I am getting off list questions about my recent trip to Yarmouth, so I am
going to take the advice of one of them and post "a report" to this list
that hopefully will answer everyone's questions and curiousity. Be aware
this is being cross-posted (normally frowned upon on the lists) to both the
Cann surname and Yarmouth County, NS lists, since I admin both and commented
on both in August prior leaving for our trip on 2 September. I get kind of
long-winded sometimes, so please forgive me if this gets a bit long, and I
hope the one of you who suggested I do this will not regret putting the idea
into my head. :-(
Before I begin, I want to apologize to all of you who responded to my post
asking for information to look up for you while we were in Yarmouth. For
reasons that will be evident as you read along below, given the overwhelming
amount of information I found and collected, I simply did not have the time
to complete my own pre-set goals while I was there, much less gather
information for yours. I am sorry I got your hopes up, but understand I am
"like a kid at Christmas" with this stuff anyway, and it turns out that I
found a bonanza of information there and got buried in it. . . .figuratively
speaking. We are already considering a return trip to hopefully "resume
where we left off" a few weeks ago, but that is a future consideration for
another time. With that said, following is the report on our trip suggested
by one of you. . . .
First of all, I had heard before I left that Nova Scotians are very friendly
and cordial people, and if my first impression means anything then I can
absolutely agree with that. As I told my wife, I am sure there must be a
grump around Yarmouth someplace out of the 7,500 or so people who live
there, but if there is one I sure never found him. :-) The people were
absolutely wonderful, and could not have been more cordial. Although we
flew into Halifax and drove a rental car to Yarmouth, we stayed at the
Murray Manor B&B right where "The Cat" (the high-speed ferry from Maine)
docks at the Yarmouth end of it's daily trips. I don't want to get into an
advertisement on this list, but if any of you ever go to Yarmouth I highly
recommend staying there, where Brenda (the owner) treated us like family.
She also prepares a breakfast second to none.
One of the first places I went insofar as our genealogy is concerned, was
Yarmouth Mountain Cemetery, which happens to be the final resting place for
1,000 or more of the entries in my genealogy, and that number is NOT an
exaggeration. I had intended to "walk the cemetery rows" when I got there,
and take pictures of any stone with a surname on it from the list I prepared
in advance, but when I got there and found more than 40 acres of cemetery
that idea fell by the wayside almost immediately. For starters, we arrived
at YMC late in the day, and that was a mistake because as the clock ticked
toward 5 PM the caretaker found us and very courteously asked us to drive
the car outside the gate so he could lock it. We were free to stay and roam
the cemetery as long as we chose, but he obviously could not lock the gate
with the vehicle still on the grounds. We decided to just leave, and return
another day when we had more time to spend there, although we did locate and
photograph a few gravesites before departing.
Another place that any genealogy researcher simply MUST visit in Yarmouth is
the Yarmouth County Museum & Archives on Collins Street. Conveniently
enough, it is directly across the corner from a big white house built and
once owned by Capt. Augustus Cann, the brother of an ancestor of mine. The
YCM&A are jointly operated by the Yarmouth Historical Society, of which my
wife and I are a member. Since they typically meet the first Friday of each
month, we attended what will likely be the only meeting that we ever attend,
though we receive the monthly newsletter and do read in that about what goes
on at meetings as well as the museum and archives.
As you might guess, we spent a considerable amount of time in the Archives,
and came back there multiple times over our ten day stay in Yarmouth. This
is another reason I did not get to do your searches, because when I began to
realize the stuff there ("so much new stuff to copy, so little time") I
wound up running out of time for a few of the things that I intended to do
while I was there. Now, most of them will be on the top of the list if I
ever get back there. The Archivist there is a very helpful lady, and her
staff of volunteers really "bend over backwards" to be helpful. The more
they helped, the more I found, and the more time I spent there taking time
away from other things I really planned to do. They have done a wonderful
job of organizing and preserving records and historical documents though,
and you really must go there if the opportunity ever presents itself. I
don't know if they offer help online or by email or not, perhaps to members
of the Yarmouth Historical Society (their parent organization), but I do
know they have a webpage.
I made my second visit to Yarmouth Mountain Cemetery the first Saturday
there, and when I arrived it was kind of drizzling. The gate is locked on
weekends, so I sat outside the gate hoping the drizzle would stop but no
such luck. I finally decided it wasn't raining THAT much and ventured out
into the dampness, armed with a list of specific graves to locate that were
of greatest importance to my genealogy. As time wore on, the rain increased
and a fog began to roll in, and it kind of reminded me of an Edgar Allen Poe
book or something similar. :-( I stuck it out, rain and all, but finally
decided my new camera did not need to get soaking wet and I never took it
out of the zippered camera case that I kept under my jacket. With my
eyeglasses almost impossible to see through and impossible to get dry in the
then driving rain, I finally gave up around lunch time without a single
picture taken. I then opted to go back to the B&B for a hot shower and some
dry clothes before meeting a friend (actually, a 6th cousin) who lives there
for lunch. Instead of spending the day in YMC as we planned, we spent the
remainder of it in the Archives once again.
Another place we discovered to be most helpful is the Yarmouth County Land
Office on Second Street. There, I found ORIGINAL hand-written wills,
probate records, deeds, and a myriad of other legal documents available for
copying. The folks there were also extremely helpful, and they even had a
copier there for public use to copy anything they had. The copies were a
little "pricey" at C$1.09 per copy (about US$1.11 at the current exchange at
the time), but while I was there I took full advantage of it and now have
copies of numerous documents to sort through, some of which are 200 years
old.
The local Visitor's Bureau was right across the street from where we stayed,
and there we discovered a number of interesting things, including a walking
tour of the historical homes and other buildings of Yarmouth. They have
done a wonderful job of preserving (and in some cases restoring) the
historic landmarks of the area, including many that are still private homes
of the 21st century. My wife has problems walking great distances, so we
took the walking tour but kind of "cheated" and did it in the car, following
the route and description found in the flyer. First on the list was Murray
Manor B&B, built and originally owned in 1805 by the first doctor in town
(and an entry in my genealogy), so that worked out conveniently enough. As
we went along the tour, with my wife reading the descriptions of each stop
while I took pictures of each, we discovered many of the properties were
once owned by my ancestors, many of whom were also named Cann. There is
also a Cann Street in Yarmouth, with a building on the corner of Cann & Main
Streets once owned by my 4g-grandfather. We never planned to take the tour,
but we did and after doing so I am amazed at what we saw and how well the
folks in Yarmouth have preserved their heritage.
On the THIRD and final try at visiting Yarmouth Mountain Cemetery, we
finally managed to do it on a clear sunny day AND early enough in the day to
be able to spend some time there. With the previous setbacks, I did pare
down my plan from walking the rows to photographing specific sites that were
of specific interest to me, and we managed to locate all but one of the two
dozen or so we wanted to find. . . .including my 4g-grandfather whom nobody
apparently knew was buried there. Every reference I have found indicated he
was buried in a different cemetery when he died in 1826, but that cemetery
is now a city park and has only a couple dozen well cared for graves in it.
Through some local research while we were there, we discovered many of the
graves in that cemetery were moved to the brand new Yarmouth Mountain
Cemetery after it opened in 1860, and thanks to some persistence (and yes,
some luck too) I managed to find and photograph his grave next to his
married daughter and her husband. So, while I did not get to photograph all
the gravestones I originally wanted, the visit to YMC turned out quite
fruitful in the end, just in a slightly modified sort of way. I am now in
the process of organizing an awful lot of data and pictures, so if I live
long enough maybe one day I will get the project finished.
Yarmouth was wonderful, right down to the last "person on the street" that
we met, and I sincerely mean that. We are already talking about going back
someday, and I hope it will happen soon. The ONLY negative on the entire
trip had nothing to do with Yarmouth. We planned to fly back to Washington,
D. C. after stopping for a few days in the Toronto area to see a good friend
I know by email only (we've never met face-to-face). Her father has
Alzheimer's Disease though, and she is his primary care giver in her home.
She contacted us in Yarmouth and told me he has had a "turn for the worse,"
so on the day we intended to fly from Halifax to Toronto we came back to
Washington, D. C. instead. Alzheimer's is a terribly cruel and awful thing
for anyone to have, expecially for the loved ones trying to take care of
him/her, so we simply did not want to make an already difficult family
situation worse for her by coming.
That is the summary of our trip folks. I apologize for talking so much, but
that always has been a problem of mine. No response is especially
necessary, but if you do respond please understand if you do not get a reply
to your message sent directly to me off list because I am really buried in
paper and details at the moment. I have no problem you discussing it on
either list, and I may or may not respond to you there if time allows it,
but that is up to you. My thanks to each of you who have written so far,
and I hope you will accept this rather "one size fits all" response at least
until I can get caught up on things once again. . . .if I ever do.
David
List Admin
David E. Cann
decann(a)infionline.net
Genealogy webpage:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~decann/genealogy/master/