Chapter Three
Settling the Rocky Spine of Nova Scotia
The ship sailed into Chester and the men off-loaded tents, axes, and supplies onto the wharf. William was in charge but no longer in uniform. The men still wore remnants of theirs.
William had a hand-drawn map. Their destination, Sherbrooke, was on the map. But there didn’t seem to be a road to it. However, another settlement, Sherwood, was halfway along a road from Chester to Windsor. They would walk that road as far as Sherwood, and then find their way through the woods to Sherbrooke.
William and his men hoisted packs, grabbed rifles and axes, and trudged up through the village to the road. They set out with jokes and jibes. Soon sweat poured down their faces, attracting swarms of mosquitoes. There was little to joke about now.
Scratched and bruised after the sixteen-mile trudge, they straggled into Sherwood at sunset. Sherwood had been settled by ex-solders like them, Newfoundland Fencibles, disbanded a year earlier. William’s weary men caught a glimpse of what they were to experience: rough log huts and out-buildings, patches of cleared land, one or two cows grazing in the meadow by the lake. Captain Evans, the man in charge at Sherwood, welcomed Ross and his band. He described the twelve miles of bogs, barrens, and streams they would still have to cross to get to their settlement area.
William’s men pitched tents, slept briefly, and at dawn, set off again into the wilderness. The mosquitoes were fierce and William wondered if he would have been better off back in the jungles of Surinam. The complaining never stopped.
This map shows how difficult it was to reach Sherbrooke in 1816. There was no road from Halifax to the south shore, so the only access was by sailing ship. There was a rutty road from Chester to Windsor. The Old Military Road ran from Annapolis to Sherbrooke, now New Ross.
(Murray Creed graphic)
At sunset they climbed the last hill and saw a deep, still lake and a free-flowing river. William paused and drew a deep breath. Then he saw wild roses; he looked at the hillside and named it Rosebank for Mary. She would get her cottage, but not this year. In the meantime, he would build a log cabin. Soon tents dotted the meadow and campfires blazed. One man threw a fishing line into the lake and caught a ten-pound salmon, which soon sizzled on the fire. They got out hardtack biscuits, lit pipes, and settled in for the night. Tomorrow they would be allocated individual plots of land. The really hard work would now begin.
William was content. As he lay in his bedroll on the hard ground, he thought of Mary in Halifax. Exhausted, he slept. He had become a landowner—one of the first in what was later to be called New Ross.
Some of the land grants were better than others, and some of the early settlers eventually gave up their dream of a new home. This document is signed by The Right Honorable George Earl of Dalhousie.
(Nova Scotia Archives)
FIRST TASKS
On the morning following, a quick breakfast over, the excitement began. Before leaving Halifax, each man had drawn lots for a “Ticket of Location”—their allocated land. Maps and charts were laid out. One-by-one, the men filed by with their numbered tickets and drew for one-hundred-acre plots on William’s chart, some of them a mile or more away. Each man then went out to find the matching number on stakes marking the boundary of his assigned hundred acres.
Some of these plots had good potential; some were less desirable. At this point, it all became very real. Some would spend the rest of their lives on the land allotted to them; many homesteads are still owned by their descendants. Others would be defeated by their own lack of practical skills and the hardships they had to endure, and half of them would give up and leave for an easier life in Halifax. Within three years only 68 of the 172 settlers remained.
In the lot plan of land grants, William was awarded five one-hundred-acre lots on Lake Lawson and another two on the lower river, plus a mill lot on the upper Gold River. His friend James Wells received one hundred acres at the upper end of the lake.
William named the lake for John Lawson, the man who gave the Ross family shelter in Halifax. William named a smaller one Lake Darling, honouring his old CO, Lieutenant Colonel Darling.
That first evening William walked over his land and decided where he would build. He chose a spot by Lake Lawson for a temporary log cabin.
From the beginning, rations were provided: biscuits, flour, salt pork, and salt beef, plus a ration of rum, brought in by the puncheon. The rum was probably opened first. The settlers were expected to get the rest of their food from the land, the forest, and the rivers and lakes. But it was too late in the year to plant a crop, so the record-cold winter of 1816 would be a long and hungry one.
Most of these men, including William, had no knowledge of farming, carpentry, or lumbering. Trees had to be felled, trimmed up, and cut into logs. “Burning frolics” came next, in which neighbours gathered to roll the logs into piles and burned them. These giant bonfires lasted for days. Tree stumps were left to rot for at least a year before an attempt was made to remove them. At first this was all done by manpower. Later that fall, oxen were brought in from Lunenburg to haul logs and help pull the stumps. Ox teams became the main source of power and are still used on Ross Farm today.
In History of New Ross, Caroline Leopold writes: “Captain William Ross cut down the first tree, probably the first ever felled by him. It was a rock maple from which a dining table and a dozen egg-cups were later made. The table is still preserved at New Ross.”
Above the slope from Lake Lawson, William marked a flat area where he would eventually build his cottage.
Author J. Lynton Martin in The Ross Farm Story writes about pioneering days in the community, land clearing, and farming methods, and illustrates the tools and implements they used, many designed and made from wood, iron, and ingenuity. He writes: “Nova Scotia is divided into two geological types: the Lowlands, such as the Annapolis Valley which constitute our best agricultural lands, and the Uplands which make up most of the province, which feature rough forested, rocky lands with small disconnected patches of tillable soil, averaging 20 acres in size.”
After William had built a log cabin, Mary and the children were able to join him. Pictured is a Ross Farm Museum staff member dressed as Mary may have looked at the time.
(Ross Farm)
William tackled one of those twenty-acre patches of land on Ross Farm. He picked up his English felling axe, and with the help of a neighbour piled the brush and set it on fire. The larger spruce and pine were used to build cabins, the hardwood cut and split for firewood, and the tall straight poles set aside for fencing. The rest they left to dry for burning next spring when the neighbours gathered for a burning frolic. The ashes provided natural fertilizer for the potatoes they would hoe in between the tree roots.
And when he had built a rough log cabin shelter for his family, he returned to Halifax for Mary and the children. He wrapped his arms around Mary, and when he could compose himself, William said, “Your home is waiting.”
William and Mary with their four children, ages ten, six, three, and one, boarded the coastal vessel next morning for Chester, one of the most meaningful steps in the Ross family saga.
In all likelihood, William hired a horse and cart to take them up the Windsor Road to Sherwood where they would have stayed overnight with Captain Evans and his family. From there they probably walked the twelve-mile route William had taken through the woods to Rosebank. The two older children would have walked—very slowly—but the three-year-old and the baby probably had to be carried. Exhausted, each mile they trudged seemed twice as long as the last one.
Finally, they came to the hill where William had stood, looking over his land for the first time, and there in the distance was a small log cabin.
“Ours?” Mary asked.
“Ours,” replied William.
William opened the door and proudly led his family into the log cabin. Mary saw her kitchen with a fireplace, a table and chairs, all of which she knew William had made. And in the second room he’d built bunk beds on one wall for the boys, a narrow bed on the opposite wall for their daughter, and a double bed against a third wall for them.
Mary, the stoic that she was, accepted the rough cabin, knowing that all she had endured and accepted came down to this—a cabin at the end of a rough road, deep in the wilderness. At last, after eleven years of marriage, they owned a home and her children were safe from the sea.
She looked out across the shining lake. It was the view that would be a constant comfort in her life—come what may.
THEIR FIRST LIVESTOCK
A letter arrived from Halifax, bearing welcome news: the gift of a cow to be brought from Lunenburg to Chester, where William must pick it up.
Little by little, the Ross family farm began to acquire livestock such as these steers that are now part of the museum.
(Matthew Gates)
It was late fall when a very tired William led the lanky, limping, brown-spotted cow along the path through the woods out to the clearing at Rosebank Cottage where Mary was waiting with the children. “Bring her some water,” he said, and his daughter lugged a wooden pail full of lake water to the cow. She emptied the pail without stopping.
In The Ross Farm Story, J. Lynton Martin describes the cow as:
The most valuable animal on the pioneer farm by far. She provided milk, butter and cheese for the family, skim milk and buttermilk for the pigs and chickens. Male offspring were trained to work under the yoke and provide the chief source of farm power until just before 1900. She provided beef for the table and leather for footwear and harness, and her manure was put back on the land to enrich the soil.
Butter churns were important devices for early farmers.
(Author)
Farm families named their milk cows, as they would be around for years and were milked twice a day, making them almost part of the family. Beef cattle were generally not named—too hard to kill them if they had a name. It was the same with pigs and poultry. Horses were given names but not oxen. Curiously, an ox team was always called Bright and Lion—Bright on the right and Lion on the left. William had built a small barn to house the cow, a couple of pigs, and some poultry.
In the winter of 1818, worry crept into the home along with snow that blew under the doorstep. Both brought a chill that lingered all winter and into spring. A modest amount of help came from an unexpected place. One morning Mary looked up to see a dark face peering in the window. Her visitor was a Mi’kmaq. He was holding out a frozen slab of meat—moose, it turned out. When Mary got up the courage to open the door he was gone—the meat lay on the snow at her feet. It was the beginning of a friendship.
NEIGHBOURS
In Cork, where William and Mary grew up, neighbours were just people who lived next door, most little more than nodding acquaintances. Family was close.
In primitive 1816 Sherbrooke (New Ross), the reverse was true. Family was distant, thousands of miles across the Atlantic, and neighbours meant everything: company in a lonely land and help with the many things one person couldn’t manage alone, from sawing a log with a pit saw, raising a rafter, to birthing a baby. Together, neighbours rolled and burned trash logs, raised barns, and threshed grain. A few brought special skills: blacksmithing, midwifery, and teaching.
William and Mary’s neighbour across the lake became the first teacher for Sherbrooke. James Wells was a twenty-seven-year-old Oxford-educated ex-Royal Navy officer who had been enticed to join the settlement for that specific job. He and his wife were granted one hundred acres on the north end of Lake Lawson, and their house was visible from William and Mary’s. To visit, they walked around the lake in summer and across the ice in winter.
On one of these visits Wells brought out two sets of navy semaphore flags, a convenient way to communicate. William took one pair of flags home, got out his old code book, and practised. Next day he went down by the lake and sent his first message—R-O-S-S.
Slowly life at the new settlement improved socially and spiritually. The first church service took place in the Ross home in 1817. Reverend Charles Inglis from Chester preached a sermon based on Isaiah 2: 4, “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares.” William could be excused if he chuckled. We don’t know if he still had his sword, probably not, but we do know that he didn’t have a plow and wouldn’t have one for several years, as the authorities in Halifax considered he did not have enough land cleared to justify receiving one.
In 1818, £100 was allocated to build a school. The first church was built in 1824, Christ Church Anglican, served by a minister from Chester. St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church opened in 1827 and a Baptist church in 1831.
William Kearney, the first medical doctor, arrived in 1835, nineteen years after the settlers had arrived at Sherbrooke. Home remedies and some highly valued tonics shipped from relatives were all they had. The Mi’kmaq helped the locals identify herbal remedies.
Social life thrived as neighbours gathered for frolics—burning frolics; mowing frolics to cut the meadow with scythes; building frolics to erect houses, barns, and outbuildings; quilting and rug-hooking frolics where the women gathered to make quilts to cover beds and mats to cover drafty floors. When the work was done, the frolicking began.
The Ross family and their neighbours often congregated after the daily chores were done. Those chores included taking care of livestock like the pigs now on the farm.
(Matthew Gates)
Neighbours dropped in without invitation, shared a cup of tea or a drink of rum punch, and stayed overnight if the weather got nasty, curling up anywhere they could find a spot to lie down, often near the kitchen stove. A plaid-covered cot in the kitchen was a necessity. The man of the house could flop there in his grubby work clothes before returning in the afternoon to work. The main meal, dinner, was served at noon, followed by a nap. Work continued until sundown. The evening meal, supper, was served at five o’clock. The men went back out to work in the fields until dark, while the women fed the animals and milked the cows, supervised the kids’ chores, and cleaned up dishes and laundry.
Mi’kmaw people dropped by. They would appear at the door with a salmon or a quarter of deer meat and be welcomed in for a visit and a mug-up. In contrast to the brutality of early Halifax and Governor Cornwallis’s bounty on the head of every Mi’kmaq, these early settlers realized that in New Ross at least, Indigenous people were their friends and teachers in practical matters of how to survive in this demanding land.
It soon became evident that a promised road eastward from Sherbrooke through Sherwood to Hammonds Plains would never be built. Instead, a more practical trail southward toward Chester Basin would be opened (Route 12, today).
In History of New Ross, Caroline Leopold recounts a tragedy that illustrates the condition of the road in its early years: “Some men going through Seffern’s Swamp one day saw a man’s hat floatin’ around on top of the mud. Pokin’ around with poles, they found, buried in the mud, the body of a man, two horses, and a wagonload of oat straw.”
Twenty years later, William and Mary’s son, Edward, noted in his diary that Sherbrooke to Chester Basin could be travelled in a day, and it was over this route that Edward hauled his produce for sale in Halifax and returned with Halifax-bought goods for sale in his Sherbrooke store.
Slowly but surely, Sherbrooke became connected with the rest of Nova Scotia, but for at least another generation, the settlers would have to rely on their neighbours for most of their daily needs and for their social life.
When William built his permanent home in 1817, there was still no sawmill in Sherbrooke. That great labour-saving device would not be available until the next year, so William was forced to cut and square his timbers with a broad axe and an adze and, with the help of a neighbour, saw his boards with a pit saw.
The Ross family and settlers like them became more and more proficient in farming. The traditional methods are preserved today.
(Matthew Gates)
Here’s how Caroline Leopold describes it in her History of New Ross:
The boards were sawed by two men, one standing above the log on a frame on which the log was laid, the other in a “saw pit” below the log. With each up and down pull, the saw bit into the log lengthways, ripping out a one-inch board and showering the man in the pit with wet sawdust, sticky with pine or spruce sap. The first boards were anything but even, perhaps one inch at one end and two at the other, with wobbles in between. But after a few cuts they learned to control the saw better and the cuts were straighter. The uneven boards were used where they wouldn’t show.
J. Lynton Martin writes in The Ross Farm Story:
Rosebank Cottage was different from the usual timber frame dwelling, but typical of many homes built in Lunenburg County. Rather than being boarded in the usual manner, the corner posts were grooved, and solid plank walls, three to four inches thick, were built up with the ends of the planks reduced to fit the grooves in the posts. Split hemlock lath was placed in the inside walls and ceilings and they were then plastered.
It was solid construction indeed, construction that lasts to this day, two centuries later. Visitors to Ross Farm Museum can stand in Mary’s place at the hearth, look at the walls that William built, and get a sense of their lives. A visitor is often invited to have tea and a hot biscuit from a pioneer recipe. Martin continues:
The cottage was built around a central flue with five fireplaces. The one in the cellar was lighted in winter during very cold nights to prevent potatoes and vegetables from freezing. The kitchen fireplace had a built-in oven to provide all cooking needs. The three other hearths, one in the dining room, one in the parlour and one upstairs served to heat the house.
It was no small feat to build such a chimney with five working fireplaces from field rocks gathered on the property. These fireplaces, including the built-in oven, are still used today.
Meanwhile the Ross family was increasing. They needed room for four small children, plus a baby, due any day. William was building a home for Mary that remains on Ross Farm Museum—Rosebank Cottage.
FIRST CROPS
William had eaten his share of potatoes in Ireland, although he had never grown a single one. His fellow countrymen relied on spuds as the main staple in their diets, more important than bread. Even in those days before the Irish potato famine, people almost starved when potato crops failed
Caroline Leopold writes: “In 1817, Captain Ross received among other things, seed potatoes (five bushels for each actual settler), turnip seed, red and white clover seed, shovels, garden rakes, Dutch bake ovens, fishing nets, rope, lead, cork and even trout hooks, twine, wax and thread.”
Even though he was born in Ireland, William was a city boy and did not grow his first potato until he started his own farm in Nova Scotia.
(Ross Farm)
The settlers were now equipped to plant their first crops, and to try for trout and salmon in the lake at their doorstep.
Preparing the soil for potatoes was not as much fun as fishing. William had cleared small areas of the smaller trees, “grubbed out” roots with a German claw hoe, and burned off the brush, loosened the blackened soil with his burnt-land hoe, and carefully planted pieces of potato. In two days, he was finished. When the plants developed, he would pick off potato bugs and hope that blight or frost wouldn’t kill the plants before harvest time.
He planted the clover seed broadcast style, stepping slowly, spreading the tiny seeds with a sweep of his arm, and raking a light layer of soil over the seed. The tiny turnip seed was planted in shallow rows and gently covered. When the plants came up, he would thin them with his hoe, leaving a plant every six inches.
His spring planting was finally done; every inch of cleared ground had been put to use. Next year he would have a lot more cleared land, perhaps a whole field, enough for a respectable farm crop.
Now that they had Patches the cow, William needed to put up a winter’s supply of hay. Nova Scotia is famous for its abundant grass production, almost as good as back home in Ireland. The meadow down by the lake was lush and green, and he set out to turn it into hay. The government didn’t provide implements for harvesting hay and grain—no one thought that far ahead. William needed a scythe, a rake, and a fork. He could make the rake and the fork himself, but in a community without a forge he would have to buy the scythe blade in Halifax. The wooden handle, he made from a slender hardwood tree.
He took his new harvesting tool down to the meadow where no one could see, and practised. On his first try, the tip of the scythe blade started low and swung high, cutting off just the heads of the timothy and clover. On the second swing, the tip dug into the ground. On the third try, he got it right, always keeping the blade parallel to the ground. He soon mastered the sweep, and saw the freshly cut grass lying in a neat swath behind him. Those moments of gratification were so welcome.
He found a small sapling with three almost parallel branches. This became his fork. Then he made a rake with pegs for teeth. He built small wooden pyramids on which he laid the grass to dry. Now that he had the tools, he called the older children to help. He cut the grass, and they raked and coiled it on the drying pyramids. Two days later, the hay was ready to stack. He criss-crossed slim rails for the base to keep the hay off the ground and prevent rotting. Then he and the children forked layer after layer of the newly sun-cured hay on the platform. He cut a ten-foot square of tent canvas, laid it over the top, and weighted it down with rocks tied to the corners. Patches now had her winter’s feed. It was late summer, and soon it would be time to harvest the grain.
J. Lynton Martin writes:
The pioneer’s grain was scattered by hand on the burnt land and covered with soil with the burnt-land harrow—and on particularly rough land with the hoe. When ripe, the grain was harvested with the sickle or reaping hook. The women often helped with this task, either reaping or tying up the sheaves. It was slow, hard work and required 15 to 20 hours for one person to reap an acre.
He adds: “One of the first thoughts of the pioneer farmer was to raise enough wheat for his bread. Imported flour was expensive and money to purchase it was scarce. But weather conditions often prevented ripening and the flour ground from it was of poor quality.”
Next came the thrashing. William fashioned a flail from a maple sapling. He then cut an eight-inch strip of eel skin and tied the two pieces together. The result was a flail. He spread another piece of tent canvas on the ground where he placed a sheaf of grain. He whacked grain off the straw with every swing of his homemade flail. He shovelled the grain and chaff into a homemade winnowing basket, shook it, and most of the light chaff blew away, leaving the grains behind ready for grinding.
Clothes were hung out to dry like this at the farm in the days before modern conveniences.
(Matthew Gates)
HOUSEWORK AT ROSEBANK
The first Rosebank Cottage had no conveniences to help Mary with cooking and cleaning. Often times pregnant, she scrubbed floors with vinegar, carried pails filled with slops, lugged water from the lake, and carried wood for the fire.
It would be 1907 before the first flush toilet, so privies provided the only comfort.
Although Mary would die in 1876, so she did see that marvel of convenience the washing machine, equipped with a wringer, the power for which was produced by the woman of the household. The handle was cranked according to precise directions. Adjustable rollers, also activated by a crank and gearing system, would not only wring out the last drop of water from the clothes, but leave the operator wrung out as well.
GOVERNOR ON HORSEBACK
George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, a Scottish landed nobleman known in Britain as “Farmer George,” arrived in Nova Scotia as governor in October 1816. Wounded in a Napoleonic War battle, he walked with a limp but was still an excellent horseman and travelled widely during his four years as governor of Nova Scotia.
One of his journeys was to visit the Sherbrooke farming settlement. Lieutenant Colonel Darling, his military secretary, wrote to William on March 4, 1817, “The Governor intends to visit the settlement probably in May. His lordship is planning, to come fish trout and salmon before the flies bite.”
He probably was a little late—the blackflies would be out in full force by then. William was also instructed to “clear as much land as possible before Lord Dalhousie’s visit to the settlement”—as if he had nothing else to do.
In August 1818, well after blackfly season, Governor Dalhousie sailed from Halifax to Chester, hired “two country ponies,” and he and his aide-de-camp rode in to Sherbrooke settlement. His diary entrees tell the story:
Lt. Ross of the Nova Scotia Fencibles, of which 100 of the men settled here are the remains, came to meet us. Mr. Ross, an Irishman, resolved on sharing their hardships and had done a great deal in the way of example, and by encouragement, but for want of a system on the part of the Government when first placing them here, they have had to contend with the most appalling difficulties.
The road to Ross’ hut is scarcely passible, what with rock, bogs and rotten logs I never could have hoped to accomplish the end without broken legs and arms.
However we did reach his place, which he calls Rosebank in about four and a half hours. He had prepared a very good dinner for us and invited his neighbour, Mr. Wells, an officer of the navy, whose distressing circumstances have let him to fix there as a schoolmaster for the sake of getting land and rations.
Mrs. Wells, a remarkably pretty woman, and very ladylike…she had been obliged to go out there in May, the snow so deep even then that she got into a wretched log house and during the first month kept warm by the thickness of the smoke.
Mrs. Ross is also lively and pleasant, but more able and more used to hardship. Her eldest girl is able to help a little. She also appears happy and contented.
Several of the settlers do their work industriously and have cleared large pieces of land—10-15 acres and will do well. But two-thirds of their number will leave the settlement as soon as rations cease.
I shall, as soon as I return to Halifax, send down a detachment of regiment to make a road accessible to Halifax.
A letter arrived March 19, 1817, informing William that “The legislature has voted 600 pounds toward opening and improving that road from Sherbrooke to Hammond’s Plains.” But the money did little toward building the cross-country route laid out for the Old Military Road from Annapolis to Halifax via Hammonds Plains. The road lay untouched until four years later. In 1822, it was to play a fateful role in the lives of William and Mary Ross. The governor did send soldiers, not a whole detachment, but only four of them. They came not to build a road but to bring a present.
Although they had hoped for something more practical, the Ross family received a piano as a gift from Governor Dalhousie.
(Author)
WILLIAM THE ADMINISTRATOR
In addition to cutting a farm out of the forest, planting and harvesting his first crops, and building Rosebank Cottage and shelter for his animals, William had another challenge. As the senior officer, magistrate, and surveyor, he had to manage the affairs of the new settlement. He received a steady stream of orders, instructions, and replies from the governor’s office. They came addressed to Lt. William Ross, Sherbrooke, and were hand delivered by any surveyor or governor official with other reasons to make the trip. As of 1818, the communications were addressed to Captain William Ross, signalling a promotion. Most of this correspondence was from his former commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel M. Darling, who was by now the military secretary to Lieutenant Governor Dalhousie.
Darling kept all letters and documents, now in safekeeping at the Nova Scotia Archives in Halifax. One would wish that someone had been as careful with William’s own letters, which have disappeared.
New settlers were arriving every month. William was ordered to assign them land and provisions.
“Lot for Frances Levy, late of Royal Artillery; Lot for Thomas Jeffety, Patrick Lawton, Edward Madden all late of Royal Artillery; Lot for John Tracey and Thomas Chives late of Nova Scotia Regiment.”
One order William was glad to receive was: “Lot for McKay, the bearer of this letter, a blacksmith.”
They needed a blacksmith badly.
William was asked for “a general plan of the settlement complete with the names of each soldier marked on the respective lots and a full report on those who have abandoned assigned land.”
Then there were the provisions, which arrived in Chester by coastal vessel. In September 1817 supplies for sixty-one officers and men, fifteen women, and thirty-one children had to be transported to Sherbrooke, distributed, and documented. Sometimes the supplies were not of good quality, and their replacements came with a warning:
Lord Dalhousie considers this a special bounty and Capt. Ross is to use his discretion. Distribution is to be made to the industrious and worthy only. Ross is to have the supplies conveyed to Sherbrooke as cheaply as possible and to guard against loss and waste; he is also to save some rations for future use.
It wasn’t enough. The ration proved to be insufficient to tide them over. Two months later William wrote again for a further ration. Darling replied:
The request for additional rations is unreasonable and I will not speak to Lord Dalhousie on the matter. Sherbrooke has been supplied 27 months instead of the promised 12. Sherbrooke has had two fine seasons and if they were not able to establish themselves by now, I doubt that they ever will. They have received extraordinary indulgence from the Government.
Put yourself in William’s shoes, having to explain that to a hundred hungry people.
His Halifax masters were also stingy with respect to blankets. In February 1820, Darling wrote that settlers Johnson, Shaw, and Smith: “are to be given land and tools—but no blankets for new children. The Government will not allow this kind of waste.”
The rations were terminated in October 1818.
Then there was the rum—ah, the rum. It was “the elixir that made pioneer life tolerable”; some were there for the rum alone. It was also a serious administrative problem for William Ross. An example: in December 1817, 485 gallons of two-thirds-proof rum was received and had to be distributed and accounted for. A month later in January when, apparently, some settlers had attempted to profit from selling rum rations (perhaps to buy blankets for their newborn?), William’s suggestion to have rum removed from the rations was rejected as “too strong a measure.” He was instructed to “exercise your authority as a Magistrate to prevent sale of rum without a licence.”
In July 1818, Lord Dalhousie wrote to Captain Ross: “The rum ration is to be discontinued. You are to sell the remainder of the present supply, using proceeds to help settlers.”
The free rum was no more, and many of the less stalwart settlers abandoned their holdings and left for Halifax, where rum was cheap and in good supply.
Medicines were also provided, although we know nothing of what kind. Lt. Col. Darling noted in his April, 1817 letter: “Lord Dalhousie wishes discretion in their distribution.”
So William was also pharmacist for the community. Bibles were sent in March of 1817, though they did not arrive with instructions as to their distribution and use.
Also in March 1817, four hundred bushels of seed potatoes arrived. That was optimistic, as very little land had been cleared in that first late summer and fall. The potatoes would be planted the following summer between the stumps with a hoe. There was still no plow, which would have spared settlers’ backs and allowed for earlier planting and better harvests.
Besides the allocation of land and the care and vittling of hundreds of people there was one ongoing concern—that road! The proposed road would link the settlement with Chester Basin, which was the shortest route to the South Shore, with its road to Lunenburg and coastal transport to Halifax. The next letter appointed William road commissioner and awarded a £100 grant for opening a road six feet in width from Gold River Bridge (just south of Ross Farm Museum) and the new settlement to what is now Charing Cross in the centre of New Ross. This was a major breakthrough.
Word of other farm and community advancements arrived. In April 1817, Darling promised “some choice grafted fruit trees.”
Word came on February 24, 1818, that grant “assistance was forthcoming towards a mill.”
December 1819: “a lot is set aside for a church.”
But throughout all this correspondence with Lord Dalhousie’s military secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Darling, something else emerges, another side of William Ross—his financial status. He and Mary must have been hard put to get by on his lieutenant’s half-pay. In a letter dated November 17, 1819, Darling states: “There is little chance of Ross securing anything more than half-pay pension. The appointment in Windsor, in which you were interested, will probably go to someone else.”
Was William considering and looking for a paying position outside the settlement? We will never know. We do know that he died intestate.
Darling also wrote that he thought “a plough would be useless in the present state of your territory.” There is no record that a plow was ever provided.
Early life was not easy for settlers, who relied on animals for farm work and transportation.
(Ross Farm)
Despite differences about what was required for the struggling settlement, William and Darling had a good relationship. Mary and the children had been invited to the Darlings’ home in Halifax, and Darling’s letters were warm for the most part. Soon after, a letter arrived from Darling containing less than welcome news: “Lord Dalhousie has been appointed Governor of British North America, replacing Lord Sherbrooke in Quebec City.”
And most remarkable of all was a letter from Mrs. Darling to Mrs. Mary Ross: “Thank you for your letter and your gift of earrings.”
What was the relationship between Mary and Mrs. Darling? There she was, a pioneer woman in a sparse cottage in the Nova Scotia woods with no occasion to wear her wedding diamonds, giving them to a high-placed woman she seldom saw.
On June 2, 1820, Darling writes his farewell letter to William: “I will sail with Lord Dalhousie on the 4th for Quebec. Sir James Kempt will become the new Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.”
It is safe to say that whatever the relationship with Lord Dalhousie, William now had to deal with a new set of bosses. He received a letter in June 1820 from R. U. Howe, the newly appointed military secretary to Lieutenant Governor James Kempt. The parcel contained a supply of paper. Perhaps that was an indication of what was expected of William in the way of reports and applications.
Mary became concerned as she watched the ever-increasing demands take their toll on her husband. As industrious and dedicated as William was, he was wearing down.
THE END OF THE TRAIL
There was a threating sky on Monday morning, April 29, 1822, when William and Joseph, his Mi’kmaw friend and guide, set out to survey a route for the extension of the Old Military Road toward Hammonds Plains. Mary wondered if he should go. William had had a bad chest cold, sometimes with a fever, for the last two or three weeks, but he said, “I’ll be fine, Mary. We should be home by dark.”
William had his surveyor’s compass and chain, and an axe. His guide carried an axe, his rifle, and the lunch that Mary had packed. It had been a typical Nova Scotia spring, cold and damp, and there was still snow in the woods. William had worked with Joseph many times and respected his native knowledge of the woods, with its game trails and hazards. But this was the first time they’d worked with a surveyor’s chain, so William told him how to use it. Joseph set out, clearing the dense underbrush as he went, avoiding boulders, steep hills, and swamps, finding a way through the wilderness.
The first few miles were easy going, more or less following the path they’d walked for years. Then they came to a huge swamp, which could be crossed in dry weather but would be impassable year-round, so Joseph had to look for another way. In the late afternoon they heard thunder to the north, but they kept going. About seven o’clock it began to pour—a mixture of rain and sleet. Soon they were soaked.
William set out on foot on his final journey. Employees at the farm today honour the work ethic of the original settlers.
(Matthew Gates)
William was feeling rotten, something like he had felt in Surinam when he thought he might be coming down with yellow fever. He had trouble breathing, and his chest hurt when he coughed. William and Joseph stopped for a rest.
Joseph brought William a drink of water, but he couldn’t swallow. Could it be pneumonia, “the old man’s friend”?
“But I’m not an old man, I’m not even forty,” he thought.
Then it got dark and there was no hope of getting out of the woods until daylight. Joseph made a lean-to and a bed for William with branches. He covered William with his coat, but the shivering continued into the night.
Mary stayed up waiting for them.
At first light, Joseph got William to his feet, but he could barely stand. Then William’s Mi’kmaw friend went for help. Sherwood was closest; he ran all the way and knocked on Captain Evans’s door.
Four men followed Joseph back to the shelter where William lay, cut poles for a stretcher, and carried him to Sherwood. A bed was ready in Captain Evans’s kitchen when they arrived, and William felt the warmth of the welcome and the fire, but the chills didn’t stop. Captain Evans sent a young man through to Sherbrooke to tell Mary what had happened.
Next morning William was worse; his breathing was shallow and he couldn’t stop coughing. Captain Evans arranged transport to Chester, where a doctor was waiting. “It’s walking pneumonia,” he told them. “There’s a schooner sailing for Halifax at noon; it’s his only chance.” Joseph, William’s loyal friend, returned to Sherbrooke to see if Mary needed help.
The wind was southerly and William’s trip to Halifax was mercifully quick; they docked early next morning. But it was too late. William’s non-stop labours of the past six years had exhausted his reserves, paving the way for pneumonia. He died on Thursday, May 2, 1822, at age thirty-nine.
The following week the Acadian Recorder (the principal Halifax newspaper) reported:
DIED on Thursday last, Lieut. William Ross, on the half pay of the Nova Scotia Regiment and late of Sherwood Settlement. On Sunday his remains were interred with every demonstration of respect, the band and a firing party of the 81st Regiment attending; and His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, the Commandant and Officers of the Garrison, and a number of Gentlemen of the town, followed him to the tomb.
How sad and incomplete was the obituary of this remarkable pioneer. He died away from home and Mary. Knowing that Mary was pregnant must have added torment to William’s last days. He had promised to make Rosebank accessible by road. He died trying.
William Ross was buried among the noblemen of Halifax in what is now known as the Old Burying Ground. No records of the location of the grave exist, and no gravestone has been found.
We don’t know whether Mary attended William’s funeral. Mary’s lot was difficult to imagine: a five months’ pregnant widow with five young children and a few acres of cleared land in hundreds of acres of forest.
She applied for a widow’s pension and was granted five pounds a year, plus one pound for each child. On September 9, 1822, her last son was born. She named him James Richard Uniacke Ross.
William’s death at age thirty-nine left Mary with great responsibilities. He was buried in Halifax at the Old Burying Ground.
(Murray Creed)
Rosebank Cottage was full of life, if not of worldly goods. Daughter Mary was now sixteen and helped with the baby. William, who had been born in Surinam and survived the shipwreck on the coast of Ireland, was now twelve. He helped feed the farm animals and split firewood to keep the cottage warm. Edward, who was born in England, was nine and was already helping with farm chores after school. George, who had been born in Lower Canada and who, like his brother Edward, had survived two shipwrecks, was seven. He fed the chickens and gathered eggs. Lawson, who was born in Sherbrooke, was four. With the baby, James, that made six children to feed, clothe, and nourish. Mary was now a widow with overwhelming responsibilities.