Nova Scotia's First
Tramway:
Landmark or Legend?
by Herb MacDonald
"In 1818, when coal mines were first opened on the East River of Pictou, a
tram road was made from the pits to the head of the tide.."
With this beginning to his 1890 paper, "One of the Oldest Rail Roads in
Canada," [Transactions of Canadian Society of Civil Engineers for 1890, Montreal:
Lovell, 1891] Henry S. Poole appears to have created a legend about transportation in the
Pictou coalfield which has survived down to the present day. This paper will present a
case for the classification of this 1818 tramway as legend rather than historical landmark
and trace the diffusion of the legend since 1890. Both of these must begin with
consideration of the context where that first reference to the 1818 tramway appeared.
At the time his paper was written, Henry S. Poole was General Manager of Acadia Coal in
Stellarton and the senior local official for the dominant mining company in Pictou County.
He had published papers on geology, mining engineering, and the industrial history of the
area, and was a respected figure in the industry. His father, also Henry Poole, had been
Agent for the General Mining Association in Pictou County during the period 1840-1854 and
was in charge of GMA operations there when the Albion Railway, the core subject of the
younger Poole's paper, came into full operation in 1840. As a result of both his father's
position during the 1840s and his own role a half-century later, when Henry S. Poole put
pen to paper, his words carried a cachet of authority they sometimes did not deserve.
Poole's paper is an important and valuable resource, made the more so because
documentation and contemporary sources dealing with the Albion Railway are in
frustratingly short supply. But the paper must be assessed in the light of those primary
and contemporary sources which have survived. When examined in that context, Poole is
found to be far from infallible.
Alongside his reference to an 1818 tramway, Poole also indicates that it was in 1818
".. when coal mines were first opened .." The historical record is not as clear
as we might wish but primary documents, which will be referred to in some detail below,
indicate that mineral rights had been acquired and mining was being carried on at least as
early as 1807 by John McKay. In December, 1817, the colonial government turned over the
rights to Edward Mortimer, a prominent Pictou merchant, who held them until his death in
November, 1819. The rights were then granted to George Smith and William Liddell who
sub-leased them to Adam Carr. Carr worked the mine until after the arrival of the General
Mining Association in 1827. With his clearly erroneous date for the beginning of mining
activity in Pictou County, Poole's credibility is weakened in the very first phrase in his
paper.
When dealing with a number of key points about his core subject matter, the
"Albion Rail Road," Poole further demonstrated that his command of what he
presented as fact was not always secure. Referring to the locomotive-powered "rail
road," Poole stated "It was finished in 1838" and completed his sentence
with "and in that year the first locomotive ran over a rail road in Nova
Scotia."
The offical opening of the railway took place in September of 1839 [see Mechanic &
Farmer, September 25, 1839; The Observer, September 24, 1839] and at that time, the line
had not been completed below the New Glasgow wharf, a distance only half way from pithead
to the "Loading Ground" wharf, the terminus near the mouth of the East River.
The line was not finished to the wharf until the spring of 1840 and The Observer [May 19,
1840] reported "the first eventful journey from the Mines to the Loading Ground"
a few days after it took place.
Had a locomotive been assembled at either Albion Mines or adjacent to the unfinished
bridge to the wharf at the northern end of the railway any time during 1838, surviving
construction cross-sections [Nova Scotia Museum of Industry Collection: I97.30.3-I97.30.8]
show that not more than 1/2 mile of useable track could have been in place from either end
of the line. In fact, evidence in a letter from John Buddle to J. B. Foord of the General
Mining Association, December 29, 1839, [Northumberland County Record Office: Buddle
Papers, BUD/60/3/#46] indicates that "not a Rail of the Way was laid before the 1st
of July" 1839. Buddle's source was John Stubbs, an employee of Timothy Hackworth who
had built the first locomotives for the GMA's new railway. Stubbs had gone to Albion Mines
in May, 1839 to "fit up .. the three locomotives" [Durham County Record Office:
Buddle Papers, NCB I/JB/1754] and would have had more than passing interest in the right
of way on which the engines would be used. His observation is further evidence of the
inaccuracy of Poole's version of events. John Buddle of Wallsend was a prominent coal
industry viewer who was used extensively by the GMA as liason with suppliers, including
Timothy Hackworth, in northern England and as a consultant on both underground and surface
operations at Sydney Mines. Extensive collections of Buddle's papers are found at the
Durham County Record Office, Durham City, and the Northumberland County Record Office,
Newcastle upon Tyne.
There is no primary or contemporary evidence to document arrival of a locomotive prior
to May, 1839 or to any operation of locomotives prior to the official opening day on
September 19, 1839. There are, however, two important sources which point to May, 1839 as
the arrival date for all three engines. An account in the Mechanic & Farmer [May 1,
1839 and reprinted in Halifax's Acadian Recorder, May 11, 1839] refers to "three
locomotives" being at that time en route from England. A February 27, 1839 letter
from Foord to Buddle [Durham County Record Office: Buddle Papers, NCB I/JB/1735],
referring to the ship Ythan which had been chartered to carry locomotives, has a summary
notation in Buddle's hand indicating the charter was for "3 locomotives." These
sources would seem to confirm the three Hackworth engines came on the same ship in May of
1839.
As noted above, Poole's paper is an important and valuable resource, despite the
presence of inaccuracies such as those noted and others. But the absence of information
about his sources and his potential for inaccuracy make it vital for his paper to be
viewed with a critical eye, something which has generally not been applied. Instead, Poole
has frequently been accepted as a definitive source rather than just one to be judged
against other or earlier sources. As a result, many of his assertions, including some
which do not stand up to assessment, have been incorporated into the post-1890 literature
of the Albion Railway. Among these is the proposition that there had been a tramway in
Pictou County before the arrival of the GMA.
Soon after Poole's paper appeared, Edwin Gilpin, Inspector of Mines for Nova Scotia in
the 1890s, published a paper entitled "Coal Mining in Pictou County."
[Transactions of Royal Society of Canada for 1896, section IV, pp 167-179] After reviewing
pre-GMA activity and the first years of GMA operations, Gilpin began a section dealing
with the development of transport in the Pictou coalfield with the following statement (p
172):
"When the first attempt was made to work coal systematically in 1818, a rough
tramway was built from the mines to a point on the East River a few hundred yards distant
... which could be reached by barges at high tide."
Had this reference to an 1818 tramway appeared before Poole's, it would have to be
regarded much more seriously. But when it appeared, Gilpin had access to Poole's paper and
certainly would have seen it. Gilpin also published in the Transactions of the Society of
Civil Engineers where Poole's paper had appeared and the two men would certainly have met
a number of times between 1890 and 1896 as a result of their respective positions.
As a result of his government position, Gilpin had access to documents and historical
records. He wrote and published widely, mostly on geology and mining engineering but with
some overlaps into historic and economic aspects of the field. Unlike Poole, he generally
documented his sources (through there were no footnotes in this particular paper) and
generally deserves high marks for accuracy. But given the timing, the absence of a source,
and the parallel phrasing, one can only conclude that Gilpin's reference to the 1818
tramway came from his acceptance of Poole's statement as an accurate one.
In Warren Anderson's "The Nova Scotia Engines," [Bulletin of the Railway and
Locomotive Historical Society, # 7, 1924, pp 75-79] one finds Poole's words almost
verbatim when Anderson writes (p 75) "In 1818, when the coal mines at East River were
opened, a tram road was built from the pithead to the head of the tide." No source
references were provided by Anderson but it appears to be a direct rewrite of Poole.
In 1933, Robert Brown presented some "Additional Notes on the Early Locomotives in
Nova Scotia" [Bulletin of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, # 31, 1933,
pp 20-23] as a follow-up to the Anderson paper. Here, Brown stated (p 21):
"The old horse operated tramway at the Albion Mine originally built in 1818
and rebuilt in 1829 was soon found to be inadequate, so in 1834 or thereabouts ..."
As with Anderson, there were no notes or sources and one can only conclude that Brown
took his content from Anderson and/or Poole.
What is most significant about Brown's 1933 reference to the 1818 tramway is that it
disappears from his later papers dealing with the same subject matter. This is
particularly noticeable in a major 1949 paper [Bulletin of the Railway and Locomotive
Historical Society, # 78, October, 1949, pp 49-63] with a detailed review of early
tramways and railways in Canada. The absence of a pre-1827 tramway in that paper indicates
that Brown had decided by this time that the case for such a tramway could not be made. In
a later letter to Bruce Jefferson, July 14, 1957, [Public Archives of Nova Scotia [PANS]:
Jefferson Papers, in Scotian Railway Society Papers, RG 28S, vol 8, no 2, p 1024] Brown
suggested that Poole's claim for a pre-GMA tramway was incorrect though he provided
neither specific reasoning for this conclusion nor an indication of when he had changed
his own mind about the matter.
With the publication of The Pictonian Colliers [Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, 1974],
James Cameron, a prominent historian of Pictou County, made an important contribution to
the history of both his county and the coal industry in Nova Scotia. But Cameron seems to
have accepted without question the story of the 1818 tramway though his account does
differ in one respect from the standard post-Poole version. He provided a new element by
allocating credit for construction of the first tramway when he wrote (p 267):
"By 1818 coal demand increased sufficiently to encourage construction of water
shipping facilities. A tram road was constructed from John MacKay's pits one quarter mile
in length to the head of tide water on the East River."
With this additional detail, however, Cameron's version has problems above and beyond
the lack of any documentation regarding "MacKay" and the tramway. John McKay
spelled his name "Mc" not "Mac," [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, #s 13 and
24] and, more significantly, in 1818 he no longer held the lease. Cameron's content is
interesting but does not offer anything to enhance the tramway's historical standing.
While all the references to the 1818 tramway noted thus far were by Canadians (despite
the American location of the papers published by Anderson and Brown) the tramway legend
has also been incorporated into works by both British and American authors. The earliest
identified British reference appeared in 1936 in a paper by G.R. Lockie on "Early
Locomotives in Canada" [The Railway Magazine, February, 1936, pp 111-115]. Within an
account of the engines built for the GMA by Hackworth, Lockie stated that the line on
which they ran "had originally been opened as a horse tramroad in 1818 when the mines
in question were first worked." More recently, Ian Bowman's 1978 paper,
"Railways in Nova Scotia," [Transport History, vol 9, no 2, Autumn, 1978, pp
110-124] stated that "As early as 1818 there was a horse-drawn railway from the
Albion coal mines to the wharves of the East River at Pictou." Neither paper was
footnoted and both the phrasing and the absence of content to indicate the use of primary
sources tend to indicate that their 1818 tramway references came from Poole or a source
based on Poole.
Within this decade, two other references have appeared from non-Canadian sources. These
call for particular attention because they come from authors with significant reputations
in the field of early railway history.
In 1990, Michael Bailey and John Glithero of Manchester, England, established
authorities on early British locomotives, carried out an assessment of the condition of
Samson and Albion, the surviving GMA locomotives in the collection of the Nova Scotia
Museum of Industry in Stellarton. In one of their reports for the Museum [The Samson and
Albion Locomotives: An Assessment of Current Condition. Stellarton, NS: NSMOI, 1992],
passing reference is made (p 14) to the existence of the 1818 tramway. But this, unlike
all its predecessors, is documented and the source cited is Poole. Communication by the
author with Michael Bailey established that he and John Glithero had examined most of the
post-Poole sources referred to above but were not aware of any earlier evidence to support
the tramway's existence.
The most recent scholarly reference is that by Frederick Gamst of the University of
Massachusetts in his English-language edition of Franz Anton von Gerstner's monumental
report on American railways based on an 1838-39 tour of the United States [Frederick C.
Gamst ed. Early American Railways. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997]. In his
extensive notes to this first English translation of von Gerstner's text, Gamst (pp
818-819) includes an annotated list of the 20 earliest tram lines in North America, all
dating from before 1830. He accords 7th place in the chronological sequence to the
"East River line of 1818" which he describes as a "short wooden railroad
for hauling coal .. worked by horses." Gamst does not document this reference to the
Pictou County tramway but has indicated in personal correspondence with the author that
his source was Poole's paper.
The emergence of this secondary record about an 1818 tram line, and the identification
of its status as one of the earliest in North America in a major work of scholarship like
Gamst's edition of von Gerstner are invitations to the erection of commemorative plaques
or the construction of a working replica as an outdoor attraction at the Nova Scotia
Museum of Industry which is located at almost the exact point where the tramway would have
started - if it had existed.
But the case for the tramway, based on these post-1890 secondary accounts, must be
assessed in the light of both the limitations of that secondary evidence and the record of
the primary and contemporary sources which have survived. Such an assessment casts
considerable doubt on Henry Poole's tramway.
This contrary evidence is of an unusual nature, the essence of which is its absence.
There are few cases where one may encounter documents of record stating that something
does not or did not exist. The case for non-existence must be made through the absence of
reference or record in those places where it would logically be present if existence of
the person, place or thing had been the reality of the matter in question.
Had there been a tramway in 1818 or any time up to the arrival of the GMA in 1827,
there are three pre-1890 secondary works where one would particulalry expect to find
reference to it. If found, those would be more significant than other undocumented
references appearing 70 or more years after 1818. However, if absent, the absence of the
references should merit an equally higher level of significance.
The first, chronologically, of these potential sources is T. C. Haliburton's Historical
and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia published in Halifax in 1829 by Joe Howe. Lack of
reference here is important. This was a venture designed to be, among other things, the
definitive promotion piece to tout the province's history, resources and development
potential in Britain and the United States. Had there been a tramway in operation prior to
1827, it is difficult to believe that neither Haliburton nor his publisher knew of it or
would not have included reference to it.
An undocumented comment by Bruce Jefferson in a letter to Edith Smith, a descendant of
Richard and Joseph Smith, GMA Agents in Pictou County, February 6, 1954, [PANS: Jefferson
Papers, in Scotian Railway Society Papers, RG 28S, vol 8, # 1, p 793]
states that Richard Smith, GMA Agent in Pictou County, 1827-34, and Richard Brown,
Smith's counterpart in Cape Breton, were the authors of Haliburton's chapter on mineral
resources and mining in the province. If true (this assertion has not yet been explored),
this would provide an even higher level of probability that a tramway acquired by the GMA
upon purchase of Adam Carr's assets would have been noted as part of the account of the
development of mining in Pictou County found in Haliburton's book.
Almost as close in time to 1818 were the Albion Mines components of Joe Howe's
"Eastern Rambles" of 1829-31. If the General Mining Association had acquired a
tramway on their arrival in 1827, it should have been known to Howe, as noted above, and
even if it was not deemed worthy of inclusion in Haliburton's book, it seems difficult to
imagine why it would not have received at least passing reference in the
"Rambles." Its absence is particularly noticeable in the "Ramble" in
The Novascotian of July 21, 1830, which described the GMA tramway, then in final stage of
construction, in some detail.
A third location where existence of a pre-GMA tramway might be expected to be noted is
Patterson's History of the County of Pictou [Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1877]. While
Patterson's focus was on religion, people, and politics in roughly that order, and despite
the fact that he paid relatively less attention to economic history, one would think that
had there been a tradition of a pre-GMA tramway in Pictou County when his manuscript was
in progress in the 1870s, that Patterson would have been aware of it and included
reference to it.
All surviving issues of pre-1841 Pictou County newspapers have been examined and no
reference to a pre-GMA tramway has been located but this absence is of little consequence
for several reasons. The earliest paper in the district, the Colonial Patriot, did not
appear until December, 1827 and a tramway that dated back to 1818 would have long since
ceased to be newsworthy, assuming it ever would have been newsworthy. Local content was
often neglected by the newspapers of this period and the papers published in Pictou County
often had more news about Halifax or Boston, London or Edinburgh, than about the local
area. In addition, there are many missing issues from the papers which appeared between
1827 and the 1840s. As a result, the absence of anything about a possible tramway from
minimum of a decade earlier in the surviving press record means very little.
There are also "travelogues" of Pictou County from the 1820s, none of which
refer to a tramway, but these are from people who passed through quickly (e.g. Captain
William Moorsom, an officer attached to Governor Dalhousie's staff, who included Pictou
County within his 1830 Letters from Nova Scotia) or produced later accounts of their
visits. The lack of reference in these sources is also insignificant as is the absence of
reference in later works dealing with Pictou County history [e.g. J. P. McPhee. Pictonians
at Home and Abroad. Boston: Pinkham Press, 1914] which tended to rely heavily on Patterson
regarding the pre-Confederation period.
If the absence of reference to an 1818 tramway in Haliburton, Howe, or Patterson is
significant, the absence of reference in primary source materials from the early years of
the Pictou coalfield is much more important. Though the primary materials which have
survived are far from a complete record, they provide a cross-section of details from the
years before the coming of the GMA. For example, the documents record the sequence of
leaseholders and coal production volumes after 1807. For some topics, however, the details
are fragmentary, and for others still, they are non-existent. The 1818 tramway falls into
the latter category.
The absence of reference to a tramway is significant because a number of the surviving
documents in the Mines and Minerals Papers of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia refer to
coal transport and coalfield investments in the period up to 1827. These provide a context
where one would expect the tramway would have been mentioned, if it had existed.
In a petition to Governor Dalhousie [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, # 13] dated Sept 29,
1819, John McKay sought compensation for work done at the mine during his years as
leaseholder, 1807-1817. McKay stated he "expended very large sums of money in sinking
drains to carry off water from the Mines, and in making permanent Roads and Bridges from
the Mines to the River." He put a value of "upwards of Fifteen hundred
pounds" on "Drains and Ditches, and making Roads and Bridges." Given the
objective of his petition, if McKay had made any investment in a tramway, it seems certain
that it would have been included here. This document also confirms that McKay's lease was
turned over to Mortimer in December, 1817, at which point McKay stated he had been in
debtor's prison for "upwards of twelve months," a fact that speaks to the limits
to McKay's assets and the profitability of his mining activity.
A sworn statement [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, # 18] dated May 4, 1820 was presented by
five of John McKay's supporters in a civil suit he launched against the Mortimer estate.
It outlined McKay's investments in "boats, carts, dwelling houses and blacksmith
shop." Another statement [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, # 19] supporting McKay from G.
Cutler (McKay's clerk, Jan 1816 - Nov, 1817) sworn on May 2, 1820 refers to McKay making
expenditures on "drains, roads, bridges, etc. to enable the said mines" to be
worked. Neither of these, like McKay's petition to Dalhousie, make any mention of a
tramway being built by McKay.
Another document which came out of McKay's suit against the Mortimer estate is a
statement [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, # 15] by John Pagan, Mortimer's bookkeeper in
1818-1819, which was sworn on August 4, 1820. This provides a brief account of the short
Mortimer era. Pagan refers to Mortimer not doing anything at the mine site until April,
1818, after which he made some improvements including "a new bridge" and a
"road laid with timber" which sounds like a corduroy road but not a tramway.
A statement from Adam Carr [PANS: RG 1, vol 458 1/2, # 17] who obtained his sub-lease
from Mortimer's successors in November, 1819 and worked it till arrival of GMA in 1827,
sworn on August 4, 1820, states that during 1819, as result of McKay's denial of transit
rights over land he owned between the mine and the river, Mortimer had to haul coal
"through a cornfield for which licence he was obliged to pay." This seems to
further indicate that no tramway was in operation during the summer of 1819, the last
summer Mortimer's employees worked the mine.
In 1827, Adam Carr found himself under pressure to sell his lease to the GMA. Carr
petitioned Governor James Kempt [PANS: RG 1, vol 458, # 146] on July 3, 1827 seeking
support from the government for the continuation of his sub-lease till mid-1828, the
originally contracted date, and sought aid against GMA threats to "undersell Your
Petitioner in the Market" which would ensure that "Your Petitioner's ruin would
be consummated." He refers to his investments since 1819 in boats and the
construction of a wharf but says nothing about a tramway.
The final document that merits specific attention is an 1842 letter [PANS: RG 1, vol
463, #41] from Carr to George Wightman, the provincial engineer, replying to comments
Wightman had made about pre-GMA activity within a report for the government on GMA
activity since 1827. Carr denied Wightman's assertion that the government had built a
wharf for him during his tenure as leaseholder and stated that:
"During the first summer of my lease I was under the necessity of erecting a
wharf of square logs for my own accommodation for which I never received, expected or
requested one farthing from Government."
Carr went on to note that:
"when I commenced operations in first I had to drive a level of 200 yds to the
coal for the purpose of draining of (sic) the water, sunk a pit about eleven fathoms deep,
placed upon that a horse gin."
This letter dates from 15 years after Carr signed over his lease to the GMA when he, as
phrased in his letter, "was driven out by Richard Smith, after six month's hard
warfare." When Carr gave up, Smith "took the tools from me and (I) received for
coal boats & carts and with all the other implements" a bit over 182 pounds.
Though this was written well after the events in question, it has in Carr's own hand the
greatest detail of what he did during his tenure. And here again, in a context where a
tramway would be expected to appear had one been constructed by Carr, we find no tramway.
The horse gin mentioned by Carr in his 1842 letter is the most sophisticated form of
equipment noted in any of the primary documents about mining activity prior to the arrival
of the General Mining Association in 1827.
Given the fact that these surviving documents are conspicuously silent about an 1818
tramway, one must consider if Poole meant what the paper literally stated in its print
form. His 1818 tramway statement was followed in the latter part of his first paragraph by
a reference to the transfer of the property to the GMA in 1827. This structure makes it
appear that the "1818" was not a typographical error intended as 1828 (as a
reference to the GMA's first moves toward the construction of a tramway after 1827) but
rather that he meant 1818 or, at the very least, something which took place before the
arrival of the GMA.
The evidence, however, in all its forms appears to indicate that the 1818 tramway was
either a figment of Poole's imagination or the product of a local legend. Absence of any
pre-Poole reference in any source makes the "local legend" appear an
unsatisfactory explanation, leaving no alternative but to conclude that: (a) Poole was the
original source, and (b) there is no documentary basis for the continued acceptance of his
assertion.
Speculation can provide one possible explanation for Poole's 1818 tramway. In 1818, an
Act [Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1818, Chapter XXII] was passed "to facilitate the
opening and working His Majesty's Coal Mines .." This statute included two references
[clause V, p 339 and clause VI, p 340] to a "railway," a term synonomous with
tramway or wagonway at this time, as one of the things a leaseholder would be empowered to
construct under the terms of a lease issued under the Act. Perhaps the 1818 statutory
provision for "railway" construction was transformed, with the aide of some
vanished source, into a belief on Poole's part that a tramway was actually built that
year.
Though the absence of any significant evidence for the existence of a tramway before
the arrival of the General Mining Association in Pictou County can never prove absolutely
that one did not exist, that absence speaks in a very convincing way. What is says is
that, after a century of status as a significant event in the history of transportation in
Nova Scotia and Canada, it is time for Henry Poole's 1818 tramway to be reclassified as a
legend unless some primary evidence emerges to give it credence.
This paper is a part of work in progress on the wider topic of the
Albion Railway. I would welcome correspondence by snail mail to:
46 Raymoor Drive, Dartmouth, NS, Canada, B2X 1G7
or by email to:
herb.macdonald@ns.sympatico.ca
Suggestions about locations of primary documents from or related to the General
Mining Association in Pictou County, 1827-1872; GMA head office in London; or the Halifax
Company, the GMA's successor in Pictou County, 1872-1885, would be received with eternal
thanks. Sources which I have already "mined" include the following:
Nova Scotia: PANS; NS Museum of Industry; NS Legislative Library; NS Museum;
Dalhousie University Archives' holdings of DOSCO Papers; Beaton Institute-UCCB; Hector
Centre Archives and Pictou County Historical Society in Pictou County
Other North America: New Brunswick Museum's holdings of Anderson Papers;
NAC-Ottawa; Harvard-Baker Library's Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Papers
UK: Durham and Northumberland County Record Offices; Hackworth Museum, Shildon;
Darlington Railway Centre, Darlington; National Railway Museum, York; British Library,
London
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©1998 Herb MacDonald, all
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