Author: Hantsport & Area Historical Society

The McDade Heritage Centre holds many school records for Hantsport; copies and transcripts of General Registers from the 1880s through to the 1980s (although some years are missing and a search is on for the originals), attendance record sheets from the the early 1900s, minutes of School Board meetings and HHS Yearbooks from 1939 up until the closing of the high school in 1989. Here for example is the General Register for 1928/29. It includes the name of each pupil, age on the 30th of June 1929 (end of term), grade, standing, number of days attendance, and the name of the parent or guardian. The number of children in each class, often comprising two or more grades with a single teacher is quite remarkable. 1928/29 Grades Primary, One and Two Dorothy Helen Frittenburg age 8 grade IIMuriel Isabel McPherson age 7 grade IIOsee Geraldine Phillips age 7 grade IIEvelyn Muriel Collins age 8 grade IIRonald Star MacInnis age 9 grade IICecil Robt Scott age...

In an undated manuscript, "History of Mount Denson", held by the McDade Heritage Centre there is a paragraph or so about the summer resort at Aberdeen Beach. PREFACE This History was sketched from some of the children of the Mount Denson school, Miss Cordelia Patterson and others. Some of this History is also of Falmouth as it explains some of the roads, trails, etc.. History in its proper sense is an account of facts and events as they occurred together with the old legends and observations of the writer "History Story" according to Webster and the same word differently written. The story of the ambitions, toil, suffering and progress of our ancestors should fill our hearts and minds with reverence for that courage and perseverance which has won for us the homes and comforts which we now enjoy. In this History I have tried to tell as fully as my own knowledge of the place, my study of old history and old documents, following the rivers, old roads, trails,...

To commemorate the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on 12 May 1937, the Hantsport High School graduating class published a special twelve page issue of the school paper that includes a class list, school news, stories and jokes. Mary MillettFrances JohnstonKay ComstockSylvia TattrieMurray HancockMaxine KirkpatrickMargaret DavisonEmily FooteSheldon RooneyCharles Wicklem/WhitmoreIrene Smith ...

Originally published in “Aged To Perfection – The Annapolis Valley 50+ Seniors Magazine” Vol. 2 Issue 1, January 2000 As a young boy growing up in Hantsport the D.A.R. (Dominion Atlantic Railway) played quite a large part in my life. My grandfather, Ned Harvie, had been an engineer and my Uncle Arthur was a fireman-engineer. My Uncle Sim was a brakeman-conductor. My father, Leland Harvie had planned to work on the railroad also, but on his return from the trenches of World War One he was not able to. He continued to be interested and so whenever he or his brothers were together the conversation invariably dealt with railroad matters. Frank, Arthur, Simeon, and Leland Harvie Our house was but three houses away from the tracks on one side and the grocery business which he owned was almost as close on the other side, so that he or one of us was regularly out waving to one or the other of my uncles as they...

A newspaper clipping reporting the wreck of the "G. B. Lockhart" came to light this week at McDade Heritage Centre. Dated 1906, it is presumably from the Hantsport Advance. Capt Rupert Faulkner and Wife Drowned Telegrams were received here last week conveying the sad news of the drowning of Capt Rupert Faulkner and wife at Bonaire, West Indies. At the time of the accident Capt. Faulkner was in command of the Brigt "G. B. Lockhart". The vessel left New York May 10th for Curacao and went ashore on North Side of Bonaire, on the night of May 30th. Captain and his wife both drowned, their little son about four years old was saved, as was also all the crew. The deceased parents have another older son in New York, at school. Capt Faulkner was a native of this town, a brother of Mayor Faulkner, his wife was a United States woman, born near Cape Cod. Further particulars of the...

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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...