William Samuel Wagner was born in Upper LaHave, Nova Scotia, on November 5, 1820. His great grandfather, Phillippus Wager (b. 1707), came over from Germany in 1751 with many other German immigrants to settle in what would be known as Lunenburg. They…

The history of the Mahone Bay Museum began in 1979 when The Mahone Bay Founders Society formed to organize the celebration of Mahone Bay’s 225th Anniversary of the settlement in 1754. Various members in the community worked together to plan this…

Many of the early British settlements in Nova Scotia were recorded in maps made by Charles Morris, his son, and his grandson. Charles I was born in Boston and was commissioned in 1746 by Governor Shirley to serve in Nova Scotia. In 1748 he was…

In 1908, Winfred Theodore Ritcey started the Acadia Gas Engines Company on the banks of the LaHave River in Bridgewater. The company was known the world over for its two-cycle gas engines. With the company’s rapid expansion, Acadia Gas Engines began…

Before the British established the town of Lunenburg in 1753, the site was known to the Mi'kmaq as E’se’katik and to the French as Merliguesche – a name they borrowed from the Mi'kmaw word for the area. Merliguesche was a small Acadian settlement in…

The South Shore Genealogical Society (SSGS) was created in 1979 to identify, search out, collect, preserve, copy, and organize, any and all information regarding to genealogical research on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. The SSGS's…

Among the passengers on the ship Murdoch that arrived in Halifax Harbour in 1751 was a young officer by the name of Joseph Pernette. The Murdoch was one of several ships bringing German, French, and Swiss immigrants. Known as “Foreign Protestants,”…

Samuel de Champlain is well-known for helping establish a French colony at Québec. What many may not know is that he spent over three years in the French colony of Acadie, which once included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and…

In early September 1632, the Mi’kmaq who lived along the Pijinuiskaq (the LaHave River) must have been astonished to see two big wooden ships sailing through the narrows between what is now known as Kraut Point and LaHave. They anchored, and 200 men…

Mather Byles DesBrisay was born in Chester, Lunenburg County, on March 19, 1828 to Lucretia Woodward and Thomas Belcher DesBrisay, M.D. He studied law at Dalhousie University and was admitted to the bar in 1851, practicing his profession in Halifax…