he was a man of the cloth, after all), and his recollections of how his grandfather broke in the land on the family farm at Athol (just outside Amherst) were fascinating.
The second was a shorter document, without any author acknowledged, but which would have been written (judging by the typewriter font and the paper) in the late 1950s or early 60s. It was a story in every sense, and began with the words, “A writer of fiction would find ample ground for a stirring tale in the career and life of Charles Baker.”
The third was a reference in the Canadian Dictionary of Biography. It turns out that Charles was important enough to have his own entry in that august volume, and when I read through all the material, sitting there in the Historical Society at Amherst, my first Canadian ancestor literally came to life.
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Charles wasn’t an Empire Loyalist after all, since he came to Nova Scotia well before the Revolutionary War. He was born in the American colonies, however, in Virginia, and his father William, an English immigrant of some means and certainly some education (he also had excellent handwriting), was from all accounts well respected in that colony. So well-respected, in fact, that he had a long friendship with one of his neighbours, a certain George Washington!
William wanted the best for Charles, and when his son out-grew the education that could be provided at home, the two of them set off to enter Charles in the College of New Jersey, better known these days as Princeton University, the only university then in North America. They didn’t just hop on a coach, however, pulling behind the 18th century equivalent of a U-Haul trailer carrying Charles’s gear. No, setting off in the spring of either 1760 or 1761, they rode horses through a good chunk of frontier America, and when William became sick they had to halt their progress for an entire summer. They then met with heavy snow in the Allegheny Mountains. In the end, they didn’t reach Princeton until the next spring.
Or so the story goes. There are actually no records of a Charles Baker ever attending Princeton. He does turn up, however, enlisting in the British army under Brigadier-General John Forbes, while troops were building a road through the mountains to Fort Duquense (these days known as Pittsburgh). Charles was recorded as saying the enlistment was a favour to his father, who was being employed by a certain Adam Hoops as an army victualler.
Or once again, that’s what the family saga reveals. Charles may have been there, but you have to wonder about his father William. Working for the British Army in Pennsylvania is a far cry from supping tea with Washington in Virginia, that’s for sure. “Facts” can obviously take on various levels of shading when you go back 250-odd years.
What we do know for certain is that things were heating up in the Chignecto Isthmus at the time, and military records show Charles working in the area by 1765. Again it’s a matter of family tradition, but it’s said that Charles ended up in the Chignecto region as a result of falling in love with the daughter of Captain Edward Barron while in Quebec (Charles got around, as did the British military, when it took control of all of French Canada after the fall of Quebec in 1759).
Ann, Captain Barron’s daughter, followed her father to the Chignecto when he received a grant of land, later to be called Barronsfield. And it was at Fort Cumberland, overlooking the strategic isthmus, that Ann and Charles were married in 1770. Around the same time, Charles took up the job of deputy surveyor, a role he carried on for quite awhile. That ability with the pen (as well as his other learning) was proving to be useful in the new settlement.
But that’s certainly not the end of it. The American Revolutionary War was fast approaching, and while we usually think of the conflict as being only about those thirteen colonies on the other side of the U.S. border, back then the entire Maritimes was part of colonial Britain, and there was little to distinguish what would eventually become the state of Maine from what would later be the province of New Brunswick, just on the other side of the isthmus.
So Charles pops up again, and again in relation to Fort Cumberland. A revolutionary fire-brand named Jonathan Eddy was attempting to rally people in the general area to rise up against the British and invade Nova Scotia, and he went so far as to meet with General Washington (yes, William Baker’s old mate) to get financial as well as military support. But the lines of supply were thin, and rebels to the cause even thinner, and so it was left to Eddy to more-or-less go it alone (although he did have at least some local support from New Englanders who were less than happy with the recent influx of Yorkshiremen brought out by the British to fill the gap left by the expulsion of the Acadians).
Histories of the Battle of Fort Cumberland say that Charles told the British authorities in Halifax in July 1775 of Eddy’s plans to make a road along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy so that a rebel force could march on the Fort. His report wasn’t paramount in getting the British to send reinforcements, though (that accolade goes to Thomas Dixson, who sailed across the Minas Strait to alert authorities in Halifax). And Charles seems to have exaggerated slightly in saying Eddy controlled 5000 men (the final force that attacked was about 180).
Nevertheless, Charles was known throughout the area as being a New Englander who remained loyal to Britain. And while Eddy’s men managed to capture about a quarter of the Cumberland garrison outside the fort’s walls, the fact that the attack on the fort itself was repulsed (thanks in no small part to the timely arrival of HMS Vulture, and its load of troops), meant that Nova Scotia did not fall to rebel forces, and remained an integral part of the territory that would later become the nation of Canada.
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Charles continued as a deputy surveyor after the war ended, enumerating land parcels for the Empire Loyalists who came to the area (by now called Cumberland County, and including much of present-day New Brunswick). He did his job well, but didn’t exactly please his boss, Surveyor General Charles Morris. Morris complained that “your method of making out accounts is the most extraordinary of any among 50 Deputies now employed…were they to follow your example the annual expense of surveying for Loyalists would amount to at least 60 thousand pounds.”
The problem was that Charles paid the men who worked for him, the ones who had to tramp through all the marsh and thicket sighting the lines, more than the government allowed. In the end, his kind-heartedness meant he had to settle his debts by selling off lands that he had been granted in Moncton (these days New Brunswick’s biggest metropolitan area) and Hillsborough township.
Still, he was finally able to settle with Ann on 800 acres in Amherst Township by 1788, although he concluded that “the land is but indifferent”. The first stirrings of settlement in Amherst began to centre on the area around his holdings, and he donated both a building site for the Anglican Church, and land for a cemetery. He became a Justice of the Peace, served as clerk of the Court, and then was appointed Judge of the Inferior Court, first in Amherst, and then for all of Cumberland County. He was also Registrar of Probate for most of the rest of his life.
Ann and Charles had seven children. The eldest, Edward, was a parliamentarian who represented the Amherst area in the Nova Scotia Assembly from 1806 to 1820. And in the last years of their lives, mother and father relinquished title to their properties (including the Barronsfield estates, which Ann had inherited) to their son William, in return for “all such decent Cloathing washing firing and attendance as they may reasonably Require.” Charles died in 1835, at the age of 91. Ann followed five years later.
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No old house exists on the West Amherst parcel Charles and Ann once owned. The town long ago moved eastward, closer to the main rail line that runs between Halifax and the rest of Canada. Nor are there any remnants of the house built by later family on land they broke in along the river at Athol in the 1800s. There is a picture of it when the house was still in use, but it was abandoned when the Athol bridge washed out in 1949.
There’s no doubt about where these two long-lived, first Bakers of the Nova Scotia colony are now, however. The remains of Charles and Ann rest in that same cemetery Charles donated back in the late 1700s, although it is officially known these days as the “Old Burying Ground.” It sits along the main road to Athol. The lawns are well-mown and the whole area, which sits up on a small knoll, is surrounded by a protective fence.
Ann’s gravestone must have at one time become a bit shaky, because it has been carefully laid along the ground to keep it from blowing over and cracking into pieces. Around it are the graves of several of their children. And Charles’s stone stands proud and tall, his name and dates very legible, although the inscription below is a bit harder to work out. It reads…
A fitting tribute, I guess, from pioneering folk of English stock not normally known for effusive praise.
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As for the Barrons of Barronsfield (Ann’s parents), unfortunately their place of repose has not faired nearly as well. This is despite the fact that the Barronsfield Cemetery is just down the road from Minudie, site of an extraordinary episode in Nova Scotia history, when a man named Amos Seaman developed a grind-stone making enterprise that changed the old dikes of the Acadians into one of the busiest places in the developing province.
Seaman realised that when the tide went out on Chignecto Bay (really just the farthest reaches of the Bay of Fundy), a hard sandstone was exposed that could be cut and then floated up on boats for easy land access once the tide came back in. So he bought the 8000 acres, and set to work. Upwards of 50,000 grindstones made from the sandstone were exported to the United States each year, and Seaman became a very rich man.
There were 100 people working in the grindstone enterprise, and Seaman ensured that the local Acadians benefited most from the work and training activities. Minudie had a rail link, and wharves where many cargo ships came and went. The diked fields grew a variety of crops, and plans were made to develop further industrial enterprises.
Seaman was something of a utopian, but also a shrewd businessman, and his estate at its height was said to be the most valuable in Nova Scotia. Famous people visited him at Minudie, and he even once had an audience with the Queen (Victoria, of course). The locals referred to him as “King”.
Sadly four of “King” Seaman’s sons died before him, and when he himself passed on the family fell into hopeless dispute over his estate. All that is left of “the big show” at Minudie these days are the two churches he built (one Catholic, one Protestant – I told you he was shrewd), and the school he established, which has been turned into a museum.
There is also an Acadian cemetery next to the Catholic church, and like all such cemeteries in the Maritimes, it is beautifully maintained, with bouquets of plastic flowers on most of the gravestones, and the stones themselves polished and shining in the sun.
Down the road at Barronsfield it’s another matter. A dilapidated sign points to a rutted track that is all but impassable to any sort of vehicle save a four wheel drive. It takes the best part of fifteen minutes to walk down the hill, passing through dense forest, and the only reason you know you’ve arrived is yet another sign, tacked to a tree, that eerily proclaims …
Strangely, though, there’s nothing but blueberry bog and small trees all around. It’s only when you wade waist-high through the brush, and stumble down a slight hill, that you see what looks like part of a gravestone protruding from the scrub. And yes, most of the stones have either blown over, or have been damaged in some other way.
Oddly, however, the scrub seems to have preserved the inscriptions far better than in the Old Burying Ground back in Amherst. You can easily read what has been carved into the sandstone, and apart from the dates some of the markers look almost as if they were erected just a decade or so ago. As for the plots of Ann’s parents, however, sadly there was no sign of them at all.
~originally composed in September, 2012~