Journals: 1758 – 1835.

The Journals are the official minutes of the Council in their legislative capacity as the upper house of Nova Scotia’s bicameral legislature. Included are lists of counsellors present for each session, addresses, proposals of bills concerning a myriad of subjects, bills read and amended (with details often recorded), resolutions, approval of payments to officials and for government funded projects such as road building and repair, examination and approval of public accounts, breakdowns of allocations of funds, and committees formed to examine particular issues. Material covers many facets pertaining to the running of the province of Nova Scotia, which also, for the earlier period, included the area of New Brunswick, with major subjects including government administration and legislation, transportation, politics, finance, trade, social and local history, religion, crime and justice, maritime matters, education, and British - French relations.

Members of the Council and those present at particular sessions could include the Lieutenant Governor, Chief Justice (President of the Council), Judge of the Admiralty, Lord Bishop, Master of the Rolls, Attorney General, and Solicitor General. Journals from the period of the American Revolution and the settlement of the loyalists are particularly interesting. Many well-known individuals from the commercial and political spheres of Nova Scotia were Council members such as S.B. Robie, Charles R. Prescott, Enos Collins, Samuel Cunard, Henry H. Cogswell, Charles Morris, Jonathan Binney, Richard Bulkeley, John Creighton, Alexander Brymer, John Halliburton, Andrew Belcher, William Forsyth, Lawrence Hartshorne, Michael Wallace, and Richard J. Uniacke.

Using some of the indexes available between 1827 and 1832, an idea of the topics covered appear, such as the following to illustrate: marriage and divorce, wills and estates, meat packing and weighing, police, West India trade, theatre, Pictou Academy, Shubenacadie Canal, methodist property, various schools, pedlars, emigrants, public houses (taverns and inns), physicians and surgery, stage coaches, contageous diseases and quarantine, Baptist Education Society, firewards, fisheries, ferries, votes for clearing of various rivers, steam boats, manufacturing/industry, local infrastructure (bridges, roads, canals), poor debtors and poor house, Bank of Nova Scotia, natives/indigenous people, light houses, census, militia and troops, black persons; as well as votes on miscellaneous services such as for an orphan house, sugar refinery, medical aid for passengers, Halifax Dispensary, and distressed labourers.

Arrangement: These are arranged in booklets, each of which covers a session of the Council.

Other titles were microfilmed by the Nova Scotia Archives with this collection:

Part of Miscellaneous Documents, 1748-1870; (vol. 219) has been included with the record. The combination of manuscripts accompanied by typed transcriptions were selected by the commissioner of public records from the files of various government departments. The documents included in this volume were mainly important government correspondence, particularly correspondence circa 1748 to the 1750s between various governors, military leaders, and foreign leaders concerning early British settlement in Nova Scotia and military conflicts (such as instructions to Colonel Monckton to attack Fort Beauséjour and the struggle over the Fortress of Louisbourg). Correspondents included Edward Cornwallis, William Shirley, Charles Lawrence, Jeffrey Amherst, Spencer Phips, James De Lancey, and Robert Monckton. Also included is the deposition of Anthony Casteel who was taken prisoner by native/indigenous people in 1753.