Once we re-entered the U.S., we had a decision to make…to go back to Virginia and the Carolinas to continue our genealogy research, or beeline for home. We decided to take the time and head to the Carolinas. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have fun along the way!
Our first, brief stop, was Acadia National Park, again. We stayed in the more remote Schoodic Peninsula area and spent one day hiking before moving on.
We also met with friends Lester and Sue in Maine- we missed them on the way north. Lester and Paul go way back and its always fun to catch up with them.
By mid September we had arrived back in Massachusetts for a brief visit. The weather was cooperative so we finally got a chance to go to Lowell National Historic Park.
Lowell (dubbed the "Lowell Experiment" at the time) was built as a carefully planned industrial city, making use of the canals that connected the Merrimac River to the Charles for transportation, fishing, and power production. By the mid 1800s, it was a thriving, massive city, and the largest textile center in the country.
By the early 1930s its role in the textile industry had severely declined and the city fell into disrepair and abandonment. This is the Lowell I remember. High unemployment, high crime- it wasn't somewhere you wanted to visit, never mind live.
Starting in the late 1900s ta re-birth began and over the years the city has begun to thrive again, embracing it's history. I was amazed at the cobblestone streets and the beauty of the waterfront area.
Another neighborhood we visited while in MA was my own- the one I lived in growing up. The little blue house was ours.
I am still friends with the women I grew up with on that street, and we all got together for a barbecue before we left town.
As always, a visit to Boston feels too short, but
we were soon on our way. We detoured to Cape Cod, (since it was after Labor Day-it would be too busy during the summer) and spent the evening with our friends Les and Alane. On the way to dinner we stopped to get a picture of the sunset.
The place we pulled off to watch the sunset was coincidentally the home of the actual Small Boat that performed the greatest rescue in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.... the story was featured in the movie "The Finest Hours". After watching the sunset and checking out the boat, we went back to Les and Alane's and watched the movie!
After leaving MA, we went to VA, and also spent a brief time in the Carolinas, looking for more family history information. Finding none, we bee lined for Texas to check up on Paul's mom before heading home to Havasu.
We came away from Cape Breton with a much better picture of my family history- especially regarding the King family, which has been my primary focus. We have new leads to follow and have already started. We stopped in the Guysborough area of Nova Scotia and although we didn’t learn much here, it was very cool for me to realize that my 5th great grandfather moved to this area from Virginia, in 1784.
We were headed to Halifax, again, to look for land deeds, but we took the long way there. With temperatures hovering at 30 degrees ( that's Celsius) we opted for one more beach day. One of the perks to traveling in a truck camper is that we can check out from one campground, stop at the beach with the camper, hang out, make our own lunch, take a shower, and then go to the next campground. And that’s exactly what we did.
Once in Halifax, we hit the Archives as soon as they opened, and found the records we were looking for. We had suspected that my 5th great grandfather came to Nova Scotia with 4 children, not just the 3 we knew about, and the land deed records showed that Amelia Cook, daughter of George King, sold land at the same time as her sister, Rebecca King Langley.
That was a key piece of information for me, and the only thing we were looking for, so we met with Neil and Susan again for dinner, this time down at the Halifax waterfront.
Labor Day weekend is one of those weekends that its not always a good idea to wait till the last minute for campground reservations. Paul and I had looked ahead and had to decide where we wanted to go. We could have done the Cabot trail again, on Cape Breton, but decided we didn’t need to do it again.
We debated heading back to the States, but there was a section of Nova Scotia that we hadn’t really explored, and we decided that it could be “now or never” so we booked places along the south western section of Nova Scotia.
Shelburne
We bypassed the quaint, but well known towns of Liverpool and Lunenburg because we had visited them before and settled near the seacoast town of Shelburne.
This is a cute little town, with a few nice restaurants and a long history of Dory making.
I have seen Dories before, in fact, Gloucester MA has dory races every year. Anyway, although I had seen dories , I didn’t know much about them. Shelburne was known for their Dories, and at one time there were 7 dory builders in town. Now there is one museum, and they build about two per year.So here is what we learned:
A Dory is a shallow bottom boat, usually about 12-15 feet long. The shorter boats can be manned by one person and the longer boats require two people at the oars.
Dories have many purposes- fishing, transport, etc
They were cheap, and considered to be disposable, so if a dory sprung a leak, it was tossed overboard.
They were painted “Dory Buff Yellow” which was, at the time, the color most visible in a fog. New ones are sometimes painted in neon colors. Back in the day, when they were used for fishing, two members of the same family were not allowed to go out on the same dory- the fatality rate was pretty high in the dory fishing world.
Kejimkujik
Trying to get back into the hiking routine, as much as possible, we stayed in provincial parks, as well as Kejimkujik National Park.
There are two sections to Kejimkujik- one deep in the woods, and another along the seashore.
We hiked them both. Paul’s favorite trail was probably the Gold Miner Trail- an interpretive hike that showcased the gold mining history of the area.
We noticed these weird contraptions all over the park, and finally chatted with a volunteer to find out what they are. The Blanding Turtle is endangered, and they love to lay their eggs in this particular area, only at night, and each year they return to the same spot. There is a group of volunteers that stay here and cover the eggs once they are laid, protecting them from predators. Once they hatch, each turtle is marked with a unique code ( they notch the shell) and released.
As we were hiking back to our campsite one day, I got a kick out of this sign that showed our speed. I was pretty impressed with our walking pace until I remembered it’s in kilometers per hour, not miles. Still, it was funny.
Digby
Our final stop in Nova Scotia was Digby. They are known for their scallops so of course we searched for a restaurant on the water where we could enjoy a glass of wine and some seafood.
Nearby Annapolis Royal has a cute downtown area and also Historical botanical gardens. We meandered around the gardens for a bit, and bought some amazingly delicious orange vinegar from their gift store.
Well, I am kind of getting ahead of myself a bit. Before we went to Cape Breton, we spent 5 days in Halifax. Halifax is the largest city in this area of Canada, and is where the historical records are kept for the province. We spent 4 days combing through records.
We came up for air long enough to meet up with our friends Neil and Susan. They live here, and we met them on our first visit here. It was Neil that convinced us to go to Newfoundland back in 2013.
Once we had gathered all the information we could in Halifax, we left for Cape Breton. Cape Breton is an island, connected to the mainland by a causeway.
Its not a huge island, so we decided to stay at Battery Provincial Park for our entire stay. It is centrally located enough that we could reach all the places we needed to be.
It’s about 30 minutes from Port Hastings, where my father’s paternal grandparents were from, about 40 minutes from Isle Madame, where my dad’s maternal grandparents were from, and about 25 minutes from where my maternal grandmother grew up.
We really loved this park. With no reservations, we had to move sites a few times, and mostly didn’t have electric hook up, but that’s easy to do in the camper, and the park was very well kept and had great views.
As added bonuses, there were very few bugs, so we could have campfires, and there is a pair of resident bald eagles that we watched a few times.
I think we spent a total of 4 or 5 full days at the Port Hastings Historical Society. That is the area that the Kings were from, and when I said what family name I was interested in, they handed me a folder with a ton of information! I didn’t have time to digest it all so I took pictures and have been going through the information as I can.
One thing that makes it harder, is internet access. Although I have my full data allotment, Paul has nothing, so we have to share. And Google maps is a data hog. Many public places have Wi-Fi, which helps some but it is still a challenge.
We took one full day and drove the island of Isle Madame, home to many many Samson and Boudreau families-I am related to most of the people on the island, in some way or other. We spent a few hours in the library there, and one of the guys working there set up his computer and let me copy a “communal” family tree that was put together during a genealogy summit a few years ago.
Once we had that, we drove around the island checking out the towns and seashore. Samson Cove was very pretty.
My great grandfather Thomas Boudreau was born here on the island, in Boudreauville- there are many small towns on Cape Breton that are named for the family that lived there. I love sea glass, and it was actually really cool to find some on a beach near the town.
There are people who I correspond with who are researching the same families- so we are related in some way- and we share what information we find. I have also reached out to a few people on Ancestry DNA, sometimes to share info, sometimes just to say hi.
Leo King and I have been sharing information for a year or so now and he set me up to meet his brother Charlie, who lives on Cape Breton. Charlie and I are 2nd cousins once removed. It was very strange meeting a relative named Charlie King- that was my dad’s name.
Charlie was awesome and showed us all around, pointing out where the old settlements had been. Most were gone and the families moved on- often just down the road it seems. One challenge in doing research here is that the names of the towns have changed since the time period I am researching. My great grandfather was born in Caribou Cove- its now Port Malcolm. My great great grandfather lived in Plaster Cove- now Port Hawkesbury, and my great great great grandfather lived in Ship Harbour- now Port Hastings. At least I feel like I have the lay of the land better now!
I got a response to a message I sent on Ancestry to a 2nd cousin who lives in Nova Scotia. The reply said “hi- I am the guy whose computer you used the other day in the library- we are cousins??” Too funny!
The nearby town of Johnstown is where my grandmother Josephine Johnston grew up. While Isle Madame is the French/Acadian area of Cape Breton, Johnstown/Red Islands is the Scottish area of the island.
Many of the signs are in Gaelic as well as English, including some stop signs. I have been fascinated with the differences we have found in the food and the accents on the Island. Many of the people of Isle Madame speak with a French-ish accent, and the people of Johnstown favor a Scottish one.
I remembered that the last time we were here, we missed the annual Milling Frolic by just a few days so I asked around and found out we would indeed be here for it this year!
It’s the oldest running milling frolic in Nova Scotia- 87 Years . In days gone by, people got together to “kneed “ wool cloth to shrink it. Nowadays it’s a social event, where they mill the cloth while singing in Gaelic.
They open the Sacred Heart church community center for the party. We were amazed to see hundreds of people show up for this event .
There is food served, a room where Bingo was being played, and a place for kids to do artwork.
Before all the “real singers” showed up they asked people to fill in the seats, so I got to sit while everyone else sang in Gaelic. Once the Gaelic singing was done they had a dance that lasted till 1 am. Or so we hear. We left at 10:30.
After about 10 days on the island, we were both ready to move on.
Our first, brief stop, was Acadia National Park, again. We stayed in the more remote Schoodic Peninsula area and spent one day hiking before moving on.
Lowell (dubbed the "Lowell Experiment" at the time) was built as a carefully planned industrial city, making use of the canals that connected the Merrimac River to the Charles for transportation, fishing, and power production. By the mid 1800s, it was a thriving, massive city, and the largest textile center in the country.
The place we pulled off to watch the sunset was coincidentally the home of the actual Small Boat that performed the greatest rescue in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.... the story was featured in the movie "The Finest Hours". After watching the sunset and checking out the boat, we went back to Les and Alane's and watched the movie!
After leaving MA, we went to VA, and also spent a brief time in the Carolinas, looking for more family history information. Finding none, we bee lined for Texas to check up on Paul's mom before heading home to Havasu.
