Family Collection : 1762-1920.

            Gideon White was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He and his cousin Edward Winslow were descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. White was a Plymouth merchant and had made several trips to both Port Roseway (Shelburne) and Liverpool, Nova Scotia, where he visited Simeon Perkins just prior to and during the early years of the American Revolution. By 1779 he was the master of the schooner, Apollo, trading to the Caribbean, and became a merchant in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1782 he returned to New York as a captain in the Duke of Cumberland's Regiment. In this capacity he went to Jamaica to recruit, but as the Revolution was drawing to a close, he returned to New York where he became a member of the Port Roseway Associates, a group of refugees who formed an association to organize a settlement at Port Roseway (Shelburne).
By 1784 he had gathered together several disbanded members of his regiment and brought them to Chedabucto Bay where they received land grants. White settled in Shelburne, engaged in trading and in agriculture and received a number of appointments which included:  deputy registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court,  justice of the peace for Shelburne County,  sheriff,  customs collector,  fire warden, tax collector, justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas,  major of the 22nd (Shelburne) Battalion of Militia, and member of the House of Assembly for Barrington Township from 1790-1793.  He remained in Shelburne as it declined in the late 1780s and continued to reside there after the disastrous fire of 1792 when many others left. He died in Shelburne on 30 September 1833.

He and his wife Deborah Whitworth had nine children, many staying and contributing to Shelburne and the province:  Joanna, Miles, Deborah, Nathaniel Whitworth, Gideon Consider, Cornelius, John Dean, Sarah, and Thomas Howland.            

            Some or all of the content is available electronically; see Finding Aid section below.

The Collection (volumes 947-962) contains family, business and official correspondence; official records made by Gideon White in various local roles; business accounts and records kept by Gideon and Miles White, and others; and diaries, journals and personal accounts of Gideon and Cornelius White and others.  The focus is on Shelburne and its people and the period between the American Revolution and the first half of the nineteenth century, and chronicles the plight of refugees to Nova Scotia and the strength of family bonds, as well as providing a window into entrepreneurship.  Main topics discussed in the papers include:  religion, local history, settlement, loyalists, government and politics, commerce and business, mercantilism, trade, economics, justice and the law, maritime matters, railway, education, and family. The main merchants involve Cox and Grassie; Benjamin and William Davis of Massachusetts (White's son-in-law); George Deblois (Halifax); Favell, Bousfield & Son (London); Stephen Skinner (Nova Scotia); and Dr. John Prince (Halifax); and main family correspondents are White's sons and brother-in-law Charles Whitworth.

Arrangement:  Volumes 947-962 and the documents in the Collection as a whole are numbered consecutively.

Detailed Content

The collection is broad in its subject matter; these are some in more detail:  Church of England (conditions, appointments, complaints, Antigonish, Barrington); the Town of Halifax (conditions and challenges at such as health), and the Town and County of Shelburne (conditions, issues such as land, emigration, fire, trade, social, religion, dissension and factious elections, also documents such as returns of militia, records from the General Sessions such as at the special sessions concerning the vessel Whiting and its impressment of inhabitants); land (lots, escheated, licences, squatters, prices); loyalists regiments and settlers: (Loyal American Rangers:  return of prisoners taken at Wilmington belonging to, list of recruits enlisted for by James Kenny; Duke of Cumberland:  return of men, women, children, black and white in Charlestown which Capt. Gideon commands; return of disbanded men, women, children of at Shelburne; pay issues; return of settlers at Chedabucto of; as well as a list of refugees coming from East Florida, list of necessaries Commander-in-Chief accorded provincial corps settling in Nova Scotia, and return of different regiments of discharged men employed in cutting streets where they are to draw their lots); House of Assembly (elections, and controversies) and political attitudes and observations, and appointments; patronage (concerning collector, customs, chief justice, road commission, chancery, and N.W. White's); prices (various goods, property, cargoes); privateers (much about the privateer Nelson, Capt Ephraim Dean of Liverpool master; seizures, Admiralty, and Navy Office), railway (much in the years 1894-5 discussing plans for, many are correspondence with N. W. White from the states and Yarmouth); and schools (accounts pertaining to the schooling of Gideon's children and relating to the Shelburne schoolmaster, and correspondence from Rev. White about Antigonish); and family (Wall family of Ragged Harbour, and the Whitworths of Massachusetts).


Document (or Item) Listing for volumes 957-961

Volume 957 (Account Books, ledgers, leaflets, land records, and other private papers)
1514.  Cash Book of Gideon White (24 Dec. 1772-30 Sept. 1775)
1515. Waste Book of Gideon White, containing list of sales made by him in Halifax, Liverpool, Ragged Islands and other places (4 Aug. 1776 – 3 Apr. 1778)
1516.  Lists of cargoes of schooner Apollo, G. White, master (1779)
1517.  List of Taxables for the Town and County of Shelburne (1786)
1518.  List of assessments of Shelburne County and poor taxes (1787)
1519.  The Nova Scotia Calendar, an almanac for the year 1792, by Metonicus
1520.  Record of cash received for taxes (28 May 1789-5 march 1793)
1521.  Record of provincial light duties collected by Gideon White (9 June 1796-31 May 1799; White’s day book (3 Jan. 1803-3 May 1810)
1522.  Ledger kept by Gideon White (25 May 1775-12 Aug. 1812); current prices of commodities.
1523-24. Record of the actions tried before Gideon White, Justice of the Peace (10 Aug. 1811-15 June 1822)
1525.  List of sales by Miles W. White (10 April 1823-1 Jan. 1824)
1526.  Receipts of sums received from Stephen Skinner, by various persons; drafts of several letters, and notes and recipes (26 Nov. 1791-18 Jan. 1826)

Volume 958
1527. Geography text book for children, by Peter Parley (1830)
1528.  “Epitome of the History, Statistics etc. of Nova Scotia”, printed text book (1842)
1529.   Minute-book and some accounts of the fire wardens of Shelburne township (21 June 1790-1 Apr. 1822)
1530.  Accounts connected with the fire wardens and their duties (1812-1846)
1531.  Account Book of the fire wardens of Shelburne County (9 Apr. 1822-9 July 1858)
1532.  Field notes returned to the Crown Land Office on surveys made in Shelburne and Queens by John Firth, deputy surveyor for Shelburne County; sectional map with each return (20 Jan. 1845-28 Sept. 1866)
1533.  Tables for the conversion of Nova Scotia Currency into Canada currency; printed at Halifax (1871)
1534. Letters and Facts concerning the Church of England in the County of Pictou” compiled by Rev. D.C. Moore, (1879)
1536.  Part of two newspapers containing articles and pictures relative to the loyalists’ coming to Shelburne
1538.  Notebook containing verses, etc.

Volume 959 Private papers of Gideon White, diaries, and other miscellanea
1539. Accounts (1769) and diary of an unnamed loyalist while making a trip to NS and from Annapolis to Halifax and back (1783), and later entries to 1787)
1540.  Memoranda in a notebook of an unnamed resident of Halifax (1776)
1541.  Leaves from Gideon White’s journal (23 June-12 July 1788)
1542.  Small note book of memoranda of G. White (1 Apr. 1795-1828)
1546.  Journal of Stephen Skinner (1799-1801)
1548.  Letters by G. White written while in England; later letters written from 
Shelburne to Favell and Bousfield, S.S. Blowers and Lynde Walter (1799-1804)
1549.  Journal of G. White (1806-1810); miscellaneous accounts and entries of cases tried by White (1806-9)
1550.  Journal of A.D. Cocken, Shelburne school master (1812)
1551.  Notebook containing accounts and letters of Katharine Skinner (1824-28)
1552.  Belcher’s Almanac for 1866, with journal of Cornelius White for the year bound in the back (1866)
1554.  Rough draft of a letter from Rev. T.H. White concerning Gideon White’s recommending Shelburne as a suitable site for a loyalist town (about 1892)
1555.  Reminiscences of Rev. T. H. White (1806-1898), as taken down by his son N.W. White, and his grandson, T.H. White

Volume 960
1560.  Accounts of business conducted by several persons in New York and Shelburne (Sept-Oct. 1775)

Volume 961
1561. Account book kept by Wm. Robertson in business in Shelburne (Aug. 1777-Dec. 1778, 1811-1815, 1842-1852); located after no. 1566
1562.  Narrative of the shipwreck of the Nottingham Galley in her voyage from England to Boston by John Deane, Commander (1762)
1563.  Journal of T.H. White (1829-1838)
1564.  Family Correspondence (1828-1832); Book titled “A Warming:  addressed to members of the Church of England of the dangers of synods (1869)
1565.  Manuscript providing information about the Deanes in the 1700s
1566.  White family crest

            

            Online:  Available electronically on the Nova Scotia Archives website:  many of the images from this collection, a searchable database of the Calendar or listing of documents compiled by Margaret Ells, Publication No. 5, 1940, as well as the Index published with the Calendar, and images relating to Shelburne.  The Calendar (with Index) is available in print in The Loyalist Collection red binders.

The photocopy of the Calendar that accompanies The Loyalist Collection has been annotated to provide more information for documents.  Relevant sections of the Calendar are found at the beginning of each volume.

A microfilm shelf list corresponding the reel numbers, volume numbers, and item or document numbers is available; see Electronic Finding Aid section.            

A note in the microfilm reel indicating that No. 1561 is missing, is inaccurate; it is located after No. 1577.

The dates that are given for item No. 1560 are incorrect.

The index to the Calendar does not include document No. 1562 to document No. 1613.