Hantsport Stories

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William Andrew Porter 1895 – 1896 First mayor of Hantsport, won election by one vote after a ballot was disqualified. Dr. Charles Inglis Margeson 1896 – 1897 Physician, graduate of Harvard Medical School (1869) William Smith Whitman 1897 - 1902 Notary Public Capt. Thomas Albert Marsters 1902 - 1903 Capt. Delancey Trefry Faulkner 1903 – 1907 Hantsport water system installed. Capt. Simeon H. Mitchner 1907 – 1908 A baker, shoe maker and ship builder. Frederick Edwin Pentz 1908 – 1910 Pharmacist and drug store owner. Andrew Welsford Pattison 1910 – 1915 Tinsmith and store owner. George Davenport Comstock 1915 – 1916 Piano tuner and editor of the Hantsport Advance newspaper. William King Sterling 1916 – 1923 Dry Goods Merchant Daniel William Murray 1923 – 1925 Manufacturer and owner of Murray's Lumber Mill...

On 27 August 1960 a replica of “HMS Bounty” was launched at Lunenburg N.S. and departed on 26 October via the Panama Canal for Tahiti, a voyage of 11,000 km with 24 crew members on board including Wayne Dewar of Hantsport. Proudly built using original 1780's ship drawings from the British Admiralty archives and in the traditional manner by more than 120 workers including 80 carpenters over an 8-month period at the Smith and Rhuland shipyard, the three-masted, square-rigged brigantine had been commissioned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for their 1962 film 'Mutiny on the Bounty' starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian. Twenty-two of the crew were Nova Scotians and so far identified from media reports are Captain Ellsworth Trask Coggins, Mark Thomson of Halifax, Robert Douglas of the U.S., Dr. Peter Denton-Cardew of Newfoundland, Hugh Boyd and Roy Boutilier of Dartmouth, John LeBlanc (cook) of Liverpool, John Kendall, Dalton Richards, Ivan Zwicker, Lewis Jennex of Oyster Pond, Ross MacKay (first mate), Ellsworth George Coggins...

Taped Interviews with Maurice “Moss” Smith Hantsport, NS – Summer 1975 OFY Project – Historical Insights CANDY MAKING: In 1895 an old gent arrived in town by the name of George H. Yeaton. He had worked for the Halifax Baking Company, and he got an idea – – the sales of candy. He thought he’d like to start a little candy manufacturing company. His wife happened to be from Hantsport and they’d come here a lot and lived here. They say he started with about fifty cents worth of sugar. The first batch of candy he made cost that much. Then he made a few other things. He wasn’t a candy maker but he employed a candy maker from Halifax, from Moirs, by the name of Beazley. He started manufacturing in a long building (they called that Station Street) and on the further end of it was a grocery store operated by George Davision, and up this end, the Davision family lived. In...

FORWARD We, who are Adria Coalfleet Phillips' friends, have watched her "Songs of the Avon" come into being with appreciation and delight. Ships, the music of the wind and sea, the River in all its moods, even in its stark and dreadful beauty at low tide - love of these is in her blood. She has one other love which now and then reveals itself in her poems - love of the history and traditions of this small seaport town in which she has lived most of her life, within sight, sound and smell of the Avon River. Of course, Mrs. Phillips comes naturally by her love of the sea and all things connected with it. A sea-captain's daughter, it is perhaps her proudest boast that, of the 250 Hantsportonians who have sailed the seven seas as captains of their craft, "34 were Davisons and all related to me". As a child, she sailed to distant ports on her father's ships often...

ADVANCE [newspaper]: My earliest recollection of it was that it was run by a man named Marchant - his wife was a sister of Maurice Smith's wife, The shop was across the railroad track in what we know as the Mumford Block, now owned by Arch Kerr. There were three little places in the bottom; barber shop in one end, Town Office in the middle, and the Customs Office in the far end. Overhead was the Advance office. After Marchant, a man named George Woodworth took it over and ran it till it died. It was there for a while, then moved [to] a little building from T. R. Johnston property over to where Karl Dowe's house is now. His office was there, and he built on to it two or three times. Later it was moved up the Lane and it burned down. Tri-Mu Church Club started by Methodist minister, then taken over by the Baptist minister....

Joe Harvie owned a farm in Kelleyville on a sideroad near Skull House. It was a quiet place, where one seldom saw a car, or for that matter, any kind of a vehicle pass their gate. From the farmyard, you saw rolling hills on one side, and gentle flatness of a fertile interval on the other, and a narrow brook meandered through the fields, crossing the sideroad, and disappearing into the thicket beyond, eventually spilling into the Halfway River. The house was painted white at one time, but the rest of the buildings were bare wood, for it seemed only the more affluent could afford paint on outbuildings. I am not sure if he had a pair of horses or just one, and I don’t remember him hauling anything to Hantsport, but he came to our place when we lived where the Strickland barn is now, to plow up the ground for us to plant. I remember that it was near...

It has been said that the mining and shipping of gypsum rock or plaster began at Windsor about the year 1832.1 It is known that E. Churchill and Sons built a tug boat called the “Chester” at Hantsport in 1890. It was steam powered. Also in the years 1890-1892 the D.S. Howard shipyard at Parrsboro built four large schooners for the gypsum trade, namely the "Gypsum Queen", "Gypsum Princess", "Gypsum Emperor" and the "Gypsum King". J.B. North built the "Gypsum Prince" at Hantsport and the "Gypsum Empress" at Horton. All six schooners were of four masts. The tugboat “J A Mumford” was built at Spencer's Island in 1903 for the Gypsum trade. The “Mumford” was of 115 gross tons and had a forty horsepower steam engine. The "Mumford" was still in use by the Gypsum Company in 1947. Later that year she was taken to the drydock at Saint John, New Brunswick where her engine and boiler were dismantled and placed in a dredge. This work, as...

The Hantsport W. I. came into existence in 1915 in the Presbyterian Church. Their motto then as now, "For Home and Country." Mrs. A.O. Graham, Mrs. S. Morse, Mrs. McKeen, Mrs. William Dorman (still living), Mrs. Asa Newcombe, Mrs. Blackburn and Mrs. B. Davison were some of the Charter Members. Mrs. Sterling became a member at an early date. This was during World War 1 and they worked hard and faithfully, making quilts, sewing, knitting for the Red Cross and helping wherever need arose. Homemaking was perhaps the main interest at that time in its early days and many were the aids and hints for better ways and means. They later did much for the schools, sponsoring school fairs, sewing and cooking classes before we had established Home Economics in this school. Reclaiming River Bank Cemetery was the big project at this time. Mrs. Lyon was the leader in this work and no effort was...

On Wednesday last, the 27th ult., Mr. J.B. North who has been an invalid by reason of paralysis, for some eight years, passed peacefully to his reward at the age of 81 years. The deceased was a native of Cornwallis, Kings County, where he grew to manhood and married a Miss Ells, a sister of the late David and Nathan Ells. Mr. and Mrs. North came to Hantsport about 1855, and he commenced business as a general dealer and shipbuilder. He bought the house now known as the Campbell house, built a store where now stands the Evangeline house, on the corner of Avon and William Street. After coming to Hantsport he first built vessels in Mr. Churchill's yard, where he launched at least three, the "Herald," the "Persis," and the “Augusta C. Small." About the year 1863 he bought property over the line on the river front, built a house and commenced building vessels in his new yard. Here he built vessels...