FIELDSTONE FENCES: PART 6
Published on March 2017The biggest change to come in the lives of the residents was in the spring of 1865 with the prospecting trip of Charles Sier. Whichever direction he entered the bush that day he came out with the quartz of a gold strike in his packsack – life was to change all over Uniacke.
Unless we can understand the effects of a Gold mining boom on any community, it would be almost impossible to picture what happened next. (The mines have their own story).
Five years later the Census and Assessment Lists had gone crazy and a town was sitting on the doorstep of East Uniacke. Some realized this was a different way of life, accepted it and went on as usual. But many would meld in. We must try to understand that though the mining boom came overnight, it would have many highs and lows. At its peak, which was reached in about 1870, then for another fifty years, there was still mining and mining companies working in there. You can see from that there were generations of people who came here as a result of the early gold strikes. A bit of what it was like might be summed up in a note in the archives from a poor man who was the Secretary to the School Trustees. They had asked him for a list of the names of his pupils for the year. He was trying to solve his dilemma by writing to the County for a copy of the family names. The note reads as follows:
“School Section No 52
Uniacke Gold Mines
Feb 14, 1870.
Mr. James A Scott
Sir:
Please send me a list of the names of our school section that is a list for the present year. Also, the sum each is appraised for.
It would be impossible for me to send you a list of the names as I do not know who all the parties are.
Some have left here and signed their houses over to other people and others move in so that I cannot find out who built or have houses in the Mines.
I can only send you the names of that part of East Uniacke which has been put on our Section this year. They are John Aker; Peter Savage; Edward O’Hearn; John Hibbits; Tom and John Savage and David Lewis.
These are the names that are not in the Mines but in the next Settlement.
It would be impossible and not of service to you to try to make a start on the names in the Mines as I cannot give them all. Please send me your list as soon as possible.
Yours truly, Donald Bruce, Sec. to Trustees”
Then there were those who bought farms, even though their employment was in the mines. Two of these were James McKenzie and his family who bought the former farm of B. Reilly, just inside the Beamish Road on the hill on the left hand side and George Polkinghorn who bought the Peter Savage farm.
James McKenzie had a family of six boys. In 1881, Edward seems to have followed in his father’s footsteps and became a miner. His days of mining were of the time of South Uniacke’s mining boom and he went there to work and live. Most of his children were born in South Uniacke. Ned came back to live in East Uniacke and he bought a piece of land just before Lewis Lake on the right hand side. He built a home, but his was a restless spirit.
There’s something about mining kids. They either follow it with an unquenchable thirst or they want no part of it. James’ sons became lumbermen. They built mills and Charles would buy land reaching from the lake out to Beddos’ Brook – about 800 acres of it, for the timber for his mill. Included in it are some of Beddos’ speculation acres and his home farmland where the foundation is still outlined in the land near Charles McKenzie’s old saw mill.
George Polkinghorn, like James McKenzie, bought a house outside of the mining town. Peter Savage sold the farm that he had carved out of the bush to Polkinghorn. George wasn’t really a farmer for his heart was tied to mining. He tried for a while but the love for the lure of gold mining got the best of him and he wanted to move on.
At the end of the road, one of George Lynch’s sons, Charles, had known by this time his family would need room to stretch out so he bought from George Polkinghorn the old Peter Savage place. He had two sons. Doris, who moved into the house up on the hill framed in the trees across Savage Lake. The other son, Dan, when he married, came to build his home in the hollow below the hill. The Lynch children of both families grew up on the old James Lynch grant (no relation but maybe a coincidence).
On our way out to the Railway Crossing we see that Thomas Kelly, who had married Ann Savage in 1855, had built them a home in 1859. It was just a little bit away from the farm of William Mitchell.
William had married Eliza Etter and their house is just in sight of the Crossing (old Powell house). This land had been bought from the Pryor heirs in 1859. William’s two sisters, Jane and Esther, had married Joseph and William Etter.
The Mitchells had lived over the Halifax County line on the land that today is the Brushy Hill Light and Power Station. It looks as if when the railroad was cutting a road towards Uniacke, the Etters were finding a short cut towards the Mitchell’s farm, for in the 1850’s two sisters and a brother married two brothers and a sister. When William Mitchell’s family had grown, he bought the George Etter house and his niece, Isobell Etter Powell, came to live in the Mitchell’s house beside the tracks. And we have another homestead that is still in its family’s generations.
As we again reach the Etter Road, there have been a few changes during the past decade or two. There’s a new school over by Bell Park which was built in 1866. It too was rather rough. When a school Supervisor called he said he was glad to see that in this school they had done away with those “barbaric benches” of the earlier schools.
There’s a straight road now where the turn used to be. It goes through the old Hopewell land and they call it the new road (#1 Highway). It cut off the Post Road at the Etter Settlement.
The meeting house was getting its finishing touches inside. Because the train is now available, the highway inns are fading away as part of the coach days.
We will leave this part of Uniacke now. Just as the Railway has come, gold has been discovered and our old friends wave goodbye as they too must go their way, back into the records.
That’s all the stories we have in our archives done by Sadie Siroy on the history of our community. If you’re interested in following more of Sadie’s stories and/or the history of our community feel free to contact the Union Church volunteer group for more information on where to purchase Sadie’s books: Doorsteps and Crossroads and A’way Back Then…..And Now.
Be sure to visit the Uniacke Post Office and view the photos on display depicting our community through the years.
If anyone out there has stories to offer/share, please feel free to contact the Uniacke Newsletter.