Saturday, 6 July 2019

How Old Barns got its name


Old Barns, where my paternal 4th great grandfather, Alexander Nelson (abt 1737-1803), settled in Colchester, Nova Scotia, was originally farmland of Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick beginning in 1755.

The area is described vividly in this extract from an unknown source:

Nelson family papers from Nova Scotia Archives
Nelson family papers from Nova Scotia Archives
Those barns were all that remained of Acadian families' farm fields and structures, which were burned by the British. Among my great aunt Letitia Nelson's possessions found after her death in 1941 was a copy of a painting of Evangeline, the fictional heroine of William Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, written in 1847. The painting is still in Nelson family hands today.




The never ending story continues....




© Margaret Dougherty 2016-2019 All rights reserved

About the Family of Robert Young and Isabella Knox

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