John Salusbury, Father of Mrs. Hester Thrale, and the Founding of Halifax in 1749

The Anglo-French confrontation on the isthmus of Chignecto in the early 1750s was part of a complex British plan to govern the Acadian population of Nova Scotia, a prelude to the victories at Louisbourg in 1758 and Quebec in 1759. At that time, the isthmus was a testing point for the claims of two imperial powers engaged in a continental struggle that continued uninterrupted between the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 and the beginning of the Seven Years’ War in 1756. During this confusing period of official peace, the game of territorial influence continued unabated. But while the apprehensions, fears, and disasters it produced preoccupied soldiers and civilians on both sides, a few took the trouble to record their experiences, as we see in the journal and letters of John Salusbury, the father of Hester Thrale (Piozzi), a reluctant participant thrust into the events in Halifax and Chignecto by virtue of a patronage appointment from the Earl of Halifax, President of the Board of Trade and Plantations. For years the Board of Trade had aimed at transforming Nova Scotia into a civilian colony, partly to draw off settlers from the colony of Massachusetts Bay and partly to satisfy merchant groups and speculators. With the appointment of the Duke of Bedford as Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the Earl of Halifax as President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, this project suddenly became a priority in 1748, when the harbour of Chebucto, big enough to anchor a fleet and strategically located between Annapolis and Louisbourg, became the new focus of British interest. A link with Annapolis would be established, forts would be built near pockets of Acadian confrontation, and troops forced to evacuate Louisbourg would be deployed to protect settlers. To be effective, though, the plan would have had to have been implemented before the French reasserted themselves at Louisbourg, and Halifax stressed the urgency of it when he wrote Bedford in 1748 By the spring of 1749, Parliament had given its approval to the enterprise, and the Board of Trade was busy organizing the details of population and supply. Since Parliament had voted what it considered sufficient funds and a pool of sailors, soldiers, and artificers made redundant by the peace of 1748 was available to serve as a population base, early in March the Board invited settlers with an announcement in the London Gazette and similar exhortations in popular magazines. To the ordinary citizen with no prospect of a secure living, these advertisements were difficult to ignore, for the Board was offering fifty acres of land to every private soldier or seaman and an extra ten acres for every member of his family. Such a grant would also be free from quitrents or taxes for ten years, and at the end of that period no one would be required to pay more than a shilling per annum for every fifty acres granted. In addition, each settler would receive subsistence during the passage and for twelve months after his arrival. He would also be furnished with any necessary arms and ammunition and provided with tools for the erection of houses, the cultivation of land, fishing, husbandry or any other purpose. Standing in a London street, a prospective settler could visualize himself as a virtual guest of the government with few responsibilities, and many of the unemployed found it difficult to resist. In the popular imagination, Nova Scotia became a kind of Utopia where class distinction dissolved, the common miseries of life faded, and riches abounded in vast expanses of land. Such Utopianism provoked …