Dartmouth was first settled in 1750 when the Alderney was sent from Plymouth with 340 settlers aboard. It was part of a larger plan of settlement of the still hostile peninsula of Nova Scotia, and one of the earliest attempts by the British outside the palisades of Halifax. The town was named, in British fashion, after one of the leading Earls of the homeland, William Legge, the Second Earl of Dartmouth who died that same year. Town lore, however, has also suggested that the name was given by one the town's oldest and richest residents, James Creighton, who came from Dartmouth England, but this is out of character for the early British towns in the province and James Creighton didn't live on the Dartmouth side until the 1780's.
Dartmouth got off to a slow start. Before the town was settled or even dreamt of the area Dartmouth would come to be built on was home to a Sawmill for the fledgling colony of Halifax and the rest was portioned off as the estates of some of the colonies wealthier inhabitants like Colonel Ezikiel Gilman (who was given charge of the Sawmill) and John Slasibury, a member of Halifax's first council who land would later be escheated to James Creighton. Neither the sawmill or the estates saw any success or production in the first decades of settlement for the same reason Dartmouth would take until the arrival of the Quakers to really get on its feet. The town was unfortunately placed at the foot of the ancient portage route of the local Mi'kmaw and saw regular raids before the burying of the hatchet 1759 as Le Loutre waged a campaign against the English settlement of Nova Scotia. Dartmouth was without significant defenses in its first year and being on the Shubenacadie, the main highway of the local Mi'Kmaw, made it as easy a target as Gilman's doomed and bloodied sawmill had been. The 1751 massacre in the new town had caused quite a scare, which prompted the construction of a palisade around Dartmouth but also frightened many of its settlers away, leaving only the brave and stubborn to struggled on until the conclusion of Le Loutre's war.
Dartmouth first population boom and first major industry to follow up the failed sawmill came with the arrival of the Quakers who emigrated to the area to avoid the heavy taxation by the British onto goods imported to the homeland their newly formed country to the South. The Quakers' time in Dartmouth was brief, spanning less than a decade, but the impact was large, revitalizing the town and setting the stage for much of its later development.
Dartmouth hit its hayday in the late 1800's with boom of factory industry. Many of the countries, and some of the continents leading industrialist started their road to riches with factories founded in Dartmouth. Mott, Starr, Stairs and Allison are some of the most recognizable and successful industrialists ho made their fortunes in the later 1800's, but the Ropeworks and several other major factories sprung up in the same period and drew in immigrants from the Eastern Shore in droves. Cultural and economically this was Dartmouth's golden age.
Since the construction of the MacDonald Bridge in 1955 the city of Dartmouth has functioned primarily as a suburb of Halifax and certainly so since its amalgamation with the HRM in 1996. It still retains its independent character and spirit in spite of this, as nearly all of the communities of the HRM have, particularly among the community living in the downtown core.
James Creighton and the Creighton Farm House
Near the top of Lawlor's Hill in Dartmouth stands an unassuming little wooden house looking out over the harbour. It has quaint country air about it, enhanced by the lovely garden its owners have kept, keeping alive the spirit of its original construction. Still, it is hard to believe now looking at it after so many years of renovations and additions, but this little house is among the oldest in Dartmouth, and is certainly the oldest in the Neighbourhood surrounding Pleasant St. Though not the original farm house, this hidden gem is in fact one of the farm houses for the original family to settle the area. Once, the estate it oversaw stretched from Dartmouth to Woodside, and from the Harbour right up to Woodlawn. Because of this, much of the houses' history is deeply tied in with the history of the neighbourhood as well.
The farmhouse belonged to the descendants of James Creighton. This surname name will be familiar to most readers because of his most famous descendant, the self made folklorist, Helen Creighton. The Creightons are among Dartmouth's oldest residents, and for a time were its wealthiest. But James is important to local history in his own right. He arrived in 1749 alongside Cornwallis at the ripe age of 16. Being one of a small number surviving the first brutal winter may have helped him along. By the 1770's he had risen to become a prominent political figure in Halifax and had become one of the wealthiest people in the area, and the single largest landholder in Dartmouth by large margin. A large portion of this land was escheated to him by the Crown, after its abandonment by another original settler and politician, John Salisbury. It is from John that the house takes its registered name with the Heritage Trust. After gaining ownership of this land, James set his fortune upon expanding his estate which he called Brooklands.
A few things helped James to acquire the massive estate he did. One was that settlement in Dartmouth, until the 1800's, was grossly unpopular due to that fact that it was both on the end of the Shubenacadie portage route which the local Mi'kmaq used to to traverse the province, but it was also more susceptible to attack, being less heavily defended than Halifax. With the English, French and Mi'kmaq regularly antagonizing each other in these early days, raid from and on all these sides were fairly a fairly regular affair. Dartmouth had been particularly hard hit in 1751, and the people of both cities were slow to forget. Yet this had been where most of the wealthy settlers, though only the hardiest of them made use of it, leaving much of it either abandoned or easily part with by its owners. James also had a distinct advantage in his age. When he come over with Cornwallis, he was 16 years old, making him younger than a good deal of the settlers, meaning that when he began his estate in 1773 with the Salisbury escheating, many of the original settlers where getting up in age. When these men died, usually their estates went to public auction, where James was able to grab them up. This is how he obtained the estate of Major Ezekiel Gilman, who had owned the stretch along the end of the present Shubenacadie Canal up through what would become Austeville.
Brooklands was very important to Dartmouth's early development. It was actually from this estate that one of the cities early services was run by James. Old Ferry Road still marks the path down to his inn and ferry by the water. This service was commenced in 1786, just around the time that the Loyalists had fled from the south, many of whom settled in Preston. It was likely this growing population that he was servicing most often, considering that Old Ferry Rd connected to Old Preston Rd (now Portland St) and kept on through Lawrencetown from there. This was to become a cultural hotspot for Halifgonians in the the late 1700's, when it became the summer haunt of Governor Wentworth and his wife. This ferry service ran well into the 1800's, well after the Creightons had ceased to operate it for themselves, and was an important part of the local transportation system. After the Creightons, Thomas Davie took up the service at Brooklands, and later Joseph Findlay took over for him.
Brooklands is also significant, as its existence and subsequent sell off in the 1800's determined how much of Dartmouth would be settled though the period, and even into the 20th century. His son and grandson, both named James Creighton, carved up and sold off the Brooklands estate. Nearly all of it was sold of to the up and coming Industrialists or men of means in Dartmouth and Halifax. Motts' Halzelhurst estate would be carved out of this land, as wood Anthony Sheils Manor Hill and Judge James' Evergreen where all carved out of the Brooklands estate. These large estates took nearly 100 years to be broken up into the suburb that now stands in its place, and for many years kept the area very rural, unlike Dartmouth and Woodside on either side of it.
It was this, the third James, James G.A. Creighton, who built the only surviving house, the one at 42 Summit, in the 1830’s. Not much is known about this grandson of James, except that he was co-owner of a firm in Halifax known as Creighton and Grassie. James G.A’s time in the house was rather brief. He died in the late 1850’s. For years the property remained in the hands of trustees and was slowly and further divided into smaller and smaller parcels, but the bulk of the property near Maynard Lake (this lake was named after the original James' Son in Law, Captain Thomas Maynard was sold to Henry Stanley, an ice dealer, in 1863.
Mr. Stanley sold the house to James Ephriam Lawlor after 5 short years in 1868. Around that time the property extended back to Maynard’s Lake and fronted at about 295 Portland Street was his farmland Mr. Lawlor was to become the namesake to the entire area for the better part of a generation as the name “Lawlor’s Hill” was applied to the hill cresting over South Dartmouth well into the 20th century when the Harrison name would become the shorthand for the property.
In his younger days, Mr. Lawlor was a schoolteacher. He taught in the rural outskirts of Dartmouth. At the age of 23, in 1843, he was a teacher in the Cole Harbour area. Three years later he was teaching in Preston. Teaching seemed to be the family trade: his sister, Catherine Lawlor, was a teacher at Fort Clarence in the same years and his wife to be, Isabelle Tulloch was also a teacher, working in Preston as well, though she quite shortly after their meeting after the death of her mother. The Tulloch’s had been in Dartmouth since 1831, when Isabelle’s father, George, came over from Scotland and worked on the construction of the Shubenacadie canal.
In 1848, the year before his marriage to Isabelle, Mr. Lawlor left teaching behind to commence business at a wharf which stood at the foot of Portland Street, in the approximate location of the current Dartmouth ferry terminal. Operating under the name of J Lawlor & Co Grocery and Hardware, he started with lumber, groceries and hardware, buying lumber from Porter’s Lake, Sheet Harbour and Guysboro County mills, and supplying goods in exchange. Within a few years business prospered and he purchased the property from the heirs of John Skerry, one of the first harbour ferry operators. Mr. Lawlor’s business expanded to include imported hardware from Scotland, and supplying gold mines across the province with drills and mining equipment. He erected a long row of barns for stabling his customers’ horses and oxen, to facilitate country trade. Over about 15 years, Mr. Lawlor’s commercial success continued and he came to acquire more real estate than perhaps any other Darmouthian of his time. He became one of the many successful merchants and businessmen to own large tracts of land in South Dartmouth. Upon his early death in 1884 at age 48, the property at 42 Summit was deeded to his son, James A Lawlor.
The property changed hands a number of times over the next 40 years and, like all the properties of the neighbour, was divided into smaller and smaller lots. The house itself was next owned by William L. Barss who purchased the property from James Jr. in 1903. Mr. Barss was an active member of First Baptist Church and a friend to Hon. J.W. Johnston., who twice served as Premiere of Nova Scotia. Chartered Accountant Fred H. Oxley purchased the property from the executors of Mr. Barss’ estate in 1913, and title was transferred to Frank P. Bent, Superintendent of Postal Service, that same year, by way of deed of agreement.
It was after this that the house gained its next long time owner, whose family would come to live there for longer than any other Geoffrey R. Harrison, a high ranking employee at the Nova Scotia Trust purchased the property in 1921, where he and his wife Annie raised their family over the next 25 years. Annie acquired the property upon her husband’s death in 1947, and she continued to reside there for the next 25+ years. It is believed that in the house was split into a set of flats during the Harrison’s residency, sometime in the 1930’s, and provided some relief to the overburdened housing market in Dartmouth and Halifax which fell short of the need of the hordes of servicemen and their families who flooded the city in the Second World War. This was a common trend in the neighbourhood, though nearly all were reverted back like this one was after the war.
Interestingly, the many renovations the house has undergone, though masking the houses original New-Classical architecture, has surely exposed a few interesting historical details. One which I know of comes form the current owners, who had been working to replace the exterior shingles. When they opened up the wall by doing so they found thin sheets of old newspaper, some containing articles dating back to the American Civil War which were found to have been used as the insulation.
There is also an interesting story about the house which is worth mentioning, which was told to the current owners by the daughter of the Harrisons, Mrs. Betty Bell. She told them that Charles Lindbergh, the American aviator who made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927, is reported to have spent the night at 42 Summit Street while on a reconnaissance mission scouting landing strips in the area. Mr. Harrison, the owner of the home at the time was himself an aviator.
Though the house has lost much of its original Neo-Classical form, with its original facade being enveloped in the sunroom which was long ago added to the front of the building, and by the hodgepodge of extra rooms tacked on to its back, the houses is still tells a great deal about the neighbourhoods history, perhaps more so. It has seen many families through almost 200 years of the towns history, and it tied back to the beginning, ranking it among the towns oldest buildings.
For more information on most of the people in this article, particularly James Creighton, or on Brooklands the best place to look is The Story of Dartmouth by John Martin. This book was very helpful when I was starting out researching the neighbourhood.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Weagle for all her hard work uncovering much of the history of this home while we were doing research for the Dartmouth Heritage Museum.
Austenville
Austenville is a neighbourhood of Dartmouth that, though still present, is not considered a separate area from downtown Dartmouth. Today, the name of Austenville is only remembered by the older residents of the area and in the name of the "Austenville Owl's Club". However at the turn of the 20th century, it was a budding lower class neighbourhood with a character all its own. Austenville was primarily home to the migrants from the Eastern Shore who through the latter part of the 19th century flooded into the Dartmouth in search of better work opportunities in Dartmouth's burgeoning industrial market. Through the latter part of the 1800's and into the early 1900's Dartmouth experienced an unprecedented boom in industry as the Nova Scotian economy shifted completely in less than a lifetime from agrarian to industrial. Factories sprung up in droves in Woodside, around Dartmouth Cove and the North end of the town. Mott’s factories, Starr’s, the Ropeworks and the Acadia Sugar Refinery were just a few of the industries that had flourished in this time. For Dartmouth, the boom was two fold and symbiotic. The increased employment opportunities brought in laborers, which increased the population and in turn increased the demand for housing which the growing industrial market had made cheaper and cheaper, increasing the demand as more and more of the population was able to afford houses of their own. This created a boom in housing construction, which drew in carpenters from the Eastern Shore in droves, who further increased the demand for housing. These carpenters found ways to further reduce costs to make housing more accessible and helped spur on the growing industries, particularly those which had to do with the raw materials for construction.
These conditions in Dartmouth led to the creation of Austenville. The neighbourhood was just outside of what was then Dartmouth, which ran to about Victoria Road before it began to mingle with the remnants of Irish town and the outskirt farm lands and estates. The neighbourhood grew up in the area between Victoria, Beech, Thistle and Ochterloney Streets. This area was underdeveloped, and near to both the town and the factories where most of the residents intended to work. This made it the perfect location. In order to be able to keep prices low, and to make as many sales as possible, the lots in the area were long and narrow, giving the neighbourhood the density it was in part known for. On the these lots, the builders constructed almost exclusively Halifax Box houses which they adapted from earlier styles used in downtown Halifax. The houses built in Austenville took the basic three by three facade of the earlier homes and the simple box shape which allowed them to fit into the tight lots and adorned them with details from the more ornate styles that were popular at the time. The homes were essentially the working man's version of Victorian Eclectic as it mismatched Italianate, Second Empire, Stick, Shingle and Gothic Revival details into a series of three of four new standard forms which became clumped under the label of "Halifax Box". Though these decorative details were few, they were always present on some level. Status symbols were an essential part of the Victorian social strata, so it was considered a necessity to have some purely ascetic features of even the most practical homes in order to show you were well enough off to afford such extravagances. However, at the same time these features had to be kept fairly modest in order to keep the houses affordable.
Austenville was also known as "Slabtown" for many years, do to a feature of the neighbourhood which had given it a distinctive appearance. Since most of the people living in the neighbourhood were rather poor and came from rural areas on the Eastern Shore and already had the skills to do so, most of the residents kept animals in their narrow yards and grew fruits and vegetables to help supplement what their meager wages could afford. It was not uncommon to find a chickens, pigs or even a cow being kept in the yards of these homes. These miniature urban farms were almost exclusively fenced in by upright slabs of wood dug into the ground. It was these rather shoddy form of fencing which gave the the area its nickname.
The origin of the name "Austenville" is a story which is not perfectly clear. The name is known to have been derived from one of the early landowners, James Austen. James Austen was the Crown Surveyor for the province of Nova Scotia and though he never appears to have lived on the land, he did own part of it, and alongside Thomas Boggs, who appears to have owned a larger portion of the land that would become Austenville, he began to sell the land in small lots in the 1860's. Strangely, there was also a third seller, who sold most of the area at the core of Austenville which was a field bounded by Rose, Maple, Thistle and Pine. This was sold by James Simmonds toward the turn of the century and was divided into 28 narrow lots which sold for around $100 each. James Austen actually owned and sold less of the land than the other two, but the neighbourhood took his name nonetheless.
The Morash Dairy
It is difficult to imagine now looking at the densely populated area near Prince Albert and Pleasant in Dartmouth, but there was once a fully functioning dairy there. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that the whole dairy is still there, though not in use. Not only does the original house remain, so does the storefront for the dairy and the factory where the milk was processed. Both of these were housed in the same building, which has been refitted into the brick faced convenience store and apartments that now stand next to the farm house. Beneath the renovations of this building you can still find the slanted concrete floor which allowed for easy cleaning of the space. The barn still stands out back, though it can be difficult to see from the street. It has been converted into a large garage for the store and apartments in front of it.
The Dairy was constructed about 1922 for Edwin and Ethel Morash. According to neighbourhood lore, the Four Square style home and the dairy were both built as a honeymoon surprise for Ethel. Edwin had all of their things moved into the new home while they were away in France, and the happy couple returned they moved directly into the new home that Ethel had not even known existed before that day. The dairy was an extension of the JR Morash Dairy in Woodlawn which was also known as the Woodlawn Dairy, which had been set up by Edwin's father, John Roderick, in 1895. Edwin had first learned his trade while helping his father and brothers on this dairy when he was growing up. He and his brothers took over their father's business in 1914 and began to work on expanding the foundation their father had set for them. however, the outbreak of WWI slowed the progress in this regard, and is likely part of the reason why it took so long for the second dairy to be constructed. This second dairy, the one where Edwin and Ethel lived, was much smaller than the original Woodlawn dairy, and appears to have only functioned as a subsidiary.
Downtown Dartmouth may seem like a strange place for a Dairy, but back at the turn of the century it would have made more sense. This area of Dartmouth was just beginning its conversion from wealthy estates to the suburbs that occupy the area today. In the outskirts of what is now downtown Dartmouth, it was not uncommon for people to keep their own animals. Though this meant a dairy or farm wasn't entire out of place, the sales potential would have been quite low in the area since people often had access to their own dairy, without the need to buy it. The location is a curious until you take into consideration that at the time, most of the money for this industry was made in Halifax, which was heavily dependent on Dartmouth for its dairy. The Pleasant Street dairy may have been set up to help supply this need. Even before this second dairy was set up, the Morashes were travelling twice daily by ferry to Halifax to sell and deliver their product. It was significantly closer to the ferry than their other location, and would have shortened the distance that would have to be traveled to get to the ferry in the first place.
Edwin and his family were recognizable figures in the city as they drove their horse-drawn wagons around the streets of Woodlawn, Cole Harbour and Dartmouth and down the to the ferry to Halifax. Though they could have upgraded long before, they kept the horse drawn wagons well into the 1940’s, when they finally replaced them with more modern trucks. Though this may make it seem like they were lagging behind in traditionalism, but in many ways the Morash family revolutionized the dairy industry in Dartmouth. Before their company, the farmers in Woodlawn, Cole Harbour and the outlying areas of Dartmouth had to each drive into town to sell their product to individual patrons and stores. But the Edwin and his father took a different approach which mutually benefited them all. Alongside their own production, the Morash family began to collect the milk of the local farmers and deliver it in town for them. Most of the areas farmers found it easier to sell through them, then to take the long trip around town each day.
Edwin was powerful addition to the company, and was instrumental in this modernizing his father’s already successful business. Prior settling down on Pleasant St, he had attended the Agricultural College in Truro, before heading off overseas to join the war effort in Europe. After the Armistice, he’d remained in England for six months to further his education in Dairying at a University there. This gave him the chance to visit many dairy schools, experimental stations and agricultural exhibits across that country and across the United Kingdom. He brought all the knowledge he had collected back with him to improve the family business. The dairy was so successful that in 1946 it had outgrown the little farm behind 9 Pleasant St and the Dairy was moved to Canal St when a new completely modernized facility was built. In time, the Morash Dairy came to absorb many of the other diaries in the area, before it was absorbed into the Twin Cities Dairy Corporation, which is now in turn part of Farmer's Dairies. Still, the Morashes themselves continued to live at the old farm house. Ethel remained there until she died in the early 1990's.
The Dairy was constructed about 1922 for Edwin and Ethel Morash. According to neighbourhood lore, the Four Square style home and the dairy were both built as a honeymoon surprise for Ethel. Edwin had all of their things moved into the new home while they were away in France, and the happy couple returned they moved directly into the new home that Ethel had not even known existed before that day. The dairy was an extension of the JR Morash Dairy in Woodlawn which was also known as the Woodlawn Dairy, which had been set up by Edwin's father, John Roderick, in 1895. Edwin had first learned his trade while helping his father and brothers on this dairy when he was growing up. He and his brothers took over their father's business in 1914 and began to work on expanding the foundation their father had set for them. however, the outbreak of WWI slowed the progress in this regard, and is likely part of the reason why it took so long for the second dairy to be constructed. This second dairy, the one where Edwin and Ethel lived, was much smaller than the original Woodlawn dairy, and appears to have only functioned as a subsidiary.
Downtown Dartmouth may seem like a strange place for a Dairy, but back at the turn of the century it would have made more sense. This area of Dartmouth was just beginning its conversion from wealthy estates to the suburbs that occupy the area today. In the outskirts of what is now downtown Dartmouth, it was not uncommon for people to keep their own animals. Though this meant a dairy or farm wasn't entire out of place, the sales potential would have been quite low in the area since people often had access to their own dairy, without the need to buy it. The location is a curious until you take into consideration that at the time, most of the money for this industry was made in Halifax, which was heavily dependent on Dartmouth for its dairy. The Pleasant Street dairy may have been set up to help supply this need. Even before this second dairy was set up, the Morashes were travelling twice daily by ferry to Halifax to sell and deliver their product. It was significantly closer to the ferry than their other location, and would have shortened the distance that would have to be traveled to get to the ferry in the first place.
Edwin and his family were recognizable figures in the city as they drove their horse-drawn wagons around the streets of Woodlawn, Cole Harbour and Dartmouth and down the to the ferry to Halifax. Though they could have upgraded long before, they kept the horse drawn wagons well into the 1940’s, when they finally replaced them with more modern trucks. Though this may make it seem like they were lagging behind in traditionalism, but in many ways the Morash family revolutionized the dairy industry in Dartmouth. Before their company, the farmers in Woodlawn, Cole Harbour and the outlying areas of Dartmouth had to each drive into town to sell their product to individual patrons and stores. But the Edwin and his father took a different approach which mutually benefited them all. Alongside their own production, the Morash family began to collect the milk of the local farmers and deliver it in town for them. Most of the areas farmers found it easier to sell through them, then to take the long trip around town each day.
Edwin was powerful addition to the company, and was instrumental in this modernizing his father’s already successful business. Prior settling down on Pleasant St, he had attended the Agricultural College in Truro, before heading off overseas to join the war effort in Europe. After the Armistice, he’d remained in England for six months to further his education in Dairying at a University there. This gave him the chance to visit many dairy schools, experimental stations and agricultural exhibits across that country and across the United Kingdom. He brought all the knowledge he had collected back with him to improve the family business. The dairy was so successful that in 1946 it had outgrown the little farm behind 9 Pleasant St and the Dairy was moved to Canal St when a new completely modernized facility was built. In time, the Morash Dairy came to absorb many of the other diaries in the area, before it was absorbed into the Twin Cities Dairy Corporation, which is now in turn part of Farmer's Dairies. Still, the Morashes themselves continued to live at the old farm house. Ethel remained there until she died in the early 1990's.
I would like to thank the Cole Harbour Farm Museum for their assistance on this one. Particularly Terry, who was a great help during my preparations for the house tour this year.
The Roue House
At the corner of James St and Summit in Dartmouth stands a beautiful Victorian Eclectic home which was the residence of one of the provinces most significant figures for over half of a century. The house at 23 James St was the home and office of William Roue, the designer of the Bluenose. Through this record breaking schooner Roue brought Nova Scotia, and Dartmouth in particular, international fame; something which the town of Dartmouth was so grateful for that in 1921 they honored him with a ceremony and scroll expressing as much. Fittingly, the house's architectural style is very similar to the signature "Lunenburg Bump House" which is so characteristic of the town where his world famous schooner was built and resided.
But the house's history goes back much further than Roue himself. The house was built in 1879 for Reverend Peter Morrison of St. James church who bought the land at the top of James St. from a Judge James himself who was a close family friend, so close in fact that Alex (Sandy) James would come to marry one of the Reverend's daughters. When the Reverend first moved into the home it was much smaller than it is today, lacking the awkward additions to the back and side of the home, but even with the space constraints he and his wife raised 11 children in the house.
There is some chance that the Reverend had some input into the character of the home which makes central use of the Scottish Dormer windows which continue down from the second floor to form the two front towers of the home's face. Morrison was a proud Scotsman and may have requested this to harken back to his own roots since the rise of Victorian Eclectic architecture had encouraged those who could afford it to put a bit of personal flare into their homes. Still, most of the homes design elements would have come from A.G. Gates, the architect hired to build the house. A prolific architect in the region, Gates also designed the town's first municipal ferry terminal., The Union Protection Company building, the Belmont Hotel and an almost identical to the house to 23 James at 13 Tulip St which is a nearly identical except for some crowning details.
The Reverend lived in the house until he died in 1902 and in this time seems to have made the expansion on to the back of the home in order to accommodate his growing family. After he died his widowed wife continued to live in the house until she passed away in 1918. It was in 1922 that William Roue moved into the house with his wife Winnifred Conrod and their son Fredrick. William himself was the son of a well to do merchant and manufacturer in Halifax, James Roue, founder and owner of the Roue Bottling Company which was one of the countries earliest carbonated drink manufacturers and one of first in North America to produce Ginger Ale. William worked for his father in his younger years at their store at 121 Water St and in time came to inherit the business, which he ran off an on alongside his brother until 1929. Still, this trade wasn't where his heart was. While working for his father he took night class at the Victoria School of Art and Design (now known as NASCAD). For several years he toiled away late into the night designing vessels for the Royal Nova Scotia Yatch Squadron. Though he stuck it big in 1921 with his 17th design, the Bluenose he continued to help with the family business and took over as manager in 1926. It was William who created "Bluenose Ginger Ale", a popular brand which melded his famous work with his day to day job. In 1934 Roue left the family trade to work full time at his chosen career. For a time he had an office in downtown Halifax, but later would move his business into the office he had built onto the side of the house at 23 James St. William lived in the house until he died in 1970. By the end of Roue's career he had left an impressive legacy having designed over 200 vessels, he had designed the sectional barge which would be used heavily for coastal assaults in WWII. He was recognized by many as a genius in his field and brought fame to his home province and town.
The house has a complex history of renovations, having what appears to be at least 2 additions on the back and the one on the side as well as having been subdivided twice into apartments. This last detail is common to many homes in Dartmouth, particularly those which were constructed prior to World War II. The war brought to the region many laborers and even more servicemen and the sudden swell of people overburdened the housing market. Many in Dartmouth decided to do their part for the war effort and rent out rooms or parts of their houses. This ended up being a good way to supplement incomes, particularly for the elderly and many continued to do so after the war. It makes sense that Roue would have since that the close of the war Roue was nearly 70. Joan Payzant in one of her articles mentions the house as being a set of apartments, but it has since been restored to a one family dwelling though there are some quirks in the floor boards and ceiling that attest to the separation. For a time in the 60's the house was also split into two into 23 and 23 1/2 James St, though it is not clear now where this separation was.
The Reverend lived in the house until he died in 1902 and in this time seems to have made the expansion on to the back of the home in order to accommodate his growing family. After he died his widowed wife continued to live in the house until she passed away in 1918. It was in 1922 that William Roue moved into the house with his wife Winnifred Conrod and their son Fredrick. William himself was the son of a well to do merchant and manufacturer in Halifax, James Roue, founder and owner of the Roue Bottling Company which was one of the countries earliest carbonated drink manufacturers and one of first in North America to produce Ginger Ale. William worked for his father in his younger years at their store at 121 Water St and in time came to inherit the business, which he ran off an on alongside his brother until 1929. Still, this trade wasn't where his heart was. While working for his father he took night class at the Victoria School of Art and Design (now known as NASCAD). For several years he toiled away late into the night designing vessels for the Royal Nova Scotia Yatch Squadron. Though he stuck it big in 1921 with his 17th design, the Bluenose he continued to help with the family business and took over as manager in 1926. It was William who created "Bluenose Ginger Ale", a popular brand which melded his famous work with his day to day job. In 1934 Roue left the family trade to work full time at his chosen career. For a time he had an office in downtown Halifax, but later would move his business into the office he had built onto the side of the house at 23 James St. William lived in the house until he died in 1970. By the end of Roue's career he had left an impressive legacy having designed over 200 vessels, he had designed the sectional barge which would be used heavily for coastal assaults in WWII. He was recognized by many as a genius in his field and brought fame to his home province and town.
The house has a complex history of renovations, having what appears to be at least 2 additions on the back and the one on the side as well as having been subdivided twice into apartments. This last detail is common to many homes in Dartmouth, particularly those which were constructed prior to World War II. The war brought to the region many laborers and even more servicemen and the sudden swell of people overburdened the housing market. Many in Dartmouth decided to do their part for the war effort and rent out rooms or parts of their houses. This ended up being a good way to supplement incomes, particularly for the elderly and many continued to do so after the war. It makes sense that Roue would have since that the close of the war Roue was nearly 70. Joan Payzant in one of her articles mentions the house as being a set of apartments, but it has since been restored to a one family dwelling though there are some quirks in the floor boards and ceiling that attest to the separation. For a time in the 60's the house was also split into two into 23 and 23 1/2 James St, though it is not clear now where this separation was.
The Final Home of the "Bard of Ellenvale"
The grey, unassuming house at 114 Ochterloney St has longer and more complicated history than you might think passing it on the street. It is a run down, very simple example of Late Victorian style housing. Carbon copies of this same house were being bought up in mass around Halifax and Dartmouth from around 1875 to 1910 spurred on primarily by the sudden growth of industrial manufacturing in the area and the flood of workers it brought in. The style consisted of a simple box shape with a low pitched roof with a three by three facade and little to no decoration and any that was there was limited to the trim; a significant departure from other architecture of the period.
This house, despite its humble appearance and apparently lack of individuality, has a very long and complex history involving some of Dartmouth most famous families and one of its most interesting characters. The house was built somewhere in the mid 1870's, but its exact date of construction is not known. It was built for Andrew Shiels, the self-taught and self-styled "Bard of Ellenvale". Under the pen name "Albyn" he was Dartmouth's most popular and famous Victorian poet, as well as being a successful blacksmith, municipal magistrate, tavern owner and vigilant member of the local Presbyterian church. The reason for his more to Ochterloney St at this time is not fully know, nor is it known where he lived between this house and his beautiful estate at Maynard Lake, called Manor Hill, which he sold in 1853. What is known is that through the 1850's and 1860's Sheils was buying up the defaulted mortgages of the unfortunate residences of Irish Town. Through auctions Sheils came to own nearly all of the land between the town of Dartmouth, Octherloney and Prince Albert Rd. Though he sold most of the land for a profit he kept the land at 114 Octerloney for himself as well as the land for the little gothic house at Dundas Road and Octerloney which went to his son, George. Judging by the style of this second house and the time of its popularity this house likely Sheils' own residence between his time at Manor Hill and his time at 114 Ochterloney.
Considering Sheils' very successful career as a blacksmith, tavern owner and magistrate it is peculiar that he downsized so drastically from his great estate (which sadly burned down in the 1920's) to the house he died in on Ochterloney. However, there are several elements in his life which may have contributed to this downsizing. First of all, having been born in 1793 he would have been nearing his 60's when he sold his home at Manor Hill, and in his 80's when he moved to 114 Ochterloney. He would have been in retirement for many years, draining his savings, and also would not have been able to upkeep a large estate, nor would the travel between Manor Hill and Dartmouth been particularly appealing as the years dragged on. A compact city lot close to the town would have been much easier to manage.
Second, as he got older, there was a noticeable shift in Sheils' demeanor. Though when he first arrived in the area from Scotland in 1818 he bought a farm where Woodlawn stands today which he called Ellenvale (named after his first wife) and opened a tavern there, in final years he become such a staunch soldier of temperance. His beliefs were so strong that he left St. James church, which he had helped found, forever and published a defamatory poem about Judge Alexander James of Evergreen as part of a very public disagreement over the fact that James drank alcohol. Of course Sheils' had been known to be a hot-headed Scotsman throughout his entire life, famous for his decades long grudges such as his one with his neighbour at Ellenvale over a flooded field, but the things that spawned these grudges took on a more moralistic angle as he grew older. The shift in Sheils' character can be seen in his poetry as well. In his early days he was compared to Robbie Burns by critics and his publisher, Joseph Howe, and generally wrote nature poems and semi-historical epics like The Witch of Westcott. During this time he was known as an eccentric character, always clad in plaid and working away at his forge of in field always with a song on his lips often composing his next poem while he worked. Later, his poems became deeply critical of the people in the town around him. He began to publish scathing poems about the townspeople and their lack of morality and devotion to the church as he did in The Sabbath in Dartmouth which commented on all of the frivolous things they did instead of going to church. This was also when he published Sir Eustace, Egotist of Evergreen which was his poem criticizing Judge James' drinking habit among other things. Even in his final will he left a scathing remark for his son. The will read that he was leaving his son "six dollars to buy a bible, with my request that he reads it!". In this same will he left nearly all of the money he made in his life to charities rather than to his wife or family. All indications by the end of his life were that he was a strongly moral man who would have been likely to shun any for of sqaundering or ostentation. This may be part of the reason for the very humble house he died in.
Other changes in Sheils' life may have also contributed to his move. His blacksmithing career was becoming decreasingly profitable in the 1840's with the increased competition and decreased business opportunities that came with the bankruptcy of the Canal company which had supplied so much business. He found new work as a magistrate at this time, but he had to start over in a lot of ways in 1846 when he lost his wife and daughter in one year, leaving him virtually alone since all but one of his sons had moved away. He remarried the following year, and though he was in his 60's he started another family by adopting a daughter. The old house would have likely reminded him of his much loved first wife and daughter and would have been difficult to live in. Also, his new career was as a magistrate in town combined with his increasing age would have made moving closer to the core of Dartmouth make sense.
Why he moved to the house at 114 Ochterloney may not be know for certain, but we do know that when Sheils died in 1879 he left this house to his second wife Isabella, with condition that it be auctioned off after her death. She moved back to her home in New Glasgow and when she died in 1885 the auction advertised the sale of the house "lately owned by Andrew Shields (a common misspelling of the poet's name) and now occupied by Mr. Creighton". This was Walter Creighton, Helen's uncle and son of Annie Albro, who had apparently been renting the place from Isabella. Though Andrew Tulloch, the son of a canal worker, bought the house, he died two years later and Walter, who had continued to rent from the new owner, bought the it. Walter and his family continued to live in the home for nearly 101 years.
Walter worked as a bookkeeper to support his family and his widowed mother. He was apparently on the rise, able to not only by the house he was renting, but also had enough money to build an expansive addition to the house a year later. Their house was also one of the first in Dartmouth, along with several buildings on Ochterloney, to receive electricity.
When Walter died in 1923 his wife Sarah and daughter Isabel took over ownership of the house. Isabel worked as a stenographer to support the both of them. They made an apartment in the basement in order to help pay the bills, and this apartment is still rented out today. Sarah died in 1958 after her daughter was already in her 60's and retired. Isabel continued to live in the house likely off of her pension and rental profits. She never married or had any children, so when she left in 1980, the house passed out of the family. Being the downtown core, the house functioned as a rental unit and office ever since.
Christ Church and its accompanying cemetery together embody over 250 years of Dartmouth's history and potentially more. They cemetery may have been in use since the earliest days of settlement. Though the first record we have of a burial is in 1777, when Dartmouth was constructed the land which would become the cemetery lay just outside the bounds of the town, which ran approximately to the corner of what is now North and Dundas. Traditionally this sort of location was where people would bury their dead, rather than within the town itself, which makes it likely to have been a burial location before the first recorded burial took place.
Until 1832, when the cemetery was officially granted to Christ Church, the cemetery seems to have functioned as a sort of common burial place, being, after all, part of the Dartmouth Common at the time. During this time, we know for certain that the Quakers who had settled briefly in downtown Dartmouth were using the land. The Quakers where in Dartmouth for 15 years between 1785 and 1790, and were known to have buried their dead in this cemetery. Unfortunately, between the fact that the Quakers were not found of leaving headstones, and the sheer age of these if they were put up, there is no remaining physical evidence of this, just written record. Instead, the oldest legible headstone is that of Miriem Meagher, the wife of the Captain for whom the town “Meagher’s Grant” on the eastern shore was named. The church first began to use it alongside others who already where when the church was founded in 1817. It was in this year that a 3 year old girl named Anne Elizabeth Finlay was buried, though there is no record of where. Today, the church still uses the cemetery, continuing the 200 year old tradition of setting its parishioners to their final rest withing its iron fence.
The church has a long history of its own. Built in 1817, Christ Church holds the honour of being the first church in Dartmouth. Before its construction Anglican worshipers had to cross the harbour each Sunday or take the long trip to Preston to attend mass. By the 1800’s this had become quite taxing for the growing population of Dartmouth. The Church was an integral part of life in Dartmouth, so important in fact, that whole communities were often mobilized in the efforts to get a parish established in their area. In the case of Christ Church, Samuel Albro organized a successful fundraising campaign to help fund the construction of the planned church after a number of citizens had petitioned the government to grant land for the church to be constructed on.
Christ Church has been central to the lives of many Dartmouthians for nearly two hundred years. As their center of community life for the Anglican community and with Dartmouth being an English settlement in its inception, there has always been a significant portion of Dartmouthians tied to that community. It was the center of life in many way. Major life events and rites of passage, such as Baptisms, Marriages and Funerals all took place within the church, meaning that all of the parishioners would all have had powerful memories forged inside the church. For many Dartmouthians through the towns history, life would have begun and ended in the church, and when they had passed through for the final time their remains would have been interred in the nearby cemetery.
The churches centrality to the lives of so many of the townspeople made it a rather natural institution to keep the record of the town's history. Since its construction and formation as a parish, Christ Church has kept valuable genealogical records. It also houses the “Book of Memories”, which records the names of all of the parishioners that lost their lives serving in the World Wars and the Korean War. Many others have been memorialized in the plaques that run along the walls of the church or in the stained glass windows it is so well known for.
Beyond this, the church was an important center of the community in many other was. It was from the church that the parishioners organized their acts of charity and of their efforts to improve the community. To name just a few; at Christmas time in the Great Depression, the Church collected useful items wrapped in white to be given to families in need and after the Halifax Explosion, the church was also one of the bases of the Dartmouth Relief Commission as the city attempted to recover from the disaster. Throughout its history, the Church also played a role in the education of the community. Reverend Inglis, the first reverend of the church had run a boarding school out of the rectory in Woodlawn and Rev. Desbrisay started the first known library in Dartmouth, loaning from his extensive collection.
From the cemetery, one can see Victoria Baptist Church. This little gothic revival church was once part of Christ Church itself, built as a Sunday school and church hall in 1853. In 1905 Christ Church donated this hall to the black baptist congregation of Dartmouth, and built the new hall that you will have seen on the way up to the cemetery by Dundas St. As you will note, the new hall was much larger. The hall was needed to house the unprecedentedly large Sunday school which the church supported in the early 20th century, consisting of over six hundred students by 1933. You will notice as you pass it on Dundas St, its street side facade was made to mimic the Georgian details of the church itself.
In Nova Scotia there are only 4 materials which were used in gravestones that have survived today, though in some places materials like wood may have been used but have not lasted. In the earliest days of the British colony, Slate was used, being the abundant stone in the Halifax/Dartmouth area and therefore the most convenient and cheapest. Between the military aspect of the cities, and the severe poverty of many of the inhabitants of the province at the time of founding, this would have been a convenient stone to use as it was used in construction as well. Slate went out of style in the early part of the 19th century, and its unlikely to be seen in Christ Church Cemetery as its oldest identified graves were placed just as Slate stopped being used. As the colony got onto its own two feet sandstone began to be increasingly popular, though it was used from the beginning, just in lesser numbers. Christ Churches oldest graves are made of sandstone, Miriem Meagher’s included. This was a cheap, more aesthetic and pliable stone.
The most common stone in the Cemetery is known as whitestone, a form of marble that came onto the scene in the last half of the 19th century, beginning just around 1850 in Nova Scotia and going out of style in the 1920’s. There are a number of reasons which may have contributed to the popularization of this stone in the Province. Whitestone marble has been used to mark graves in the West since at least the Bronze age. It was also already used as the material for European Sculptural work for centuries and was well suited to adaptation for the increasingly ornate gravestones of the late Victorian era. To add to this, the stone was expensive and could stand as a symbol to the deceased wealth. This sort of showiness was an extremely important status symbol to the new and upwardly mobile middle class of the time. As well, whitestone has a long standing biblical symbolism surrounding pardoning and reward which may have influenced the choice as it the context of a gravestone it would have represented the Lord’s forgiveness of the deceased’s sins and the reward of heavenly bliss.
As you tour the graveyard, you will notice that the whitestone graves, though newer than their sandstone counterparts, have worn significantly, though as whitestone monuments in other areas of the world will show, this stone is generally quite resilient. This is unfortunately due to a quirk in the local marble, which is primarily composed of Dolomite, which contains magnesium which makes it more susceptible to erosion than even sandstone is.Possibly spurred on by the durability issues which would have been notice after even a few decades, polished granite would become the next popular movement in gravestones. This was only possible toward the turn of the century, due to the development of pneumatic tools which made it possible to care this extremely hard stone. Stone was imported from quarries around the province and around the world, and came in many colours and has seen a great deal of variety in the styles used. For nearly a century this has been the predominant stone used for grave markers.
Decorative elements, like stone choice, has changed over time and reflects the changing tastes, beliefs and income of the people of the province. In the earliest days of British settlement, the grand majority of graves had no decorative elements at all, likely a reflection of the economy in the province and the lack of permanent settlement by the british. The grand majority of those stone with decorative elements from this time are crowned with “Death Heads”, consisting of a skull flanked by some form or another of wings. This was the most common, but not the only form of gravestone decoration in the first days of settlement, though nearly all represented a rather blunt stance on mortality. Gravestones, if at all, were always marked with reapers, skulls, hourglasses or some combination of the three which were meant to remind onlookers of their shared fate with the deceased. Some script would accompany these images and reinforce this message, usually amounting to something along the lines of “As I am now, so too shall you be”. In nearby Massachusetts, where most of our death head stones were imported from, this is associated with Puritan attitudes toward death. With no Puritans settled in Nova Scotia, it is more likely that this had, though the Puritans early and nearby settlement of New England, become part of the cultural landscape of the New World. It should also be recognized that life in the New World in the 17th and 18th century was still very harsh for European settlers, often comprised of war, hunger and uncertain and dangerous voyages across the ocean.
From about the 1770’s on, the deaths head was falling out of favour, being replaced by the stylistically similar “Angel” or “Cherub Head” which reflect changing cultural attitudes towards death; focusing more on images of the resurrection than on images of mortality. In the earliest uses this angel’s head closely mimics the previous style, being a human like head flanked by a pair of wings. As time went on the wings tended to drift down to a more natural shoulder setting. It is in this time as well, that the very matter of fact statements of “Here lies” gave way to “Here lies the body of”, a subtle change reflecting the idea that the soul of the deceased had moved on to be with God, which the epitaphs often referenced in this period. As the 1800’s marched on, this tend to give way to the more sentimental “In memory of” or “sacred to the memory of” which we are more familiar with today. This represented a shift to have the grave act less as a marker, and more as a memorial to the deceased (Victorian sentimentality). This shift is in many way paradoxical; gravestones became both less personal and more sentimental. Scholars have argued that these new kinds of markers are less personal in that they are largely memorial that could have been set up anywhere and still have the same meaning. Gone are the direct references to the person being buried below; on these stones reference is only made to the memory of the person kept by their family and friends. Epitaphs tended toward eulogies in this period, and most stones began to show memorial urns, often paired with willow branches. All these developments also reflect a culture which had moved from a sort of matter-of-fact approach to death, to the culture of mourning which was spurred on by Queen Victoria’s years of mourning after the death of her husband.
The Urn and willow theme ties into to larger cultural movements of the late 18th century. Locally, the symbol would seem to make very little sense as almost no one in Nova Scotia in this time period would have even seen a funerary urn as these had not been popularly used since the Antiquities. This odd choice of pictorial reference is tied into the Neo-Classical Revival of the later part of the 1700’s, the very same one which gave rise to the housing style of the same name. This was a broad cultural movement attributed mainly to the first archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum which in the same way the turn of the century discoveries in King Tuts tomb sparked a sort of Egyptomania, these discoveries ignited a cultural ferfer in the West for the visual images of the ancient world. In North America this coincided with the American Revolution. With their ties severed to contemporary Europe and their new republic founded, they were seeking for places to draw inspiration for the direction of their country, and the republic of Rome seemed to suit them perfectly, leading to an even stronger cultural affinity on this side of the ocean. With Nova Scotia baring strong ties to both England and America, it makes sense that this would have spread here as well, not to mention that even in the 1800’s many of our gravestones were imported from the US. However though the urn imagry was used in Nova Scotia, the “Urn and Willow” style did not catch on nearly as much here as south of the border, a fact which is attributed largely to political strain caused by the War of 1812, which coincides with the height of its popularity in the States, and a time of discouraged and decreased cultural and economic exchange. The willow tree of the “Urn and Willow” was a rather natural pairing, already being a common christian image used to represent the gospel of Christ since it was believed that a willow could flourish regardless of how many branches were cut from it. The willow has been a symbol of mourning since the days of the old testament, and was also part of the “Victorian language of flowers” and was seen in this time to represent the forsaken, and thus was used both to represent the mourners. So it was an easy pairing to give a bit more meaning to the rather secular urn.
Other forms exist within this simplified timeline. Throughout the 1800’s and in great number in Christ Church Cemetery, sophisticated script forms of the word “Sacred” were commonly the most prominent or only decoration on a stone. For this most part this coincided with the “Urn and willow” movement of the late sandstone period, and reflects similar ideals. Side by side with the Angel or Cherub heads and usually accompanied by the “Here lies the body of” script, some graves made use of images of trumpeting figures or angels meant to symbolize the resurrection, drawing from biblical references by Paul to the coming day when “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible” (Cor 15:52). A few examples of this are likely to be seen in Christ Church Cemetery, but not on any of the cited graves for the tour. You will also observe other standard christian images such as crucifixes, olive branches, and the monogram IHS. Sometimes you will see national symbols as well. Several graves, usually of fallen soldiers have maple leaves, and the graves of some Scottish immigrants like the Tullochs have thistles.
As a particular quirk of Nova Scotia, when examined in light of other Colonial gravestones and in particular to European traditions which the settlers were drawing upon, a significant lag can be seen in the styles present in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotians, in particular the loyalists, tended to cling on longer to styles which they saw as traditional to the places from whence they’d come. Whenever movement of people occurs, particularly forcibly, as in the case of the Loyalists, those moved tend to cling to the ideas and culture which they saw as traditional to the place they came from in order to keep their roots. So the styles in Nova Scotia usually lagged behind the styles even elsewhere in North America.
This house, despite its humble appearance and apparently lack of individuality, has a very long and complex history involving some of Dartmouth most famous families and one of its most interesting characters. The house was built somewhere in the mid 1870's, but its exact date of construction is not known. It was built for Andrew Shiels, the self-taught and self-styled "Bard of Ellenvale". Under the pen name "Albyn" he was Dartmouth's most popular and famous Victorian poet, as well as being a successful blacksmith, municipal magistrate, tavern owner and vigilant member of the local Presbyterian church. The reason for his more to Ochterloney St at this time is not fully know, nor is it known where he lived between this house and his beautiful estate at Maynard Lake, called Manor Hill, which he sold in 1853. What is known is that through the 1850's and 1860's Sheils was buying up the defaulted mortgages of the unfortunate residences of Irish Town. Through auctions Sheils came to own nearly all of the land between the town of Dartmouth, Octherloney and Prince Albert Rd. Though he sold most of the land for a profit he kept the land at 114 Octerloney for himself as well as the land for the little gothic house at Dundas Road and Octerloney which went to his son, George. Judging by the style of this second house and the time of its popularity this house likely Sheils' own residence between his time at Manor Hill and his time at 114 Ochterloney.
Considering Sheils' very successful career as a blacksmith, tavern owner and magistrate it is peculiar that he downsized so drastically from his great estate (which sadly burned down in the 1920's) to the house he died in on Ochterloney. However, there are several elements in his life which may have contributed to this downsizing. First of all, having been born in 1793 he would have been nearing his 60's when he sold his home at Manor Hill, and in his 80's when he moved to 114 Ochterloney. He would have been in retirement for many years, draining his savings, and also would not have been able to upkeep a large estate, nor would the travel between Manor Hill and Dartmouth been particularly appealing as the years dragged on. A compact city lot close to the town would have been much easier to manage.
Second, as he got older, there was a noticeable shift in Sheils' demeanor. Though when he first arrived in the area from Scotland in 1818 he bought a farm where Woodlawn stands today which he called Ellenvale (named after his first wife) and opened a tavern there, in final years he become such a staunch soldier of temperance. His beliefs were so strong that he left St. James church, which he had helped found, forever and published a defamatory poem about Judge Alexander James of Evergreen as part of a very public disagreement over the fact that James drank alcohol. Of course Sheils' had been known to be a hot-headed Scotsman throughout his entire life, famous for his decades long grudges such as his one with his neighbour at Ellenvale over a flooded field, but the things that spawned these grudges took on a more moralistic angle as he grew older. The shift in Sheils' character can be seen in his poetry as well. In his early days he was compared to Robbie Burns by critics and his publisher, Joseph Howe, and generally wrote nature poems and semi-historical epics like The Witch of Westcott. During this time he was known as an eccentric character, always clad in plaid and working away at his forge of in field always with a song on his lips often composing his next poem while he worked. Later, his poems became deeply critical of the people in the town around him. He began to publish scathing poems about the townspeople and their lack of morality and devotion to the church as he did in The Sabbath in Dartmouth which commented on all of the frivolous things they did instead of going to church. This was also when he published Sir Eustace, Egotist of Evergreen which was his poem criticizing Judge James' drinking habit among other things. Even in his final will he left a scathing remark for his son. The will read that he was leaving his son "six dollars to buy a bible, with my request that he reads it!". In this same will he left nearly all of the money he made in his life to charities rather than to his wife or family. All indications by the end of his life were that he was a strongly moral man who would have been likely to shun any for of sqaundering or ostentation. This may be part of the reason for the very humble house he died in.
Other changes in Sheils' life may have also contributed to his move. His blacksmithing career was becoming decreasingly profitable in the 1840's with the increased competition and decreased business opportunities that came with the bankruptcy of the Canal company which had supplied so much business. He found new work as a magistrate at this time, but he had to start over in a lot of ways in 1846 when he lost his wife and daughter in one year, leaving him virtually alone since all but one of his sons had moved away. He remarried the following year, and though he was in his 60's he started another family by adopting a daughter. The old house would have likely reminded him of his much loved first wife and daughter and would have been difficult to live in. Also, his new career was as a magistrate in town combined with his increasing age would have made moving closer to the core of Dartmouth make sense.
Why he moved to the house at 114 Ochterloney may not be know for certain, but we do know that when Sheils died in 1879 he left this house to his second wife Isabella, with condition that it be auctioned off after her death. She moved back to her home in New Glasgow and when she died in 1885 the auction advertised the sale of the house "lately owned by Andrew Shields (a common misspelling of the poet's name) and now occupied by Mr. Creighton". This was Walter Creighton, Helen's uncle and son of Annie Albro, who had apparently been renting the place from Isabella. Though Andrew Tulloch, the son of a canal worker, bought the house, he died two years later and Walter, who had continued to rent from the new owner, bought the it. Walter and his family continued to live in the home for nearly 101 years.
Walter worked as a bookkeeper to support his family and his widowed mother. He was apparently on the rise, able to not only by the house he was renting, but also had enough money to build an expansive addition to the house a year later. Their house was also one of the first in Dartmouth, along with several buildings on Ochterloney, to receive electricity.
When Walter died in 1923 his wife Sarah and daughter Isabel took over ownership of the house. Isabel worked as a stenographer to support the both of them. They made an apartment in the basement in order to help pay the bills, and this apartment is still rented out today. Sarah died in 1958 after her daughter was already in her 60's and retired. Isabel continued to live in the house likely off of her pension and rental profits. She never married or had any children, so when she left in 1980, the house passed out of the family. Being the downtown core, the house functioned as a rental unit and office ever since.
Christ Church Cemetery
Christ Church and its accompanying cemetery together embody over 250 years of Dartmouth's history and potentially more. They cemetery may have been in use since the earliest days of settlement. Though the first record we have of a burial is in 1777, when Dartmouth was constructed the land which would become the cemetery lay just outside the bounds of the town, which ran approximately to the corner of what is now North and Dundas. Traditionally this sort of location was where people would bury their dead, rather than within the town itself, which makes it likely to have been a burial location before the first recorded burial took place.
Until 1832, when the cemetery was officially granted to Christ Church, the cemetery seems to have functioned as a sort of common burial place, being, after all, part of the Dartmouth Common at the time. During this time, we know for certain that the Quakers who had settled briefly in downtown Dartmouth were using the land. The Quakers where in Dartmouth for 15 years between 1785 and 1790, and were known to have buried their dead in this cemetery. Unfortunately, between the fact that the Quakers were not found of leaving headstones, and the sheer age of these if they were put up, there is no remaining physical evidence of this, just written record. Instead, the oldest legible headstone is that of Miriem Meagher, the wife of the Captain for whom the town “Meagher’s Grant” on the eastern shore was named. The church first began to use it alongside others who already where when the church was founded in 1817. It was in this year that a 3 year old girl named Anne Elizabeth Finlay was buried, though there is no record of where. Today, the church still uses the cemetery, continuing the 200 year old tradition of setting its parishioners to their final rest withing its iron fence.
The church has a long history of its own. Built in 1817, Christ Church holds the honour of being the first church in Dartmouth. Before its construction Anglican worshipers had to cross the harbour each Sunday or take the long trip to Preston to attend mass. By the 1800’s this had become quite taxing for the growing population of Dartmouth. The Church was an integral part of life in Dartmouth, so important in fact, that whole communities were often mobilized in the efforts to get a parish established in their area. In the case of Christ Church, Samuel Albro organized a successful fundraising campaign to help fund the construction of the planned church after a number of citizens had petitioned the government to grant land for the church to be constructed on.
Christ Church has been central to the lives of many Dartmouthians for nearly two hundred years. As their center of community life for the Anglican community and with Dartmouth being an English settlement in its inception, there has always been a significant portion of Dartmouthians tied to that community. It was the center of life in many way. Major life events and rites of passage, such as Baptisms, Marriages and Funerals all took place within the church, meaning that all of the parishioners would all have had powerful memories forged inside the church. For many Dartmouthians through the towns history, life would have begun and ended in the church, and when they had passed through for the final time their remains would have been interred in the nearby cemetery.
The churches centrality to the lives of so many of the townspeople made it a rather natural institution to keep the record of the town's history. Since its construction and formation as a parish, Christ Church has kept valuable genealogical records. It also houses the “Book of Memories”, which records the names of all of the parishioners that lost their lives serving in the World Wars and the Korean War. Many others have been memorialized in the plaques that run along the walls of the church or in the stained glass windows it is so well known for.
Beyond this, the church was an important center of the community in many other was. It was from the church that the parishioners organized their acts of charity and of their efforts to improve the community. To name just a few; at Christmas time in the Great Depression, the Church collected useful items wrapped in white to be given to families in need and after the Halifax Explosion, the church was also one of the bases of the Dartmouth Relief Commission as the city attempted to recover from the disaster. Throughout its history, the Church also played a role in the education of the community. Reverend Inglis, the first reverend of the church had run a boarding school out of the rectory in Woodlawn and Rev. Desbrisay started the first known library in Dartmouth, loaning from his extensive collection.
From the cemetery, one can see Victoria Baptist Church. This little gothic revival church was once part of Christ Church itself, built as a Sunday school and church hall in 1853. In 1905 Christ Church donated this hall to the black baptist congregation of Dartmouth, and built the new hall that you will have seen on the way up to the cemetery by Dundas St. As you will note, the new hall was much larger. The hall was needed to house the unprecedentedly large Sunday school which the church supported in the early 20th century, consisting of over six hundred students by 1933. You will notice as you pass it on Dundas St, its street side facade was made to mimic the Georgian details of the church itself.
In Nova Scotia there are only 4 materials which were used in gravestones that have survived today, though in some places materials like wood may have been used but have not lasted. In the earliest days of the British colony, Slate was used, being the abundant stone in the Halifax/Dartmouth area and therefore the most convenient and cheapest. Between the military aspect of the cities, and the severe poverty of many of the inhabitants of the province at the time of founding, this would have been a convenient stone to use as it was used in construction as well. Slate went out of style in the early part of the 19th century, and its unlikely to be seen in Christ Church Cemetery as its oldest identified graves were placed just as Slate stopped being used. As the colony got onto its own two feet sandstone began to be increasingly popular, though it was used from the beginning, just in lesser numbers. Christ Churches oldest graves are made of sandstone, Miriem Meagher’s included. This was a cheap, more aesthetic and pliable stone.
The most common stone in the Cemetery is known as whitestone, a form of marble that came onto the scene in the last half of the 19th century, beginning just around 1850 in Nova Scotia and going out of style in the 1920’s. There are a number of reasons which may have contributed to the popularization of this stone in the Province. Whitestone marble has been used to mark graves in the West since at least the Bronze age. It was also already used as the material for European Sculptural work for centuries and was well suited to adaptation for the increasingly ornate gravestones of the late Victorian era. To add to this, the stone was expensive and could stand as a symbol to the deceased wealth. This sort of showiness was an extremely important status symbol to the new and upwardly mobile middle class of the time. As well, whitestone has a long standing biblical symbolism surrounding pardoning and reward which may have influenced the choice as it the context of a gravestone it would have represented the Lord’s forgiveness of the deceased’s sins and the reward of heavenly bliss.
As you tour the graveyard, you will notice that the whitestone graves, though newer than their sandstone counterparts, have worn significantly, though as whitestone monuments in other areas of the world will show, this stone is generally quite resilient. This is unfortunately due to a quirk in the local marble, which is primarily composed of Dolomite, which contains magnesium which makes it more susceptible to erosion than even sandstone is.Possibly spurred on by the durability issues which would have been notice after even a few decades, polished granite would become the next popular movement in gravestones. This was only possible toward the turn of the century, due to the development of pneumatic tools which made it possible to care this extremely hard stone. Stone was imported from quarries around the province and around the world, and came in many colours and has seen a great deal of variety in the styles used. For nearly a century this has been the predominant stone used for grave markers.
Decorative elements, like stone choice, has changed over time and reflects the changing tastes, beliefs and income of the people of the province. In the earliest days of British settlement, the grand majority of graves had no decorative elements at all, likely a reflection of the economy in the province and the lack of permanent settlement by the british. The grand majority of those stone with decorative elements from this time are crowned with “Death Heads”, consisting of a skull flanked by some form or another of wings. This was the most common, but not the only form of gravestone decoration in the first days of settlement, though nearly all represented a rather blunt stance on mortality. Gravestones, if at all, were always marked with reapers, skulls, hourglasses or some combination of the three which were meant to remind onlookers of their shared fate with the deceased. Some script would accompany these images and reinforce this message, usually amounting to something along the lines of “As I am now, so too shall you be”. In nearby Massachusetts, where most of our death head stones were imported from, this is associated with Puritan attitudes toward death. With no Puritans settled in Nova Scotia, it is more likely that this had, though the Puritans early and nearby settlement of New England, become part of the cultural landscape of the New World. It should also be recognized that life in the New World in the 17th and 18th century was still very harsh for European settlers, often comprised of war, hunger and uncertain and dangerous voyages across the ocean.
From about the 1770’s on, the deaths head was falling out of favour, being replaced by the stylistically similar “Angel” or “Cherub Head” which reflect changing cultural attitudes towards death; focusing more on images of the resurrection than on images of mortality. In the earliest uses this angel’s head closely mimics the previous style, being a human like head flanked by a pair of wings. As time went on the wings tended to drift down to a more natural shoulder setting. It is in this time as well, that the very matter of fact statements of “Here lies” gave way to “Here lies the body of”, a subtle change reflecting the idea that the soul of the deceased had moved on to be with God, which the epitaphs often referenced in this period. As the 1800’s marched on, this tend to give way to the more sentimental “In memory of” or “sacred to the memory of” which we are more familiar with today. This represented a shift to have the grave act less as a marker, and more as a memorial to the deceased (Victorian sentimentality). This shift is in many way paradoxical; gravestones became both less personal and more sentimental. Scholars have argued that these new kinds of markers are less personal in that they are largely memorial that could have been set up anywhere and still have the same meaning. Gone are the direct references to the person being buried below; on these stones reference is only made to the memory of the person kept by their family and friends. Epitaphs tended toward eulogies in this period, and most stones began to show memorial urns, often paired with willow branches. All these developments also reflect a culture which had moved from a sort of matter-of-fact approach to death, to the culture of mourning which was spurred on by Queen Victoria’s years of mourning after the death of her husband.
The Urn and willow theme ties into to larger cultural movements of the late 18th century. Locally, the symbol would seem to make very little sense as almost no one in Nova Scotia in this time period would have even seen a funerary urn as these had not been popularly used since the Antiquities. This odd choice of pictorial reference is tied into the Neo-Classical Revival of the later part of the 1700’s, the very same one which gave rise to the housing style of the same name. This was a broad cultural movement attributed mainly to the first archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum which in the same way the turn of the century discoveries in King Tuts tomb sparked a sort of Egyptomania, these discoveries ignited a cultural ferfer in the West for the visual images of the ancient world. In North America this coincided with the American Revolution. With their ties severed to contemporary Europe and their new republic founded, they were seeking for places to draw inspiration for the direction of their country, and the republic of Rome seemed to suit them perfectly, leading to an even stronger cultural affinity on this side of the ocean. With Nova Scotia baring strong ties to both England and America, it makes sense that this would have spread here as well, not to mention that even in the 1800’s many of our gravestones were imported from the US. However though the urn imagry was used in Nova Scotia, the “Urn and Willow” style did not catch on nearly as much here as south of the border, a fact which is attributed largely to political strain caused by the War of 1812, which coincides with the height of its popularity in the States, and a time of discouraged and decreased cultural and economic exchange. The willow tree of the “Urn and Willow” was a rather natural pairing, already being a common christian image used to represent the gospel of Christ since it was believed that a willow could flourish regardless of how many branches were cut from it. The willow has been a symbol of mourning since the days of the old testament, and was also part of the “Victorian language of flowers” and was seen in this time to represent the forsaken, and thus was used both to represent the mourners. So it was an easy pairing to give a bit more meaning to the rather secular urn.
Other forms exist within this simplified timeline. Throughout the 1800’s and in great number in Christ Church Cemetery, sophisticated script forms of the word “Sacred” were commonly the most prominent or only decoration on a stone. For this most part this coincided with the “Urn and willow” movement of the late sandstone period, and reflects similar ideals. Side by side with the Angel or Cherub heads and usually accompanied by the “Here lies the body of” script, some graves made use of images of trumpeting figures or angels meant to symbolize the resurrection, drawing from biblical references by Paul to the coming day when “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible” (Cor 15:52). A few examples of this are likely to be seen in Christ Church Cemetery, but not on any of the cited graves for the tour. You will also observe other standard christian images such as crucifixes, olive branches, and the monogram IHS. Sometimes you will see national symbols as well. Several graves, usually of fallen soldiers have maple leaves, and the graves of some Scottish immigrants like the Tullochs have thistles.
As a particular quirk of Nova Scotia, when examined in light of other Colonial gravestones and in particular to European traditions which the settlers were drawing upon, a significant lag can be seen in the styles present in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotians, in particular the loyalists, tended to cling on longer to styles which they saw as traditional to the places from whence they’d come. Whenever movement of people occurs, particularly forcibly, as in the case of the Loyalists, those moved tend to cling to the ideas and culture which they saw as traditional to the place they came from in order to keep their roots. So the styles in Nova Scotia usually lagged behind the styles even elsewhere in North America.
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