History of the County of Annapolis, Including Old Port Royal and Acadia: With Memoirs of Its Representatives in the Provincial Parliament, and Biographical and Genealogical Sketches of Its Early Engli

Excerpt from History of the County of Annapolis, Including Old Port Royal and AcadiaFrom a draft prospectus of a "History of the County of Annapolis, its Townships and other Settlements from 1604 to 1867" among the papers of the late Mr. Calnek, I gather that he was led to attempt this work as an "historical essay" by the persuasion of the late T. B. Akins, Esq., D.C.L., Record Commissioner of Nova Scotia, who gave him free access to the "valuable collection of historical material in manuscript known as the Nova Scotia archives." He also consulted Champlain and L'Escarbot, and other early French writers, for the translation of which he expressed obligations to the late P. S. Hamilton, Esq. He soon became convinced that justice could not be done to the subject in a mere essay, and the work "gradually grew into the dimensions of a good-sized volume."As far as the work had then advanced toward completion, he submitted it in 1875 to the governors of King's College, Windsor, and received for it the "Akins prize" for county histories. It then consisted of Chapters I. to VIII., as here arranged, and what was intended for the first chapters of the histories of the townships of Annapolis, Granville, Wilmot and Clements, now forming Chapters X., XII., XIII. and XIV., with the histories of the other settlements, here embraced in Chapter XV., and about a third of the biographical memoirs. His plan embraced every township and settlement in what is now the County of Digby, down to the division of the county in 1837, and the memoirs of the members from that county down to 1867. After 1875 he proceeded quite far in the completion of the remaining memoirs, leaving only about seven of those prior to 1837 untouched. The memoirs he afterwards determined to publish in a separate volume. He, later still, postponed indefinitely the completion of the history and memoirs, and proceeded to collect and put in order materials for a volume to be entitled "Biographical and Gen…