Colonial Settlers

Nova Scotia's New England Planters and Loyalists: Descendents of European Peoples Attracted to Salt Marshes.

Western European countries such as the British Isles, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany have large low-lying coastal flood plains that contain extensive tracts of both fresh water and saltwater wetlands. Since prehistoric times these important ecosystems have attracted human settlement. Hamlets and villages were built on small patches of elevated land that were, more or less, above the annual flood level waters. Grains and wheat for human consumption were grown on these islands of higher ground and an abundant verity of waterfowl, fish, and shellfish were found in the pools, streams, and rivers scattered throughout the marshes. As well marsh grasses provided suitable forage and hay for livestock.

Living and practising marshland agriculture on one of Western Europe's coastal flood plains was a continual struggle with inundation due to run-off from heavy rainfall and inundation by high tides. To cope with this problem Europe's marshland inhabitants developed, over a long period of time, a dyking and, flood control technology. The roots of this technology can be traced back at least to Roman times and an examination of its development is important to our understanding of the agricultural practices of Nova Scotia's New England Planters and Loyalists. A significant number of their ancestors were farm families from Western Europe’s wetlands where they had practised marshland agriculture and had at least a rudimentary understanding of dyke (sea wall) and aboiteau (tide gate) construction. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that when these progenitors of Nova Scotia's Planter and Loyalists settlers arrived in North America they sought out places to settle that contained salt marshes. This is nicely expressed by agronomist and historian Howard S. Russell:

"All along the winding Massachusetts Bay shore, wherever salt grass caught the eye, exploring stockmen were petitioning the General Court to be allowed to set up townships. The adjoining upland might be only moderately fertile, even chiefly ledges and woods, yet cattlemen brought up amid England’s grassy vales and tidal marshes coveted the salt hay in the lowlands…Fresh-water marshes exhibited drawing power also." (Russell, 1976 p 47).

Professor Kimberly Seabold also emphasizes the importance of salt marshes to the early New England settlers:

"From the earliest times, New England settlers recognized the importance of saltmarshes in the establishment of stable communities as they depend upon the lowland grasses for a ready supple of hay. Saltmarshes became an impetus for initial settlement in Massachusetts, and also later expansion into the coastal regions of new Hampshire and Maine." (Seabold, 1998 p 18).

Salt marshes became even more valuable as the population of communities in the Northeast Region increased. As explained by Professor Matthew Hatvany this new importance kindled an interest in dykeland agriculture:

"...increasing demographic pressure and a lack of good arable land that frequently led coastal farmers from New Jersey to Quebec to turn to transforming the marsh environment, just as the Acadians had done in the early 17th century. Any lingering doubt as to how these non-Acadian marsh dikes and tidal sluice gates operated can be assuaged, since a clear description is given by the naturalist Peter Kalm. In the mid-18th century, Kalm visited the former Swedish colony of Raccoon in southern New Jersey. There he observed the dikes and tidally operated sluice gates built along the shores of the Delaware River. Not only did Kalm write extensively of the exploitation of salt-marsh pasturage and marsh hay in this region, but he also observed that:"

"The country here was very low.... The plains on the banks of the [Delaware] river were flooded at every ... flowing of the tide, and at the ebbing they were left dry again. However the inhabitants of the country hereabouts met this situation, for they had in several places thrown up walls or dykes of earth near the river to prevent its overflowing the land.... In the dykes were gates ... they were sometimes placed on the outside of the wall, in such a way that the water in the meadows would force them open while the river water would shut them." (Hatvany, 2002,p. 132)

The Aboiteau or Tide Gate
Dyked salt marshes required sluiceways with tide operated one-way valves to prevent seawater from inundating the marsh at high tide. Tide operated sluiceways, called aboiteaus by the Acadians, aboteau in France before the colonization of Acadia (Hatvany 2002, p.124), and tide gate in England and the United States, were used in Roman settlements in the Netherlands in the first century AD (Rippon 2000, p. 84-90). The image links below show a Roman aboiteau and a present day aboiteau.
Roman Aboiteau or Tide Gate
Drawing of Roman Aboiteau or Tide Gate
Reconstruction drawing, by Kelvin Wilson, of an Early Roman sluice-gate.
Location of Roman Aboiteau or Tide Gate
Present Day Aboiteau or Tide Gate at Advocate. Image1
Present Day Aboiteau or Tide Gate at Advocate. Image2
Present Day Aboiteau or Tide Gate at Present Day Aboiteau at Great Village. Image 1
Present Day Aboiteau or Tide Gate at Great Village.Image 2
Present Day Aboiteau at Present Day Aboiteau or Tide Gateat Great Village. Image3

References

Hatvany, Matthew G. 2002. The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau: An Environmental-Historical Geography of the Northeast. Historical Geography 30, Also available at http://www.historical-geography.net/volume_30_2002/hatvany.pdf.
Russell, Howard S. 1976. A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England: University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H. .

Sebold, Kimberly R. 1998. Low Green Prairies of the Sea: Economic and Cultural Construction of Salt Marshes Along the Gulf of Maine, Ph.D Thesis, History, University of Maine.

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. 1922. English Local Government: Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: Longmans, Green and Co. .

References

Colonial Settlers: A migration from the Wetlands of Western European to the Wetlands of the Northeast Region of the Atlantic Coast

By Kerr Canning

LargeVersion of Map and Source

"Before the salt marshes were considered wastelands in need of “reclamation,” and even longer before they were elevated to the rank of a “sacred cow” in the environmental movement, the marshes were clearly, and intimately, a part of the early New Englander’s “life support system”