The Descendants of John Grant and Mary Sabean: Associated Families of Southwestern Nova Scotia and New England

By George Allen Grant M.A.

In Nova Scotia, the focus of study about Scottish settlers, including the Grants, has been on the eastern counties of the province, and on Cape Breton Island. In the United States, when Grants are mentioned, a significant concern seems to be to find a genealogical or DNA link to Ulysses Grant.

No one has seriously examined and written about the Grant families of southwestern Nova Scotia. That leaves a space for me to act in, and to develop a narrative history of a family founded in the soil, strengthened by the forest, and challenged by the sea environments that comprise the fundamental essence of Nova Scotia. And so, my passion has been to tell the story of my family and their relatives in southwestern Nova Scotia and to follow the paths of many of them to New England (especially to Massachusetts). This study will fulfill an implicit task left to me by my Aunt Ruth Dexter. That is the essence of why I have spent so much of my retirement on this task. But there is more to come as I follow suggestive clues left by my ancestors, or seek to overcome “brick walls” that stump every genealogist from time to time.

When I began this project, my aim was simply: “To collate and present a family history of the line descending from John Grant and Mary Sabean to myself.” If I had stayed within that framework this book would have been much shorter and less interesting. As it turns out, there are many fascinating aspects to our story. Not only will you read about the hard-working and courageous children of John and Mary, but you will follow them and their offspring as they find love and marriage, sometimes with close or distant cousins.

• You will ride or sail with them as they migrate within Nova Scotia and outward to New England.
• You will wonder at their expressions of faith and sense their hidden, internal conflict as they make religious choices based on factors we can only imagine (spirituality, simplicity, availability, or energetic missionaries), reflected in obituaries, burial sites, or their answers to census questions.
• You will share their sorrow at the deaths of loved ones through accident, disease, suicide, loss at sea or in the service of their country in war, particularly in World War I.
• You will learn of their varied occupations, trades and professions, from farming, fishing and forestry to shoemaking, carpentry and sailing, nursing and teaching.
• You will join them as they strive to become master mariners, volunteer in their churches, train young women with the YWCA in China, or succor the sick and wounded with the Red Cross in Siberia – follow them south to Boston and the Caribbean, east to Europe and across the Pacific to Asia.

Only then you will come to understand why, at its core, my passion has been to be the voice of my direct ancestors and extended family within a defined framework of time and place, to record their activities where sources allow, in essence, to be the story they could not write.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385007097

George Allen Grant M.A.

Allen Grant is an active septuagenarian and retired Canadian military officer who resides in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife Lois. The search for meaning and understanding in faith and history has always been a significant factor in Allen’s life. During the past twenty years he has added a passion for genealogy to his interests. A major retirement goal for Allen has been to combine these pursuits in a manner that would be interesting and useful for his own family and of value to readers interested in writing their own history. This book is the outcome and proves that it can be done!

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 George Allen Grant, M.A.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0707-3 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0708-0 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0709-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917348

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/07/2023

To the descendants of John Grant and Mary Sabean

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Figure 1. The Mayflower: Floral Symbol

of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Grant Family and Its Historical Background

Chapter 2     First and Second Generations: Setting Up House in NS

Chapter 3     The Third Generation: Staying the Course in NS

Chapter 4     The Fourth Generation: The Attraction of New England

Chapter 5     Generations of Fortitude: Outstanding Women Make their Mark

Chapter 6     The Fifth Generation: Entering the Twentieth Century

Chapter 7     From Sail to Steam: Sailors, Mates, and Master Mariners

Chapter 8     The Sixth Generation: At Home and Abroad

Chapter 9     The Military Connection: Our Nova Scotian and New England Relatives during World War I

Chapter 10   A Summary of Family Themes across Time and Space

Appendix

List of Abbreviations

Annotated Bibliography

Selected Index

Endnotes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been written without the encouragement of Ruth Grant Dexter (1927–2012). Ruth was my aunt, a sister to my father, George Norman Grant. She was a woman of many talents: a loving wife, a supportive mother, a serious antique collector and dealer, an active church member, and an amateur family historian. She stirred my interest in this research with an outline of the Grant family tree that became the foundation for this study. Her sister-in-law, Janetta Dexter, created a starting point for the connecting data that brought the Grants of Digby and Annapolis counties together.

One standout genealogist of Annapolis and Digby counties is Wayne Walker, a former military professional and dedicated genealogist. His contribution to the family history of Annapolis and Digby counties cannot be overstated. This study owes a good deal to his encouragement and research. He has also helped to improve on my efforts by commenting on drafts of the early chapters of this work.

Lois Jenkins, a volunteer genealogist at the Annapolis Royal Heritage Centre, helped me find several useful references during one brief visit to the Centre in 2015. Critically, she helped me resolve the mystery of the death of my second great-grandfather, John Grant Jr. We communicated again in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, at which time Lois was able to provide another key piece of my family puzzle, tying David Grant, my sixth great-grandfather, to Annapolis Royal. Cheryl Anderson, of the same Heritage Centre, kindly did some research for me and sent me valuable source material.

I should mention here another Lois, one Lois Pyke of the Nova Scotia Archives, who provided quick and professional responses to my many queries and requests to make corrections to vital statistics transcripts.

This version of our Grant family history would not have been as accurate, logical, or reader friendly without the help of several family and friends who agreed to comment on various of its drafts. The following have read and added value to the early drafts of the book: Chris Bent, James Eakins, Cathy and Bob Gray, Patrick Grant, and Robert and Alice Nash. Marlean Rhodenizer, a new friend and expert local historian of New Germany, Nova Scotia, and her daughters, Pat and Donna, supported my efforts to understand the lives of three Grant brothers and their families who lived in New Germany during the mid-to-late-nineteenth century. My busy niece and mother of three, Andrea Rankin Sibley, and our cousin Katherine Grant, active grandmother, biker, and newspaper editor, read drafts of the book and helped me to keep it clean, correct, and crafted for my target audience of family, friends, and interested historical genealogists.

The staff at WestBow Press have been very patient with me and have gently shepherded me through the intricate process of having a book prepared and released in today’s complicated publishing environment. I have learned much about the general process and haved developed valuable lessons about editing, marketing, copyright, production, pricing and the distribution of non-fiction works.

In the tradition of acknowledgments, family members and friends are usually mentioned last. In fact, far fewer books would be written without the support of those close to the author. My wife, Lois (Potter) Grant, has provided a safe harbor during the time I have juggled more than one task, often to the detriment of my health. Without her support, this book would not have been written, let alone published.

Finally, the help and guidance of family and friends (old and new) cannot shield any writing project from error. Those I accept as my own.

PREFACE

The research and writing of this genealogy and history of my Grant relatives has been a labor—both a labor of love and a serious commitment of time when I should have been slowing down, relaxing, and spending my retirement wisely.

An early introduction to genealogy came in the 1970s when I was a young corporal in the Canadian military. Our station operations officer, Captain Wayne Walker (mentioned above), called me to his office. Filled with trepidation, I arrived and was permitted to sit down (a useful indicator, suggesting that I was not in serious trouble). Captain Walker had been looking through our personnel files and noticed that I was from Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley and that my wife, from the same general area, was a Potter. It turned out that Wayne and Lois were distant cousins. A short time later, he generously gave her a typed genealogy of her Potter family. Although I vaguely remember reviewing the document with my wife, I have to admit that it was safely filed away for later use. That was five decades ago.

I have mentioned my lovely aunt Ruth Dexter. Sometime during the 1990s, while I was in Nova Scotia on leave, she gave me copies of the Grant genealogies prepared by herself and Janetta Dexter. We had discussions about the documents and about the fact that both family historians did not believe the family lines were connected. I filed the documents safely with the Potter genealogy. That was three decades ago.

I just looked at my user profile for Ancestry; I joined in 2002. That was more than two decades ago. In the intervening years, I have put together a small library of books about genealogy and received from my special mother, Mary Frances Grant, some books about local Annapolis Valley history. That was a decade ago. During those two decades, I researched and read and studied and made notes and organized and reorganized. I looked at other online family trees. I examined Grant family histories, both American and Canadian. The American documents and books most often sought a connection to President and General Ulysses Grant; nowhere among those studies did I find a reference to Nova Scotia (that is, to me). I looked at the many mentions of Grants in Nova Scotia, but few of them included my family line or any Grants in my part of Nova Scotia for that matter. A singular exception is the historian of Digby County, Isaiah Wilson, who wrote A Geography and History of the County of Digby, first published in 1900.

In Nova Scotia, the focus of study about Scottish settlers is in the eastern counties and Cape Breton Island. No one has seriously examined and written about the Grant families of southwestern Nova Scotia. That left a space for me to act in, a space for me to develop a narrative history of a family founded in the soil, strengthened by the forest, and challenged by the sea environments that comprise the fundamental essence of Nova Scotia. And so, my passion has been to tell the story of my family, the Grants of southwestern Nova Scotia. This study will fulfill the implicit task left to me by Aunt Ruth. That is why I have spent so much of my retirement on this project. But there is more to come as I follow suggestive clues left by my ancestors or seek to overcome brick walls that stump every genealogist from time to time. As the reader is aware, projects almost always grow beyond their original scope.

My aim at the outset could have been stated this way: to collate and present a family history of the line descending from John Grant and Mary Sabean to my father’s generation. If I had stayed within that framework, this book would have been much shorter and less interesting. As it turns out, there are many sides to the extended family beyond my chosen first generation. Some of the facets of family history that you will read about in this book include the following:

• descendants of John and Mary,

• marriages and intra-marriages,

• religious adherence, particularly in Nova Scotia,

• lives lost to disease and loss at sea,

• occupations (farming, forestry, and factory work; carpentry and sailing; and nursing and education),

• migrations and locations (within Nova Scotia and outward to New England), and

• military service, particularly World War I.

At its core, my passion has been to be the voice of my direct ancestors and extended family within a defined framework of time and place, to record their activities where sources allow, in essence, to be the diary they could not write.

The reader may judge whether I have achieved that goal. As for me, my passion continues; in the words of Denise Rice, a prolific Annapolis County genealogist, I love my work.

INTRODUCTION

This history is the culmination of several years of intermittent genealogical and historical research, designed to document the history of one Scottish family from southwestern NS that became both Canadian and American. The focus of attention is on Annapolis and Digby counties but includes Grant family members in Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth, and material references to other counties in the western part of NS. Like most modern Nova Scotians, we cannot ignore the geographical and genealogical importance of New England, where our relatives sought opportunity and partnership. Because of the daunting number of individuals who enter the scene from the third generation onward, some limits have been placed on the work in terms of the number of branches, twigs, and leaves I follow in this volume.

There was no historical mass Scottish immigration into the lands of southwestern NS to match that of Pictou County and Cape Breton.¹ The fertile lands and harbors vacated because of the expulsion of the Acadian population in 1755 were settled by a variety of English, Scottish, and Irish settlers. The English government at Halifax first brought in Planter colonists from New England to settle those Annapolis Valley and other terrains forcefully vacated by the Acadians. Loyalists came in their thousands to the region. Other colonists came in smaller numbers from the settlement of individual soldiers in the province. My belief is that our Grant ancestor was a member of the latter group.

The anchors of our story, John Grant and Mary Sabin or Sabean, were my fifth great-grandparents. They lived at a time when personal diaries were few and vital statistics recordkeeping in early NS was almost nonexistent or limited to church documents. They may have been illiterate, as were many of their descendants. Thus, there is no record documenting John’s parentage or, for that matter, his birth date and birthplace. The information presented herein is based on hypotheses developed from a scattering of documents and reviews of other genealogical works. Nevertheless, the story of his descendants is more concrete, in the main documented by birth, marriage, and death records and gleaned from census returns, provincial and state directories, and local histories. Several family histories were particularly useful to develop our story (see the bibliography).

The main body of the work uses the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) Register method of documenting family history. It is one of the most widely used formats and is easily transferrable to book form. It has the added benefit of ease of editing and lends itself to the addition of background information and conclusions gained from research.² My interest is in establishing the line from John and Mary Grant to my father’s generation and then to provide as complete a picture as possible of related families.³ I have chosen to modify the format somewhat, without, I hope, abusing the traditional outline:

In this example, the number 99 indicates a follow-on paragraph, which will provide greater detail about the family group. The underlined names show the usual first name of the individual where I can find it. Nicknames and diminutives are not normally used by adults in official documents and so may only be known by family and friends. The names of principals, their spouses, and children will be in the style Main Person because of the complexity of using so many styles within this one history. The parents of a relative’s spouse will be expressed in the Normal style. I have added Notes to family groups where warranted and endnotes in cases where there is no follow-up paragraph.

I have chosen to add as much research value as possible to our story. That includes family group summaries to establish family connections, particularly where I believe links exist between individuals documented in the 1861 census of Canada and that of 1871. In the former, and prior to that, only heads of families and numbers of males and females in the household were enumerated. Spouses born in the English American colonies and afterward in the United States have more complete family information. Where possible, I have included maps and diagrams to show the locations of places and communities where members of the Grant and related families lived. I have also tried to include a summary of occupations taken up by the descendants of John and Mary. We will see that farming and the fishery were the foundations by which most earned a living and supported their large families in the early years. Our relatives were also engaged in shipbuilding and as sailors and master mariners (see chapter 7). They worked as laborers, made shoes, and became nurses and doctors, schoolteachers and university professors, house painters and artists, and streetcar operators and bus drivers. Women and girls worked in house and field and had adventures equal to those of their male relatives (see chapter 5). While chapter 5 provides a focus on a selection of our female relatives, you will see other examples of courageous women within almost every other chapter and paragraph. The reader will not be surprised to find a separate chapter on our military relatives, including grandparents, granduncles, and a multitude of cousins. I have focused on those Canadian and American relatives who served during World War I (see chapter 9) and in some cases were passed over or rejected by a system of administration and command in search of the healthiest soldiers and sailors.

I have included a few asides within the text. Historical Asides provide some background to the family history. They are linked to the time, location, and activity of the family groups written about in the accompanying text. Similarly, Genealogical Asides discuss some of the many challenges I faced and successes I achieved in researching and writing about a particular individual or family group.

Rather than using the cumbersome title of British North America (BNA) to denote pre-Confederation Nova Scotia, I have chosen to use a shorter formula when referring to locations associated with my family. For example, if a grandparent was born in Weymouth before 1867, it will be written as Weymouth, Digby, NS. (The usual form is to enter the location as town, county, province, country). Similarly, I have avoided using the forms United States, or USA, for references that predate the American Revolution. Place name spellings are standardized to modern forms, although, where necessary, I have indicated an older form or previous naming convention, such as Sissiboo and Weymouth or Port Williams and Port Lorne.

I have provided a summary of the main sources used for this study. There are so many valuable research sites online that to list all of the sources I discovered would not be informative for the reader. My main genealogical research database can be found on Ancestry.ca, where I have created a Grant family tree that is tagged as a public tree, so that anyone can view the information I have collected. Family members and researchers are welcome to review and comment on the contents of the tree. My identification on the site is algrant64.

FamilySearch.org is a free and invaluable site for family researchers and genealogists. I used it frequently to research, compare, and edit my findings. Especially valuable at Family Search is the recently updated and evolving Wiki that references and links to a wide range of outstanding sources. I have not been given permission to cite from Family Search records or from the Wiki for contractual and copyright reasons.

Finally, I had to decide where to stop writing. As a result, …

ONE

THE GRANT FAMILY AND ITS

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

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The Grants who came to southwestern NS in the eighteenth century were probably Scottish. Scotland, particularly the Highlands, is associated with the family name Grant, although it also appears in many English and Irish locations. The earliest probable Grant ancestor in Annapolis Royal, NS, referred to himself as Scottish. He was David Grant, the sixth great-grandfather of our current generation and the subject of this introductory chapter.

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Figure 2. Where we originated in the Highlands

Scottish surname use, as in other regions of Europe, began in the Middle Ages. Anglo-Norman names, like Grant, began to infiltrate Scotland after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Surnames were first documented in Scotland during the reign of King David I (1124–1153).⁷ Thereafter, there was a gradual increase in the use of the surname as it became more intricately linked with the clan name.

Generally accepted to mean large or great, the name Grant appears prominently west of Loch Ness and in the Strathspey region of the Scottish Highlands (figure 2). Following losses suffered during Scotland’s generations-spanning struggle for independence from England, large numbers of Grants were exiled to the American colonies, notably in 1651, 1715, and 1747.⁸ Many thousands of Scots came as part of the waves of immigrants from the British Isles to North America from the seventeenth through to the end of the nineteenth centuries. In Nova Scotia (NS), several Grants sailed with Lord Edward Cornwallis to help found Halifax in 1749.⁹ Somewhat later, in 1773, the Hector, an old brigantine sailing from Loch Broom in northwestern Scotland, carried 189 passengers, including five adult male Grants, to their new homes in Pictou, NS.¹⁰

The history of English-led settlement in NS is charged with lofty ideals, the influence of war and its aftermath, the displacement of Acadian and Aboriginal peoples (Mi’kmaq), and the dreams of immigrant settlers, many of whom came directly from England, Ireland, and Scotland. Among those who arrived in the mid-eighteenth century were German and Swiss farmers looking for good farmland and French Huguenots wanting to escape poverty and oppression in Europe. Many more came at various times from New England as Planters or Loyalist refugees. Planters were farmers and merchants who took up the offer of lands left vacant by displaced Acadians to move to the Annapolis Valley of NS in the 1760s. Two decades later, Loyalists came in their thousands following the American Revolution, seeking new opportunities under the British crown and respite from the hatred and violence of their American neighbors and kin. They came to Annapolis Royal, Digby, Weymouth, Shelburne, and other locales looking for land and financial restitution for property lost in the war.

Historical Aside: The Honorable Alexander Grant (no relation), a member of the Executive Council at Halifax, estimated the population of NS at 10,000 persons in 1764. Those communities of interest to our history had the following numbers: Lunenburg, 1,600; Annapolis County, 1,000; Yarmouth, 150; and dispersed along the coast in various numbers about 383.¹¹

Even in Annapolis Royal, established as Port Royal by early French explorers 150 years before our period of interest, it is difficult to find detailed references to the first Grant settlers. They do not have a place in the general histories of NS and receive scant mention in local county histories of that part of the province. They were not important. We can assume, then, that our early forebears were poor, illiterate, and educated only in the common or practical knowledge of the day. Lacking letters, diaries, family Bibles, or other personal family information, sparse references in provincial and state records, local histories, and a few published family trees will have to do as a starting point for our research.

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Figure 3. Where we began in southwestern Nova Scotia.

In an early history of Annapolis County, W. A. Calnek writes that there was not much of interest to record during¹² the four years following the expulsion of the Acadians. He mentions several men associated with the garrison of Annapolis Royal, including the chaplain, a Reverend Thomas Wood, who was also a Church of England missionary. Otherwise, there were very few civilians who at this time lived at Annapolis.¹³ As we enter the relatively brief period of New England Planter migration to NS, Calnek provides a correct list of the names inserted in the first grant of the township of Annapolis in 1759.¹⁴ The list does not include any Grant names. In his Supplement to Calnek’s history, Judge A. W. Savary provides another listing of early grantees in Annapolis Township, dated October 30, 1765; neither does the name Grant appear in this list.¹⁵ Nor is there a Grant listed among those settling in Annapolis County to be found in the seminal work by historian Dr. Esther Clark Wright.¹⁶

Following the expulsion of the Acadian population from their well-developed and prosperous homes, the British government settled New England Planters from Vermont (VT), Connecticut (CT), Rhode Island (RI), New Hampshire (NH), and Massachusetts (MA) on the vacant farmland. Many were given property in the eastern part of the Annapolis Valley in the new townships of Wilmot, Cornwallis, and Horton. But some were allowed lands surrounding Annapolis Royal where the government had established the townships of Granville and Annapolis. A nineteenth-century historian of NS, Beamish Murdoch, refers to land granted in June 1759 to settlers in the township of Granville and Annapolis, to Mr. Crocker and Mr. Grant, to the number of 138.¹⁷ A similar reference is used in a paper about the New England Planters by historian R. S. Longley, citing an original document and made without mention of Beamish’s work.¹⁸

Today, naming someone Mr. Grant would refer to a civilian of that name. Perhaps the civilian is the Grant ancestor we are seeking, notwithstanding the weak logical connection. But we have more to go on, at least to the point of being able to give this or another Grant a probable first name. On 4 September 1759, from the provincial capital of Halifax, Governor Charles Lawrence (1709–1760) …

passed under the seal of this Province Giving Grant and Confirming unto John Linsey, Robert Walker, James Wilkie, John Frost, John Williams David, Edward Leau, David Grant, John Harris, Francis LeCain [and others] a Tract of Land on the South Side of Annapolis River beginning at the Westerly bounds of the Farm of Sylvanus Cobb and George Dyson, thence running on Annapolis River and measuring one hundred and Six Chains, then South Six Degrees East measuring One hundred Chains … to the said Grantees in Severalty to be equally divided by and between them as they shall agree containing in the whole by Estimation Seventeen hundred Acres more or less being in the ts [sic, township] Annapolis in the said Province of NS.¹⁹

It is entirely possible that this David Grant was the first of our ancestors to settle in NS.

Gordon Alan Morris, when researching the Sabean family line, found a record concerning a David and Susanna Grant, who transferred one hundred acres "more or less, known as Lot 17, Dugaws [sic, Dugas] Farm, in Annapolis Royal to John Harris of same place. Removed c1769 from Annapolis to Lot 16, Eastern Bank of Sissiboo River. Morris noted that the transfer by David Grant was actioned by his mark."²⁰ We gain a lot from this brief entry: that David Grant was a landowner in Annapolis Royal during the period we are interested in; that he owned a lot between Annapolis Royal and Upper Clements;²¹ that he was illiterate; and that he moved from Annapolis to Sissiboo (Weymouth) about 1769.

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Figure 4. Signature and mark thought to be those of Susanna and David Grant.

The story can be expanded based on a more complete summary of the deed transfer:

On November 12, 1762, David Grant of Annapolis Royal of the County of Annapolis, Province of NS, Taylor [sic, tailor], for 25 pounds Halifax Currency, sold John Harris of Annapolis Royal … Esq. … a certain messuage lying in Annapolis Royal called or known by the name of Lot No. 17 in Dugaws farm containing by estimation 100 acres, more or less, butted and bounded as followeth, Viz: N.E. on lot No. 16 now in possession of the Widow Ann Davis. N: on Annapolis Royal River about twenty-five Perches. S.W. on lot No. 18 in possession of Pardon Sanders. S.E. on land not laid out, etc. etc. [Signed] Susonh [sic] Grant, David Grant his mark Witnesses: Mehetable Patten, Joseph Patten.²²

We learn several things from this entry: David Grant owned land in what is now Allain’s River by at least 1762; David was likely a tailor by trade (in many transactions of the time, the occupation of the principal was recorded); given the date this deed was entered, David and Susanna may have continued to live on the property until 1769, when they reportedly moved to Sissiboo; David had money, at least twenty-five pounds by the time he moved to Sissiboo; and, finally, while David was likely illiterate, Susanna (or Susonh) knew how to write her name.

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Figure 5. Aerial view of Annapolis Royal looking west toward the Dugas property.

Census returns from 1768 and 1770 can be found in Calnek’s history; David Grant is listed in the earlier summary. His family consisted of two males and one female, one of the males being Scotch and the other family members American. David also had two oxen, a young cow, and a pig. It is probable that the term American meant that they were born in North America, rather than intending any national reference at that time.²³ The second extant census has several names missing, men who appeared in the document of 1768, including David Grant. Calnek reports that some of the settlers returned to New England, and some moved to other parts of NS.²⁴ The historian J. M. Bumstead asserts that many of the Planter families and other settlers returned to New England or moved elsewhere in NS, not because the land was unproductive but because they were unable to find suitable local markets for their goods.²⁵ Those who moved to other parts of the province did so for their own undocumented reasons.

To find a connection between David Grant and an American spouse named Susan, Susanna, or Susonh, I looked through Ancestry, AmericanAncestors, and FamilySearch databases. A preliminary search of online records in the New England area turned up several references to a David Grant and Susanna Hanners in the city of Boston, MA, in the late 1740s. Banns of their promise of marriage were published on 21 March 1747.²⁶ A later entry reports the marriage of David Grant and Susanna Hanners on 6 April 1748 at King’s Chapel, Boston. Both David and Susanna were reportedly of Boston.²⁷ Online searches of birth and immigration records have not revealed any information about the families of David and Susanna. Nor do we have their arrival time in Annapolis Royal prior to the birth of their son John in 1755.

New England Birth, Death, and Marriage (BDM) records are extensive and more thorough than in many countries or regions. Thousands of Grant BDM records were explored online, beginning with MA, and encompassing the remainder of New England. There are also many thousands of Grant genealogies accessible at Ancestry, FamilySearch, and other repositories.²⁸ Current investigation has not revealed any additional information about the couple.

If David and Susanna were of Boston, it probably meant that they were living in that city at the time of their marriage. David Grant was in the Boston area as early as March 1747, when the Banns were published. He must have known Susanna Hanners and her family for some months before the publication date. It is even likely that David was living and working in the city in 1746. We do not know how or where they met or where they went in the years following. If their son John was born in Annapolis Royal, NS, in 1755, as some think, what did the couple do in the intervening years, 1748–1754? What about other children? Was John their only son? I have no answers.

If we can make no direct family connection for either David or Susanna in Boston, then where did they come from and why is it that neither of them has any previous or subsequent records showing up in Boston?²⁹ Were they related to families in Boston or the area? Did they have siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins with whom they lived? After all, it was and remains common for immigrants to go where there were relatives to support them and introduce them to their new and strange surroundings. For now, I have no answers.

David Grant and Susanna Hanners appear to be the best candidates for my sixth great-grandparents. They did not fit the historical pattern outlined above; they were neither Planters nor Loyalists, somehow having arrived before those historically important groups. My theory goes something like this: David Grant was a Scot of unknown origin, who married in Boston in 1748 and was working as a tailor in the English garrison town of Annapolis Royal in 1755. Where he came from in Scotland we do not know. He may have worked his way from Scotland to MA in the early 1740s, or he might have been transported by the English following the rising of 1745.³⁰ How he and Susanna ended up in Annapolis Royal is not known with any accuracy.

The following timeline is suggested for David and Susanna Grant, including references to their deaths:

1725. Reasonable birthdate for David Grant, somewhere in Scotland.

1730. Reasonable birthdate for Susanna Hanners, in New England.

6 April 1748. Boston, MA. Marriage of David Grant and Susanna Hanners at King’s Chapel.

1755. Annapolis Royal, NS. Birth of John Grant.

29 June 1759. Annapolis Royal, NS. David received his grant of land.

12 November 1762. David and Susanna (Susohn) Grant sold their property to John Harris.

1768. David Grant and family reported in census of Annapolis Royal and Granville. He was a landowner with working animals and livestock.

Summer or autumn 1768. David Grant moved with his family to Sissiboo, Digby, NS.³¹

31 December 1768. David Grant died while establishing his family in Sissiboo.³²

31 January 1769. Deed transfer to John Harris registered in the Annapolis Township deed book.

1775. John Grant receives a land grant in Sissiboo, NS (see below).

February 1796. Susanna Grant died of old age in Weymouth and was buried on 21 February 1796.³³

Where do we go from here? We have many sources (histories) and some records (marriage, deed, land grants) that lead me and other researchers to believe that David Grant and Susanna Hanners are the earliest identifiable sixth great-grandparents of the current Grant generation. Without additional information connecting them to Annapolis Royal, it might be difficult for some to believe that we have cracked the case. Yet the theory is reasonable. The names, places, dates, and activities are so closely related as to be plausible.

TWO

FIRST AND SECOND GENERATIONS:

SETTING UP HOUSE IN NS

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They were scantily supplied with cash, but richly endowed

with energy, hope and courage. They were wholesomely pious

persons, given to the practice of great hospitality, and every

other virtue that their humble circumstances permitted.

—R. R. McLeod (1912)³⁴

During his early days in NS, David Grant may have earned a very modest living as a tailor. But as we have seen, he supplemented his basic income from that trade by obtaining and farming a parcel of land. Anyone who intended to support a family as a farmer in mid-eighteenth-century or early-nineteenth-century NS needed a large parcel of land to survive and prosper. If one had money, it was possible to buy land, either pristine or partially cleared by an earlier settler. Others could rely on the colonial government in Halifax to supply land in some abundance, depending on one’s status. David Grant obtained land in Annapolis Township but relinquished it to move to another location. With his wife, Susanna, and his son John, he began to establish a home in Sissiboo (the early name for the young community; from 1785 called Weymouth) well before the arrival of the Loyalists in 1783. From mid-1768, they lived adjacent to the property of Jeremiah Sabean, who was to become John Grant’s father-in-law. A memorial, or request, dated 17 March 1783, presented to Governor John Parr, included a list of settlers who had been given land on 15 September 1775 by a previous governor, Michael Francklin. In that document, John Grant was given Lot 16 and Jeremiah Sibbens (sic) Lot 17, the lots being in parcels of one hundred acres.³⁵ In closing, the memorialist assured Governor Parr that the settlers were vigorous and productive and that they had cleared, improved and built on³⁶ their respective properties.

Isaiah Wilson provides some details of a Grant of Confirmation dated 31 January 1801, which provided land to Loyalists and to the earlier settlers of Digby Township. This document included a reference to the 1775 grants mentioned above and to the later grants to Loyalists made in 1784, some of which overlapped with the Francklin document and caused legal friction. In part, the Grant of Confirmation affirmed the colonial government’s responsibility for land management and clarified ownership of the properties in question. The 1801 grant included David and John Grant and consisted of "ninety-one thousand six hundred and thirty-two acres of land situate lying and being in the Township of Digby, in the County of Annapolis, consisting of three hundred and thirty-four farm lots, ten fish lots and fourteen Locations [sic] hereinafter particularly mentioned and of one undivided tract."³⁷ The David mentioned in the 1801 document probably referred to John’s eldest child, David—named in the Scottish style after his paternal grandfather.

A segment of the 1946 map of historical NS land grants, shown below in figure 6, documents the Grant and Sabean lots on the east side of the Sissiboo River, near its mouth, in what was to become Weymouth North.³⁸ Wilson’s summary of land settlement states that in 1801 David Grant received 200 acres, John Grant 125 acres, and the heirs of Sarah Grant 600 acres.³⁹ Wilson provides a narrative description of the grant survey, which was developed from uncleared lands not settled by the Acadians, in what is now Weymouth and its surrounding land and water frontage.⁴⁰ Given the reasonableness and beneficence of the colonial government, it is not strange that David has more land than his father. John would have inherited his father’s property next to the Sabean lot. It is also probable that the same John Grant is listed as the grantee of 250 acres of land on Nowlan Lake near Havelock, Digby County (see figure 9).

Historical Aside: We refer many times to county histories in this work. For genealogical researchers and history buffs interested in the story of NS from its beginnings until the end of the nineteenth century, county histories are a good start point. Of varying quality, but always useful, they resulted from an initiative undertaken by Thomas Beamish Akins, the first official archivist of NS. Called the Commissioner of Public Records, Akins held the office from 1857 until his death in 1891.⁴¹ In 1864, Akins established an annual competition for the best county history or related essay. The thirty-dollar prize was modest, but the contest offered the authors an opportunity to participate in the task of collecting and preserving the local records⁴² of the counties of NS and describing local traditions and the progress made in settling various parts of the province. Akins was no simple bureaucrat: he had assisted Thomas Chandler Haliburton to gather facts for his writings about NS, and he was a cousin of the historian Beamish Murdoch. Six of the prize-winning essays were revised, enlarged, and printed as books, including the histories of Yarmouth and Annapolis counties. Two other essays that did not win prizes followed the same editorial and writing path and were published—Digby and Lunenburg Counties. We must be grateful to Akins and to the many scholars and amateur historians who answered his call.⁴³

You will see below a description of the style of home built by our Grant relatives in the late eighteenth century. But if we could find an image of the earliest Grant and Sabean dwellings in Sissiboo, it would be of a log home, having one or two rooms, no larger than 14 x 18 feet and having a single stone fireplace for heating and cooking. The roof might have been cobbled together of bark shaved from the logs used to build the structure. A door made of split log planks and one or two holes used as windows completed the simple cabin. The pelt of a black bear or deer provided the hinges for the door and coverings for the windows. Inside the cabin, over a period of a few years, the first settlers would have accumulated chairs, benches, tables, beds, chests ⁴⁴ and even eating utensils made by hand from the leftover building material. John Grant would have inherited some homely items from his father, so there might have been a few basic pieces of pottery and even a handful of pewter forks and spoons. We can imagine the Grants wearing simple clothing of flax and wool, with an additional assortment of durable leather wear.

The process of clearing the land in Sissiboo and building habitable structures and farm buildings would have taken several years. Beginning with small tracts of land, the settlers used single or paired oxen, like those reported above by David Grant in the census of 1768. The bulldozers of the day, oxen could pull small trees and stumps out of the ground. Removing larger stumps would have required time to allow for the roots to rot and weaken before they succumbed to the shovel and ax, and even to ox power. John, his sons, and close neighbors would have cooperated to clear sufficient land for planting and to construct the first log homes for themselves and shelters for their animals. In addition to an ox or oxen, other animals on the property would have included hogs, cattle, and sheep. Some grain and vegetables might have been grown in the early years. Fish and game were plentiful in the rivers and forests, and the nearby sea provided early settlers with an abundance of fish and seafood. Women, men, and children worked long, exhausting hours to create a bountiful home out of a subsistence environment.

As early as 1785, some colonists at Sissiboo were doing quite well. They had decent farmland and reliable sources of timber. There were four working sawmills, along with oxen, horses, sheep, and up to a thousand cattle. The settlement already had its own 120-ton sloop and an 80-ton brigantine that were used to good purpose transporting cod to the West Indies.⁴⁵ In 1788, Charles Inglis, the Anglican bishop of NS, noted in his diary that he counted some thirty-eight families on the north or eastern side of the Sissiboo River and another seventeen families on the New Edinburgh side, the western bank. John Grant and his family were among those recorded on the east side of the river. Several Sabean households would have been included.⁴⁶

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Figure 6. Original 1775 land grants made to John Grant and Jeremiah Sabean.

1. JOHN GRANT

¹

was born in 1755 at Annapolis Royal, NS.⁴⁸ He died around 1825 at the age of seventy, probably in Weymouth, Digby County.⁴⁹ John Grant and MARY SABEAN (or Sabin) were married in 1774, probably at Annapolis Royal.⁵⁰ Mary Sabean, daughter of Jeremiah Sabean (1732–1815) and Susanna Lavallee (1732–1775), was born circa 1748 in Berwick, York, ME.⁵¹ She may have died at Weymouth sometime during or after 1833.⁵²

John and Mary Grant had seven children and adhered to Scottish cultural conventions in choosing their names, especially for the older children.⁵³ For example, the firstborn son of a Scottish family was named after the paternal grandfather—in this case, David. The convention follows in the naming of the eldest daughter; Susanna Grant was named after her grandmothers, Susanna Hanners and Susanna Lavallee. Jeremiah was named after his grandfather Sabean. If the convention had held for other children, Mary Grant would have been named after her paternal grandmother. This general guide also supports the conclusion that David Grant was the father of John (See also the Morris genealogy of the Sabean family.)⁵⁴

The Sabean family⁵⁵ (Sabin, Sabine, Sabeans, Sibbens) is well documented; we are fortunate to have records and family histories dating from the initial period of English settlement in New England and southwestern NS. Mary Sabean can be associated firmly with a lengthy New England and English heritage. Mary’s father, Jeremiah Sabean, was a fisherman who came to settle at the mouth of the Sissiboo River in 1765 and built on leased land on the east side of the river around 1766.⁵⁶ We know from the published obituary of his son, Deacon Benjamin Sabean, that Jeremiah had his family with him in Argyle, Yarmouth County, in 1763, the year Benjamin was born. Young Benjamin was two years old when the family moved to the mouth of the Sissiboo River.⁵⁷ Mary Sabean would have been about eighteen years old at the time.

In addition to the land grants mentioned above, confirming the existence and probable relationship of the several members of the Grant family, we find in Wilson a tabulation of taxpayers of twenty-one years of age who owned property in Weymouth Township in 1816. These names included David Grant, Jeremiah S. Grant, and John Grant Sr.⁵⁸ It is likely that the David Grant mentioned here is the son of John Grant and brother to Jeremiah.

In correspondence dated 16 January 1821, residents of the communities of New Edinburgh, Sissiboo, Township of Clare, Long Island and Briar Island and Digby Neck petitioned the government in Halifax that after the alteration of County boundaries that New Edinburgh be made the county seat.⁵⁹ The petitioners argued that New Edinburgh was more centrally located than Digby and complained about the expense of travel to Digby from their more distant locations in the new county. This occurred at a time when preparations were being made to establish Digby County as separate from Annapolis County. John Grant, Jeremiah Grant, and Peter Grant were signatories to the request.

Not everyone was happy with their prospects in what would become Digby County in 1837. Many settlers were impressed by the reports from friends who had settled in the new province of Upper Canada (ON), in particular those correspondents of George Wood, who had resettled from Weymouth to the Brockville area in 1790. His very favorable statement combined with the … stringency and uncertainties arising from scarcity of provisions in NS from 1793 to 1815 …⁶⁰ led some to abandon Weymouth for more fertile farmland. This situation endured even after the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812–1814. One of the neighbors of the Grant and Sabean families in Weymouth North, Deacon David Shook, deeded his property to Reuben Sabean on 4 September 1824. The farm, identified as Lot 15, bordering on John Grant’s farm, was sold together with [Deacon Shook’s] stock, furniture, farming implements, crops, and other possessions.⁶¹ Thus, in the autumn of 1824, John Grant was still alive.

Genealogical Aside: Correspondence from Robert Stephen Sabean provides considerable information about his great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Sabean, including a last will and testament, an obituary written by the Reverend Charles Randall, and summaries of the membership of the Sissiboo Baptist Church dated 1809 and 1833. Combined with the writings of Isaiah Wilson and David Alan Morris, they provide confirmation of several facts and events important to this work. Benjamin Sabean’s last will and testament gives us the names of his wife and children. We will see below that his son Robert Sabean, who becomes one of the will’s executors, marries Elizabeth Grant, daughter of David Grant and Isabella Charlton. The clergyman who wrote the obituary exudes a good deal of respect for the deceased Benjamin, an active member of the Baptist Church and one of the founders of the Sissiboo Baptist Church. In the first instance, we are interested in the date that the family of Jeremiah Sabean arrives in Sissiboo. Combined with the reports of Wilson and Morris, we can have some confidence in this fact. Of more than passing interest are the notes referring to the membership of the Sissiboo Baptist Church in 1809 and 1833. To retreat a few years, Wilson summarizes the history of the Sissiboo church, beginning in 1799, when brothers Benjamin and Willoughby Sabean are mentioned among the seven founders of the church.⁶² Morris believed that Mary Sabean Grant was the twenty-fifth subscriber to the original Covenant.⁶³ The membership of the Sissiboo church in 1809 included the two Sabean brothers in the top six names. David Grant appears as subscriber number nine, and Mary Grant is a little farther down the list. Robert Sabean’s notes include two Mary Grants in the membership list of 1809. I believe one of them to be John Grant’s wife; the other is the daughter of David Grant (see below). There is only one Mary Grant listed in the 1833 membership list and one Mary Grant Mullen, who happens to be her daughter. The point is this: based on these lists, my fifth great-grandmother Mary Sabean Grant was living in 1809 and in 1833.⁶⁴ Her death occurred in 1833 or soon thereafter. She would have been in her mid-eighties, not improbable given the life spans of many of our early relatives.

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Figure 7. Riverside Baptist Church and Cemetery, Weymouth

North, Digby, NS (Courtesy of Wayne Simon).

John Grant and Mary Sabean had the following children:

THE SECOND GENERATION

The children of John and Mary Grant were born into a settler family, in an area where land was still being cleared and life was difficult. Already, a certain degree of mobility can be seen in the second generation of Grants. Four of the children, David, Jeremiah, Susanna, and Mary, lived and died near their birthplace. Philena married and, after setting up home in Wilmot Township for a few years, moved to Kempt in Queens County. Henry and Abraham moved to the new and promising township of Wilmot, to be closer to the relatives of their wives. All the children remained in NS.

Henry and Abraham are named in early census records of Annapolis County. The first census of NS after the Loyalist immigration took place in 1817, so we might hope to have found Henry and Abraham in this document; unfortunately, there are no surviving records for Annapolis County.⁶⁷ The next census, in 1827, lists two Grant families in Wilmot Township, both Baptist farmers. Abraham Grant reported a household of three males and two females. Fourth great-grandfather Henry Grant’s family consisted of three males and five females. One of the unnamed members of Henry’s household was born between 1 January and 30 September 1827, the latter entry being the date of the census.⁶⁸

Eleven years later, the census of 1838 reported three Grant families in Wilmot Township. It is likely that the same Abraham Grant was recorded, this time with a larger family of nine, including two males under six years old, three males aged six to fourteen, one male over fourteen, and one female over fourteen. His wife, Elenor (an error, a middle name, or nickname for Experience), was also named in this census. His brother, Henry Allen Grant, and his wife, Mary, had four children remaining at home in 1838. The other family, of John and Barbara Grant, included one male and female under six years old and a female between six and fourteen.⁶⁹

2. DAVID GRANT

²

(John¹) was born about 1775 at Sissiboo, Digby, NS.⁷⁰ He died before 1841 at Weymouth North, Digby County.⁷¹ David Grant and ISABELLA (ISABEL) CHARLTON were married 11 October 1790 in Wilmot Township, Annapolis County. Isabella Charlton was born in 1775 in Wilmot Township, the daughter of John Henry Douglas Charlton (1732–1816) and Mary Tolman Crane (1739–1815).⁷² She died 27 September 1850 at Weymouth North.⁷³

David lived and died in Sissiboo/Weymouth, and his future wife, Isabella Charlton, was born many miles away. Yet they met and were married. There is a story that David Grant and his cousin Benjamin Sabean traveled on horseback from Weymouth to Halifax sometime in the autumn of 1790. They stopped somewhere in Wilmot Township to rest and change horses and were introduced to the daughters of Henry Charlton. Smitten by the sisters, on their return from Halifax they stopped in Wilmot, married the girls, and carried them away to Weymouth (my own antique terminology).⁷⁴ Isabella might have been fifteen or sixteen years old at the time.

David may have been the recipient of additional land grants from the province. One source includes a David Grant among those individuals receiving a share of vacant marsh land at the head of St. Mary’s Bay on 3 January 1817. The land was divided into 485 equal parts, ten of which were granted to Trinity Church in Digby.⁷⁵ The same David Grant is probably one of the residents who, on 10 February 1817, sold to Augustine Guiddery for five shillings each, and the proportionate expense of getting the Grant, their respective portions of the Marsh at head of St. Mary’s Bay.⁷⁶ The transaction is not explained further in any of the available online research material.

David was a professed Baptist, a farmer and lived on two hundred acres of land near his father.⁷⁷

David Grant and Isabella Charlton had the following children:

Genealogical Aside: James Grant and Rachel Allright were married at New Tusket in an Episcopal Church ceremony. James was fifty-two at the time; Rachel was a thirty-year-old spinster. Her parents were John and Rachel Allright, farmers. Their nuptials were witnessed by William R. Barr and Mrs. R. Allright. What is unusual at this stage of our family journey is that William Robert Barr, a widowed carpenter of thirty-three years, married Sarah Ann Allright, aged thirty-three years and the sister of Rachel. The record shows their marriage on the same day and in the same church as James and Rachel. Their vows were witnessed by James Grant and Mrs. Rachel Allright. A double ceremony! A joyous day!⁹⁴

3. JEREMIAH SABEAN GRANT

²

(John¹) was born about 1777 in Sissiboo, Digby, NS. He was living in 1868 and died before the census of 2 April 1871 in Weymouth, Digby County.⁹⁵ It is possible he bore the middle name Sabean.

Jeremiah Grant and NANCY CHARLTON probably were married in Wilmot Township, Annapolis, NS. Nancy Charlton, daughter of John Henry Douglas Charlton (1732–1816) and Mary Tolman Crane (1739–1815), was born in 1780 or 1781 in Wilmot Township. She was a widow living in Weymouth in the spring of 1871.⁹⁶ Nancy Charlton died on 2 June 1876 at the age of ninety-six at the residence of her son and was a member of the Church of Sissiboo, which was likely the Baptist church in Weymouth North.⁹⁷

In 1816, Jeremiah S. Grant (middle initial found in the online document) was listed on the assessment roll for the Township of Weymouth, being over twenty-one years of age.⁹⁸

Jeremiah Grant and Nancy Charlton had the following children:

Historical Aside: Early in the morning of 22 May 1817, just as the communities of Digby, Annapolis, Granville, and Wilmot were rousing themselves for a long day of work in the home and out on the fields, an earthquake hit. Three shocks rumbled through the region, shaking the inhabitants and echoing with a noise like thunder. The houses were shaken, furniture moved, and the inhabitants alarmed.¹⁰¹ Digby and Annapolis were struck the hardest, especially Digby, where houses were shaken and the people much alarmed.¹⁰² The earth trembled to a lesser degree as far away as Fredericton, NB, and Boston, MA. In modern terms, the violence that awakened the residents of the region has been assigned a magnitude of 4.8 by Canadian geophysicists, modest by global standards and capable of causing light to minimal damage.¹⁰³

4. SUSANNA GRANT

²

(John¹) was born on 4 July 1780 in Sissiboo, Digby, NS.¹⁰⁴