Great Village, Nova Scotia
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Great Village is a community of approximately 500 people located along Nova Scotia Highway 2 and the north shore of Cobequid Bay in Colchester County Nova Scotia.
[edit] Settlement of Great Village
"The vessel 'Hopewell' with Irish settlers reached Halifax, October 9, 1761, and landed passengers where they remained over the winter. Early next spring arrangements were made to hire a vessel to take these people to the 'District of Cobequid' where the best lands and greatest quantities of marsh in that part of the country were assigned to them, and furnished them with provisions out of the Provincial Funds. Many of these settlers finally took up land in what is now Londonderry district. Tradition is that twenty families located along the Bay Shore between Isgonish River and Bass River." (from "Great Village History", written and published by the Great Village Women's Institute, 1960, 155 pages, not copyrighted. For an astonishing testament to the truth of this two-hundred-year-old oral tradition, see the advertisement in the "Belfast Newsletter" of 11th March 1762, signed by twenty (sic) people. The existence of this advertisement was not known in Great Village until 1983.)
What was to become Great Village was first settled in the spring of 1762 by Protestants of predominantly Ulster origins, brought over by formerly-Nova-Scotia-stationed (Nova Scotia in 1775 = present-day Nova Scotia AND New Brunswick) and by then former-British-army-Captain Alexander McNutt, himself an Ulsterman. (For a detailed history of McNutt's land promotion scheme, practically on a day-by-day basis and with thorough references to primary sources, see: R.J. Dickson, Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1718-1775", Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 1976, ISBN 0-901905-12-8, especially Chapter VIII, "The Activities of Land Promoters", pages 134-152.)
The original grants of land of the Township of Londonderry were prepared in 1765, but because of the British government's explicit prohibition against the granting of Nova Scotia land to Irish, they were not made official until February 10, 1775.
"The reader should bear in mind that the settlement of the township of Londonderry was for the most part on those lands near the Bay Shore--Masstown, Glenholme, Great Village, Portaupique, and Bass River. The present community of Londonderry, or Acadia Mines, was not included in the Area described in the Grant of 1775. Presumably settlement of that community did not commence until iron ore was discovered there in 1847." ("Great Village History", page 40.)
"In the early nineteenth century this village was called 'The Port of Londonderry' and was a Port of Registry." ("Great Village History, page 7) (that is, the port of Londonderry Township, not the port of the present town of Londonderry!)
The area was earlier settled by Acadians, who built dykes to create farmland from the area's saltmarsh. The village partially exists on this created land, which is still farmed. The dyked land, substantially below the habited portion of Great Village, is an unspoiled heritage-engineering site worthy of note.
[edit] Other facts and features
A number of gardens and Victorian-period built houses are located in and around Great Village.
In her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Bishop lived with her grandparents in Great Village for a few years. She based many of her stories on the life of a fictional village of the same name. One story that details Great Village is called appropriately, "In the Village".
Great Village is considered by most locally to incorporate the areas of Highland Village to the west and Scrabble Hill to the north northwest.
