The German Settlement in Bear River

Among the Loyalists that thronged New York in 1783 were a number of discharged soldiers and officers from the German regiments hired by the British Crown, during the American Revolution. Ihese men were natives of the Principalities of Hesse, Brunswick, Waldek and Anspach‑Bayreuth, and they shared little in common with the Loyalists except their battlefield experiences and now, their ultimate destination. Caught up in the new enthusiasm of their Loyalist associates, many of them were to share in a new settiement venture in the colony of Nova Scotia. In doing this, they found a great deal of encouragement; after seven years of bitter and frustrating war their ties with the homeland were brittle and often broken; and as a reward for their services in the British cause, the offer of land and provisions made to Loyalists and German soldiers alike were eagerly received. General Carlton was one of the many who looked upon the Maritimes as a site for the rebuilding of another overseas empire, and so Nova Scotia became one of the recipients of this settlement material.

So in July, 1783 the first contingent set sail, these men being Waldekian in origin. Some weeks later they were followed by a second group, and with the arrival of a third group from various regiments in Annapolis Royal who were granted permission to settie with their compatroits, the main contingent was complete. Their reception had been encouraged by the description given of their qualifications for the new colony as "valuabie tradesmen and farmers" but this was somewhat overated. Some of them may have followed these callings in their homeland, but a good proportion were carpenters and shoemakers, gamekeepers and store clerks, and men of urban rather than of rural background. Yet they possessed initiative and a will to work, and with the official help provided were soon as well off as their Loyalist neighbours. Indeed, they were located on their land grants by the fall of '83, six months before the official Loyalist grants were made. It was one of their own surveyors, Johan de Greben, who layed out the settlement area of 11.000 acres just west of the Bear River in the projected township of Clements. This block was tri‑sected into a Northern unit for the Waldeck soldiers; a southern portion held by the Hessians and Brunswick men; and a much smaller central section which accommodated a group which had filtered into the Province as individuals wishing to rejoin their regimental comrades. By 1784 it was noted "The Germans settled at the Bear River have made great improvements, there is not one of them that has not planted a crop of some kind or other."

A small, but persistent stream of officers and men continued to arrive and settle; some sent to Germany for their wives and families, and a stable population was reached to the total of one hundred souls. This resulted in a small Teutonic island amidst a sea of Loyalists, and a babel of German Provincial dialects surrounded by the low murmer of Colonial English and Anglicised Dutch.

Yet four years later after this influx, only thirty‑five families remained. By 1791 there were only twenty‑one. The centre area of the settlement lot had been surrended to Loyalist, and later British newcomers; the commission officers had departed to seek a less strenuous way of life, and the urban born tradesmen had moved into the larger settlement areas of the South Shore or New Brunswick. What happened was, that backwoods life, with its inexerable weeding out process had reduced the initial ranks to a small stubborn group who made their direct contribution as part of a larger community, only to be rewarded by absorption. Once government help was reduced, as in 1788, their initial enthusiasm was somewhat dampened. Soldiers have always been a class less likely to succeed as settlers. Caught unprepared for the emergencies of farm life, crop failures and winter weather, and the withdrawal of govemment support, many joined the Loyalist mini‑return to the United States or tried their fortune in New Brunswick or Upper Canada.

The officers seem to have been of little asset to the settlement. Being professional soldiers of German lower nobility, the rigour and enforced democracy of the frontier life was not easily acceptable. They were the first to leave, for they failed to realize that the ownership of 400 acres of woodland did not entitle them to the same prestige that it would have brought in a small German Principality. The tradesmen had little to keep them in Bear River. It was Halifax and the larger coastal settlements that afforded them scope for the use of their skills. The increased wave of British settlers pouring through the open gates of the port of Halifax acquired many of the abandoned lots, sometimes at very low prices. These prices remained stable and low, into the 1800's. Ten pounds sterling for 100 acres was considered a good price, and usually included buildings and improvements. A situation which the English speaking elements, with characteristic energy, exploited to the full.

There were other reasons for the decline which are rather less obvious than the economic. The original settlement drive was borne of a sense of nationality, the togetherness of war carrying over into the days of comparative peace. But it was the very weakness of this national awareness that led to the collapse of the settlement. Their home country, by whose name they were described as Germans, was an amazing collection of several hundred minute states and principalities.

The Waldek Line settlement prospered longer than the others, not only because of the better soil, but by reason of the fact that they were all from the same local German area. The Hessian group were a mixed collectjon drawn from many states and the resultant mix of dialects and customs was a negative factor in the development of a strong commnunity spirit.

In 1783, a Hessian officer could write of "arranging the discharge of two foreigners to go to Nova Scotia," although the two men in question were merely conscripts from a neighbouring State in Germany, namely Bayreuth.

Perhaps it is best expressed by an old lady, an aging Anspach mother who lamented:

"Troubles never come single. First John went away and now Katie's married a Waldecker."

The history of the Hessian and Waldek lines as distinctly German settlements comes to an end by 1778 and become history of some forty survivors struggling to preserve their national and cultural identity in the face of inevitable submersion by their English speaking neighbours. As their numbers reduced they began to be more aware of their distinct nationality, as they did of their isolation. They attended the Anglican church at nearby Clementsport in a body named their children after each other, planted poplar seedlings imported from Germany, and decorated their homes with austere Portraits of the Margrave of Anspach or the Prince of Hesse‑Casse. They became nostalgic to the point of forgetting that the strictness of life in their tax stifled and regulation ridden homeland had influenced their decision not to return to it. In this way, the remnant of the German settlement, solid, industrious and pious, made the Hessian and Waldek lines for many years a source of German tradition and ghost ridden anecdote for for future generations to share, in the whole settlement area of Clements.

The first generation were successful in preserving their old way of life but failed to pass it on to their offsprng. The Anglican Church, sole dispenser of formal religious and eduocational opportunities, was a major factor in the sub mersion of the German language, traditions and dominaitional fait.They never formed a Lutherian parish, for lack of a minister, but they did share with the Long Island Dutch settlers in the building of the Old St. Edwards Church in Clementsport. In a last effort to preserve something of their own form of worship they obtained one concession – that all services would begin with a hyrmn sung in Dutch, and close with a hymn sung in German, but even this association was broken with the death of the last original settler in 1839.

They never achieved any education in their mother tongue although a schoolroom was built to serve the children, of the two communities. The reason given was lack of numbers, as a situation that precluded the appointment of teachers of German origin. The real reason was born of a policy, consistently held, which hastened the inevitable extinction of the German language in Clements, and was expressed in a letter written by the then Bishop lnglis.

"I cannot see the good of sending foreign missionaries or schoolmasters to the Colonies. They only serve to keep a separation and preserve a foreign language, where our business 1 conceive is to teach thern English as soon as possible."

Not until two decades had passed and the remaining German settlers had attained some degree of prosperity and economic stability did the Germans stand out from their English speaking neighbours by reason of their nationality. By that time, so few were left, and so many of their offspring had married English settlers, that the early extinction of the German presence was a foregone conclusion.

This brief survey of the German Settlement has been taken, with permission, from an article first printed in the Dalhousie Review, Vol. 41 No. 1 witten by Mr. Max Sutherland.  Max was a Bear River boy whose interest in the history of the village began with the finding of a German document in some family papers. His discovery that one of these settlers was one of his ancestors led him during his university at Wolfville to continue his interest in history as a graduating subject. He now lives in Nepean, Ont. In the course of our own research, we also found a great deal of material in respect of the same man and were able to chart the life and times of this firstcomer to Bear River great detail. Johan Conrad Hetterick is the subiect of the next chapter.

- Letters to a German soldier -