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, every wind blows through it. The passage doors are torn off, the rooms of the students are open and neglected.”45 Given the appeal of the other dissenting religions in Hants County and in the region generally, the college had little chance of attracting sufficient pupils to be viable46 (see Map 6). Lord Dalhousie pressed for it to be made non-denominational, which happened in 1829, and after that its future was secured.47
Liverpool, founded in 1760 as a fishing port, benefited from the piratical activities of its privateer ships during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, and went on to become a major seaport, second only to Halifax. But its rise was checked with the growth in the timber trade, which gave Pictou an unrivalled advantage. Methodism had become well-established in the town of Liverpool by 1804, although the minister struggled to cope financially, since the congregation was poor and he had not received his full allowance for several years.48 Writing in 1818, a Methodist minister found the Liverpool inhabitants to be “in general very respectable and very friendly … it is a Maritime town and their trade is chiefly in lumber and fish.”49 This assessment was corroborated by Lord Dartmouth:
Liverpool is in all respects a most striking contrast to Shelburne. The houses large and clean and handsome, many new ones building, the streets broad, gay and bustling in work, the people wealthy and confessing themselves to be so. Their concerns are mercantile and in the Labrador fisheries. They do trade to the West Indies but on a small scale; they were fortunate in privateering speculations during the war with America and keenly bent on that pursuit against the States.50
Anglicans established their first congregation by 1820, this being the only part of Queens County where the Church of England attracted significant support.
Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Liverpool, built in 1821.
Immigration to the province had reduced to a trickle during the mid1760s but increased dramatically between 1772 and 1775, when around nine hundred people from Yorkshire and nearby parts of northern England took up residence on both sides of the isthmus connecting Nova Scotia with New Brunswick. A combination of high rent increases in Yorkshire and the desire to benefit from Nova Scotia’s agricultural potential were the main driving forces, although many were Methodists seeking a safe haven in which to practise their faith. Having been enticed to the Chignecto Isthmus by the availability of rich marshland, they joined New Englanders who
