Tuesday, March 4, 2014

52 Ancestors: #9 William Archibald (1765-1836)




William Archibald, my fourth great grand uncle, was born on this date in 1765, in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada, the sixth of twelve children born to Thomas Archibald and Janet Orr and their third son.

In the fall of 1759, a group of 20 men had come up the Bay of Fundy from New England, specifically to Truro and Onslow, to prepare the land for settlement. They returned to New England to spend the winter, and in the spring of 1760, they returned again to Nova Scotia with their families.

These first settlers endured a considerable amount of hardship for the first few years. In the fall of 1760 all the women but one returned to New England to spend the winter. It was difficult to obtain provisions from the provincial government, and agents of the British government were no more forthcoming.  It wasn't until the spring of 1762 that William's parents, Thomas and Janet Archibald, arrived in Truro, but by 1763 there were 60 families settled there.



William's older brother David was actually born during the sea voyage from New Hampshire to Truro in 1762, and William was the first of the remaining eleven children to be born in Truro three years later.

William married Martha Denny of the new settlement of Londonderry Township, Nova Scotia, the seventh of eight daughters of John Denny and Rebecca Mitchell, on February 17, 1791. Between that year and 1811, William and Martha had nine children.

William Archibald was a farmer all his life. He died in the month of July, 1836, in Truro.




Sources:

Miller, Thomas. Historical and genealogical record of Colchester County (Originally published Halifax, N.S.: A. & W. Mackinlay, 1873)

Murphy, John Michael. The Londonderry heirs: A Story of the settlement of the Cobequid Townships of Truro, Onslow, and Londonderry, in Nova Scotia, Canada, by English-speaking people in period 1760 to 1775 (Middleton, Nova Scotia, 1976)

Smith, Leonard H., Jr. and Norma H. Smith, compilers. Nova Scotia immigrants to 1867 (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub.Co., 1992)


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1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this post. I am also connected to the NH and NS Archibalds. Thomas Archibald who married Janet Orr had a brother Samuel (1719-1774) married to Eleanor Taylor. One of their granddaughters Jane (or Jean) (1783-1873) married Edward Sherburne Blanchard (1778-1856) in 1802. These are two of my great-great-grandparents on my mother's side.
    A family legend has it that there was so much intermarriage among the Archibald, Blanchard, and Waddell families in NS because "no one else was good enough".

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