55,000 Feet of Hemlock - A Mahone Bay Merchant, a Halifax Shipowner, and the Coal Mines of Glace Bay -

The Cover

The envelope is addressed:

Mr. Henry Schnare

Mahone Bay

The Halifax postmark is dated 19 November 1864, and the Mahone Bay receiving mark on the reverse is dated 21 November. The enclosed letter is dated in Halifax the same day:

Halifax, 19th November 1864, and begins:

Mr. Henry Schnare, Mahone Bay

I wrote you on the 12th inst. for about 30 M 2 in. & 5 M 1 in. Hemlock, to be ready for shipment in two weeks. I today received a letter from Mr. Archbold stating that he wishes 20 M more to have it all ready in three weeks. That is in two weeks from Monday next, for shipment to Glace Bay direct. The additional quantity will make 55 M in all. If you cannot supply the whole let me know by Telegraph on receipt of this.

James A. Moren

Pres't Glace Bay Mining Co.

The “M” represents thousand board feet in conventional lumber measurement. Moren was asking Schnare to provide 55,000 board feet of hemlock. The original order was for 30,000 feet of two-inch hemlock and 5,000 feet of one-inch hemlock. An additional 20,000 feet requested by “Mr. Archbold” brought the total to 55,000 feet.

The deadline was short, and Moren wanted to know immediately if Schnare could not supply the whole order. If necessary, Schnare was to respond by telegraph.

The letter therefore captures a commercial transaction being conducted at considerable speed. The postal system carried the formal written order; the telegraph stood ready for an urgent response.

Henry Schnare: The Young Merchant

When the letter arrived in Mahone Bay on November 21, Henry Schnare was only 28 years old. Born 6 October 1836, Henry was the son of Edward Schnare and Elizabeth Jane Lantz. He had married Sophia Elizabeth Zwicker on 1 March 1863, less than two years before Moren's letter arrived. Their first child, James Edward Schnare, would not be born until 1866. Four more children would follow: Mary Elizabeth Sarah, William Henry, Susie Harriet, and Margaret B. In November 1864, Henry was a young husband, not yet a father, and a merchant trying to establish himself in business.

The contemporary directories identify him as a merchant in Mahone Bay. By 1868–69 his advertisement described him as a:

“Commission Merchant and Dealer in Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, Earthenware, Hats and Caps, Boots & Shoes, Patent Medicines, also, Wood, Lumber and Hemlock Bark.”

That advertisement is particularly revealing when read beside Moren's letter.

Four years before the advertisement appeared, Henry was already receiving substantial orders for hemlock lumber.

This was not necessarily a business in which Henry owned the forest or operated the sawmills himself. As a commission merchant, he could stand between producers and customers, arranging the purchase, assembly and shipment of goods. For a 28-year-old merchant with a young wife and a growing future family, an order for 55,000 feet of lumber was a significant opportunity.

Mahone Bay, Lumber, and the Forests Beyond

By 1864, Mahone Bay was much more than a small coastal settlement. It had developed into a busy maritime and commercial centre, its economy closely tied to the forests of Lunenburg County. The harbour provided an outlet for lumber and other forest products, while the surrounding waterways connected the town with the timber-producing interior.

Two rivers were particularly important. The Mush-a-Mush River and Martin's River penetrated the heavily wooded country behind Mahone Bay, providing routes by which logs could be brought toward the coast. By the nineteenth century, numerous sawmills operated along these waterways. One contemporary history of Lunenburg County recorded fourteen sawmills on the Mush-a-Mush and another four on Martin's River, illustrating the scale of the lumber industry that lay behind Mahone Bay's maritime trade.

This was the commercial environment in which the young Henry Schnare was operating.

We cannot identify the particular sawmill or logging operation that supplied Moren's order, but a plausible supply chain can be reconstructed. Hemlock could have been cut in the forests of inland Lunenburg County, moved by teams and waterways to one of the area's sawmills, and then brought into Mahone Bay. From there, a merchant such as Schnare could arrange its shipment to an industrial customer outside the county.

The November 1864 letter suggests that this was not a trivial transaction. Schnare was functioning within a commercial network that linked the forests of Lunenburg County with the rapidly expanding industrial economy of Cape Breton.

Mahone Bay's maritime character made such trade possible. Lumber was not simply produced in the countryside and consumed locally; it moved through the harbour into a much wider Atlantic economy. Shipbuilding and the lumber trade developed together, and by the mid-nineteenth century the harbour was crowded with vessels, merchants, wharves, sawmills and other businesses dependent upon the movement of goods.

Seen in that context, the cover becomes more than correspondence between two businessmen. It records a supply chain in miniature: forest, river, sawmill, merchant, harbour, vessel, and finally the coal works at Glace Bay. Henry Schnare, only twenty-eight years old, was one of the links connecting those very different parts of the Nova Scotia economy.

A Lunenburg County Family

Henry's ability to participate in this commercial world was itself the product of a much longer history.

His paternal ancestor, Ludwig Conrad Schnerr, was born in 1711 at Heubach, in the German states. He married Apollonia Elizabeth Nieforth there in 1735. Their son Johann Peter Schnerr was born in 1746.

Winthrop Bell's Register of the Foreign Protestants of Nova Scotia identifies Ludwig and his family with the 1751 ship Murdoch. This places the Schnerr family among the early German-speaking immigrants who arrived before the founding of Lunenburg in 1753. Ludwig and Apollonia became established in the new Lunenburg settlement. Later children were born in Nova Scotia, including daughters recorded at Lunenburg in the 1750s. Ludwig eventually died at Mahone Bay on 6 May 1798.

Ludwig's son Johann Peter Schnerr, born in Germany, continued the family in Nova Scotia.

The surviving Lutheran records provide valuable evidence. A church record identifies Peter Schnerr, a widower after the death of his first wife, Elizabeth Catherine Eisenhauer, marrying Catharina Deuthof. Peter also appears in contemporary Nova Scotia assessment records as Peter Schnear, farmer. His will, dated June 27, 1807, identifies him as a yeoman in the Township of Lunenburg and names his son Conrad.

Peter's son Johann Conrad Schnerr was born on 9 September 1782. Lunenburg's Zion Lutheran Church records documents his marriage on 16 December 1806 to Maria Catharina Rehfuß. The record names his father as Peter Schnerrs. (The family appears in the German-language records as Schnerr, Schnerrs and Schnear, while later records increasingly use Schnare. Likewise, Maria Catharina's German surname Rehfuß subsequently appears in English records as Rafuse.)

Johann Conrad and Maria Catherine were the parents of Edward Schnare, born in 1810. Edward married Elizabeth Jane Lantz, and their son Henry was born in 1836. Henry was therefore the great-great-grandson of an early German Protestant immigrant.

The Other Henry Schnare

There is an important Mahone Bay complication. The name Henry Schnare later became associated with one of the town's premier shipbuilders, but this was a different man.

The 1871 Lovell's Gazetteer actually lists two Henry Schnore/Schnare men in Mahone Bay—one a ship carpenter and another a storekeeper.

The Henry who received Moren's letter was the man born in 1836, the merchant.

The later shipbuilder was James Henry Schnare, born in 1844. His shipyard was established in the 1880s and eventually produced numerous wooden vessels.

It is tempting to conflate the two men because their lives unfolded in the same community and their occupations were closely related. But they should remain separate in the story.

James A. Moren

The man who wrote the letter was a prominent figure in Halifax.

James Alexander Moren was a merchant, shipowner and West India trader. His commercial interests extended into banking and, importantly for this story, into Cape Breton coal mining.

James A. Moren was born in 1906, but there was a maritime connection in the Moren family before James's own career. His father, George Moren, is recorded in Royal Navy records as Master of the Halifax Careening Yard. George died in Halifax in 1817. James married Mary Ann Ritchie on November 2, 1833. They had at least three sons before Mary Ann died in 1859by 1864, when Moren was one of the Halifax interests involved in the development of the Glace Bay Mining Company. James lived until December 2, 1885 and is buried in

Camp Hill Cemetery, Halifax. His death notice published in the Manitoba Weekly Free Press on December 10, 1885, called him the oldest merchant in Halifax, saying he was a heavy west India trader, was very wealthy, and was president of the Union Bank for twenty years.

Another name in his letter brings the Cape Breton story into focus.

“Mr. Archbold”

In the letter, Moren wrote:

“I today received a letter from Mr. Archbold…”

That was Edward P. Archbold, a Sydney merchant who had acquired a coal lease at Little Glace Bay by 1859 and begun developing what were then known as the Burnt Mines.

The operation initially suffered from inadequate drainage, ventilation and development. Archbold therefore needed capital and commercial connections.

He found both in Halifax.

Archbold partnered with James A. Moren. He subsequently brought in a group of Massachusetts investors who paid $75,000 for a half interest in the mine. The Glace Bay Mining Company was formed around this new partnership.

The new capital transformed the operation. But there was one fundamental problem. The coal had to get to a ship.

Building a Harbour for the Coal

Archbold understood the success of the mine depended upon transportation.

In December 1862 he explained that the value of the coal deposit depended upon having a suitable place where vessels could lie and load.

The company spent approximately $32,500 on harbour construction in 1862. By the spring of 1863, the improvements were substantially complete.

R. J. Uniacke's description of Little Glace Bay in 1864 gives us a remarkable picture of the result.

Only a few years earlier, he had crossed a small marshy brook by a pole bridge.

When he returned, he found the waterway greatly enlarged and twelve or thirteen vessels—barques, brigs and schooners—occupying the harbour while receiving coal brought down from the neighbouring pit by cars.

This is the world into which Henry Schnare's lumber was being ordered.

Glace Bay in 1864

The company's growth was extraordinary.

Coal sales from the Glace Bay Mining Company mines tripled in 1863 and again in 1864, reaching 72,077 tons in 1864.

By that year the company had erected 48 buildings, including 29 dwelling houses containing 65 tenements, together with stores, offices, shops, engine houses and a schoolhouse.

Little Glace Bay was becoming an industrial community.

The mine required housing and stores. It required workshops and engine houses. It required transportation, harbour facilities and ships. And all of those things required materials. Lumber was one of them.

This is why the order from Moren to Schnare of 55,000 feet of hemlock boards becomes historically interesting.

From Mahone Bay to Cape Breton

The letter brings together several economic systems that are often studied separately.

The forest economy of Lunenburg County. Trees were cut in the interior, moved toward rivers and sawmills, and converted into lumber.

The maritime economy of Mahone Bay. Merchants, shipbuilders and vessel owners moved lumber and other goods through the harbour.

The commercial economy of Halifax. Merchants such as Moren provided capital, shipping connections and access to wider markets.

The industrial economy of Cape Breton. Companies such as the Glace Bay Mining Company transformed coal deposits into large-scale commercial enterprises requiring enormous quantities of materials and transportation.

The 1864 letter sits exactly where these economies intersect.

A Final Glimpse of Moren's Coal Enterprise

The Glace Bay Mining Company continued to promote the quality of its coal after the date of this letter.

In 1867, the company published an Admiralty report concerning trials of Little Glace Bay coal aboard HMS Duncan. The report found the coal suitable for steam generation and particularly noted the quality of the Harbour Vein. The company's advertisement was signed by James A. Moren, President.

The company was therefore seeking markets well beyond the immediate Cape Breton region.

Moren's career and the development of the Glace Bay Mining Company were part of the larger transformation of Cape Breton coal from relatively small workings into a capital-intensive industrial industry.

And the infrastructure that made that possible was already visible in 1864: mines, coal cars, harbour improvements and vessels.

The lumber coming from Mahone Bay was one small part of that infrastructure.

Sources and Further Reading

• Winthrop Bell, Register of the Foreign Protestants of Nova Scotia.

• Nova Scotia Lutheran church registers, including the records of Peter Schnerr, Johann Conrad Schnerr and their families.

• Nova Scotia assessment and poll-tax records.

• Peter Schnerr's 1807 will.

• Nova Scotia Archives, historical directories.

• R. J. Uniacke, Sketches of Cape Breton.

• Mahone Bay Museum, ship database and historical material.

• A. A. MacKinnon and C. Parnaby, Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century.

• Contemporary advertisements and reports concerning the Glace Bay Mining Company.