A History of the County of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. - 1876 by Rev. J. R. Campbell (1841-1926) (on CD)

$18.00

Cat No.:   CA0441: (See also product CA0441-DL for this "book" as a downloadable file and save the mailing cost.)

This book’s author started to write down his history of Yarmouth as a result of a public invitation from the Governors of Kings College (Windsor) for Essays on County Histories, under the sponsorship of the Akins Foundation. A favorable reception of his efforts, plus compliments from his local associates, encouraged him to redouble his research efforts and to continue to record his findings. Thus was the beginnings of this “classic” history of one of the oldest areas of European settlement of what has now become Canada.

In his book’s Introduction Campbell discusses his intentions of providing:

“……. simply the common-place records of a young, but growing community, in which there is necessarily much of personal detail, and even that confined to a few whose ability to be publicly useful in one thing usually identified them with many, and to whom, therefore, by consequence, frequent reference had to be made. But I venture to think that, as all things are great or small only by comparison, the details of the affairs of this County however insignificant in themselves, are more interesting and more important to its people than are the details of any other limited part of the world.”

He later goes on to say, about the book:

“The plan of the work is simple. I have endeavoured to trace the origin of settlements, and the rise and progress of all the Institutions in the County, in, as far as was practicable, the order of their occurrence; interweaving at the most suitable time and place, notices of those individual citizens, who for their prominence and influence, ought to be had in remembrance.”

As can be expected of any book attempting to record the whole gamut of human experience in any area the list of topics in the Index is exceedingly wide and consequently difficult to capture in a short description such as this. However an attempt to précis the Table of Contents to just a few highlights yields:

• Physical & Natural History; • Original Inhabitants;

• European Settlers and their Settlements; • Development of Settlements;

• Identification of Settlement Areas and Establishment of Administrations;

• Industries; • Establishment of Churches: • Communications (roads etc.);

• Identifying Major Settlements and Areas;

• External Influences (e.g., US Revolution & 1812 War);

• Settlement of Yarmouth; • Social Progress; • Centenary Celebrations;

• Specific Aspects of Yarmouth’s Development.

The book lists 10 illustrations. These were printed using woodcuts, made from original photographs, implying they can be expected to be more reliable than an “artists impression.” This is further supported by a mention that several additional portraits had been rejected for not truly representing their subjects. I hasten to add that the first listed illustration is missing from our copy of the book - with no physical evidence that it was ever there - and no other copy of the book we could find had it either - so we believe it was never actually published.

I can hardly complete this description without a mention of a very old dispute which was started by this publication. Or, to be more precise, started when another historian researcher, George Stayley Brown, discovered what he considered to be serious errors in this book - sufficient indeed for him to write and publish his own book, which he titled “Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, a Sequel to Campbell’s History, in 1888 (our CatNo. CA0159) some 12 years later.

While this may, at first sight, seem alarming it must be recognized that any “historical” account is that individual’s interpretation or inference as to the facts and consequence of a past event. So, we should feel encouraged to have the interpretation of two specialist historians of these significant events. Rather than being alarmed we should consider both accounts and (provided the difference is not over some simple right-or-wrong fact) decided for ourselves which interpretation seems most likely. Or, more probably, move forward keeping in mind both interpretations so both can be matched against other apparent consequences we later discover.

To this end we not only offer a reproduction of both individual books but we also offer a “set on CD” including both digital book reproductions, but related through a common “index” so the “hits” for your search terms in BOTH books are offered for your inspection see CatNo. CA0444.

We bring you the best reproduction of an original copy of this book, prepared with our normal attention to creating the highest fidelity reproduction. That said, this is a 139 year old book which has collected its share of dirt and deterioration, in addition to being the product of an antique technology. In preparing this book for you we have electronically removed what we recognize as “aging products,” e.g., dirt and foxing, and failures of the original printing technology in the visual representation of the printed pages. We also review the results of the OCR and correct its “failures” to capture the correct characters as we can identify with certainty. In a few cases we also identify what are clearly original typesetting errors. We will NOT change the page image in these cases BUT if we are sure we know what was supposed to be printed we WILL correct the OCR so that your searches will direct you to the occurrence of a search term, even when it was incorrectly printed.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-927503-60-7 ;