Great Village, Nova Scotia

Great Village is a community of approximately 500 people located along Trunk 2 and the north shore of Cobequid Bay in Colchester County Nova Scotia. It is considered locally to incorporate the areas of Highland Village to the west and Scrabble Hill to the north northwest.

Settlement

What was to become Great Village was first settled by French-speaking Acadians around 1630 , who built dykes in the marshes, reclaimed land, and created a village called Petit-Louis.fact|date=November 2007 They were expelled by Governor Lawrence in 1755, and dispersed among the American colonies, Louisiana, England and France. They left behind memorials in the names of nearby rivers (anglicised in modern times into Portaupique and DeBert).

The next settlers, whose descendants were to remain, came in the spring of 1762: Protestants of predominantly Ulster origins, brought over by formerly-Nova-Scotia-stationed [Nova Scotia in 1775 = present-day Nova Scotia AND New Brunswick] and by then former-British-army-Captain Alexander McNutt, himself an Ulsterman. Many of these settlers re-used the burnt-out storage cellars of the expelled Acadians as the foundations for their first homes. [For a detailed history of McNutt's land promotion scheme, practically on a day-by-day basis, and with thorough references to primary sources, see: R.J. Dickson, "Ulster Emigration to Colonial America", 1718-1775", Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 1976, ISBN 0-901905-17-8, especially Chapter VIII, "The Activities of Land Promoters", pages 134-152.]

"The vessel 'Hopewell' reached Halifax carrying Irish settlers on October 9, 1761, and landed passengers where they remained over the winter. Early next spring arrangements were made to hire a vessel to take these people to the 'District of Cobequid' where the best lands and greatest quantities of marsh in that part of the country were assigned to them, and furnished them with provisions out of the Provincial Funds. Many of these settlers took up land in what is now Londonderry district. Tradition is that twenty families located along the Bay Shore between Isgonish River and Bass River." [Great Village Women's Institute, 1960, "Great Village History", 155 pages; copy on file in the National Library of Canada. For an astonishing testament to the truth of this two-hundred-year-old oral tradition, see the advertisement in the "Belfast Newsletter" of 11th March 1762, signed by twenty (sic) people. The existence of this advertisement was not known in Great Village until 1983.)]

The original grants of land of the Township of Londonderry were prepared in 1765, but because of the British government's explicit prohibition against the granting of Nova Scotia land to Irish, they were not made official until February 10, 1775.

"The reader should bear in mind that the settlement of the township of Londonderry was for the most part on those lands near the Bay Shore--Masstown, Glenholme, Great Village, Portaupique, and Bass River. The present community of Londonderry, or Acadia Mines, was not included in the Area described in the Grant of 1775. Presumably settlement of that community did not commence until iron ore was discovered there in 1847." ["Great Village History", page 40]

The Acadian settlers built dykes to create farmland from the area's saltmarsh. The village partially exists on this created land, which is still farmed. The dyked land, substantially below the inhabited portion of Great Village, is an unspoiled heritage-engineering site worthy of note.

"In the early nineteenth century this village was called 'The Port of Londonderry' and was a Port of Registry." ["Great Village History, page 7. (That is, the port of Londonderry Township, not the port of the present town of Londonderry!)] Several shipyards thrived in the late 19th century and along with lumber exports created the wealth which built many of the fine, large Victorian-period houses and gardens visible today around the village. Shipbuilding culiminated in the 1885s with the construction of the four masted barque "John M. Blaikie", which along with the barque "Kings County" built across the Minas Basin, was one of only two four masted barques ever built in Canada and among the largest wooden sailing vessels built in Canada. ["Sailing Ships of the Maritime" Charles Armour and Thomas Lackey (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1975), p. 168-169]

Literary Significance

In her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Bishop lived with her grandparents in Great Village. She based many of her stories on the life of a fictional village of the same name. One story is called appropriately, "In the Village".

Notes and references

External links

* [http://www.destination-ns.com/common/map/Map.asp?PlaceID=518&KmsWide=5&Layer=All Destination: Nova Scotia with a map of the Great Village area]
* [http://greatvillage.cobequid.net/ Great Village Community Association]