August 7, 1913
The County of Annapolis
Judge Savary has just issued a volume partly corrective and partly additive to the history of Annapolis County originally edited and partly written by him in co-operation with Mr. Calnuck. The volume contains much that is interesting in matter and a good deal of excellent English composition in the setting. The history of Acadia begins at Annapolis and that history starts out with a long exordium. The charter given by the Kings of France to DeMonts ran as follow:
"To our dear and well-beloved, the Lord of DeMonts, one of the gentlemen in ordinary of our chamber; Salut: As our greatest care and labor is and always has been since our coming to this crown to maintain and conserve it in the ancient dignity and splendor thereof, to extend and amplify as much as lawfully may be done the bounds and limits of the same, we being for a long time informed of the situation and condition of the lands and territories of LaCadie, moved above all things by a single-minded zeal and devout and constant resolution which we have taken with the help and assistance of God, Author, Distributor and Protector of all Kingdoms and estates, to cause the people who do inhabit the country, men at the present time barbarous, atheistic, without faith or religion, to be converted to Christianity and the belief and profession of our faith and religion, and to draw them from the ignorance and unbelief in which they now are."
The glory of the Crown, the glory of France, the glory of the Church, such were the professed objects aimed at in the founding of Port Royal. A great deal of new light is also thrown on the much-vexed question of the Expulsion of the Acadians, and there is an interesting chapter on the attitude of many Nova Scotian people during the Revolutionary War. A large number of men, both in Annapolis and other places, openly expressed sympathy with the revolted Colonists, a feeling which caused some to take up arms in Cumberland and Colchester counties. One woman, wife of a Justice of the Peace, wished that the French would return and re-conquer the Province. – Acadian Recorder.