We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder
1930
I have been doing some digging into the history our our homestead lately and I have uncovered some very interesting things.
As you know our home was built in 1810.
But who built it and why, where always questions on my mind.
I now have some of those answers.
When we bought the property were were given bit of information from everyone including neighbours,past owners and even descendents of the original settlers.
It was allot of information to digest and try to determine the truths.
I went to a local museum so I could figure that out.
I was in luck,they had four very full files on the names I had brought with me, Rand and Eaton.
These names are on old deeds I have,the oldest dating to 1900.
The deeds were given to me from a previous owner,they are pretty amazing and I'm grateful that she thought they belonged to us, the new owners of this remarkable home, they will be treasured forever.
I also lucked out and got the chance to talk with a lady who knew everything about our homestead,she helped me uncover the truths...
This farm was settled by New England Planters, Thomas Rand and his wife Mary Marchant Rand.
‘Planter’ is a 17th century (Elizabethan) term meaning ‘colonist’, someone who plants a colony. The New England Planters were the first sizable group of English-speaking people to inhabit Nova Scotia, as such, they represent the first significant Anglophone immigration into Canada.” (Courtesy of James E. Candow from "Conversion: The New England Planters in Nova Scotia, 1959-1848")
The New England Planters who came to Nova Scotia were descendants of the Puritans. They represented the bottom 1/3 of New England society.
About 8,000 came representing some 1,500 families. The chief occupation was farming, although there were fisherman as well.
All the way from Martha's Vineyard Thomas and Mary made the long journey to NS.
They settled the original plot of 666.36 acres.
A small log cabin was built on the property.
We were always told it was across the brook, high on our pine ridge.
We have searched for the remains which we were told still existed,we would have never found them.
Upon further research I found out the Cabin was built right behind our house,I was in shock to find this out as we uncovered small square stones that were part of a foundation when we built the greenhouse.
I'm not sure if it was the cabin, a root storage or some other building, I will never know for sure..
Thomas and Mary had nine children,I can almost picture them working and playing on the farm.
One of those children was Silas Rand, born 1768.
Silas Rand married Deborah Tupper,they lived in that same log cabin, they had one child Silas Tertius Rand, born 1810.
That year Deborah became very sick with TB and passed away.Tuberculosis was quoted “The most fatal disease known to man” in the 1800’s.
From what I was told they burned the log cabin and all the contents to prevent the spread of the disease.
That same year,1810,Silas built this home.
Silas was a bricklayer by trade and his work is still alive and well,our basement was masoned by him.
I wonder where the rocks came from,our soil has not one stone,it is all sandy loam..what a job it must have been to get them here...
Though Silas was generally uneducated he taught young Silas to read and later sent him to school, which he attended until the age of 11.
He then took up the family occupation of bricklaying with his father.
At age nineteen,young Silas was introduced to English grammar and he began the study of languages.
By age 21, he began teaching grammar. At 23, he entered Horton Academy (part of Acadia University) to study Latin but he left the school a month later, learning Latin grammar at home while he worked as a bricklayer.
In 1833 he underwent a religious conversion.
He was baptized and decided to devote his life to God. In 1834 he was ordained a Baptist minister. He took a position in Liverpool, Nova Scotia where he met Jane Elizabeth McNutt, whom he married in 1838. The couple had twelve children. Rand was later a pastor in Windsor, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
In 1846 he was offered an opportunity to travel to Burma as a missionary, but he elected instead to work among the Mi'kmaq where he travelled widely among Mi'kmaq communities, spreading the faith, learning the language, and recording examples of the Mi'kmaq oral tradition.
Silas mastered many languages including Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Mohawk, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin and modern Greek.
Silas Tertius Rand
He produced scriptural translations in Mi'kmaq and Maliseet, compiled a Mi'kmaq dictionary and collected numerous legends, and through his published work, was the first to introduce the stories of Glooscap to the wider world.
In one version of the Mi'kmaq creation myth, Glooscap lay on his back, with arms outstretched and his head toward the rising sun, for 490 days and nights, then Nogami, the grandmother, was born as an old woman from the dew of the rock. The next day, Nataoa-nsen, Nephew, was born from the foam of the sea. On the next day was born the Mother of all the Mi'kmaq, from the plants of the Earth.
Glooscap was said by the Mi'kmaq to be great in size and in powers, and to have created natural features such as the Annapolis Valley. In carrying out his feats, he often had to overcome his evil twin brother who wanted rivers to be crooked and mountain ranges to be impassable; in one legend, he turns the evil twin into stone. Another common story is how he turned himself into a giant beaver and created five islands in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia by slapping his huge tail in the water with enough force to stir up the earth.
Yet another legend says that when Glooscap finished painting the splendor of the world, he dipped his brush into a blend of all the colours and created Abegweit, meaning "Cradled on the Waves" — his favorite island (Prince Edward Island).
When Glooscap slept, Nova Scotia was his bed, and Prince Edward Island his pillow.
I find it so remarkable that I was able to uncover so much on the history of this home and the land that surrounds it.
The people who lived in this home and worked the land will never be forgotten by us.
Buried in a graveyard not more then 150ft from where our mighty oaks line the road way,This site is the final resting place of Thomas and Mary Rand....I wish we had the site here so it could be properly taken care of
.
Oak trees lining our field and roadway, 1940's
Oak trees 2010,150ft past the last tree on the right lies the grave site.
“Always remember to slow down in life; live, breathe, and learn; take a look around you whenever you have time and never forget everything and every person that has the least place within your heart.”
