Good Morning Everyone. The get together at the Digby Library was packed!! Great discussion and questions.
The get together organized for the Lockeport Library tonight has been postponed because of the weather.
We have rescheduled for Thursday, March 7 2019 – same place, same time.
Hope to see everyone there with comments, questions and insights!
~Brenda J.T.
Photo by Mike Yakaites on Pexels.com
The Poor House, or County Home as some call it, in Bridgetown, Annapolis Valley, was the only poor house in the province that segregated paupers by colour. The rest of the houses did not allow the sexes to mix but did not care about the African-Nova Scotians and the First Nations mixing in with the white people.
There was a fair amount of African-Nova Scotian people in the area of Annapolis Royal and Bridgetown because of the arrival of the Loyalists in 1783. Many of the Loyalist were permitted to bring their African slaves with them while many other Africans were fugitive slaves who ran away from their rebel masters and were referred to as “Free Negroes”. Others were members of the regiment of the Black Pioneers. Thomas Peters was one of the Black Pioneers and leaders of Brinley Town, the black settlement outside of the new town Digby in 1784.
This is the original Annapolis County Poor House; the county received more funding and built a wooden poor house in front of this one. This brick building became the poor house for the Black paupers of the area and the wooden building was for the white paupers. Eventually this building became known as the County Home and then was referred to as a Hospital.
The African Nova Scotians who did not go in the exodus to Sierra Leone in 1792, who stayed here, struggled for equal rights, for respect, for work, for equal pay. Their descendants struggled and continue to struggle to this day, for the same thing; respect and work.
The angle of this photo shows the poor house for the white paupers in front and the older, brick building for the African-Nova Scotian paupers in the back.
The poor house on Church Road outside of Bridgetown buried their poor in unmarked graves and segregation was not a problem when burying the paupers. Like most poor houses, the Bridgetown Poor House did not record it’s dead until approximately 100 years ago. Recently, I was given a list of the known African Nova Scotians who are buried in the pottersfield of the Bridgetown poor house. The following list is just the ones we know of; the children break your heart.
Derby Bailey
d. 18 October 1912
40 years of age
Katherine Pomp
d. 4 February 1908
94 years of age
Margaret Simms
d. 19 October 1910
86 years of age
Lucy Mitchell*
d. 20 October
88 years of age
Thomas Francis
d. 28 November 1910
34 years of age
Benjamin Francis
d. 22 Jan 1911
6 weeks old, at Ward 11
Alice Stephenson
d. 28 May 1913
2 years of age
Edward Owens
d. 11 September 1913
2 mos.
Joshua Sims
d. 24 February 1914
63 years of age
James Johnson
d. 28 April 1914
83 years of age
Thomas Jackson
d. 4 Aug. 1914
3 years of age
Silas Jackson
d. 2 Dec. 1914
2 months of age
Paddy Mitchell
d. 13 Dec. 1914
85 years of age
Ruby Evelyn E. Jackson
d. 28 May 1915
1 month, 27 days of age
Cyril Jackson
d. 27 Dec. 1915
2 weeks, 1 day of age
Letitia Camps
d. 20 Jan 1917
60 years old of age
Emma Godfrey**
d. 26 April 1919
90 years of age
Henry Cuff
d. 2 June 1919
73 years of age
Alexander Jackson
d. 7 August 1920
94 years of age
Mary Parker
d. 20 August 1921
80 years of age
Margaret Johnson
d. 23 November 1921
86 years of Age
Henry Sims
d. 30 November 1922
77 years, 6 mos, 27 days
Fred Jarvis
d. 16 Dec. 1922
1 year of age
Mary Stephenson
d. 11 March 1925
42 years of age
Lavinia Cuff
d. 25 Dec. 1926
88 years of age
Jennie B. Owens
d. 31 December 1927
24 years of age
Albert Mitchell
d. 15 August. 1928
56 years of age
Elsie Owens
d. 12 March 1930
6 mos.
James Owens
d. 17 Aug. 1930
1 yr. 6 mos. 15 days
William Bailey
d. 12 Aug 1932
aged 80 years
Dorothy Owen
d. 10 Jan 1934 at Ward 11
3 mos. 28 days
Ethel Elizabeth Simms
d. 23 March 1934
13 days
Eleazar Marsman
d. 18 Sept. 1934
age 69
Irving Crosby
d. 28 July 1935
age 83
James Henry Owens
d. 12 Nov. 1936
age 87
Naamon Owens
d. 15 July 1938 Ward 11
aged 44 years
Harold Stevenson
d. 21 May 1940 Ward 11
4 mos. 29 days
Percy Jackson
d. 5 May, 1941 in Inglewood
59 years of age
John Henry Jackson
d. 9 December 1941 in Bridgetown
aged 69 yr 2 mos
Lillian Golden May Bell
d. 9 Nov 1944 in Boston
73 years of age
Buried at the county home
Curtis Bailey
d. 8 Sept 1950
65 years of age
*The well known African-Nova Scotia poet, Maxine Tynes, whom I had the great privilege of meeting in the late 1980s, wrote a poem about Lucy Mitchell.
A hand drawn cartoon of Lucy Mitchell, known around Bridgetown as ‘Crazy Luce’. Elizabeth Ruggles Coward writes about Lucy in her book History of Bridgetown; Maxine Tynes wrote a poem about Lucy.
**Likely a descendant of the amazing Rose Fortune.
The discussion about the local poor houses in Clark’s Harbour was great! Information swapped, pictures, stories…..now I am going to do it in Digby and in Lockeport.
Author and her 10 year old daughter Megan in front of the Marshalltown Almshouse, Digby NS 1994
Discussion about the Digby Marshalltown Almshouse will be held at the Isiah W. Wilson Library at 84 Warwick Street on Tuesday, February 19 at 6 pm.
Discussion about the poor houses in the Lockeport area will be held Thursday, February 21st at the Lillian Benham Library, 35 North Street at 7pm.
I am looking forward to seeing everyone there who is interested in this fascinating subject!!
The poor house in Arcadia, Yarmouth County, NS circa 1890
I’ll be doing some speaking engagements about Poor Houses in Nova Scotia in February 2019. The Western County Libraries have very kindly invited me to speak at a few of their libraries.
Want to talk about Poor Houses, Maud and Lewis Everett??
Western Counties Regional Library
“A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses in Nova Scotia” – Author Reading
Learn about the poor houses of Nova Scotia. The poor house formerly located in Marshalltown was
near Maud and Everett Lewis’ home and where Everett worked as a night watchman.
Clark’s Harbour – Feb 7 / 6:30pm
Digby Library – Feb 19 / 6pm
Lockeport Library – Feb 21 / 6pm
Clare Library – Feb 28 / 6pm
I hope to see you there and learn some community stories!
Hi All! Good News! My publisher emailed me the other day and told me that A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses is not only a Best Seller, but that they want to do a Second Edition of the book. They want to include more stories of people who were in the poor houses.
Some of you have sent me stories and photos already and I thank you very much for those. I will be changing family names as requested. If you have a story you wish to see included in the 2nd Edition, please contact me on here and we shall discuss it.
Thank you in Advance!!
~Brenda J. Thompson
A personalized signed copy of A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses in Nova Scotia would make a great Christmas gift. Drop by and see us at Bainton’s in Annapolis Royal!
Greetings All! I am truly sorry for not writing on here sooner. My summer job as a barista was taking up a lot of my energy and then I started researching and writing on my newest book about Rose Fortune.
Rose Fortune, 1830s
The first draft of Rose is done, my summer job is over and I finally have a bit of time. Over the summer while I was working as a barista, I was sought out by a number of people who had read my book A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses in Nova Scotia. Many had stories to tell me of family members in poor houses, living close to a poor house or working in a poor house.
One story in particular intrigued me. It was a story of a woman who worked at the poor house in Dayspring, Lunenburg County many years ago. The buildings were no longer being used as a poor house and were being used as something else. The woman told me that one night she was locking up and her husband came in to help her shut off all the lights in one particular building. The woman went up to the attic to check that everything was locked and lights were off; she noted the clothing hooks that still had the names of the children who had lived up here and who had put their clothing on these hooks. She shut off the lights and went downstairs.
Her husband was waiting for her in their car and, as they started to drive away, she looked in the rear view mirror and noticed the lights were on up in the attic. “Funny” she said to herself “I know I turned those out.” She had her husband drive back up to the building and she unlocked the door, went back up to the attic, turned off the lights and went back downstairs, locked up the doors and got into the car. As they drove away, she looked in the rear view mirror and saw that the attic lights were on again. She and her husband looked at each other: “I’m not going back up there again” she told her husband. “I think the children want to stay up late and play” he replied. “Let’s go with that” she said. And they drove away.
The lights often went on and off up in the attic the woman told me. I left working there a while later but I often wondered if it really was the children wanting to stay up late and play in the attic. The buildings were demolished a few years later and a new building put in its place.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Allan E. Marble
I shall be giving a talk on Poor Houses in Nova Scotia, and most particularly the Annapolis County Poor House in Bridgetown, on Thursday, August 23 at 7 pm at the James House Museum in Bridgetown. The address is 12 Queen Street, Bridgetown. Let’s talk Local History!
I haven’t been writing on here much lately as I have been so busy working at my summer job. In between, I have been speaking about my book A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses in Nova Scotia at various locations. I thought it was time, however, to step off the mainland of Nova Scotia and write about one of the poor houses in Cape Breton.
The North Sydney Poor House has been the most difficult one on which to find information. There is simply very little written about it. I have requested information from local history groups and they do not seem to be able to locate much either, much to our mutual disappointment.
Dr. Page, who was the Inspector of Charities at the time, wrote in 1898 that the North Sydney Poor House had had only two inmates for several years.
The poor house was a small cottage located in the town of North Sydney and generally took care of impoverished elderly people of the area.
In 1899 the new Inspector of Charities, Dr. Sinclair wrote “It is an ordinary dwelling…and is comfortable and apparently satisfactory to its’ occupants….I hear no complaints.” Who would complain when the alternative was homelessness?
In an academic paper written by Suzanne Morton in Atlantis, Volume 20, No. 1, entitled “Old Women and Their Place in Nova Scotia 1881-1931” she writes:
“…by 1907…North Sydney’s Poor House was a simple cottage that in the same year housed a single old woman.”
By 1914, Dr. Hattie was the provincial Inspector of Humane Institutions and wrote that there were two inmates in this poor house and wrote of the ‘general neglect’ this house was suffering. This was the last report written on this poor house. It is surmised that the North Sydney Poor House was closed some time prior to the beginning of the First World War.
I do not have a photo of this poor house. Do you? Do you know of someone who has a photo of the poor house? Would you like to expand upon our history of poor houses in Nova Scotia by sharing it? Please contact me at brendajuanitathompson@gmail.com.
