Christie bathers

When I worked on Amherst's Centennial celebration in 1989, the late Janet Christie gave me some photos to use.  This one of Christie girls digging for clams at Tidnish Beach is my favorite.  Imagine wearing those hosery on a hot day. 

Adam Porter brings a new life.

It is said that Adam Porter met Esther Cox while she was in Amherst jail, but I found no evidence of that.  Esther was sent to jail in November 1879 for theft and was released on December 20^th, even though her sentence was to be for 4 months.  We do know that Esther was still in Amherst in August of 1881 from a newspaper story about a bizarre incident when she was called on as a witness in the Amherst courthouse.   Esther married Adam in March of 1882. Both Adam and Esther were living in Springhill at the time of their marriage. 

Adam was previously married to an Olive Porter of Hants County in 1871 who died  but Adam was originally from Westville Pictou County.   He was one of 10 children of a second generation Scottish Presbyterian immigrant. By 1881 Adam Porter was living with his sister and brother in law Robert Conn and working at Albion Mines.   Adam moved from Pictou to Springhill, presumably to work in the Springhill mines, settling in with  his mother, sister and brother in law some time after 1881. His Brother in law Robert might have been related to the Conns of Conns Mills.  Robert and his wife are buried there.

Porter was 14 years older than Esther.  She bore him a son James in 1883. Adam and Esther’s son James went to Brockton Massachusetts with Esther and her second husband Peter Shanahan.  James married Nellie.  They both worked at the shoe factories in Brockton, he as a finisher and she as a stitcher. 

 I have never been able to find out what happened to Adam Porter in Springhill, nor have I been able to trace his son James in Brockton any later than 1905. Someday something will show up.

It's a new year!

And I'm turning over a new leaf.  Hoping to get back to my favorite pastime, researching stories from the past, mostly Amherst of course.  I received this wonderful photo once from a friend.  Although I had left Cumberland County Museum and Archives, as would often happen, an item would be put into my hands for my viewing while grocery shopping or at a yard sale.  This is one such item, and unless the Museum already has a copy, it will go to them.  I love the many Acadian names in this St. Charles Baseball Club 1913.  White, Cuvilier, Burke, Blanch.  Baseball was in its heyday then, even I (the physical activity hater) played with my brothers in the empty lot in our neighbourhood in my girlhood. In the days of this photo, baseball church leagues were popular.  Everyone in our area had heard of the Springhill fencebusters, particularly my family since both parents grew up in Springhill. A neighbour of ours once told me that my father was a pretty good ball player in his younger years, high praise for that generation.  If you recognize anyone, let me know.

Amherst Female Seminary

It is unusual for a town the size of Amherst to have such an advanced school for young women in the 1850’s but Amherst was full of   industrialists who wanted their daughters to be prepared for an elite role.  Although Charles E. Ratchford (1810-1889) receives the credit for the school in early documents it was in fact his wife Carolyn Ratchford (1813- 1889) and her sister Katherine Yates who developed and ran the school.  The sisters hailed from Albany New York and were graduates of the famous Emma Willard School for Girls in Troy, New York.  Charles, being the savvy political animal that he was, acquired funding from the provincial legislature in the early years of the Amherst Female Seminary to establish and run the school.  In the seminary’s first year, probably 1850, nine young women qualified at the Seminary to become teachers and six were already teaching in rural districts. 

Charles had married Carolyn in New York and brought her back to Parrsboro to meet his very successful merchant family.  At one time the Ratchford importing business brought goods from 163 ports to Partridge Island affording the family a large home, servants, schooners, and hotel. But by the time the Charles Ratchfords began a family, the merchant business was dwindling and Charles, being a barrister, moved to Amherst, briefly opening a store on Ratchford Street and  solicited for public service contracts from local politicians. So Carolyn’s family was young when she began the Seminary; Julia A born in 1837, Mary Alida in 1840 and C. Edward in 1845. Carolyn’s partner and sister Katherine never married.

Carolyn and Kate advertised in the British Colonist as well as the Islander.  They provided” board and washing” with instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, grammar and composition, philosophy, astronomy, botany, and of course embroidery. For an extra fee one could also learn piano or Spanish guitar, singing, drawing and French.  Each of two terms was five months.  The Ratchfords advertised exercise and if requested, riding, and promoted Amherst as a healthy part of the country within walking distance of public worship.  Carolyn also boasted of some impressive references such as Thomas DeWolf and Rev. Charles Tupper.  The school employed 6 women instructors including a French teacher.  One of their teachers, Madame Carritt(e), wife of Dr. Thomas Carritte of Great Amherst Mystery fame, decided to branch out on her own, leaving the Seminary and offering a “Female Boarding School” also in Amherst.  Boasting of being one of the principal teachers of the Amherst Female Seminary, Madame Carritt developed a service in competition with same. One wonders how the sisters felt about that.

Before the establishment of Female Seminaries in Nova Scotia, daughters had to leave the province to seek higher learning.  Although today we accept women teachers as a majority in their profession, in fact in early Nova Scotian teaching, men were considered the more appropriate teacher. 

In many parts of Nova Scotia, it was the Scottish tradition of parish schools that prevailed where men only were required to teach, partly because women were not allowed a leading role in public religious tasks, a requirement of teachers of the day. It was the Baptist and Methodists who more readily embraced the role of women in secondary education, albeit to make young women better mothers.

While the employment of women in the public school system was not readily adopted in the rural areas of Nova Scotia, women as educators in the private realm seemed to be more acceptable, particularly if their charges were only girls.  For example, the provincial Normal School, opening in 1854, did not allow its many female students to take examination for first class licenses until 1869; first class licenses being for the teaching of lower grades only. By 1870 however, Nova Scotians generally accepted the role of women as educators and understood the importance of good teacher training for women in the profession.

The success of Charles Edward Ratchford’s request to the Nova Scotia legislature for funding  (on behalf of his wife) to support the Amherst Female Seminary, indicates provincial acceptance of women as educators and of the higher education of women.

During the mid 1800’s Female Seminaries could be found at Acadia (Grand Pre Seminary), Berwick, Bridgetown and at Mount Allison University.

Ratchford’s success with the Amherst Female Seminary is a testament to the hopes and expectations for economic growth of Amherst’s industrial elite.

Young students of Amherst Female Seminary

Childhood Reminiscence of a Baby Boomer

I sometimes wonder if I am the last generation

who played baseball in a field without adults,

who spent the day making tree houses in the woods,

who spent a penny on a whole bag of candy,

who was not permitted to answer the phone during mealtime,

who followed the ice cream truck,

who ran through the mosquito spray up the street,

who skated on the marsh until dark,

who learned to dance to the most famous band in the world (Twist and Shout),

who embroidered peace signs on their jeans,

who wore hats to church,

and who could get a job just by knowing how to type. 



Amherst Kindergarden class c. 1957



Times of changed.  In an effort to create a “vintage” experience for children, I discovered a generation who could not grasp the game of hop-scotch; could not see the point in being able to bounce a rubber ball under one leg; and became quickly bored with skip rope.  Am I being a pessimist or worse, lumping a whole generation under one generalization?

Socrates is attributed as saying "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

I wonder how this generation, in their adulthood, will rail against youth.

Walter Hubbell, Ghost Buster or Gullible Believer.

Walter Hubbell (1851-1932)

Born to a family of lawyers, Walter Hubbell must have felt a bit of an enigma.  Walter was the second of six children of William Wheeler Hubbell and Elizabeth Catherine Remley (or Ramillie). An actor by profession, Walter never married.  He was not the only bachelor in his family, brothers Lawrence and Paul were both single late into adulthood and both worked in New York.  Walter was the family historian and wrote several books including "The History of the Hubbell Family".

Walter’s grandfather Trueman Mallory Hubbell was a well known Pennsylvania settler. Truman was unrivaled as an expert shot with the rifle, pistol and shot-gun in hunting for deer, bear, wolves and panthers. He was personally acquainted with James Fenimore Cooper, the celebrated novelist. He was the original "Deerslayer" in Cooper's novel of that name and became the owner of the rifle "Killdeer" mentioned in the Deerslayer. In 1811 Truman rented a saw mill in Chester, Pennsylvania, and married the owner's daughter in 1817. He continued in the lumber business and established a lumber yard in Philadelphia in 1818. He took a prominent role in establishing public schools and was elected to the Legislature of Pennsylvania in 1834-5. He also had an adventure in Georgia of defending a stage coach carrying two million dollars against an armed robbery attempt. Late in life, he and his wife went to Philadelphia to live with their son William Wheeler Hubbell (Walter’s Father) until his wife's death in 1876, then living with another son until his death in 1878 at the age of 90.

I think that Walter inherited his grandfather’s taste for celebrity. According to Walter, he was first on the professional stage in 1872 at the age of 21.  Walter travelled North America, working as an actor while based in New York. He lived on Madison Avenue, in Yonkers and later in Queens.  In one of his books, Hubbell provides the following view of his acting career,  “He has been on the stage since boyhood, and has played every line of parts in the classic and standard drama with, among others of renown, Charlotte Cushman, Adelaide Neilson, Edwin Booth, John McCullough, Charles Fechter and Barry Sullivan. In 1890 he first appeared as a star in Western provincial towns, as Macbeth, Hamlet and in other tragic parts, appearing in Chicago in 1891, at the Windsor Theatre, under Benjamin Leavitt's management, as Hamlet, Othello and Richard III, meeting with instant success, not only as a Shakespearean scholar, but as a tragedian of the very highest class.”  Hubbell often played the role of Aguila, in “A Royal Slave”, a performance that brought him to Amherst, Nova Scotia.  By the age of 68, he was still performing, playing the voice of the ghost in Hamlet in San Jose, California in 1919.

But Hubbell is most noted for his relationship with Esther Cox.  Hubbell wrote “The Great Amherst Mystery” a book which has kept the story of Esther Cox’s experience alive for well over 100 years.  Professed to be a debunker of all things mysterious, in fact if we look at Hubbell we seem to see  a gullible man who cannot separate himself from spiritualist encounters.  Not only did he immerse himself in Esther’s story, exaggerating her experiences; he also had a habit of involving himself in other similar events.  He became a member of a small inner circle of admirers of Washington Irving Bishop a noted mentalist who died supposedly by being autopsied during a trance.  Hubbell was fascinated by John Wilkes Booth (assassin to President Lincoln) and followed reports of Booth’s whereabouts through acquaintances with family members.  Hubbell sought attention on the stage of Reverend F. A. Wiggin, a pastor of the Spiritual Temple in New York and supposedly was controlled by the spirit of John McCullough, a fellow actor.  During that stage event, Walter wrote on a piece of paper a supposed quote by the former actor and placed it on a table on stage requesting that the medium identify his unseen quote, which of course Wiggin did.

The most revealing hoax was when Hubbell reported that a friend and neighbour, Edward Serviss, had been kidnapped in broad daylight, only to be told that Serviss was picked up by police being one of the most notorious swindlers of western America.

Hubbell's home courtesy of Kathy Hufnel

Other books that Hubbell published included “The Curse of Marriage” in 1888 and “Marcus Brutus, and Other Verses in 1886”.  Upon retirement he lived with his sister Eleanor.

Laurene's style

My mother had great style in her younger years.  I want to carry that style myself but its hard in this casual dress world.  I can remember sitting on the edge of her bed as a child watching her put the finishing touches on her ensemble before my parents went off for a Christmas party.  She always wore these wonderful red dresses, some made of silk velvet.  My father would buy her beautiful cashmere sweater sets for Christmas gifts and have my older sister wrap them up for him.  We got to look them over and touch them to our face before wrapping.  Mom wore a wonderful grey dress and matching coat even before Jackie Kennedy made it popular.  I think Mom’s sense of style was what made me come to love vintage textiles so much.    I have my grandmother’s 20’s flapper embossed velvet dress, the only outfit that she kept and my mother’s leather purse that my father made her.  I have an old chenille jacket of my own in my trunk that I just cannot give up, even though it is not very stylish or unique. 

We women have one item tucked away in a closet or trunk that we just can’t let go; clothing has such an emotional connection for us.