Recap: In Chapters One and Two, we met Sarah Rushton walking her land grant in Westchester, Nova Scotia with her daughter Elizabeth and grandchildren. Sarah, her husband Jeremiah, and his family had run a successful cordwaining business in New York City during the Revolutionary War, but were exiled as Loyalists at the peace. Promised a land grant in Nova Scotia as a soldier with the Westchester Refugees, the family boarded a ship for the unknown. Elizabeth, fretting over her own husband's plans to move the family to Upper Canada, asked, “How do you know when to go? What do you bring to a new life in the wilderness?”
The Story of the Evacuee’s Wife ~ Chapter Three
“Then what happened, Grannie?” Eddie wanted to know as the family continued walking along the land grant’s path. “Did the big ship bring you right here?” He looked around them at the narrow fast-flowing brook.
“No, silly,” William scoffed. “Ships can’t get in here. They came by road.” He looked up at Sarah uncertainly. “Wasn’t that so, Grannie?”
Now Sarah had a boy by each hand. “That’s so,” she affirmed. “We got to Fort Cumberland, but our land wasn’t ready. No one knew where it would be even. So for the time being, they gave us all a little bit of land, made it a town, and named it Fanningborough after Colonel Fanning.
“The very first day, we all got our clothes, and lined up to wash them in the fort’s big iron wash pots. And we all took baths!” Sarah laughed at William, who had made a face. “I hate baths,” he frowned.
“We were lucky we arrived in summer, since so many poor souls came in winter and had to live in tents. We had time. We built ourselves a tiny log cabin each, and then we cleared a little for a garden. We planted peas and beans to grow fast, and then our potatoes, carrots, and turnips.”
“What did you have to eat?” Eddie asked.
“Your favorite, strawberries!”
“Blueberries are better,” William declared.
“Strawberries,” Eddie insisted.
“You’re wrong.”
“Strawberries are better ‘cause they’re red.”
Wild Nova Scotia blueberries, https://www.novascotiawildblueberryblog.com/2025/07/blue-focus-newsletter-july-2025.html
Sarah went on amid a lively youthful discussion on the merits of various berries. “The local women showed us where we could pick strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, rose hips, and fiddlehead ferns. The berries and rose hips were easy to lay out and dry in the sun. We had plenty of bags to store them in all winter. I put the berries in our porridge or baked them in bread, or we just ate them by the handful.
“I know rose hips are good for colds,” Elizabeth commented. “But did you have any tea to put them in?”
“Your papa loves his tea,” Sarah chuckled. “That was one thing he made sure to buy from the settlers on the shore.”
She smiled more broadly. “I loved our time in Fanningborough. I loved our little tiny cabin, just one room. It was the first time your father and I had had any privacy since we’d been married. It was like we were setting up housekeeping together for the first time. We’d spent our married life with him away fighting most of the time, and me living with his family. In Fanningborough, we could look out the door and see other small houses and gardens…it was like New York City had been shrunk down into a little doll town. There were plenty of people to talk to, just a short walk away. I made friends with some of the other women.”
“Did the other women have good advice, Mama? How did you know what to do? What to buy first off?” Elizabeth inquired.
“Yes, we all talked all the time. We had more money than most, but I kept that quiet. Sir Guy Carleton had arranged for us to have some provisions, some food and blankets, but there were some settlements along the shore where we could buy things. Iron was the most dear. We bought a big and a small pot for ourselves, pot hooks and crane for the fireplace, and more tools for your father. Your father even bought me two panes of glass for a window.
“And we bought a cow!” Sarah leaned in to tell Lucy, snuggled in Elizabeth’s arms.
“What was the cow’s name?” Eddie wanted to know.
“Browny.”
“Was it brown?”
“What do you think?”
“Brown cow,” Lucy said proudly.
“You are all so smart.”
A Chronicle of an Evacuee’s Wife - Chapter Three
The Rushtons and other Westchester Refugees lived in Fanningborough, now North Wallace, for two years, waiting for their petitions to go thru and their permanent grants to be surveyed. Each man drew a 3-acre lot of 239 lots that had been cleared, enough for a small log cabin and garden. Sir Guy Carleton wrote on 18 July 1783 that he had directed provisions "to the 1st of May next (1784), to be furnished to those whose necessities may require it." They were also able to obtain advice and buy goods from settlers who already lived along the shore.
The red-and-white dotted line indicates where Fanningborough was located. Route 104 is the current form of the Cobequid Road running from Amherst to Londonderry. The Cobequid grant ran along Route 104 fourteen miles northeast starting at Londonderry. It later became Westchester Mountain. Google Maps.
Advice from locals was crucial to survival, especially for those who had just left a city. Most important was information about available food and medicine. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, chokecherries, highbush cranberries, bunchberries, wild rose, and fiddlehead ferns grew wild in that area of Nova Scotia. Strawberries, blueberries, and bunchberries could be eaten fresh; strawberries and blueberries could be dried for winter; strawberry leaves were used to make tea.
Chokecherry bark was a sedative and cough suppressant.
Cranberry bush black root or cramp bark was good for flu, sore throat, and uterine cramps.
Bunchberry plants lessened headaches and fevers.
Fiddlehead ferns and wild rose hip tea were important for Vitamin C, but the rose hips could be dried for use all winter long.
Carleton’s provisions included an axe, a shovel, blankets, pots, a musket, powder, lead, salt, seed, and some rations. Beyond that, these latest settlers were able to purchase items from those who had come before. Unlike most of their peers, the Rushtons left a prosperous business in New York City that would have netted them silver coin from Englishmen, as opposed to the nearly worthless paper money the Patriots used. This put them in a position to buy what they had not been able to bring. Important immediate purchases were heavy items that could not have been transported. Iron was scarce, expensive, and sold by the pound. A large iron pot cost 40 shillings and was necessary for immediate concerns such as washing and cooking, and later chores like making soap and dyeing. Kitchen and building tools of iron were another important early purchase.
Livestock would be next. A cow was important to provide nutrition: milk for immediate consumption and cheese and butter as good sources of stored protein.
Since they had money, Jeremiah may have bought expensive window panes at 8 pence per pane. However, with an uncertain future, settlers would likely have carefully considered whether to spend or save their cash.
Many of the Westchester Refugees must have liked their small Fanningborough community, because after a year, the Westchester group petitioned to keep their lots there; the petition was granted.
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