|
*******************************************************************
O U T L O O K NEWSLETTER of LUNENBURG COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Fort Point Museum - Sainte Marie de Grace, LaHave, Nova Scotia ISSUE
NO.:17 SUMMER 2006
****************************************************************
Fort Point Museum, Rte 331in LaHave Open daily , June to Sept. 10.00am- 5.00pm - No admission fee A Society Meeting every third Tuesday at the LaHave Fire Hall, with an
interesting program after a Potluck Supper. Guests are always welcome.
***********************
Due to the construction work this summer the museum might be closed on
and off , so check with the guides at the museum before you go (688 -
1632)
********************************************************
MUSIC AT THE POINT
Sun, July 16 - at 2pm $5.00 admission DARREN ARSENAULT An
accomplished folk guitarist and singer.. Snacks and bake table will be available. Bring a chair, sunscreen and all your friends.
**********************
Next concert will be on Sunday, August 20th - 2pm Nick Jeffrey Guitarist and singer
*********************************************************
OUR NEXT SOCIETY MEETING:
Tuesday, July 18 - at LaHave Fire Hall. 6:30pm - Potluck SupperBring your plate, silverware, and a cup 7:30pm - Mary Smith shows more of her beautiful slides from their trip last year to the Southwest of USA, especially the area of unusual mountains called THE WAVE.
**********************************
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Tues, August 15th - our guest speaker will be Jean de Saint-Sardos.
Mr. de Saint-Sardos participated in the 2004. Champlain lectures. His presentation will be on the Year 1604., when Samuel de Champlain came to out shores.
*****************
Tues. Sept. 19 -Paul Harmon and Patsy Drew of Petite Riviere will talk about collecting old photos for the successful show in 2004 HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAHSS OF PETITE RIVIERE
***************
Tues.Oct.17 -George Himmelman on the history of HIMMELMAN SUPPLY CO. AND OK SERVICES and more stories on the local history.
***************
Tues. Nov. 21 -John Walker will show and speak about his Documentary on the miners from Cape Breton called MEN OF THE DEEPS
**********************************************
(pic. not avalable on email)
Here it is: Fort Point Museum how we have seen it for years: the Cairn telling us about the first settlement of the Fort in 1632, the lighthouse keepers house, now our museum with many interesting exhibits, our own little lighthouse, the canons, the picnic tables.... A concert this Sunday will be the last event before they start with the big change and extension. So come and see us once more in the old familiar setting.
(photo: Edith Wolter)
********************************************************************
A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT
Summer is here, and with it,most of our summer residents have returned. A hearty "Welcome Home", to all. The Society hosted a very successful Wine Tasting in June, and raised approximately $500.00. I would like to thank the volunteers and those who made the event a success by attending. The Gardening Committee was delayed by the wet weather. However, at the first ray of sunshine, they whipped the garden into order. Please drop by, for a view of the finished product. Many thanks to our gardeners.
We have hired two labourers. The evidence of their hard work is, particularly, visible in the basement. The old floor has been torn out. The walls have been removed, back to the concrete foundation. Vapour barriers will be installed and the walls will be rebuilt. The construction of the addition to the museum, has been delayed because of wet weather. The excavation for the foundation is scheduled for July 17. Things will move along at a good pace, once the foundation is completed.
Our July 16th concert will be the last event hosted before the big changes begin. Please come by to enjoy the site in its' current form, one last time. This would be a good time to get some pictures. We have been selling raffle tickets on a, lovely, Decorative Garden Bench. The draw will take place at the concert. The bench would be an attractive addition to any garden, be sure you have enough tickets.
I hope to see you on the 16th. Gary Malone
***************************
SALUTE TO CAMP NORWAY
The June 20th meeting, well attended by forty members and guests enjoying the Royal Norwegian Consulate, Steinar Engeset's passionate presentation on Camp Norway. He praised the people of Lunenburg and the surrounding area
for their hospitality shown to the Norwegians from 1940 to 1943. He also
described how important the Convoys were in transporting supplies to the Allies. Mr Engeset's closing remarks employed us to remember our Veterans
and continue to preserve our History. Johanna Rafuse
**********************************************
THE SACK OF LUNENBURG From "Sagas of the Seas"by Archibald MacMechan.
FOREWORD OF HISTORY
The town of Lunenburg was founded in 1753 with immigrants from the Lower Rhine, the Palatinate and the protestant stronghold on the border of Switzerland. stronghold Montbeliard and represented the policy of the British Government to people the province with Protestant settlers as a counterpoise to the French. The site of the town was selected with an eye on easy defence.It stands on the narrow hog's back isthmus of the peninsula jutting far into the sea. The town itself was outlaid as a small compact oblong of twelve streets crossing at right angles. Towards the nose of the peninsula seaward, two large parcels of land were set apart as commons and a series of garden-plots. On the landward site, beyond the isthmus, the farms were allotted on a generous scale. Each worthy settler received a town-lot, a garden-lots thirty acre lot and a hundred acre farm. Chance decided the holdings, as the settlers drew from a pack of cards. Some of these cards are occasionally still produced as evidence in law-suits. Three blockhouses, a pentagon fort with barracks and a line of pickets protected the town on the west. Another blockhouse crowning the hill, one hundred and thirty feet above the water defended the eastern flank.With adequate arms, a resolute garrison and fortification,Lunenburg should have proved a miniature Gibraltar.
This settlement had suffered many things. Even before the Seven Year war broke out in 1756, Indians attacked the outlying farms, shooting, tomahawking, scalping helpless women and children, till the terror-stricken farmers abandoned their farms and took refuge in town. Then, after a short decade of peace, the American Revolution came, bringing to the Lunenburgers, as to the rest of the province, scarcity, high prices, dangers from enemy actions. Their greatest hardship was the attack of the "rebels" in the last year of the war, when American privateers were most numerous and active. In 1775, the Yankee cruisers raided Charlottetown, Annapolis Royal was surprised and plundered in 1781; but the attack on Lunenburg is the best remembered and the most famous in the annals of the province.
II THE SURPRISE
At dawn on the 1st of July, 1782, Magdalena Schwartz on Myra's Island went out to milk her cow. Hearing a nose, she looked up and saw a large band of armed men coming over the hill and trampling down her patch of barley. She dropped her pail in her fright, ran to the house and told her husband Leonard. At once he started to give the alarm , and, though fired at crossing Rous's Brook, reached the town in safety. The enemy were close at his heel. In a few minutes every soul was awakened by the crackle of musketry fire about the eastern blockhouse. Fear and confusion reigned. What had happened? The night before, Captain Weiderholt came in from Halifax and told Leonard Schwartz "The Yankees are coming to-morrow" The warning was unheeded, but the Yankees came as predicted. During the night, six sail of privateers had landed a party of ninety men at Redhead, inside the harbour, two miles from the town, and at sunrise the invaders were on the march to attack it. The flagship of the hostile flotilla was the big topsail schooner Scammell of sixteen guns and sixty men. She was commanded by Noah Stoddard, a fitting name for a sailor. Like Lambro, "this sea-silicitor" was a genial pirate. His vessel was commissioned in April and his first exploit , in company with the Lively privateer, Captain Adams, was rescuing the officers and crew of H.M.S. Blonde wrecked on Great Seal Island. The Blonde was a smart frigate, new coppered and "sailing swift as the wind," says the veracious Gazette; but the Blonde's high hopes of captures and prize-money were dashed. Some sixty American prisoners were on board when she was wrecked, but they escaped. Noah treated his unfortunate enemies with greatest humanity, sending them back to Halifax and furnishing them with passes to secure them from molestation by other privateersmen. In the long black record of privateers brutality, such a deed shines like gold. Now Admiral Noah was directing with great skill a combined attack , eight guns and thirty men; the Massachusetts brigantine by sea and land upon a hostile provincial town. His "operations" are a good example, on a small scale, of what the strategists call amphibious warfare. The other vessels were the Massachusetts schooner Hero, nine guns and twenty-five men, George Waitstill Babcock, master; the Massachusetts schooner Dolphin, eight guns and thirty men, Greag Power, master; the New Hampshire cutter Swallow, five guns and twenty men, John Tibbetts, master; and a small row-galley of unknown armament and crew. According to Major Pernette - and he is confirmed by the Boston Gazette - the expedition was organized in Boston for the express purpose of attacking Lunenburg. The Americans were an overwhelming force. Lunenburg contained at that time no more than forty or fifty dwelling-houses; man of the inhabitants were absent. When the old, the invalids, and the children are omitted from the muster, there could not have been mire than twenty men available for the defence. Still there was a sow of resistance. The first citizen was undoubtedly Colonel John Creighton, who had seen service as a lieutenant in the British Army during the war of the Austrian Succession, and had been wounded at Fontenoy. The privateer men planned to surround his house, which was near the blockhouse, and secure him first; but his servant saw the enemy advancing along the road across the common, and warned his master. Such casual warning should have been unnecessary. The eastern blockhouse had a night-guard,which should have remained at their post until properly relieved, but with the lax discipline of militia-men, they had gone off at dawn and left the blockhouse undefended. Into this deserted strong-point the old colonel hurried with five men, and opened fire on the attackers. His faithful black servant Sylvia did yeoman service, carrying cartridge and ball in her apron to the fort from the colonel's dwelling nearby. When the musket balls rattled against the wall s of the Creighton house, she sheltered the colonel's son with her body. Sylvia was something of a heroine. Tradition has it that she help to load the muskets in the blockhouse and even fired them. Some of the bullets found their billet, for at least three of the invaders were winged, and one was severely wounded. How long the tine garrison of the blockhouse held out is not clear from the records. The first landing party was speedily reinforced. having impressed three Lunenburgers as pilots, the privateers were soon descried sailing round East Point. Without mishap, they all reached the inner harbour, anchored in face of the town and landed another strong detachment with four ship guns. Their objective was the undefended blockhouse to the west of town. Two parties rushed to the two batteries at the end of the picket-line, spiked the two twenty-four -pounders and rolled them with their cannon-balls down the steep bans. They established themselves as a main guard on Blockhouse Hill, which commanded the whole neck if land leading from town to the country, and they planted the guns from the ships so as to sweep the streets. Lunenburg as now completely cut off from the surrounding district, the landing parties strongly occupying both flanks, and the menacing flotilla at anchor in the harbour. The attack was a brilliant success and a credit to the staff work of Admiral Noah Stoddard. Further resistance was useless. Colonel Creighton in the eastern blockhouse had no choice but surrender. He and two of his men were taken prisoners, marched down to the King's Wharf and put on board of the Scammell. Faithful Sylvia was allowed to escape. The defence of the blockhouse that July morning was a small affair, and there has been a tendency to view it in a humorous light; but, as Montaigne says, a man may show as much courage in dislodging a musketeer from a hen-roost as in slaying a champion in the sight of two armies. Later in the day the Reverend Pierre de la Roche, with two other leading citizens, went on board the Scammell to beg for the colonel's release, but in vain. Captain Stoddard bore his prisoner no ill will. After the war he sent kind inquiries by a Haligonian about the family of the late enemy, and stated that he had " a great regard for the old gentleman." (The outcome of this true story in the next issue.)
****************************************
RENAISSANCE PROJECT CONSTRUCTION
is underway, we have hired two labourers through Service Canada, John and Brainard .We now have the basement floor out and are in the process of getting the new walls constructed.This is being done by Nauss Construction Company. We are also working on a new design for the septic system. The old system is not satisfactory for the extension of the museum and has to be replaced and reconstructed. There have been many people visiting the museum since opening day.
Stacie Lynn Wallace
**********************************************
INTERPRETIVE PANELS
We are working in five interpretive panels to be erected on the grounds after the construction is over. The panels will cover the history of the Fort Point site from pre-1604 (that is, before Champlain arrived) to the present day. They describe the time it was the location of the capital of New France, with Isaac de Razilly as Lieutenant-General appointed by Louis XIII. The panels are illustrated with maps and many other reproductions of exhibits from the museum.
The panels will be in French and English. Jim Sewell
**********************************************
MICHAEL FITZPATRICK CELLO CONCERTS Michael will present a concert and
cd signing at Planet Organic Market, Halifax on 22 July, at 12:30 pm and a concert at St. John's Church, Bell Island, on 23 July, at 4:00 pm. Heather
Brill, harpsichordist, will join Michael at St. John's. Because of some
changes in his tour the St. James concert in West LaHave will be postponed until he return to LaHave, later in the year. These are two more concerts by our "local" cellist Michael Fitzpatrick you should not miss:
**********************************************
FORT POINT ART CLASSES AT THE MUSEUM
Enjoy creating hand crafts, working with paints, drama and writing, and experimenting with natural materials found on the shore of the LaHave. New activities in every session. Only 4 weeks left. Led by teacher, Brenda Hebb. Ages 4 to 7 10:30 a.m -12:00 p.m. $20 per three day session
Ages 8 to 12 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. $30 per three day session
Session III #06332/33 July 18, 19 & 20 - "Whale of a Tale"Our
province has a rich history of folklore. Let's try telling tales and making art about what lives in the deep and around Fort Point. Session IV#06336/37 July 25, 26 & 27 "Old Days and Old Ways" Fort Point has its own historical treasures in both European and Aboriginal cultures. Let's explore the past with stories and crafts to discover how people, young and old, lived differently than from today.
Session V #06344/45 August 1, 2 & 3 "Wind, Sail and Sand" Come to
Fort Point where the wind is strong and the sail boats are a glorious sight on the LaHave. We'll make kites and do our own sailing of a different sort.
Session VI #06347/48 August 8, 9 & 10 "Fiesta" Let's celebrate
the last week with a Summer Fiesta. Dress for summer play and water games.
For information or to register call 541-5300.Janice Rand Program
Coordinator
*************************************************
HISTORIC PERNETTE WALKING TOUR
Joan Dawson has twice taking people on a walking tour around Pernette Cove, down to the original ferry landing spot and the St. Peter's Cemetery. Joan will do it again this August if there is enough interest. If you want to join her, please leave your name and phone number at the Fort Point Museum (688-1632) or call Joan at 688-2149. Evenings are best time to call.
********************************************
SALTSCAPE SUBSCRIPTIONS
If you want to take out a subscription for yourself or a friend of this very interesting Maritime magazine, please mention that you are doing it through the Lunenburg County Historical Society and use a form available at the museum. As a partner in their COMMUNITY SPIRIT the museum will get a $10.00 donation from Saltscape.
*******************************************
FIRST PEOPLES' MI'KMAQ GATHERING
Sat, August 12, 2006, 10-6pm, Marc, Dayspring. Enjoy a Mi'kmaq Experience and Culture Day with our Mi'kmaq Crafters and Artisans. Learn how to make baskets,porcupine jewellery, dream catchers, drums, write with hieroglyphics, medicine walk, children' activities, dancing, drumming , singing and a feast plus many more. Demonstrations : How to make a Medicine bag,knowledge of bow hunting, animal talk and eel fishing. Lobster and Scallop rolls available at the canteen.
More Information: Ellen Hunt 902 634-8017 Mi'kmaq Burial Ground
Research Restoration Assc.
*******************************************
'HISTORIC TIMES'
Copies of the historic newsletters of LaHave, Bridgewater,Mahone Bay and others are available at our giftshop.And, don't forget, so is our own publication HISTORIC LAHAVE RIVER VALLEY as well as many other
interesting items from the Maritime No tax at our giftshop.
******************************************
FORT POINT CANCUN BEACH BASH (Age 3-12)
Ship on on over to the Fort Point Museum in LaHave and join the LMRD staff as they treat you like royalty at their Cancur resort. Buried treasure, sand sculpting and the Mexican Jumping Beans dance will make this afternoon one to remember. FREE registration on site. 3&4 year old must be accompanied by an adult. Thursday, July 20, 1:30 to 4.00 pm
*****************************************
WE NEED VOLUNTEERS:
Our busy season is fast approaching and we need lots of volunteers:
volunteering at the Museum, with garden and yard work, with the new
Oral History project, events in the summer , calling members, ideas for
guest speakers. Please offer your help Any assistance. is greatly
appreciated.
contact Johanna Rafuse (688 1674)
************************************
WANT TO BECOME A SPONSOR ?
If you want to sign up as a sponsor for this newsletter which comes out three times a year telling the world about our society, events and exhibit and - would be a good advertisement for your own business, please let us know. Just call Lesley ((693-2002) or Edith (543-7702) and we will arrange it. For a $50.00 donation, the purpose, background and accomplishment of your business will be spelled out in a little article, show an appropriate picture and will be distributed, and we hope read, by 750 people in LaHave, Green Bay, Petite Riviere, LaHave Islands, Pleasantville and part of Riverport. You will be in good company with our previous sponsor who have always been pleased with their sponsorship.
***********************************************
ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR PROGRAMS:
If anyone has any good idea about a speaker they would like to hear at our potluck suppers or a subject they would like to be covered or uncovered, please let Gary (688-1970) or Lesley (693-2062) know , so it can be incorporated into the planning for next year.
**********************************************
A FRIENDLY REMINDER to all members who have not paid their dues, please
do so. We welcome and encourage any interested new members.
*********************
IT'S EASY TO BECOME A MEMBER
Just fill out the form below and mail it:
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION
Name:.......................................................................
Address:....................................................................
incl. civic address Phone:home:.............................work:...............................
email:......................................................................
Interests:...............................................................................................................................
.................................................................................................................................................
.................................................................................................................................................
Dues are $10.00 per person
Please mail to: Fort Point Museum, Membership - Roberta Macnab RR 1
Pleasantville, B0R 1C0
**********************************
OUR NEW RECIPE COOK
Remember the old one ? It was fun, but we are planning to do a whole new one and hope people will send us all kind of new or old recipes we can put in and tell everybody what is your favourite. Write them down and bring them to the museum or one of our meetings
*****************************************
LUNENBURG CO. HISTORICAL SOCIETY Fort Point Museum - Ste.
Marie de Grace
P.O.Box 99, LaHave, NS B0R 1C0 (688-1632)
email: Ichs-fortpoint@ns.sympatico,ca website: www.fortpointmuseum.com
Officers: President: Gary Malone (688-1970) Past President: Phil
Kenny (688-2399)
Vice Pres.: Johanna Rafuse Bookkeeper: Dick Joyce Recording
Secretary: Donna Malone
Directors : Maggie Dorning, Carol Kenny, Mary Meagher and Jim Sewell
Newsletter: Edith Wolter (543-7702)
back to top
|