Jocelyn Snyder Freeman contributed to the album: SCOTCH BAY- SCOTS BAY - SCOTTS BAY.
----In 1764 three or four families located at Scots Bay and began the present settlement there, among them people of the name of Andrews and Loomer. Tradition has it that shortly before this a vessel with some Scotch emigrants sailed up the Bay of Fundy, its passengers intending to settle at Cape D'Or. In a squall was driven ashore at the present Scots Bay, where she lay stranded, her passengers and crew however being saved. For some time the shipwrecked people wandered helplessly about but at last came on a solitary hunter. He gave them food and led some of them down the mountain, but these soon returned to their first landing place. During the winter that followed the Scotchmen made frequent journeys into the valley for food but what became of them in the end we do not know. From these temporary residents the place got its name, Scots Bay.
----In all the early documents, Deeds, Wills, etc., up to around 1840 the name is spelled 11 Scotch Bay", later it is 11Scots Bay11 and still later and up to the present time it is Scotts Bay.
----The first effective grant of Cornwall is Township dated July 21st, 1761, mentions the Bay of Fundy boundary as follows:- Thence on the said Bay according to the course of the Bay of Fundy to Cape Fondu". One authority speaking of the Bay of Fundy says, researches have proved that the name comes from an early French corruption of the French word fendu meaning split applied on old maps to the cape now called Cape Split at the entrance of Minas Basin.
----When the first settlers came to Scotch Bay they found, except for the marsh, forest to the waters edge. A forest principally of spruce, fir, beech, birch and maple and logging , milling and shipbuilding industries grew up in connection with this forest. Logging is almost wholly a winter industry, snow roads being depended upon for moving the logs. The first houses were built of logs, and I think it is safe to say that since the first settler came, whoever he was, not a winter has passed without logging operations being carried on.
----Perhaps the fishing at Scotch Bay first attracted settlers there. Shad fishing began to be carried on in a small way at Scots Bay. About 1800, weirs were made there on a large scale and great numbers of fish we re caught. In perhaps 1835 a new seine was set in place of the Great Seine of 1800 and shares were bought in it but only by the proprietors of the soil at Scots Bay itself.
----The Great Seine was set toward the north end of the beach across the corner where the shore turns west to the Cape and is said to have been a trip seine fastened down at the bottom and with buoys attached to the top, the seine was tied down in such a way that it could be tripped from boats at high tide after the fish had gone in over it. As the tide went out the fish were gathered into boats and taken to the fish house which appears to have been on the south e nd of the beach on the Davison land.
----People in Cornwall is and Halifax were financially interested in the Great Seine and there were almost unlimited quantities of fish in their season and of the finest quality, but the story of the progress of the fishery at this time would read like a temperance lecture. The Fish Company, greedy for profits, brought in a number of men to carry on the fishery and made it compulsory that they accept a certain amount of rum as part of their wages, and so much drunkenness resulted that there was much loss . Boatloads of fish were overturned on the way to the fish house, fish were left without attention until partly spoiled and the catch was so badly cured that sales fell off and finally the venture was abandoned.
----In the first settlement' of Scotch Bay no doubt most of the coming and going was by way of the sea, but as time went on there would be more communication with the Cornwallis settlements in the Valley, first by footpaths, then on horseback and later by horse drawn vehicles. When the first travel led path across the Mountain became finally widened and improved so as to accomodate horse drawn vehicles we do not know, probably it could be so used in winter for some time before it would be passable in summer. Travel for any distance was almost entirely by horseback until 1840 there being very few wheeled vehicles in Cornwallis before that time for summer travel.
----If we reckon the history of Scotch Bay as beginning in 1764, probably all the frame buildings, both houses and out buildings of all kinds for over one hundred years from that time were built of lumber sawed in one or another of these mills, and the roofs and in many instances the sides also of these buildings we recovered with rived shingles made by hand by splitting blocks of clear spruce to the required thickness and shaving them with a draw knife by those ski] led in the art, and for some of the older buildings the nails were made one by one by a blacksmith, or we re simply wooden pegs. In the late 1870's or the early i880's a steam mill was built just east of the aboiteau where the creek runs out past the wharf, this mill I think, was owned by a Company and operated by David Jess. It contained a rotary, edger, planer, shingle machine, and later a tee nail turning machine and some other machinery. A large quantity of lumber was manufactured in this mill, much of which was exported.
----A water mill buiIt by Ardent C. Tupper on the George Ells Brook, just east of the highway was in operation for several years where staves, heads and shingles were manufactured. Th is mill was put out of business by a freshet in 1927 which broke the dam and moved the mi 11 from its foundation, it was never repaired .
----In 1919 William Rupper and Sons built a mill powered by Steam engine a short distance north and east of the Pingree Mill site, this mill has a rotary saw and also manufactures barrel stock and shingles. This mill is still in operation. Lumbermen have also set up portable mills at Scotts Bay at various times, and considerable lumber sawed in these mills has been exported .
----Near the centre of the Village, some distance to the eastward of the house now occupied by William Tupper and just east of the old road used previous to 1844 is what may be called the Pingree Burying Ground. This is situated on land purchased by John Pingree from Samuel Gore in 1794, and remaining in the Pringree family until about 1829. It is not known who else may be buried there, but there are probably others. The second George Jess, who died February 2nd, 1851 was buried there as he owned the Pingree farm at that time, but his remains were some years later removed to the present public Cemetery.
----At the north end of the Village, situated on the lot of land bought by the first George Jess from Samuel Starr is a Burial Place where among others, the first George Jess and his wife are buried.
----To the south of the South Shore Road between the road and where the Mill once stood and just east of the lot on which the house stands once occupied by John Legge Sr., there are two graves. The bodies of two sailors were found on the shore and the unidentified remains were buried there .
----The building of ships at Scotts Bay was carried on at intervals of a long period of years, giving employment at a large number of men and making the Village for the time being a prosperous community. There was abundance of timber of high quality for this purpose, the Ridge or northern edge of Cape Split and on toward Blomidon was principally hardwood, maple, birch and beech, while the southern slope of the Cape and land to the eastward of the Village was covered with a heavy growth of soft wood, spruce of various kinds, and fir. There were crooked trees for ships frames, straight trees for plank and beams a nd trees with heavy roots for knees for braces, trees for all purposes connected with shipbuilding except the oak for the keels, and some of the wood used in finishing the cabins, the-re were no oak or pine trees at Scotts Bay.
----In these shipyards, until quite recently, practically all work was done by hand, there were no mills or power machinery to saw or plane, the logs were lined or marked by the rods, and then notched in to the line, the blocks split off and then finished with broad axe and adze. Frames, plank, ceiling, beams and deck plank were all manufactured in the way except such as were sawn by hand by two men working an up and down saw over a sawpit , the man below in the sawpit , his face covered with a veil to keep the sawdust out of his eyes, pulled the saw down, and the man above pulled it up again and this went on hour after hour . The two men taking hours to accomplish what a rotary would do in a few minutes.
----A steam box was used for steaming the plank so they would bend into the required shape, and the plank were taken from the box while hot and forced into the proper position. In the little old Black smith Shop built over the bank near the lower end of the north shore road. Lemuel Ells, Shop's Blacksmith, ironed the ships. It was said that there was nothing a blacksmith could not do with iron , and that there were ship's forgings put out of the little shop by himself and his sons, that could not have been done elsewhere except in a shop equipped with trip hammers and overhead carriers.
----The first vessel built at Scotts Bay, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was the Schooner Dorea, built by Jonathan E. Steele in 1850 or 1851 in the Steele Shipyard in the Hollow adjoining the Lemuel Ells place, where all his vessels were built except the Habitant.
----In the early years of the Village while there were fish in abundance and game birds and animals were plentiful, agriculture was not so important, but as these gradually failed and could not be depended upon, more attention was given to tillage of the soil and the raising of various kinds of live stock. There are now hundreds of acres of cleared land in the viIlage on which crops are raised or in use as pasture, there was at one time a large clearing on Cape Split called the Lady Cove Clear, but this is now again overgrown with forest.
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HISTORY OF SCOTTS BAY BY ABRAM JESS
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