A brief history of the Harbour

This rural area is located on the south side of the Bay of Fundy, on the North Mountain of Nova Scotia. It was named for Dr. William Baxter, or his son John B. Baxter who settled here in the early 19th century. This harbour may have been frequented by fishermen in 1780 or earlier. Dr. Baxter bought his land from David Eaton, around 1802. It was part of Cornwallis township which was granted in 1761. This part of the North Mountain was known as Baxter's Harbour Mountain.

Dr. Baxter built his house around 1802, and set up the Baxter Mill on the brook below his house. Johnathon Margeson was a schoolmaster in the Harbour in 1834. A schoolhouse was built in 1869, and a new one in 1906, but it burned down and was replaced with yet another new building in 1939. A way office was established in 1873 with John Baxter as the postmaster. A wharf was built in the Harbour, but a lot of shipping actually occurred from Black Hole, a little ways down the road. It had a much better harbour and steep cliffs surrounding it. Apparently they used to throw logs over the cliffs into the water and then load them from there into great sailing ships. There was never a wharf at Black Hole, goods were simply thrown over the cliff into the water.

The area has been logged over at least twice, it is in the process of being logged over a third time now. Families here engaged in logging, farming and even shipbuilding and shipping, all at once. They would load potatoes and logs onto a sailing ship and then sail down to the Caribbean to sell in the fall, certainly a dangerous trip given the kind of weather you get on the Atlantic Coast in the autumn. But in those days there was no railroad in Nova Scotia, everything was shipped via sailing ship from the many coastal ports.

The North Mountain was economically important because of all its ports, even farmers in the rich Valley below had to bring their produce up the Mountain to have it shipped out to the world. The railroad put an end to that, and the railroad was built as part of the deal that brought Nova Scotia into Confederation. Nova Scotia never saw economic good times again, becoming part of Canada was not the best thing that ever happened here.

A number of families in the Harbour have links with New Brunswick. Baxters and McCulleys are also found in the Kennebecasis Valley of NB. They sailed there from the Harbour, going up the Saint John river and then the Kennebecasis as far as the tide would allow them, and then settled there.

In 1956 the population of Baxter's Harbour was 112 souls. Today it is ???

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