Saturday, October 6, 2012

Nova Scotia Land Papers 1765-1800

The Nova Scotia Archives has gathered land records (1765-1800), and has put them on it's online database.

The information that is on the website says that “The records are a collection of petitions made to government by individuals or groups of people seeking grants of Crown Land for settlement purposes in early Nova Scotia”.

The database contains 11,464 names, and links from the petitioner's name to the fully digitized document files created for that particular land grant — 1890 files, containing 9259 image that were scanned.

They say that if you are searching for online information about early land settlement in Nova Scotia, you have come to the right place – you get to read the original document! The land records are from the "Record Group 20, Series A, Land Petitions and other material."

I did come across records belonging to Andrew BARCLAY, in Shelburne County, which completed, for me, his land records that I had been looking for from 1783 to 1785.

The website for the archives is http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm

The land records are at http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/landpapers

In addition, there are some records here from New Brunswick before it became a separate province in 1784.

Postscript: I am slowly going through the Nova Scotia Historical Newspaper Records for news about the Barclay family from Shelbure County, and the Webster family from Kentville, Kings County, although it does seen that I have not made much progress.

You can go to http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/newspapers