June 12th, 1929
The Pioneers (No. 5)
A very natural surprise was felt by many of the descendants of the New England planters who came to this Valley five years after the expulsion of the Acadians when they read in The Register of May 22nd that those planters came here from New Jersey. The expulsion took place in 1755. Five years later, in 1760, the grantees of Horton and Cornwallis arrived. Not one of them came from New Jersey. When the Township of Aylesford was established, toward the close of that century, one family of grantees claimed to have come from New Jersey. That family bore the honored name of Van Buskirk. They came some thirty years after the expulsion instead of five years, as stated in the article in The Register.
The grantees under the first effective grant in the Township of Horton numbered 189. In Cornwallis they were 127. These were mostly from New England, though not all. Some few were land speculators, but most were planters. The family names (surnames) numbered about 163. Eighty-one of these came from Connecticut; fourteen from Massachusetts; eight from Rhode Island; four from New Hampshire and two from Maine. Deacon Abel Parker, who settled in Berwick, was, as has been stated, a descendant of a grantee in Annapolis County. In Cornwallis, however, there were three grantees – David, Elisha and Robert – who bore the surnames of Parker. The Nichols family came to Annapolis with the Loyalists, but Elisha Nichols was a grantee in Horton in 1761, and an Asa Clark among those of Cornwallis in 1764.
Among pioneers who did not come from New England may be mentioned the names of Burns, McBride, Neily and Ray. These came from the north of Ireland, coming into the Valley about 1764.