People love their family history. And there are different paths to follow. Some like to have their DNA examined to find out their ancestral roots. Many want more than that – they want names! Who was the first in my family to come to the “New World” and what are my family links to that person. They want their Family Tree.
I am lucky. I had a relative who spent decades researching the Cutten family tree and he was successful in completing the genealogical history of the Cuttings/Cuttens from their arrival in the American colonies in the 1630s, to their movement into Nova Scotia in the 1750s and to their subsequent spread into various provinces and states. And there are some great names in that family tree, none better than Thankful Cutten!
This has been an active contributor to the Raven & Gryphon Fine Books revenue stream over the past six years. I have found that the quickest to sell are books focused on specific families. They don’t stay around very long. The slowest to sell are county histories, first editions tend to be quite pricey and family genealogical data not a strong point. In between the two are municipal histories.
We had two copies of the history of Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia and one went to the United States and the other to Australia. Both copies went to members of families that had roots from Europe, immigrating to Nova Scotia and then “moving on”. This book contained a piece of their family puzzle.
We recently acquired the following book:
I must admit that I was surprised by the size of the book. Heading to the Annapolis Valley on Route 101 from Halifax you pass by Windsor with its 3 exits and quickly go past Falmouth that has no visible signs of a “Township”. A glimpse into the book reveals how Falmouth was one of the key welcoming points of the New England Planters who were enticed to come to Nova Scotia to take over the farms and lands that had belonged to the deported Acadians. And “Falmouth” as defined in the book was a sizeable land mass much greater than what today is known as Falmouth. And this book contains the genealogies of more than 150 families. I don’t expect that we will have this book much longer. Here is our description of the book as posted on the internet:
“Township of Falmouth Nova Scotia: A New England Town in Nova Scotia; by John V. Duncanson; Mika Publishing Company, Belleville, Ontario, 1983. This book is comprised of two parts. The first part, 476 pages, is a reprint of the 1965 first edition, and the second part, 102 pages, is the 1983 Supplement and is the more complete and desirable book. The book is illustrated and has a fold-out map of Falmouth, tipped in at the rear of the book. From the blurb – This book is a carefully researched record of the settlement in 1760 of the Township of Falmouth, Nova Scotia by pioneers from New England. Falmouth was one of the Minas Basin townships founded by the Crown to settle the lands which had been vacated by the Acadian French. From the introduction – Since the publication of Falmouth – A New England Township in Nova Scotia in 1965 many requests for copies have been directed to myself as well as to the Mika Publishing Company. It was therefore decided that a reprint of the 1965 edition would be published to meet this demand. The original book included more than 150 genealogies. These families lived on the west side of the Avon River from the head of the tide at Upper Falmouth to Mount Denson and Hantsport in the lower section of Falmouth Township. There are now many hundreds of descendants of the original French Acadian families and the New England Planters who replaced them in 1760. Over the years many corrections and additions to the original book have been forwarded to me. Many of these revisions will appear in the Supplement at the end of the current reprint – John Duncanson, Duncanson and Dyke Roads, Falmouth, Nova Scotia Sept. 1983.”