0 - 2016 - City of Dartmouth

1750

February 25, 2023April 21, 2016 by Dartmouth

From The Story of Dartmouth, by John P. Martin:

After the Treaty of Utrecht, the first recorded proposal for a settlement on the Dartmouth side from British officials originated with Captain Thomas Coram of London in 1718. One of the districts selected for establishing colonists was “northeast of the harbor of Chebucto”. Massachusetts influence opposed this plan as being detrimental to their fisheries.

As an aside, Martin’s account of Captain Thomas Coram in 1718 and his attempt to establish settlements “northeast of the harbor of Chebucto” isn’t supported by “An historical and statistical account of Nova Scotia” by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, where it is stated that the settlement was instead planned for a location “upon the sea coast, five leagues S.W. and five leagues N.W. of Chebucto”, not on the Dartmouth side. (Five leagues is approximately 28 km). It did make me wonder about the “Bayer’s Lake mystery walls” and whether they are remnants of a such a settlement, made regardless of a lack of authorization from Colonial authorities.

When Hon. Edward Cornwallis set out to settle Halifax in 1749, he carried a complete plan of the harbor, the Basin and the surrounding shores, which had been previously surveyed by British Admiral Durell. The latter’s information about useful places on the eastern side must have been noted, and probably soon inspected by Cornwallis, for he does not lose much time in sending men over to the present Canal stream with the necessary gear to erect the sawmill.

Cornwallis also carried with him royal instructions that called for the founding of two townships “…containing 100,000 acres of land each be marked out at or near our harbor of Chebucto”.

Labaree, Leonard Woods. “Royal Instructions To British Colonial Governors“, Volume II.
New York, Octagon Books, 1967. https://archive.org/details/royalinstruction028364mbp/page/n93/mode/2up

There were about 30 men quartered at the sawmill during the winter of 1749-1750. More were living aboard the “Duke of Bedford” and on an armed sloop, which were anchored in the Cove nearby. It must have been an especially severe season, for the two ships were frozen-in so that ice had to be broken every night to prevent incursions from the shore.
Major Ezekiel Gilman was in charge of the sawmill. This pioneer local industry seems to have been an utter failure. In April 1750 Cornwallis reported to London that the mill had been his “constant plague from the beginning. We have never had one board from it”. This was partly due to Mr. Gilman’s bad management.
On the other hand, the Governor makes more encouraging reports on a second undertaking, presumably carried out on the eastern side of the harbor. In July 1750 he writes that “30,000 bricks have been burnt here which prove very good”.
Brick clay can still be clawed out of the sloping bank along the railway from Tupper Street to the Passage. Mott’s Pottery used tons of it. Until the 1880’s the Wellington brickyard flourished near the Seaplane base at Imperoyal. A record in the New York Public Library says that [Mi’kmaq] before going into battle, used to appear more ferocious by smearing their faces with “that red vermillion found on the east side of Chebucto”.
This clay belt must extend under the surface of downtown Dartmouth, because excavations at 85 Portland Street brought up quantities of plastic mud from the bottom of a 20-foot well, unearthed in the back yard.
The earliest accounts of the colonists destined to become our first citizens have been obtained from the Secretary of the Public Record Office in London. Their 1750 files disclose that the “Alderney” was getting ready to sail for this port from Gravesend on May 25. On July 6, she was reported at Plymouth, having put in there on account of contrary winds.
Evidently then, the pioneer settlers of Dartmouth sailed from the same English port as did the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620.
The actual day that the Alderney reached Halifax harbor is not definitely known. It was not before August 19, and not after the September 3rd, because Governor Cornwallis’ Council met on the latter date to select a location for the new settlers. The sites suggested were at the head of Bedford Basin, at the North West Arm, in the present Woodside-Imperoyal section and near the Saw Mill. The last mentioned was finally chosen. (The dates given are all old style. To conform to the present calendar, eleven days should be added).
The Alderney was a ship of 504 tons and the number of passengers on board totaled 353. No deaths were recorded on the voyage, mostly because immigrant vessels were by that time fitted-up with the newly-invented system of ventilation. The largest vessel among Cornwallis’ transports of 1749 was the “Wilmington” yet she carried only 340 colonists. Stretching space on the Alderney must have been very limited.
As a conjecture, the hold of the Alderney was also jammed with family heirlooms, household utensils, bedding, clothing, perhaps pet dogs, cats and parrots in the midst of seasick youngsters and oldsters inhaling the garlicky atmosphere so characteristic of old-time steerage accommodations. Hence, transatlantic voyages on these lurching and leaning sailing ships weren’t just exactly luxurious.
How our town came to be called Dartmouth is not definitely known. Dartmouth, England, was probably named for the first Earl of Dartmouth, George Legge the celebrated Admiral. He stood in high favor until suspected of treasonable correspondence with James II. Then he was imprisoned in the Tower for three months until his death in 1691.
William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth, was Keeper of the Privy Seal, and perhaps held that office in 1750 when he died. The late Harry Piers, who edited Mrs. Lawson’s History, says that our town was doubtless named after this man.
On the other hand, the name may have come from Dartmouth in Devon on the west coast of England. The 1950 guidebook of the latter town informs us that people from that district of the river Dart, migrated to Newfoundland from earliest times, probably to prosecute the fisheries.
Governor Cornwallis’ reports of 1750 indicate that he is anxious to obtain fishermen in order to make his colony self-sustaining. He hoped to have “people from the West of England next year for the fishery. Mr. Holsworth of Dartmouth sent people here this year, they have cleared ground to begin upon the Fishery next year”.
Dartmouth, England, guidebook states that the Holdsworth family occupied the post of Governor of Dartmouth Castle in hereditary succession until 1832. The descendants still live in Devon, according to recent information received from Mr. B. Lavers ex-Mayor of Dartmouth, Devon.
The town plan as laid out in 1750 comprised 11 oblong-shaped blocks, mostly 400 feet long by 200 feet wide. Each building lot was 50 by 100 feet. Reference to the cut shows that all the streets running north and south, lead to the Point, which is the front part of the settlement. The northern boundary seems to be the present line of North Street. The southern boundary is the present Green Street (once between Portland Street and Front Street), if it were produced through to Commercial St (present Alderney Drive). All the area from that line to the Point would be the 10 acre grant of Benjamin Green.
The eastern boundary is at Dundas Street, and from there the present Queen Street extends through the middle of the plot to Commercial St. But Portland and Ochterloney Streets come to an end at King Street. (No street names appear on first plan).
From that point all the way to Eastern Passage, larger areas ranging from 60 to over 200 acres, and fronting on the shore, were granted to people prominent among Cornwallis’ settlers. Adjoining Davison’s was that of Samuel Blackden (or Blagdon); next was John Salisbury at Hazelhurst shore, then Charles Lawrence in the Department of Transport vicinity; William Steele, Richard Bulkeley, Byron Finucane, Joseph Gerrish, Jacob Hurd, Charles Morris, Leonard Lockman, Rev. Aaron Cleveland, Rev. Mr. Tutty and others.

1749

March 11, 2024April 21, 2016 by Dartmouth

From The Story of Dartmouth, by John P. Martin:

Even before Dartmouth was settled, the authorities at Halifax planned for a sawmill and a guardhouse to be constructed on the eastern side of the harbor.
It was Major Gilman who erected the sawmill at Dartmouth Cove. It was likely situated on the stream which flowed from the Dartmouth Lakes (later, the Shubenacadie Canal), but the exact site is difficult to ascertain.
The land laid out for the sawmill appears under the name of Ezekiel Gilman in records of the time. The boundary of the plot began on the stream, at a spot about thirty chains (605 Meters, 0.38 miles) from Collins’s Point (King’s Wharf), near the Railway. From there it ran north 65° east, about sixty chains (1210 Meters, 0.75 miles); then north 35° west for about forty-two chains (845 meters, 0.52 Miles); then south 55° west, for seventy-two and a half chains (1460 Meters, 0.91 Miles); then south 35° east, for about fifty chains (1005 Meters, 0.62 Miles) until it reached the stream mentioned previously. This encompassed the lower half of Lake Banook, and the land to the south and southwest of it to the harbor.

066-1024x790 — A general idea of what would have been Gilman’s plot

A “Major Gilmot” noted here on “A plan of the harbour of Chebucto and town of Halifax” from 1750.

The 30th day of September 1749 was a harrowing day for Dartmouth when a major attack against Cornwallis and his men took place.
Early on that Saturday morning, six men were felling timber in an area about 180 meters from the old Dartmouth mill on Canal Street. They were suddenly attacked by Mi’kmaq who had been lurking in the thick forest nearby. It was the season of Michaelmas (the feast of St. Michael, September 29), when the nights grow longer and blacker. The Mi’kmaq had no doubt crept down from the lakes in the cover of darkness.
Four men were killed in the “‘”Mill Cove Massacre”‘”, and a fifth man carried up-country as a prisoner. The sixth one escaped, because he was probably out of musket range, he was able to get back to the Dartmouth mill where Major Ezekiel Gilman and his guards were stationed.
Governor Cornwallis had long feared an attack on his colonists, but not from the Dartmouth side. He had recently received information that the Mi’kmaq were designing to besiege the settlers at Halifax during that first winter.
The Mi’kmaq had been friendly when the transports came in June, but afterwards began to withdraw. On September 11, 1749, the Governor wrote to the home government that “Not one [Mi’kmaw] had appeared at Chebucto for some weeks past”. This was most unusual.
Then reports reached him that the Mi’kmaq were becoming hostile. At Canso in August, they took twenty English prisoners. Later at Chignecto another attack on some merchant vessels, and three dead crew. This event moved the Governor to take extraordinary precautions.
Accordingly, he ordered Captain John Gorham and his rangers to take up winter quarters in Bedford at a post which later became Fort Sackville. Halifax was well guarded at the front entrance.

But, as Historian Thomas H. Raddall points out, Cornwallis failed to realize that there was also a back entrance to his settlement.
This was by way of the river and lakes from Shubenacadie to Dartmouth, a traditional route used by Mi’kmaq for millennia – likely the route used for the Mi’kmaq assault, canoes beached at the foot of Lake Banook.
The assault occurred about seven o’clock in the morning. Two musket muzzles belched out first, and then a deadly volley spurted from the guns of the assailants.
When the soldiers from the Mill found their four dead comrades they saw that two of them had been decapitated, and their heads had been carried away. A third victim had been scalped. A pursuing detachment eventually killed two of the Mi’kmaq warriors. These men they promptly scalped, probably for the bounty.
In the collections of the N.S. Historical Society for 1892, there is a contribution by Miss Elizabeth Frame of Shubenacadie on the incident. It is an account written by one of the New Englanders living in Halifax and published in a Boston newspaper of 1749:
“Halifax, October 2, 1749 – About seven o’clock on Saturday morning before, as several of Major Gillman’s workmen with one soldier, unarmed, were hewing sticks of timber about 200 yards from his house and mills on the east side of the harbor, they were surprised by about 40 [Mi’kmaq], who first fired two shots and then a volley upon them which filled four, two of whom they scalped, and cut off the heads of the others, the fifth is missing and is supposed to have been carried off. Two or three men at work near the mill made their escape to a wooden planks—on one side of the Major’s house. As soon as he was alarmed he called in all his people and a party of 12 soldiers into his half finished blockhouse, fired his guns into the woods among them, and awaited their attack which they did not make, although they might easily have carried the place.”
During the winter of 1749-50, the storeship Duke of Bedford and an armed sloop were anchored in Dartmouth Cove, and the ice was broken around them every night in order to prevent an approach by the Mi’kmaq.
They were within “Gun Shot of the Fort at the Sawmill.” (Minutes of Council, Sunday, 7th January, 1750). The ships were under cover of a gun which was mounted on a point near the sawmill. This was likely Collins’s Point [-now “Kings Wharf”]. In June, 1752, the government mills at Dartmouth were sold at auction, for £310, to Major Ezekiel Gilman.
The story was also explored more recently, in 1944 by Thomas H. Raddall. It focused on the prior and the subsequent adventures of the captured Mill Cove wood-cutter of Major Gilman’s party, “Roger Sudden.”

Location of the “Government Mills” seen here, near the location of what would be “Marine House” at five corners today.

Settlement previous to 1749

March 11, 2024April 21, 2016 by Dartmouth

From The Story of Dartmouth, by John P. Martin:

Dartmouth, long before the European explorers and colonizing forces, had a 7,000 year history of occupation by the [Mi’kmaq]. The [Mi’kmaq] annual cycle of seasonal movement; living in dispersed interior camps during the winter, and larger coastal communities during the summer; meant there were no permanent communities in the Euro-centric sense, but Dartmouth was clearly a place frequented by [Mi’kmaq] for a very long time. Whether it was the Springtime smelt spawning in March; the harvesting of spawning herring, gathering eggs and hunting geese in April; the Summer months when the sea provided cod and shellfish, and coastal breezes that provided relief from irritants like blackflies and mosquitos, or during the autumn and its eel season; Dartmouth with its lakes and rivers, both breadbasket and transport route back and forth to the interior, was a natural place for the [Mi’kmaq] to spend their non-winter months.

A fascinating look into what Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada could’ve looked like, from the end of the ice age at 19,000 BCE, until present. By 12,000 BCE, this model shows Cape Cod extending much further into the ocean than it does at present, along what is now Brown’s bank, a ridge which more or less stretches all the way to Sable Island along the continental shelf. A sea level 300 feet lower than it is today was enough to create a kind of land bridge to the parts of western and central Nova Scotia no longer under ice, the Bay of Fundy looking like it was an inshore repository for glacial meltwater until sea levels rose. This could’ve allowed for human exploration and settlement in what is now known as Nova Scotia previous to the retreat of the ice sheet in full.

By 10,000 BCE most of the ice had retreated, which squares with the earliest artifacts found in the area, such as at Debert, which date to the same general period, if not previous to that. That sea levels had risen one hundred feet in this two thousand year period might be instructive as to why artifacts are few and far between from this period, many of the settlements, if coastal, would have long ago been lost to the sea. Assuming the artifacts found (at Debert and Belmont) were not from nomadic hunters, and that this model is somewhat accurate, Nova Scotia could have been settled for 10,000 years or more.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210807155606/https://sos.noaa.gov/catalog/datasets/blue-marble-sea-level-ice-and-vegetation-changes-19000bc-10000ad/, https://web.archive.org/web/20130219202242/https://sos.noaa.gov/Docs/bluemarble3000h.kmz

A census of the district of Acadia taken in 1687-1688 attributed to de Gargas shows Chebucto had 1 French family consisting of a man, wife and son; that there were 7 Mi’kmaw men, 7 Mi’kmaw women and 19 Mi’kmaw children, “36 souls” in total. 1 French house, 7 Mi’kmaw homes, 3 guns, 1/2 acre of improved land.

carteacadie6 map — “Chibouctou: https://cityofdartmouth.ca/carte-particuliere-de-la-coste-daccadie/

Source: “Recensements d’Acadie (1671-1752)”, (info), http://139.103.17.56/cea/livres/doc.cfm?livre=recensements, http://139.103.17.56/cea/livres/doc.cfm?retour=R0231&ident=R0040

The St. Malo fishermen who were located at Sambro and at Prospect in the days of French ownership, must often have run to the inner harbor either to dry fish on our long beaches, or to barter furs with the natives who were always their allies. On the Dartmouth side of the harbor, geographical conditions were far more favorable for congregating, with three voluminous streams of never-failing fresh water flowing down to the estuaries of the two little bays, both later known as Mill Cove.
Besides that, there was an abundance of shell fish available at low tide, along with lobsters, crabs, sea-trout, salmon, halibut, codfish, and haddock, with the usual runs of herring and mackerel in warm weather. The woods teemed with wild life. Partridge roosted on trees, moose and deer roamed the forest, and wedges of wild fowl honked high overhead.
The evidence already submitted that the [Mi’kmaq] resorted to the Cove, is borne out by the description of Cobequid (Truro district) by Paul Mascarene about 1721, where he states that “there is communication by a river from Cobequid to Chebucto”. This Implies that the Shubenacadie route had long been in use. Engineer Cowie, after studying several harbor sites for Ocean Terminals a hundred years ago was of the opinion that Chebucto had been used as a trading post over a century before its permanent settlement.
In 1701, when M. Brouillan the newly appointed French Governor, came here from Newfoundland to rule Acadia, he went overland from Chebucto to Port Royal. This is in Murdoch’s History. Dr. Thomas H. Raddall, in his bicentennial story of Halifax, thinks that on this occasion, [Mi’kmaq] transported the Governor by the well-known canoe route of Dartmouth Lakes. (One can’t imagine a viceregal party trudging over a rough black-flied trail from Bedford to Windsor, or portaging through the shallow rivers of that section of country).
One of the early sketches of Dartmouth side is preserved at the N.S. Archives. It is a detailed drawing of the whole shore and harbor, showing the depth of water from the Eastern Passage to the head of the Basin, done by the French military engineer De Labat in 1711.
The indentations of the various inlets seem quite accurate. The soundings must have occupied a full summer, and the work was no doubt done from small boats; otherwise his large vessel would have butted such shoals as Shipyard Point and the one off shore at Queen Street.

Not sure whether this is the 1711 map Martin attributes to De Labat but it is detailed, especially as it relates to the Dartmouth Cove, and it contains a number of soundings as he describes. From: “Plan de la rivière de Seine et en langage accadien Chibouquetou” http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53089940v/f1.item.r=halifax.zoom

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