Malagash | genealogyhistory

Malagash

Malagash is an Indian word and its meanings are many and varied such as end of smooth water, milky water and place of sports. According to Indian tradition, it means a favourite rendezvous, a place to meet and play games - in fact some claim that lacrosse was invented here. It was also, according to tradition, much larger and Amet Island was once part of Malagash Point. Sometime in the past, an island much larger than Amet lay about midway between Amet and Saddle Island. In the French maps of the 18th century, Amet Island was called L’Ormet which means The Helmet - probably referring to the fact that it was once covered with trees.. Today it is less than ½ acre in size.

Since the inner harbour was almost enclosed, it teemed with quantities of fish including oysters and lobsters. The adjacent marsh lands were the haunts of numberless wild fowl. Hence, great quantities of oyster shells have been found on the beach by the early pioneers, and it is known that the natives frequented this area. Indian Point was the nearest burying point except for the spot where two Indians were buried on a little knoll at the west end of Shipyard Island. The old Indian camping grounds of that time were on Shipyard and Fox Islands. Numerous pieces of pottery, flint arrowheads and a flint axe have been found, particularly on the farm of Herbert Purdy. The writer was told by an old resident long since passed, of numbers of Indians camping on the Purdy farm year after year as far back as he could remember. He also spoke of one band who, after a lapse of many years, returned to the old camp site. The day they returned, they went to a piece of low ground nearby, scraped the moss and mould from a certain spot and exposed to view a spring of excellent water. It had been rudely stoned up and no one seemed to have known of its existence.

Alexander McNab in The Citizen of Saturday, July 17, 1976

In 1713, the Acadians arrived and stayed until 1755 when they were expelled. They left behind their dykes and orchards and place names. Next to come were the Loyalists. The Remsheg grant was surveyed by Baker in 1786. In Malagash, 20,000 acres in one continuous tract was granted by the British Government to Colonel Joseph Pernetter, a French soldier who had fought in the British Army.

Subsequently, he traded it with a fellow officer, Isaac Ackley, for a grant on the La Havre River. Malagash contained 58 land grants, some already settled by 1782, notably by the Treens and Teeds. After the survey, other Loyalists and disbanded soldiers such as Stephen Canfield, David and Isaac Teed, Solomon Horton and Colonel Gilbert Purdy followed. They were given 200 acres each through the drawing of lots. Many of the original grantees never saw their land, having already settled in other parts of the province and New Brunswick. By 1790, the families here were Treen, Ackley, Horton, Austin, Maby, Purdy, Treen, MacNab, Dewar and Wilson.

In about 1816, many Irish families came to Nova Scotia and settled on some of these grants. Michael Cantwell and Terrance Carty, his wife and three sons Patrick, James and William came from County Cork that year. A short time after William Smyth and Patrick MacKay came from County Clare. Edward Carberry came about the same time from County Kilkenny. By 1820, all the land in the Malagash district was owned.

Lumbering was the first industry. Ship building began in 1804. A lobster factory was established in 1877 and a cheese factory in 1891. Salt mining began in 1918, a wine industry began in 1978 when the first grapes were planted by Jost and in 1996, Charles Purdy started an oyster farming enterprise.

Ship Building

There were quite a number of ship builders making both large sailing vessels and small fishing boats. Treens had a boat yard and built three brigantines that traded to England. Others were built at the Dock below Clair Ross’s place and on the west end of Stewart’s Island. One small island which is completely submerged at high tide was called Shipyard Island.

Lobster Canning and Fishing

The lobsters used to be very plentiful. Initially, farmers would take an ox team to the shore when the tide was out and get a load of lobsters which they boiled and fed to the pigs. People didn’t really think of it as food for their table, but the Americans were starting to fish lobster for American cuisine.

Dan Matheson was the first to have a lobster cannery at Malagash. John MacInnes had one in 1911 that canned lobster for over 50 seasons - the longest of them all. Burnham and Morrell, an American Company, had a large factory on Saddle Island employing over 60 persons. Other canners were Duncan and Jack MacDonald, Herbert and Sam Smith, Burt and Edward MacLennan of Malagash Point, George Langille who was in partnership with Ira Purdy and Fred Dakin from Pugwash.

The operators used to charter a schooner to deliver approximately 200 or more barrels of bait each spring from the Magdelines. Some springs the ice was late getting away, and they couldn’t catch them, or ice and unfavourable winds kept them from delivering. Sometimes, the herring were so plentiful on the Malagash that the bait from the Magdelines wasn’t needed. The nets would be as full as they would hold, and one danger would be losing the nets from their sinking. When they could not sell any more herring, farmers would put them on the land as fertilizer.

One particular year, 1902, after a blow, the whole of Wallace Harbour was full of herring. About 80 nets were sunk at Fox Harbour, they were so full. Everyone helped each other get their nets in and the spawn was in a windrow three feet high along the beach. Another fish that would strike in large numbers periodically were the squid. Everyone would load them with forks or shovels which they would put on the hayfields and rake up the dry skins with the hay. Scallops were also fished from the Malagash wharf.

Local fishermen would go out in sailboats two or three times a day and get a boat load of lobster to bring to the canneries.

Excerpted from an article by Arthur Treen

The Cheese Factory

The first cheese factory in Malagash was owned by a Mr. Archibald at Stake Road for a few years until 1897. Allison Treen gathered the milk up the south shore and Sandy Porteous on the North Shore Road.

The farmers got together in February of 1898 and started a company known as the Malagash Butter and Cheese Company. Shares were sold at $5.00 and William MacNeill was appointed chair. They did not find water where they wanted it, so they decided to build on Alex Porteous’ land and use Mary Treen’s spring which they leased for 30 cents. For the first few years they had to hand pump the water up grade into the boiler to make the next day’s cheese. The cheese factory was built by Beatty and MacKenzie in the spring and measured 56' x 28'. They brought the lumber in from Colchester County, shingled it with cedar on all sides and had 3 doors and 9 windows with 112 pains of glass. They finished it for $360 in time for cheese making .

The first cheesemaker was Byron MacLellan. He was the head of Brookfield Creamery. A variety of cheese makers and helpers followed. In 1915, the factory caught fire. Luckily Colin MacKenzie was driving home past the factory and put it out with pails of whey. By 1922, the cheesemaker was earning $70.00 a month.

The cheese was of very good quality - so much so that the government had an inquiry from some place in the Southern US of how much they could supply; however the cheese wasn’t made in such a quantity. One year, they sent cheese to the Halifax Exhibition and got first prize.

A lot of farmers started into fox farming and kept their milk for foxes. Others had gone to trucking salt to Malagash Station and the wharf. A number of farmers had two teams of horses and wagons and were too busy to bother with milk. Scotsburn Creamery started and farmers were sending cream and had the skim milk for calves. They only had to deliver once or twice a week to the train station. After a while the patrons of the Cheese Factory got so few in number and the milk supply so small that the cost of manufacture was too high, and they never started up again. In 1929 after 31 seasons, the factoroy closed.

Excerpted from an article by Arthur Treen

The Salt Mine

In 1912, Peter Murray wanted a well on his property, so one winter he had one drilled to 75 feet. The water gushed forth from the boring, rising as high as the eaves of his farm but immediately subsided and did not overflow. The next morning, Mr. Murray found the snow had vanished from his barnyard and the ground was soaking wet from the water bubbling out of the new well. He tasted it and almost choked, for it was saltier than fresh salted cod. He thought he had tapped into the sea. He tried several other holes and brine was encountered in each.

At this time, one of his enterprises was raising pigs, so he decided to try his well water for pickling brine for salt pork. People couldn’t believe that the pork had been cured in nothing more than well water. Soon his neighbours would come to him for supplies of the brine for their own use. In 1917, a sample of the water was sent to the Department of Mines in Ottawa. An analysis was made and Dr. Shutt concluded that there was probably a salt deposit of some proportion under Murray’s land.

In 1918, two New Glasgow men, A. R. Chamber and George MacKay formed a company and sank a shaft down to 85 feet. The first rock salt ever produced in Canada came up on Labour Day of 1918. They soon were taking out salt at the rate of 30 - 40 tons per day. Horse- drawn wagons carried it the eight miles to the nearest rail point until 1926/27 when a railroad was built.

In 1948, the company was reorganized as the Malagash Salt Company. By 1952, it was producing 50,000 to 60,000 tons of salt annually, and had its own ten-mile railway as well as shipping facilities on Tatamagouche Bay with a warehouse which could house 10,000 tons. In 1959, a PEI truck loaded with 12 tons of potatoes struck the front end of the lead car, one of eight cars of salt being pushed by the Malagash diesel engine. It upset the car and its 1000 bags 50 tons of salt across Rte. 6. Traffic was tied up for over 7 hours. The warehouse, which had been built in 1927, burned down in April of 1966.

In June of 1951, Canada Salt gained control of the mine. It also took over the mines in Neepawa and Windsor from CIL. In 1959, operations were shifted to Pugwash which was deemed to have a purer grade of salt as well as a deeper harbour. The salt mining history of Malagash was marked with a museum and monument that opened on June 17, 1994.

Excerpted from The Northern Miner of Jan. 17, 1952 and Amherst Daily News of Feb. 1959

Other Notable Events

A small settlement was started once the salt mine began. The workers rented or built homes nearby. A grocery store was started by Jack Johnson and then the Densmores. Ed Long started a pool hall which was also an ice cream parlour. Art Mitchell had a small grocery store in his home and showed movies. A miner’s hall was built after the miners unionized, and a post office opened.

In 1901, the Malagash wharf was built by Baxter Robinson from Fox Harbour. A ferry went from the Malagash wharf to the Tatamagouche wharf three times a day on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday run by the government. In the winter, people would drive across the ice to get there. Some were responsible for bushing the ice. Everyone was responsible to keep the roads in shape. Men had short sections of road about three miles long to keep cleared and if they didn’t do their share, they were fined.
The telephone was put in in 1904 or 1905.
On May 24, 1928, the war memorial at Stake Road was unveiled. Also that day the Malagash Calf club was organized.
In 1931 or 32, the United Church manse was built at Stake Road by William Halverson and Earl Kirk. Aitchison Clark and Bismark MacLean hauled stone for the basement and Biz was paid 10 cents an hour. Next to it was Still Purdy’s house also built by W. Halverson in 1932. The first minister to live in it was Rev. Daniel C. MacKenzie; his wife was Irene Seaman. The first marriage performed there was a Danish couple - her name may have been Christensen.
After Malagash wharf was built, in 1932 or 1936, a large storage shed was built with a surveyor belt extension to run the salt out to the boats.
In 1938, the Malagash baseball team won the Southern Section of the Cumberland County Baseball championship and entered the playoffs. Joggins eventually won.
In 1938 on Sept. 15th, the Saddle Island lobster factory burned.
In 1944, the first tractor in the area was bought.
On August 26, 1948, electric power was turned on in Malagash.
On April 14, 1966, the Malagash wharf burned.

Churches and Schools

In 1791, Reb. William Grandin, who had been preaching to the settlers of Westchester Mountain visited Malagash. His strong stand against all amusements which excluded religion from the heart convinced many to convert. In 1793, Dr. McGregor, a Presbyterian preacher reached out to the Scottish settlers of Malagash. A Methodist Church was built in 1818 on land donated by William Treen. The first burial in the graveyard was 1826 and it was that of William who had donated the land. The first church burned in 1860, and another was built on the same property. A Presbyterian Church was built shortly after the Methodist church. In 1890, John Munro built a Presbyterian Church at Blue Sea corner. In 1938, it was moved on skids to be nearer to the Salt Mine.

There have been a number of schools on the Malagash Peninsula. Malagash Centre School was on the south shore road near Purdy Loop. The East Wallace School is close to Horton’s Point. There was also Stake Road and Upper Malagash School. Malagash Point School was out at the point. The North Shore School was half way between the mine and Smith Road. When the salt mine first started and the population increased, the North Shore school became too small. The walk to it was almost two miles. A meeting was held, and it was decided to get a teacher and board him two weeks at a time with the parents and hold classes in one of the old, now unused, bunkhouses that were built to house the men. The first teacher was a Mr. Yorston from PEI. He had lost a foot in the Great War. All was well until he was boarded with a family with a grade ten boy. The boy decided that the man was acting strangely and avoided him. The next place also had teen age boys and the next. A quick meeting was held one night and Mr. Yorston was escorted to Malagash Station and presented with a ticket to PEI. A school to replace the bunkhouse was built in 1937.

The last school closed in 1982, and it was one of the last one-room schools in the province.

Jost Winery

Founder Hans Wilhelm Jost began to produce wine for the Nova Scotia market in the mid-1980s. The company was taken over by his son Hans Christian Jost in the early 1990s and grew to become the largest and longest operating winery in Nova Scotia. The company, now owned by Carl and Donna Sparkes, has traditionally made wines that are both blends of Nova Scotia grapes with imported juice, along with one hundred percent Nova Scotia products.

Bay Enterprises Ltd.

Charles Purdy took over the family farm from his grandfather in 1962, and in 1996 restarted the oyster farming that the Purdy ancestors had been involved in since 1868. The Purdy family’s agricultural farm started in 1783 with both land and sea farming. They currently only farm at sea, but still own much of the original farmland. The Purdy operation is one of the few oyster farms in Eastern Canada. Inspected to sell almost anywhere in the world, they sell their oysters locally in Nova Scotia as well as ship to some parts of Quebec, Ontario and the United States.