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Family from Forfar - Chapter 2

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John who was born in Woolwich in 1800, when the family was stationed at the Royal Artillery headquarters, married Elizabeth Dill of Hants County, Nova Scotia and had a family of five children with her. In 1823, John was age 23 and he purchased three acres with a house and barn at Ste. Croix Bridge, two weeks after his marriage. He eventually acquired other properties that included farmland and woodland. Ste. Croix was a community that had been home to his wife's Dill relatives since they first settled there in 1784. The area went by various names including Ste. Croix Bridge and Seven Mile Plain - as it is seven miles from Windsor - on the main post road connecting Windsor to Halifax. The French name, and the French spelling Ste. Croix has survived in the community as a reminder of the early settlements by Acadian farmers who diked the inter-tidal flats. The dikes remain a vital part of agriculture in the area today.

Acadian settlement in Hants County dates from 1685 when it became an area of expansion for a younger generation as the original settlements at Port Royal grew and expanded by diking additional tidal lands surrounding the Bay of Fundy as new settlements.

Over the next seven years John Scott acquired a variety of land and is listed as both a trader and farmer. The properties included a store in Ste. Croix. The transactions involved six different properties, including 300 acres on Ardoise Hill (likely still wooded) which he acquired between 1828 and 1829. The largest section was 200 acres which cost £56.  For 128 acres including 5 acres of rich dyke land he paid £300 in 1828. Transactions indicate he also sold portions of the land and acquisitions were mortgaged through private loans in Halifax and England. An English loan from William Scarth Moorson was arranged through a local agent, and both Thomas Forrester in Halifax, and Rev. Francis Salt provided financing.

Transactions included details on the age of the bay horse (15 years old) and the red and white cows (age 5 with drooping horns and age 7 with straight horns) that came with the property. Red and white dairy cattle (Ayrshires), and red and white beef cattle (Herefords), were a ongoing feature on Scott property in Ste. Croix throughout most of the 20th century.

After Elizabeth's death at the age of 41 in 1835, John sold a small portion of his Ste. Croix property to his brother-in-law Alexander Dill in 1837 including the house at Ste. Croix Bridge. Alexander Dill operated a carding mill on the Ste. Croix River, and he and his wife had no children of their own. Following the death of his sister they adopted their nephew David Scott as their son and heir. A biography of son John Adams Scott (John Jr.) described the situation,"His mother dying when he was eight years old and the family being broken up, he lived till his fifteenth year on the farm of his father's only sister," It is unclear where others may have lived or what "family broken up" entailed but it appears that extended family may have assisted with the care of the children.

John Scott established a new mercantile operation 26 miles west in Wolfville by 1836, as census records of that year list John's occupation as a trader. Likely renting initially, to get established; in 1838 he purchased a store property from the estate of Henry Allison in Wolfville. The following year John married Catharine Ann DeWolf, the daughter of a prominent family. While the DeWolf family name was distinguished in the district, the community was technically known as Horton and had acquired a local name of Mud Creek which two of Catharine Ann's cousins decided was a less than distinguished name. Those two girls are credited as having convinced their Uncle Elisha DeWolf Jr. who was then postmaster to apply for renaming the community in recognition of the prominent role their DeWolf ancestors had played in developing the area. In 1830, the arrangements were finalized and the Post Master General for Nova Scotia recognized that Mud Creek was renamed Wolfville.

Living in the same eastern part of Wolfville, a short distance from where Catharine Ann grew up, John and Catharine's own corner became known as Scott's Corner, and is located near the intersections of Maple Ave. and Main St. at the entry of the town. The old post road from Halifax connected with Wolfville at this point and continued through the town to other communities in the Annapolis Valley.  Records indicate that John Scott's store was located on the south side of Main Street at the corner and that the residence was on the north side of Main. Today the house is restored and is a much enlarged home which retains the original 1760's kitchen in the cellar with cast iron pots and period items. Today, it is numbered 114 Main St.

While living in Wolfville, John continued to acquire land in the town including a property from Elisha DeWolf Jr. (the post master) in 1840 for £250. The mortgage was held by John Anderson of Halifax and eventually he sold to the same John Anderson in 1846 another piece of property nearby for £245 - a piece which John Scott had paid £15 for six years before. Likely the property had been improved with buildings over the six years and the transaction was to settle the mortgage.

The store property was eventually sold for £27 in 1849 to his son-in-law James Sterling Jr. of Newport, Nova Scotia who the year before married his daughter Jane Scott. Pictures of the house and Wolfville area are available. Store keeping also continued as an occupation among John descendants, with both a son (David Scott) and grandson (Alexander Dill Scott) starting their own stores in other locations. 

Together Catharine Ann and John had two sons, but in 1845 at the age of 40, Catherine Ann Scott tragically died. She was buried in the historic Old Burying Ground on Wolfville's Main St. among her DeWolf ancestors.  Records of shoe maker Lewis P. Godfrey, who had moved to Wolfville in the 1830's, from Windsor indicate that he did business with John in 1847. The final land transaction to sell the store, within the family was in 1849, and it appears the departure for Boston, was around then. Although a common name, we know that a John Scott booked passage to Pennsylvania in 1846, from Nova Scotia, and possibly this was the same individual on an exploratory trip to area where his brother had settled five years before. That same year son John Jr. moved to Boston. His youngest sons Daniel and Albert, are recorded as having travelled from NS to Boston in 1850 on the schooner Albatross and thus it appear that the family had permanently relocated in Boston by that date. 

When John became a single parent in 1845, he had seven children aged of 2 to 22. As previously mentioned his eldest son, David Scott, was living in Ste. Croix as the adopted son of Uncle Alexander and Aunt Mary Dill. The Dills had no children of their own, and David inherited the 200 Alexander Dill property known as Elm Farm which remains in the Scott family today. David and his wife Jane Hunter Dill honoured his adopted parents in naming their first son, Alexander Dill Scott. The Dill name has continued to be used by succeeding generations of Scott descendants as a middle name. Alexander Dill Scott or "Dill" - as he was known, moved along with some of his neighbours and relatives, to California in 1883. Dill is credited with naming the town of Novato, California in his role as the post master and general merchant in the community. The name was based on local Mexican terms with historic roots in the area. Dill was a founding director of a local bank, and a successful businessman.

In Nova Scotia, Dill's brother John Albert Scott would carry on his father's farm and become known in Nova Scotia for his leadership in temperance and church organizations. Of the six sisters that were were raised in the home with Dill and John A. only three would survive the scourge of Tuberculosis and then only one would marry, losing her only child at an early age. Despite these losses the family flourished, with a Boston Branch of the family, the California Branch as well as the Nova Scotia branch. Annie Elizabeth Scott and her sister Alice  remained at Elm Farm and played a critical role in the education of their nephews Rev. John Redford Scott and Frederic C.G. Scott.

A fourth branch was also developing in Ohio and eventually Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the early 1800's where David the son of Sergeant David and Sarah Jean, had settled with son Thomas and daughters Margaret, Mary Jane and possibly Sarah Ann. Contact with the Pittsburgh branch was lost for many decades, but a chance reading of a newspaper item by members of the Boston clan reunited the families around 1870. David was elderly by then and not in good health. A letter written in the 1950's recounted the story of the two brothers David and John who had not seen each other for most of their lifetimes reunited in their old age. Another letter written in 1870 describes David's son Thomas Scott travelled from Pittsburgh to Boston on business and arranged to meet and stay with his long lost cousins.

It appears that early in the 20th Century with the passing of Thomas Forester Scott in 1910 and his two sisters within five days of each other the following year - that contact was once again was lost between the branches - this time for almost a century - until the two branches were reconnected in February 2000 through genealogical research by descendants in Canada and the United States through the Internet. The two main branches had now developed additional branches spanning ten generations in North America and geographically are spread throughout much of the continent.

The Boston family became established in the carriage factory business and three of John's sons worked in that field. Among the younger generation that had gone to Boston as young men or as children with their father both Daniel DeWolf Scott and Capt. John Adams Scott made a career in operating their own carriage shops. Jean (Dalgity) Scott lived with family in Boston. Possibly, she helped raise her grandchildren after raising a family on her own as the census of 1836 suggests additional adults lived in John's Nova Scotia household.  Widowed herself at a young age, she saw her son John widowed twice and may have been of some assistance in his household. Stories tell of her ability to quote long passages of Sir Walter Scott's poetry and how she reminded the younger generations that they were related to the bard, although what sort of kinship connection it might have been was not indicated.

Eventually her son John did remarry and his third marriage was his longest, lasting the final 20 years of his life. After the death of his mother Jean on the 1st of November 1851, John Scott married on the 17th of March 1853, Sarah (Jenkins) Curtis a widow with eleven children. Sarah and John were married at the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem, in Boston.