UPDATING FAMILY HISTORY

Listen up, all ye members of the next generation: Heidi and Lee have learned a whole lot more about the sources of your DNA!

We spent the morning with Abbie and Ross Hersey tooling around Port Maitland, Lake George, Breton and various points in between hunting down various sites associated with Martin Family history.  Both hosts proved not only apt guides but also great storytellers, full of anecdotes tied to various events and locations.

The Port Maitland house in which Heidi's Great Grandparents once lived still exists (although in a somewhat dilapidated state) as does the Salt Air Lodge where her Grandparents often summered together with Heidi's Mother and her Aunts.

HOME OF JACOB AND ELEANOR CROSBY, PORT MAITLAND, YARMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA

ONCE THE SALT AIR LODGE, NOW A PRIVATE HOME, SOON TO BE A BED AND BREAKFAST
PORT MAITLAND, YARMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA

The house in which Heidi's Grandfather was born, however, has disappeared, leaving only the remnants of a stone wall on the property near Lake George.

THE NOW DESERTED PROPERTY WHERE WILLIAM HENRY CROSBY WAS BORN NEAR LAKE GEORGE,
YARMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA

Two cemetery searches yielded no family tombstones but Crosby Hall (the funds provided for by William Henry Crosby -"Pup") still exists beneath the sanctuary of the Port Maitland Baptist church after all these years.

CROSBY HALL, BAPTIST CHURCH
PORT  MAITLAND, YARMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA

Both Heidi and Lee thought Port Maitland itself a charming and lovely Yarmouth area village and could well understand why Ross, for instance, never left, why Abbie returned in retirement and why, all those years, the Crosbys spent summers looking out over the Bay of Fundy.

WITH THE ARCHIVIST AT THE YARMOUTH MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES

 Our afternoon at the Yarmouth Museum and Archives yielded equally fruitful insights.  While Heidi tracked down some of the ancestors of her female relatives, Lee focused on the six generations of Eleanor Moses Durkee, Heidi's Geat Grandmother (who married Jacob Knowles Crosby), dating back to the arrival of William Durkee in Ipswich, Massachusetts, from the West Indies in 1663, likely as an indentured servant.  That endeavor added some twenty-six names (and potential sources of DNA) to the female side of the Martin family tree!

Staggering out of the Museum / Archives after several hours, we strolled around the Yarmouth historic district, once home to some 600 sea captains and their elaborate mansions.  Some of the survivors still look fantastic, but too many had "for sale" signs out front, indicative of the continuing decline in the town's fortunes (some attributable to the cessation of direct ferry traffic between Yarmouth and Bar Harbor, Maine).

In our continuing consideration of Canadian cuisine, this evening Heidi thought about ordering Lobster Poutine for dinner at the Austrian Inn until she found out it consisted of lobster in a cream sauce served over french fries and topped with melted cheddar cheese...

A BEAUTIFUL CANADIAN SUNSET,
YARMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA

BACK TO THE VERY BEGINNING

What a full and fascinating day this turned out to be!

After the usual great breakfast and good conversation with our hosts and fellow guests, Heidi and Lee walked over to the nearby Historical Gardens, a seventy-five acre collection of plants and trees laid out and cared for with great attention to attractive and informative groupings.  Lee, of course, ended up with even more digital images of flowers; but both of us thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the site, taking in all the beauty on display.


On our return walk to "downtown" Annapolis Royal, we stopped by to photograph the harbor at high tide.  While at the wharf, a local workman nearby indicated that the high tide last night had reached twenty-nine feet, reaching right up underneath the wharf-side shed where he was working.   On our way out of town thereafter, we stopped to watch the rushing influx of tidal waters adjacent to the Tidal Power Generation Plant on the edge of town, fascinated by the swirling, foaming waves rushing upstream into the Annapolis River.

We then drove out to the Habitation, a recreation of the very first French enclave in the Americas, established at Port Royal in 1605.  This was also the first major historically accurate reconstruction effort undertaken by the Canadian government back in the 1930s.  The resulting meticulous restoration of the entire outpost proved eye-opening for us both.  The attention to detail was everywhere apparent, and the costumed interpreters really knew their stuff.  We spent a good ninety minutes exploring the buildings, questioning the guides and poking around, in the process coming to admire the relative luxury of the accommodations (The settlement even had a wine cellar; and the inhabitants, a social club which, within a year, put on a production of the first ever play to be written in the New World!).

After an agonizingly slow (but delicious) lunch at the Bistro East, we again hit the road, this time headed west to Port Maitland where we dropped in to meet and chat with Heidi's second cousin, Abbie, and her husband, Ross.  Abbie knew not only Heidi's Grandfather and Grandmother Crosby but her Great-Grandparents as well!  We enjoyed our chat with both deep-rooted residents of the small town from which Heidi's Grandparents migrated to the Boston area and will return tomorrow to be taken to some of the local sites associated with the Crosbys.

Our final stop for the day brought us to Yarmouth and the Murray Manor Bed and Breakfast, a Gothic Revival mansion, where we will stay tonight and tomorrow while Heidi undertakes some genealogical research at the Yarmouth Museum and Archives.

Dinner this evening took us across the street to Peg's Family Restaurant where we had our first experience with the huge portions "everyday" Canadians demand when dining out.  Among the "new" items on the menu were a hamburger slathered with both peanut butter and cheese and another patty served between two toasted cheese sandwiches (which even the waitress admitted would serve most folks for three meals, not just one)!  The desert specials included deep fried chocolate bars...

A WELCOME CHANGE OF PACE

Lee is sitting alone at the far end of an immense Queen Anne Revival style living room in a mansion built in 1882 here in Annapolis Royal, looking out into a wood paneled entrance hall illuminated by a crystal chandelier and a winged bronze statue of Peace holding aloft an electrified torch -- quite a luxurious setting, believe me!

We returned a short while ago from the Bistro East, a very comfortable local restaurant, where we both had dishes featuring Digby scallops, fresh from the ocean, seared and served with a minimum of embellishment - what a treat.

Dinner proved the perfect compliment to a very relaxing day largely spent traveling from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia.  We began the day, of course, in Saint Stephen, just across the border from Maine.

BREAKFAST AT BLAIR HOUSE, SAINT STEPHEN, NEW BRUNSWICK

THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY AT BLAIR HOUSE

ANOTHER SAINT STEPHEN MANSION,
THIS ONE ONCE BELONGED TO THE LOCAL CHOCOLATE FACTORY OWNER

After breakfast (featuring fruit compote, pancakes and good conversation with folks from Pennsylvania, Cincinnati and Ottawa), we drove to Saint John (the "Saint" is always spelled out completely to differentiate this "Saint John" from "St. John's", another Canadian city).

We arrived early enough to stop and see the Reversible Waterfall, actually a cataract the current of which shifts directions depending on the tide.   The process was at midpoint in the shoft from outflow to inflow, but photographs in the visitor center illustrated the differences nicely.

On our way down to the ferry dock, we drove around the preserved historic heart of downtown Saint John which has managed to maintain the largest collection of nineteenth century urban retail structures in Canada, a very impressive collection of buildings.

We lazed away the three hours it took to sail between Saint John and Digby, Nova Scotia, lounging in the bright sunshine of the perfect Fall afternoon - cool, bright and sunny.

Once in Nova Scotia we drove on to Annapolis Royal and to the Bread and Roses Bed and Breakfast Inn.

Annapolis Royal served as the capital of French Canada in the seventeenth century and today remains a charming introduction to that era of (very complicated) history and culture.  We wandered around town for much of the afternoon, reading historic plaques, admiring the many eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings and marveling at the apparent differences between "low tide" and "high tide" hereabouts.  (Evidently the tide throughout the Bay of Fundy can rise and fall twenty-six feet or more between the two extremes!)

All along the way we ran into REALLY friendly people who invited us into their homes and gardens to help give us the full flavor of the town and its history.  We learned a lot and were quite overwhelmed by the hospitality as well.

The day as a whole proved a fantastic beginning to our nine day adventure here in Nova Scotia!

ACROSS THE BORDER -- FINALLY!

The number of hours spend zipping along the Interstate, first between Cleveland and Washington, then up the East Coast into Connecticut, New Hampshire and on into Maine, has mounted up to a seemingly astronomical sum!  By late this afternoon we were both ready to settle into a more manageable routine.  Fortunately, that schedule shift is set to kick in tomorrow - thank goodness!

But today we still were trying to accomplish a bit too much within a single twenty-four hour period.  We wouldn't have given up any of it, however, and actually we coped well enough - and the evening ahead looks much more manageable.

We started the morning sharing a meal and catching up with John and Karen Martin at Steve's, a popular local breakfast spot in Exeter.  Before setting off on our sprint for the Canadian border, we also dropped in again on Aunt Free.  Then, off we drove.  We lunched in Bangor, having meandered around first looking for the house in which Heidi's father lived when his father taught at Bangor Theological Seminar (It seems to have somehow disappeared since Heidi first saw it on an earlier visit years ago.).

We arrived at the border in Calais (which locals pronounce "Callous") and, following quite a quizzing at the crossing, moved on into St. Stephen.   A quick stop at the New Brunswick Tourist Office and the aid of a helpful soul there put us almost immediately into a quite wonderful bed-and-breakfast, Blair House, just a couple of blocks away.

St. Stephen is known as "Chocolate Town" although the local chocolate factory closed awhile ago and the building itself has been reconfigured into apartments, a museum and the Bistro, a fine little restaurant where we had an early (and quite delicious) dinner.

Now we're settled in for the night, talking with others also staying at Blair House - a relaxing conclusion to a busy, busy day.