In 1798, William Burke and a group of other men blazed a trail through Queens and Annapolis counties, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Bay of Fundy. In blazing this trail, William Burke truly began the settlement of Northern Queens County, the area that we today known as North Queens.

William Burke was not the first to cut his way through the Northern Queens woods. Besides the countless Aboriginal people and numerous Frenchmen before him, a party of traders as recent as 1795 had gone across the country. The difference in 1799 was that expansion and settlement into the interior was necessary and expedient. Forty years after Liverpool was settled by the immigrants from the New England colonies, new farmland and new transportation routes had to be thrown open. The fertile soil that was being sought was abundant in Northern Queens and would soon be turned by the ploughshares of new settlers.

William Burke was born in 1764, the son of Walter and Nancy Burke of Halifax. William*s father had recently migrated to Halifax from England and worked as a blacksmith in His Majesty*s navy yard in Halifax. When William was seven years old his father died. William was then taken in by Samuel Mack, a wealthy merchant in Port Medway (now Mill Village). Here, although his foster father lived by the mercantile trade, William took a great interest in the woods and hunting. He traveled extensively with the Indians in the area — in particular, Joseph Glode. The Glode family had hunted and fished extensively on the Mersey and Medway rivers as well as Kejimkujik Lake and, therefore, were excellent guides for Burke*s trips to the interior.

Little is really known of William Burke despite the many eulogies that have been written about him. One of the earliest references describes him as possessing an iron constitution, a firm mind and a hospitable disposition. It is known that he married Mary Foster, daughter of Edward and May Foster of Liverpool in 1786. Fourteen years later he moved his wife and four children from Mill Village to a log cabin he had built just south of the Medway River in what was to become South Brookfield. “Brookfield in the Wilderness” had begun and Burke, before he died in 1835, would witness numerous settlers established and a dozen settlements grow up in the vicinity of the dry knoll near the Medway River where he had first settled.

As would be expected the beginnings were not easy. Burke was a skillful hunter and depended not a little on the game that he killed. He had cleared two acres within a year of his settlement and then began the long process of burning off additional land, uprooting the tree stumps and transforming what was once a forest into a farm. Frequently in those early years, Mary Burke enjoyed the valuable assistance of the Glode family who were always ready to provide help when she needed it. She was well adapted to pioneer life although William receives most of the plaudits. It was she who made” the home and walked to Liverpool for supplies. She also had to walk to Liverpool in order to be in the care of other women when she gave birth to four of her children. A sturdy woman, she outlived her husband by 21 years and passed away in South Brookfield in 1856 at the age of 88. Her picture was one of the more popular objects for sale during the centennial celebration in Brookfield in 1899.

The first decade did not bring an anticipated flood of settlers. The road was still but a path and potential settlers had little incentive to leave a Liverpool booming due to the extensive privateering brought on by the French Revolutionary War. However, the Interest in the resources of Northern Queens County was also shared by the Nova Scotia government. A surveyor and botanist, Titus Smith, had set out in 1801 to complete a survey of timberland in Western Nova Scotia so that the Government of Nova Scotia would no longer have to rely on “vague reports.” He was to explore the unknown interior in order to discover areas best adapted to the furnishing of naval stores. Smith had started his journey by foot on July 8, 1801. By August 8th he had reached Lake Rossignol and continued on until he reached Burke*s home, noting the hemlock, pine and birch along the way. Smith wrote that :he followed the track to Burke*s cabin and commented that the trail was not wide enough for a horse and sleigh.

Burke informed Smith that there was good farmland for 20 miles up the Port Medway River. It was along this line, almost parallel to the river and just west of it, that the later settlements of Caledonia, Harmony, Kempt, and Northfield would grow. Smith noted that the area had good hardwood soil as well as fine meadows covered with blue joint grass excellent for livestock fodder. Others shared Smith*s opinion and Burke was not alone in 1801. Seven miles northeastward was “a Settlement begun by some young men on excellent land. This was Pleasant River and these young men would soon see other settlers coming to join them.

Neither Smith nor any other contemporary writer can give an adequate reason or reasons for the delayed migration-to an area offering a wealth of land, timber and game. Perhaps the lack of roads and the Liverpool “boom” as suggested earlier had something to do with it. Nevertheless there was a trickle of settlers some of whom, like Samuel Freeman and James Daley, remained while others came, saw what pioneering meant, and departed.

The physical hardships of housing, land clearing and utilizing burnt land as well as the lack of tools and assistance did not help matters. Those who were to come and settle Caledonia later could fall back on the, by then, established community in Brookfield. But the first pioneers were virtually a handful in number and none were established sufficiently to help others as much as was necessary. In addition to this was the unclear nature of the land question. Land grants had been suspended in 1790 and a dispute over church land in the early 1800s had led to the revocation of the suspension order of 1790.

No law had been made to replace it and soon thousands of unlicensed squatters were clearing the backwoods of Nova Scotia unbeknownst to the government. High fees for the clear title to the land could not be paid by the poor who entered the wilderness. Therefore, the squatters would have to be tolerated for some time.

It was not until the second decade of the 19th century that this area began to attract settlers. This is not to say that it was neglected nor that it had no effect on Liverpool other than economic. A religious revival occurred in Pleasant River in 1807 and several young people, including Bartlett Freeman and Zenas Waterman Jr., traveled to Liverpool and went from house to house exhorting all to repent. A similar phenomenon then occurred in Liverpool. Some businesses were shut and a religious revival took place. This was but one of the many influences that gave Northern Queens a strong but, at times, varying cultural connection with Liverpool.

The settlers who arrived in the next two decades were from the north, as well as the south, of Nova Scotia and from points overseas. Although the bulk of the early settlers in this central area were still coming from Liverpool and its immediate environs, there were also the Kempton’s from Annapolis who founded Kempt and Nimrod Rowter, an Englishman who settled in Maitland.

Caledonia was settled about 1817 by six Scots and two Irishmen, with the community being named poetically after the Scottish settlers* homeland. Three or four Waterloo veterans made their homes in Hibernia and West Caledonia, including Patrick Lacey and James Donnellan. The Irish Catholic influence was so strong that the first church at Caledonia was built in 1836, this being the Roman Catholic Church in West Caledonia.

By the late 182Os one of the last settlements, Harmony, was still a wilderness and the new land grant holders of the Harmony area requested “Father” Burke to aid them in establishing a new settlement. Given Burke*s age at the time, this request was probably more to honor him as the first pioneer in the area than to utilize his labor. Samuel Hunt remembers the first tree that was ever to fall in Harmony for the purpose of making a farm. In a short time a sawmill was up and a grist mill established. It was only then “they considered that they were pretty well advanced towards civilization.” This points out the major aim of the settlers to this area-to manufacture as well as to produce. To be independent in those things that could be locally made was the goal. It is necessary then to examine more closely the temperament, trades, and settlement patterns of this rapidly growing area, for by the early 1840s virtually all the present-day settlements of Northern Queens County and Southern Annapolis County had been established.