Irene Elder of Falmouth

Nova Scotia # 10 on October 14th, 1867 cover from Kentville, Nova Scotia to Hantsport, Nova Scotia. Addressed to Miss Irene Elder, Hantsport. Backstamps Kentville OC 14 67, a second with illegible place and date 1867, a third backstamp is completely illegible.

Irene Elder was 26 years old and apparently living in Hantsport when she received this letter from Kentville. Four years later, the 1871 census has her living with her elderly parents on their farm in Falmouth, Kings County, north of Hantsport. Irene Elder, 30, birthplace Nova Scotia, Baptist, living with Samuel Elder, 85, farmer, and Sarah Elder, 74.

Sarah Irene Elder was born February 17th, 1838, in Hantsport. She had three sisters and four brothers. Irene's father Samuel F. Elder appears in the 1838 Horton Township Census returns. His occupation is farmer. In the household we find two girls under the age of 6, two boys between 6-14, two girls between 6-14, two young men over 14, one female over 14 (probably his wife Sarah), for a total of ten including himself.

Two years after Irene received this letter, the first train ran through Hantsport on Christmas day 1869. It stopped at Hantsport, but as it was a very foggy morning, the train ran quite a distance by the station before it could be stopped and had to run back again. The train ran between Kentville and Horton Landing three months before it ran through to Windsor since the bridges over the Avon and Horton rivers had not been completed. The locomotive used to build the railroad between Horton and Windsor was brought from Windsor to Hantsport on a scow and hauled by horse team up Prince Street to the railroad right of way on temporary rails. Woodman, Harriet, History of Hantsport.

Locomotive built by the Fox-Walker Co., Bristol, England for the Windsor & Annapolis Railway, November 1868

The railway was ultimately Irene's father's undoing. According to his death record, Samuel died on October 9th, 1873, at Hantsport, age 87. He was run over by a set of rail cars. His daughter Irene was the informant on record. He had been a farmer and teacher up until his untimely death. Samuel is buried in Riverbank Cemetery in Hantsport.

Two years after her father's death, on June 16th, 1875, Irene was married in the Hantsport Baptist Church to Albert Fisher Morton, born March 18th, 1840, in Middleton, Annapolis County, the son of Joseph and Matilda Morton. Irene and Albert had three children, Charles Foreman, Alberta Irene, and Pearl Josephine.

The 1881 census for Middleton Corner, Annapolis County has A F Morton, 41, farmer, Methodist Church of Canada, with Irene S Morton, 41, C Foreman Morton, 5, A Irene Morton, 3, and Pearl J Morton, 8 months.

The 1891 census for, Middleton, Annapolis County, has Albert Norton, 52, Methodist, farmer, with Irene Marton, 52, wife, Charles Marton, 15, son, Alberta Marton, 13, daughter, Pearl J Marton, 12, daughter.

Irene died 26 Nov 1923, aged 85, at Deep Brook, Annapolis County, and is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery, Middleton, Annapolis County, Albert died two years later on December 28th, 1925, aged 85, and is buried with his wife.

The Elders of Falmouth and Hantsport

The first Elder immigrant to Hants County was Irene's grandfather, Matthew Elder, born 1748, who came as a young man from County Donegal, Ireland, to Windsor, probably during the McNutt migration about 1760. He married there Rebecca Jenkins, daughter of Nathaniel Jenkins of Falmouth, N.S. who had come from Armagh Ireland, probably at the same time. Matthew Elder purchased Greenwood Farm in Falmouth from Jeremiah Northup on June 10th, 1784, and settled there. The farm remained in his family for three generations. He made his will January 11, 1811, shortly before he died aged 63. it was proved Mar 21, 1811. His wife, Rebecca died October 9, 1809, in Halifax, while on a visit to her son James. She is buried in St. Paul's Burying Ground on Pleasant Street, with James.

Mathew and Rebecca had eleven children. Irene's father, Samuel F. Elder was their third child, born August 12th. 1786. He married January 16th, 1818, Sarah Shaw, the daughter of Peter Shaw and Nancy Smith. Samuel is listed as a lieutenant in the Hants County militia in 1820. Samuel was a founding member of the Baptist Church in Windsor in 1819, and in 1829, he, along with 20 other members of that church, organized a new congregation of Baptists in Falmouth. Interestingly, subscriptions were solicited from the public at large for the construction of the Falmouth Baptist Meeting House. "To be built between John Elder, Esq. and Elisha Porter's in the said Middle District [of Falmouth]." Samuel and Sarah had nine children, of which Irene was the eighth. Her younger brother, William graduated from Harvard in 1868 and held the chair of Natural Science at Acadia University.

Alexander McNutt and the Settlement of Nova Scotia

Alexander McNutt was a British Army officer, colonist and land agent, responsible for seeing an approximate 500 Ulster Scottish emigrants arrive in Nova Scotia during the early 1760s.

McNutt emigrated to America some time before 1753 by which time he had settled in the town of Staunton, Virginia. In 1756 he was an officer in the Virginia militia on Major Andrew Lewis's Sandy Creek Expedition against the Shawnees on the Ohio River. By September 1758 McNutt had relocated to Londonderry, New Hampshire, a town settled by Ulster Scots.

Between April and November 1760, McNutt served as a Massachusetts captain at Fort Cumberland near the present-day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, five years after the Expulsion of the Acadians. It was during this time that he became involved in the colonization of Nova Scotia. He concerned himself with the Cobequid Townships of Truro and Londonderry.

Through McNutt's efforts, a group of fifty families from New Hampshire arrived in the spring of 1761 in the Cobequid (Truro) area of Nova Scotia. He had several proposals for settlement of some 7,000 to 8,000 Protestant Irish in Nova Scotia accepted by the Board of Trade in London, but he was not successful in getting the support of the Privy Council who feared such an out-migration would harm British interests in Ireland. He nevertheless went to the Ulster with just the Board of Trade's approval to seek out emigrants. In the spring of 1761, he advertised throughout Ulster with an offer to "industrious farmers and useful mechanics" of 200 acres (0.81 km2) of land to the head of a family and 50 to each member. His effort resulted in 300 colonists arriving in Halifax in October on the ships Hopewell and Nancy.

The next autumn, 170 more settlers arrived out of Londonderry on the same two ships and settled the New Dublin area in present-day Lunenburg County and elsewhere in the province. The link below is to the McNutt entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Biography of Alexander McNutt