They Planted Well v THEY PLANTED WELL NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS IN MARITIME CANADA Edited by Margaret Conrad TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 INTRODUCTION 9 IMMIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT R.S. Longley, The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley 14 D. Murray Young, Planter Settlements in the St. John Valley 29 Esther Clark Wright, Cumberland Township: A Focal Point of Early Settlement on the Bay of Fundy 36 Ernest A. Clarke, Cumberland Planters and the Aftermath of the Attack on Fort Cumberland 42 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT Jack Greene, Recent Developments in the Historiography of Colonial New England 61 George Rawlyk, J.B. Brebner and Some Recent Trends in Eighteenth-Century Maritime Historiography 97 Barry Cahill, New England Planters at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia 120 Terrence Punch, Genealogy, Migration and the Study of the Past 132 CULTURE AND SOCIETY Graeme Wynn, The Geography of the Maritime Provinces in 1800: Patterns and Questions 138 Debra McNabb, The Role of the Land in Settling Horton Township, Nova Scotia, 1766-1830 151 Elizabeth Mancke, Corporate Structure and Private Interest: The Mid-Eighteenth Century Expansion of New England 161 Allen Robertson, Methodism Among Nova Scotia's Yankee Planters 178 Daniel Goodwin, From Disunity to Integration: Evangelical Religion and Society in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 1761-1830 190 Thomas Vincent, Henry Alline: Problems of Approach and Reading the Hymns as Poetry 201 Gwendolyn Davies, Persona in Planter Journals 211 MATERIAL CULTURE Allen Penney, A Planter House: The Simeon Perkins House, Liverpool, Nova Scotia 218 Daniel Norris, An Examination of the Stephen Loomer House, Habitant, Kings County, Nova Scotia 236 Heather Davidson, Private Lives from Public Artifacts: The Architectural Heritage of Kings County Planters 249 M.A. MacDonald (with Robert Elliot), New Brunswick's 'Early Comers': Lifestyles Through Authenticated Artifacts, a Research Project 262 Deborah Trask, 'Remember Me As You Pass By': Material Evidence of the Planters in the Graveyards of Nova Scotia 298 FUTURE DIRECTIONS Phillip Buckner 307 Brian Cuthbertson 310 Marie Elwood 313 James Morrison 315 William Naftel 318 Esther Clark Wright 320 They Planted Well New England Planters in Maritime Canada Edited by Margaret Conrad Acadiensis Press Fredericton, New Brunswick 1988 © Acadiensis Press 1988 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data They Planted Well Includes bibliographical references. Proceedings of the Planter Studies Conference sponsored by the Planters Studies Committee, and held in Wolfville, N.S., October 1987. ISBN 0-919107-20-6 1. Maritime Provinces — Emigration and immigration — History. 2. New England — Emigration and immigration — History. 3. Land Settlement — Maritime Provinces. 4. Farmers — Maritime Provinces. 5. Maritime Provinces — History — to 1867.* I. Conrad, Margaret. II. Planters Study Conference (1987: Acadia University). III. Acadia University. Planter Studies Committee. FC2032.T53 1988 971.500413 C88-098642-5 Acadiensis Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Publishers Assistance Programme of the New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Recreation and Heritage and of Acadia University. COVER: William Morrison, engraved by J. Clark for Letters from Nova Scotia, published by Colburn & Bentley, London, 1830. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Turning conference proceedings into a bound volume is more difficult than most people realize. I am particularly indebted to Hazel Ward and Sherri Davis who entered the manuscript on disks for nothing more than the experience of doing it. Deborah Eaton had the thankless task of keeping paper moving, badgering delinquent authors and copy-editing their work. Without her constant presence (funded by a SEED grant) and efficient ways (surely a manifestation of her Planter roots) the manuscript may never have been completed. Acadia University Archivist Patricia Townsend was her usual helpful self during this project and Edith Haliburton cheerfully tolerated our many demands for "rare" books at a time when the Library was officially closed. The History Department at Acadia University, particularly its head Sam Nesdoly and his assistant Carolyn Bowlby, were supportive in ways too numerous to mention. The other members of the Planter Studies Committee — Douglas Baldwin, Gwendolyn Davies, Richard Davies, Alan Macintosh, Barry Moody, James Snowdon and Patricia Townsend — gave me a free hand to do as I wished and spared me the trouble of endless editorial meetings. Since books like these rarely pay for themselves, I am also grateful to those who dug even deeper into their purses to provide publication subsidies; in particular, Lois Vallely-Fischer, Dean of Arts, Marshall Conley, acting Director of Graduate Studies, and President James Perkin of Acadia University. The remainder of an Occasional Conference Grant provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the Planter Conference was essential in putting us "over the top" and I am grateful to the Council for its support. Finally, I would like to thank the contributors, most of whom scrupulously met my unrealistic deadlines and graciously accepted my editorial nit-picking. It is to them, both longtime and recent Planter scholars, that the book is dedicated. Margaret Conrad Acadia University Planter Nova Scotia, 1767 Introduction Between 1759 and 1768 some 8000 New Englanders emigrated to what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Known as "planters," the old English term for colonist, they were among the first anglophone immigrants to the area of present-day Canada. In October 1987 nearly 150 people converged on Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to attend a conference billed as "New England Planters in Maritime Canada." It was the first time that the Planters had ever been made the exclusive focus of an academic conference, and the unexpectedly large turn-out suggested that the time was long overdue for such an event. The obscurity into which the New England Planters have fallen is a curious phenomenon of Canadian historical scholarship. In numbers, the Planters included almost as many people as migrated to Quebec during the whole period of the French regime, and they equal or surpass the Icelandic, Doukhobor and Mennonite migrations to the Prairies in the nineteenth century. Yet, as George Rawlyk points out in his article in this volume, authors of Canadian history texts give short shrift to the Planters, if they mention them at all. Part of the explanation for the "missing" Planters must surely lie in their motives for coming to Nova Scotia. Because the Acadian deportation and Loyalist migration were far more dramatic events than the peaceful migration of a mass of land-hungry Yankees, the Planters have received less scholarly attention than their numbers and impact warrant. But this explanation alone is not enough. Other migrant groups endowed with a healthy strain of possessive individualism have not been expunged from our textbooks. Nor can it be said that little is known about the Planters. J.B. Brebner, whose book, The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, was first published in 1937, explored, at great length, the period during which the Planters dominated the population base of Nova Scotia. Why have Brebner's mighty labours, and those who have followed in his footsteps, not guaranteed the Planters their place in the Canadian mosaic? It would be easy to blame the Toronto-dominated Canadian history profession for deliberately down-playing the Planter heritage in the Maritimes. However, this explanation, appealing though it may be, will not do. And it would be equally remiss to blame the Americans for refusing to acknowledge that people have actually left the United States for opportunity elsewhere. Indeed, it is the Planters themselves who must share much of the blame for the neglected state of Planter Studies. As Ernest A. Clarke reveals in his discussion of Cumberland Township during the American Revolution, Planter identity was a fragile concept, at best, during the first generation of settlement. It more or less easily gave way to 10 They Planted Well Loyalist rhetoric once it became clear that Nova Scotia would remain a British possession. Even the term "Planter" atrophied from disuse. Although the New Englanders called themselves "planters," a generic term for colonist, they did not see themselves collectively as an exclusive group called "Planters." Nor did ninteenth-century historians find the term particularly useful. A.W.H. Eaton in his History of Kings County, published in 1910, described his ancestors as "Planters" but Brebner referred to them only as "New Englanders" or "Yankees." By the 1960s "Planter" was again in vogue, an attempt on the part of historians to avoid the obviously ahistorical use of the term "pre-Loyalist" to lump together all anglophone immigrants to Nova Scotia prior to the American Revolution. Nevertheless, as the articles in this collection indicate, Planter is still not a widely accepted term. In New Brunswick, a colony established in 1784 as a response to Loyalist pressure, "early comer" still vies with "pre-Loyalist" as a way of establishing the Loyalist migration as the benchmark against which all other immigrants are measured. It is instructive to consider how the Planter identity would have evolved had Nova Scotia joined the newly formed United States of America in 1776. Surely New England origins would have served the Planters well in establishing their claim to citizenship in the great republic. Such