The Legend of Peter Barnes, Margaretsville
The Margaretsville Lighthouse on a winter’s day in January 2021, Photo taken by Isabel Luce
This horrific story has been told and re-told many times over the years. Will R. Bird shares his version of the tale in his book Off-Trails in Nova Scotia (1956). I have summarized Bird’s take on the story here, accompanied with some recent photos I’ve taken on a winter’s day in Margaretsville and some supplementary commentary based on further research I have undertaken.
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On a cross-Nova Scotia trip in the 1950s, Bird made his way into the Annapolis Valley. Speaking with locals to get an idea of places to visit, he heard about a little coastal community called Margaretsville, that was once known as Peter’s Point. From his conversations with various community members, he heard “various versions of what happened [to] the original founder of the village. At that time a feature was a jagged ridge of black rocks extending three hundred yards into the sea and known as Black Ledge. In 1780 Peter Barnes, an Irishman, was the only inhabitant of the place and he lived in a cabin constructed from timbers salvaged from the sea.” (p. 82)
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Peter’s Point would have been close to where the Margaretsville lighthouse now stands.
A little home with grey cedar shakes on the cliffside in Margaretsville, photo taken January 2021 by Isabel Luce
“Peter grew vegetables in his clearing and fished for a living, but in 1793 an early frost ruined his garden and fish failed to make their annual run along the coast so Peter faced famine. Christmas Eve came and with it a wild storm of wind and snow, and the provisions Peter had put in for the winter were nearly exhausted.”
Other sources (including Over the Mountain and Down the Bay, A History of Margaretsville, East Margaretville, and Forest Glade by the Margaretsville Women’s Institute, 1992) say that this would have been the December of 1797 instead, so the exact date of this incident is not clear. The house pictured here likely sits near the clearing where Peter would have had his house and garden.
A man looking out at the Bay of Fundy, standing on the rocky cliffs where Peter would have stood more than 200 years earlier, photo taken in January 2021 by Isabel Luce
“At evening Peter saw a sail out at sea and he at once lighted his lantern and placed it in a tree at the top of the cliff so that it might appear to be a lighthouse. Miles up the coast was a port that vessels used to shelter in during a storm and a light shone at the entrance. Soon Peter and his housekeeper heard a crash on the rocks and the cries of the crew of the foundered vessel. But Peter and the housekeeper stayed in their cabin until morning.” (p. 82)
Other accounts say Peter and his wife heard the noises and Peter went out to investigate. After some time had passed, he returned and said they must have been mistaken as he hadn’t seen or heard anything.
A vein of red granite running through volcanic rock and disappearing into the Bay of Fundy, photo taken in January 2021 by Isabel Luce
“When they went out [that next morning] they found the bodies of six men encased in ice at the foot of the cliff and produce and provisions had been washed up on the beach. Peter gathered these and took them to his cabin and lived on them until spring. Fishermen saw the wreckage and recognized the Saucey Nancy but could only be suspicious of Peter.” (p. 82)
Other sources talk about fishermen later arriving and seeing footprints in the snow leading to the three men who had survived the impact with the Black Ledge. They had made it from the destroyed ship into the forest, but then died of cold during the night when no one responded to their screams for help. Supposedly rings had been wrenched from their fingers, no valuables were found in their pockets, and all supplies on the boat were gone. The shipwreck of the Saucey Nancy was recorded in a register in Cornwallis as having happened on December 23rd 1797.
View towards Margaretsville from the lighthouse, photo taken in January 2021 by Isabel Luce
“Twenty years later, on another Christmas Eve, Peter was out to a tavern in Middleton. Returning late in a snowstorm he lost his way and looked for a light in his window, not knowing that one of the villagers, out on an errand of mercy, had placed a lantern in the recess of a cliff to guide his return journey. It was exactly the same spot where Peter went over the bank. They found him on jagged rocks encased in ice and on her death-bed the old housekeeper told of Peter’s awful crime.” (p. 82-83)
The only tavern in Middleton at this time would have been William Pearce’s Inn, known as the place to visit on a Saturday night for drinks and gambling on horses that they would race along Main Street. Other sources say that Barnes went to the Gibbon’s tavern in Wilmot which was previously run by a widow named Mrs. Anna Dodge. Either way he would have made his way home from one of these taverns by walking up the North Mountain, passing lands being cleared by Mr. Stronach and Mr. Fales (their names still familiar to locals who regularly use Stronach Mountain Road or walk along Fales River). Barnes’ horrific death on the jagged rocks where the Saucey Nancy had met its fate 20 years beforehand was seen by locals as evidence of his guilt, and karmic justice.
But with many local legends, fact gets distorted over time. Is that really how he died?
Standing from the pier at Margaretsville and looking towards the light house where Peter Barnes would have lived, photo taken in January 2021 by Isabel Luce
The story of Margaretsville’s first settler is a horrific one. To purposefully lure a boat in to the rocky shore to its doom in order to pillage its provisions is extremely cruel, and yet stories of “wreckers” are not uncommon to coastal communities. A correction to an 1897 History of Annapolis County, however, adds doubt to the Barnes story. “An aged lady familiar with the local traditions of this part of the township of Wilmot assured me that the settler Barnes was unjustly suspected of the crime here imputed to him. The opinion of the more intelligent inhabitants was that he was entirely innocent.” (p. 235)
Doubt starts to creep in more when you read Over the Mountain and Down the Bay, A History of Margaretsville (1992), which provides a completely different account of Barnes’ death. The late Beth Mapplebeck heard as a child a story from George Dolan Harris, who heard it from his father David Harris (1800-1871), who was there the very night that Barnes died.
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Barnes didn’t make it to Margaretsville the night of his death, the story goes. His body was found along the road from the tavern, and taken to General Ruggles’ house. Here it was “placed in a corner by the fireplace in which a hot fire was burning. To while away the time while waiting for the body to thaw enough to put it in a coffin, a group of men, including young David Harris, were playing cards. All at once, the body of Barnes gave a twitch and at the same time, let out a long drawn out groan. The men, cards, and the table went in all directions as the men scrambled for the door. However, in a few minutes the braver members of the party returned. In thawing, some of the air trapped in the body was released causing the horrid groan that had startled the men. The body was finally put in a rough coffin and buried near a fence in the field to the west of Ruggles Road.” (p. 13)
To the very end, Barnes stirred horror among his countrymen.
Standing on the rocky cliffs looking down at the Bay of Fundy in front of the Margaretsville lighthouse, photo taken in January 2021 by Isabel Luce
Even the idea of whether Peter Barnes was shunned by the surrounding community due to locals suspecting he had a role in the deaths of the crew of the Saucey Nancy is up for debate. A researcher, Leone Cousins, found evidence that in the twenty years after the shipwreck, Barnes was a regular church goer at the first Nictaux Baptist Church, sharing a pew with Elijah and Zebulon Phinney. He was also a regular at Foster Woodbury’s General Store in Wilmot according to ledgers from there. Some argue that this is evidence that Barnes was an active member of the community, and therefore it’s clear that the general public did not think he was guilty. But I wonder if he got a few strange glances every Sunday in church, or if his transactions at Woodbury’s store were cold and quick to get this man out of the store as soon as possible, these are the things we can’t know two hundred years later.
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Finally, in an article by Beth Mapplebeck, she talks about how “for years after Peter Barnes had died, his widow lived in the little home on the hill overlooking the Bay of Fundy [at Peter’s Point]. [Mapplebeck’s grandmother told a] tale of the time when as a young girl called Caroline Wilkins, she along with other young ladies of the neighbourhood, including Margaret Halliburton, were taught fancy needlework by Mrs. Barnes. When Mrs. Barnes came to the end of her life and lay dying, she tried to whisper the story of her life to the women around her; but it was too late. Her life remained a mystery which has never been solved.” (p. 13)
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We may never know the whole story of what happened on December 23rd 1797, but that night will live on as a tragic day in Margaretsville’s history.
Compiled by Isabel Luce
January 2021
