by Dr. Julian Gwyn (Wolfville)
The year 2010 marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the first New England Planters in Nova Scotia. Most Planters migrated from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Those who settled the Minas Basin townships – Cornwallis, Horton, Falmouth, and Newport – were attracted by the good quality soil, much of it long cultivated by the Acadians, expelled in the 1750s. With a population of about 2,000 by 1767, Planters and their descendants numbered more than 10,000 in the 1827 census. Their economic history in Nova Scotia, the societies they established, their religious turmoil, and political expression are all sketched in four separate township histories to 1815.
