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Rachel, Daughter of Hagar, Daughter of Bathsheba: Some Preliminary Observations on Late-Eighteenth-Century Black Anglicans of Digby, Nova Scotia
During the research I conducted for my PhD thesis, I spent several visits at the Nova Scotia Archives looking through the parish records of Roger Viets, the Anglican missionary at Digby from the 1780s into the early 1800s.[1] Viets was a Loyalist clergyman who migrated to Nova Scotia from Connecticut during the American Revolution. In 1786 he was appointed to the Loyalist congregation at Digby by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (the missionary arm of the Church

Colby Gaudet
Aug 12, 20249 min read


Sisters of Charity Burials, Mount Olivet Cemetery, Halifax
In my recent research pursuit of Sister Mary Bernard (1852–1937), who I discussed in my last post, I discovered that she was buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery, here in Halifax.

Colby Gaudet


Primary Source: Letters from an Acadian Nun to Her Parents, 1884–1893
Last fall, I was looking through the items in the Fonds James Valentine Stuart at the Centre Acadien, Université Sainte-Anne. Born in Halifax in 1806, Stuart married an Acadian – Marguerite-Sophie Melanson – in 1839, and lived the remainder of his life in the port village of Church Point in the township of Clare, Nova Scotia. In the 1860s and 1870s he was a justice of the peace and the customs collector at Belliveau’s Cove, a key port at the time on St. Mary’s Bay.[1] His pap

Colby Gaudet


“Those Dominions of Violence”: The Rev. Jacob Bailey’s Experience of the American Revolution
I was recently examining the North American records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) – the missionary arm of the Church of England, established in the early eighteenth century. I had begun my reading of these reports to learn more about the history of SPG missionaries stationed in Nova Scotia in the 1760s when the society was trying hard to establish Anglicanism in the province’s largest settlements. [1] I was especially interested in the reports of th

Colby Gaudet
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