Abby Jenks and Hulda Read, Seminarians

Nova Scotia # 10 on 23 November 1864 cover from Amherst, Nova Scotia to Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Addressed to Miss Abby Jenks, Grand Pre Seminary, Wolfville, NS. Backstamps from Amherst, NO 23 1864, H(alifax) NO 24 1864, and Wolfville, date illegible. Manuscript "Miss Hulda J. Read" written twice on back.

Both the sender and the recipient of this 1864 letter had been students at the Grand Pre Seminary during the 1861-62 school year, as recorded in student lists in James Doyle Davison's 1981 book Alice of Grand Pre.

On page 76, one of the students in 1861-2 is Hulda Reid of Minudie

and on page 105, Abbie Jenks of Amherst is named as one of the 1861-62 class.

Alice of Grand Pre : Alice T. Shaw and her Grand Pre Seminary : female education in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Davison, James Doyle, 1981

Alice of Grand Pre

The sender, Hulda Jane Reid was born March 8, 1844 in Minudie, Cumberland Co, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Joseph Bedford Read (1803-1866) and Abigail Seaman (1811-1893). Her great-grandfather, Eliphalet Read (1730-1804) was a New England planter from Rehoboth, Massachusetts settling in Sackville, New Brunswick in the early 1760s.

On July 15, 1878 at River Hebert Baptist, Hulda Jane Read, 33, spinster, daughter of James and Margaret Read, farmer of Menudie, Nova Scotia, married Robert Amos Christie, 38, bachelor farmer, son of Joseph and Abigail Christie, merchant of Menudie. She and Robert had three sons and three daughters. Hulda died 8 Dec 1929 in River Hébert, Cumberland, Nova Scotia. She is buried in River Hebert Cemetery.

Tracing the lineage of the letter's recipient, Abby Jenks, is more difficult. The 1861 census only lists heads of families, and no Abigail Jenks appears in the 1871 census, presumably because she had married in the interim. Davison's book records her as Abbie Jenks of Amherst. There is only one Jenks family in Amherst in the 1861 census: James L. Jenks, head of a household of 5: 2 males and 3 females. But James Lewis Jenks was born January 2, 1835 at Halfway River, Hants Co, Nova Scotia, making him too young to be Abbie's father. However, James Lewis' father, David Andrew Jenks (1795-1864) had a daughter, Eunice Abigail Jenks, born May 1, 1839, who would have been 22 years old in 1861 and may me our Abby. David Andrew's grandfather, James Jenks (1733-1806) was a New England planter from Providence, Rhode Island to Halfway River, Nova Scotia. Genealogy of the Jenks family of America, by Browne, William Bradford, 1952, p 223.

Grand Pre Seminary

In 1858 Rev. John Chase opened a school for young ladies at Wolfville, NS with his daughters, who had studied at Mount Holyoke seminary, MA, as teachers. Two years later the school was taken over by the Education Society with Miss Alice Shaw (who later married Rev. Alfred Chipman) as Principal. Miss Shaw had also studied at Mount Holyoke Seminary and prior to becoming Principal had conducted her own Girls’ School in Berwick, NS. From 1862 to c. 1870, the school was known as the Grand Pre Seminary, but in 1872 it became the “Female Department” of Horton Academy. In 1865 the Academy including the Seminary, came under the control of Acadia College. After 1872 the Seminary was moved to the Acadia campus, and in 1877 it, with the Academy, passed into the hands of the Board of Governors of the University.

Grand Pre Seminary circa 1862