Sometimes I question how Nova Scotian I am, really, but then something like this happens. The prompt for #52Ancestors Week 3 is Long Line. You say: ‘Long Line’; I say: ‘Commercial Fishery.’ So, I went looking for my nearest fishing ancestor.
My paternal grandmother has family from an Irish fishing village in Kerry, but it’s my great-great-grandfather on my maternal grandfather’s side who wins the fishing derby. James Alfred Cook is the fisherman I am most closely related to.
James Cook was born on the territory of the Mi’kmaq, on June 21, 1841, at a place called Indian Path by the English. His family name was Koch, and he was descended from one of the “Foreign Protestants” recruited in the early 1750s from the German Palatinate, to occupy land in what is now Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The land the Kochs received in 1753 had been taken by force, by English soldiers under their violent governor Edward Cornwallis and his successor Peregrine Hopson.
The Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas taught me Lunenburg is called E’se’katik (place of clams). The French, who had arrived around 1620, called it Mirligueche. It is a beautiful place, with a sheltered harbour surrounded by sweeping hills. However, the land the English allotted them was mostly rocky forest and not very fertile, a a challenge for the German and Swiss peasant settlers. The policies and actions of the colonial English also made them the enemies of the Mi’kmaq and the French.
Fishing has been a big part of life in Mi’kma’ki for at least 10,000 years. It’s part of what drew Europeans in the first place – Vikings, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, Basques, French, English. The fishing banks were rich and the seafood abundant.
The Mi’kmaq developed expertise in river, lake and ocean fishing over millennia. The present-day Mersey River, not too far from my home as a teenager, is just one important waterway in the history and culture of Mi’kma’ki. One recent archaeological study at Eel Weir Bridge found thousands of artifacts related to fishing in Kejimkujik National Park and Heritage Site.
While learning this week, I was grateful to be able to watch videos from UINR — the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources — which today serves as “Cape Breton’s Mi’kmaw voice on natural resources and environmental concerns.” On the UINR site, I started to learn about netukulimk. This is “the use of the natural bounty provided by the Creator for the self-support and well-being of the individual and the community. Netukulimk is achieving adequate standards of community nutrition and economic well-being without jeopardizing the integrity, diversity, or productivity of our environment.”
However, a few days of study has pointed out that I don’t even have basic understanding or knowledge about the Mi’kmaq. Fortunately, there are resources online prepared by teachers from First Nations and Indigenous communities. I am working my way through Kekina’muek (learning): Learning about the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia published by The Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq. Next time I am in Lunenburg, I will visit the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, where an exhibit, First Fishers, has opened since I last visited. One of the resources on this museum page is a silent educational film from the 1930s showing the traditional porpoise hunt. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this film, the lives it briefly shows, its messages, and its context. There is a lot to be seen; and there was a lot that was seen. Why have I not seen anything? I feel frightened by this.
I know very little about the Mi’kmaq, and also hardly anything about my South Shore Nova Scotia ancestors. When I went to high school there after moving to the province, I was vaguely aware that my grandfather was from there, but I wasn’t curious about it. I considered my Nova Scotian roots to be in the Annapolis Valley and Bay of Fundy shore, not Lunenburg, Riverport and Bridgewater.
I regularly passed by the Georgian-era Koch House in Lunenburg on the way to church without ever knowing Henry Koch was my five-times great-grandfather. He and his father Anton were among the first group of settlers recruited by agent John Dick to sail from Rotterdam on the ship Ann in 1750. After several years of unexpected residence in the military camp that was Halifax, the “Foreign Protestants” were moved in 1753 to Lunenburg, re-named in honour of King George III’s German connection. The Kochs set up the first sawmill and apparently became rather wealthy citizens from cutting down the oak forest the Mi’kmaq stewarded.
Eventually, “Peace and Friendship” treaties called the Covenant Chain of Treaties (Kekina’muek, Chapter 10) were negotiated between the Mi’kmaq and the English and life became easier for the Foreign Protestants. More settlers came, and as the colony spread out, the Mi’kmaq were pushed into smaller areas.
James Cook (their surname was anglicized at a certain point) was the father of my great-grandmother Lorenda Cook. I know only a little bit about her. Like my grandfather, she died in her 50s, she was adored by her children, and I have always been given the impression that she was ambitious for them. One detail I know is that she went without food for herself in order to budget money for her daughters’ piano lessons. She was also part of a shift away from the old ways. Was it because of economics and the prevailing demographic change to urbanization, or did she want to get away? In any case, she left the country to live in the town of Bridgewater with her husband Josiah Barkhouse, a factory worker, and her children in turn moved away to cities. My grandfather died in Montreal in 1968, a bank manager in the commercial heart of Canada. He was very far away from the fields and woods and waters where his grandfather made a living.
My mother told me that her father considered the LaHave the most beautiful river in the world. The river runs through the Town of Bridgewater where he grew up and out to the sea. The book Historic Bridgewater by Tom Sheppard shows a town that I wouldn’t call gorgeous, but certainly (like today) one with some nice spots. However, down the LaHave River, at Ritcey’s Cove where his grandfather James Cook lived as an adult is a very lovely part of Nova Scotia indeed.
What I know about James Alfred Cook is limited to a few statistics. In the 1901 Census of Canada, which collected birth dates, his is given as June 13, 1843. However, Find a Grave has a picture of his tombstone, which gives his date of birth as July 21, 1841. So that will be something to explore, maybe when I get back to Nova Scotia, where the South Shore Genealogical Society has an amazing resource library. Certainly our Lunenburg ancestors don’t seem to have bothered much with registering with the Nova Scotia government, so Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics are pretty spotty.
By the 1901 Census, at age 57, James was listed as a farmer. He was married to Ellen Cook (nee Myra) who was 52, with a birth date of January 6, 1848. Their 23-year-old son Henry was now the fisherman in the household. This is just as it was the generation before, when farmer David Cook and Annie Cook (nee Parks) had two sons in their household who were fishing, according to the 1871 Census: James Cook, age 27, and not yet married, and Benjamin Cook, age 20.
James was fishing in the 1881 Census of Canada as well. Ellen had married him by then and they had three children listed with them: Edwin, age 9, Amanda, age 7, and 4-year-old Henry. I know that Henry was always called “Henny” by the family. I wonder if that nickname dates back to these early childhood days.
The fishing stories and statistics from this time are staggering. Anyway I slice it, my ancestors were part of a massive cull of resources from land and sea. It’s hard to imagine waters around Nova Scotia teeming with fish the way they did then. To bring back their catches, they took on hard and dangerous work, and their wives had anxious and laborious lives especially while their husbands were out to sea. But on their return, the Lunenburg fishermen would also share in the profits from the catch and were able to make a living to support their families.
It was a life that seems to have been considered more suitable for the young men. In the 1891 Census of Canada, James had returned to farming. He was listed as age 49, and Ellen as age 44. Another item of note is that the two older children are now listed as Abraham, age 19, and Lorenda, age 17. The younger ones are Henry Cook, 15, Ella, 10, Naomi, 7, and Minnie, 3. There are many stories of the Lunenburg settlers holding on to their German dialect and accent for many generations before the language died. Perhaps the census-taker in 1881 just misunderstood Abraham and Lorenda’s names. I think it could be the same in 1891, since “Ella” was named Ellen Cook in real life.
I should be able to find James and Ellen Cook in the 1911 and 1921 Census records, too, as he died January 24, 1924 and Lucy Ellen (as her name is shown on their tombstone) died in 1930. But I haven’t yet. Henry, who never married, is buried with his parents in First South Cemetery, Lunenburg County. He passed away in 1958. There is a ton to learn, and I’m only just starting.
Root and Blade 