The Lord of Selma Hall

Each place name tells a story if we pause long enough to listen.

Sometimes, as we’ve noted with the excellent Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas (https://placenames.mapdev.ca/), these stories relate to how people used the land. Sipekne’katik (anglicized as Shubenacadie), is the place of the segubun, or ground nut. We’kwaltijk (anglicized Waegwoltic), Halifax’s Northwest Arm, means “End of the bay; ending without a river coming in.” That’s part of the genius of Mi’kmaw place names: as soon as you hear it, you learn something useful. A place name like We’kwaltijk can save you a 10km paddle down the arm and back if you were a newcomer looking for a river. English place names sometimes do this as well. Think downtown Halifax’s Pizza Corner.

European place names occur several other common types. Some mark occupancy, like at Sweet’s Corner, near the St. Croix River in Hants County. Benjamin Sweet operated a store at the northwest corner of this intersection from about 1840. He is long gone now, but his story still clings to these crossroads.

Some are honourific, and like naming rights today, imply a kind of patron-client relationship. Halifax is named after Lord Halifax, who presided over the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1749. Surely, he would take a personal interest in supporting the fledgling town (and it needed a lot of support, especially the financial kind). Names like this are instrumental and come with have ‘strings attached’.

Other names offer immigrants a kind of psychic reassurance by replicating place names from home, with or without the adjective New, as in New York.

But there is another kind – the kind that interests us here – that differs slightly from these. You could almost categorize them as aspirational place names because they attempt to reflect or echo a set of values or more elevated cultural associations. Selma, Nova Scotia, is one of these.

We don’t possess a Mi’kmaw place name for Selma, but its river drains into an arm of the Minas Basin that the Mi’kmaw call We’kopekitk (“End of the flow”), aka Cobequid Bay. In the early 18th century, this little valley, and its productive tidal marsh, was called La Pré à Briards, or Briards Meadow, after a branch of the LeJeune family who farmed here. They fled well in advance of the deportations, so that when John Winslow’s men arrived to round up the inhabitants in late September of 1755, they found only empty buildings.

New England born merchant, officeholder, and aspiring oligarch Malachy Salter obtained a grant to these lands in the 1760s but may not have done much with them. Then as now, real estate was a business of speculation, but the bluff just east of this area is still called Salter’s Head. In time, Salter sold it to a Scottish army officer named John Small (1726-1796), who was intent on developing a feudal estate for himself in “New Scotland.”

Small was one of a deep cast of historical actors who were not exactly a-listers, whose names are instantly recognized by people today. But he regularly rubbed shoulders with these types and played a role in several historically significant events. During the Seven Years’ War, for instance, he served at Fort Oswego, Ticonderoga, and at Montreal.

When the first shots were fired in what is now recognized as the American Revolutionary War, Small was at Boston. He led his men to storm the rebel entrenchments on Breed’s Hill (later Bunker Hill), in the battle of the same name.

American artist John Turnbull actually featured Small in one of his most famous works, “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 17 June 1775.”

In the painting – but not in the preliminary sketches – Turnbull depicts Small attempting to restrain a grenadier from bayonetting the wounded Dr. Joseph Warren, who had recently been elevated to the rank of general in the colonial army and had made the ill-advised decision to lead his men from their trenches on Breed’s Hill. The well known and highly regarded Warren, who surely would have become as historically recognizable as a Washington or a Jefferson had he lived, was Small’s friend.

As the latter recalled in a meeting with Turnbull, “At the moment when the troops succeeded in carrying the redoubt, and the Americans were in full retreat, General Howe (who had been hurt by a spent ball which bruised his ankle) was leaning on my arm. He called suddenly to me: ‘Do you see that young man who has just fallen? Do you know him?’ I looked to the spot towards which he pointed – ‘Good God, Sir, I believe it is my friend Warren.’ ‘Leave me then instantly - run - keep off the troops, save him if possible’. I flew to the spot, ‘My dear friend’, I said to him, ‘I hope you are not badly hurt.’ - he looked up, seemed to recollect me, smiled and died! A musket ball had passed through the upper part of his head.’

Warren was hastily buried that day in a common grave, but his family later retrieved his remains and identified him with the help of silversmith Paul Revere, another friend of the gregarious Warren. Revere had recently fashioned a set of false teeth for Warren and was able to identify him based on that apparatus. Scholars point to this as the first case of forensic dental identification in American history.

Warren’s skull was photographed in the 19th century and, using these photographs, historian Samuel Forman determined that Warren was killed by a musket ball entering his left maxilla - basically his cheek, between his teeth and his left eye - and exiting the back of his head. Curiously, the small diameter of the entry wound indicates he was likely shot at close range by an officer’s pistol. Who may have pulled the trigger is a mystery.

Small served in a number of other later engagements, but at war’s end made his home in Nova Scotia, where we find him signing deeds to his new estate. He also obtained a massive land grant for the disbanded soldiers he had commanded in the Second Battalion of the 84th Regiment (Royal Highland Emigrants). I suspect Small saw himself as a war leader of old, a chief providing for his host.

The area where they put down roots became Douglas Township.

Small carved out an estate for himself on the Kennetcook River, which he called Amherstford, in honour of the general with whom he had worked closely in the Seven Years’ War, but he made his home on the shores of Cobequid Bay. He named this estate Selma, after the legendary palace of Fingal, popularized in the romantic of the Ossian cycle of James Macpherson, a contemporary. Here is a place name pulled from romanticism and legend.

Small spared no expense on his new mansion house. Our best informant appears to be Christina Ross Frame (1860-1950), who grew up near the site of its ruins and “heard many stories of the grandeur of Selma Hall, told by a very old lady, whose father… had been a frequent guest of Colonel Small’s.” She says “Windows, doors, stair-railings, wainscoting, were brought from England, as well as the furniture, pictures, china and silver.” It must have been quite a site for this transplanted Scottish baron.

Historian John Duncanson states the mansion burned not long after its construction, when Small was in England, but Frame disputes this, saying her own ancestor bought it in 1803 and it burned to the ground the next year. As a child, she remembers being shown “the grassy depression that showed the cellar and the level that was evidently lawn.” This would be a fascinating site to relocate and test excavate.

His friends published poetry to celebrate the Lord of Selma Hall when he finally returned to Britain. It was here, as a friend of the royal family, that this Scottish romantic popularized the wearing of highland garb and regalia. This military and regal association is still evident today.

Small was serving as Governor of the Channel Island of Guernsey when he died in 1796 at age 70. He left his estate to his close friend and cousin, the musician and Lieut.-Gen. John Reid. One of Reid’s portraits shows him brandishing a flute rather than a sword.

Small wished his New Scotland estates to become two feudal baronies on the old world model, but it was not to be. Reid sold everything, and the lands were subsequently divided into the many parcels visible today.

But if you happen to stroll through the older parts of Edinburgh, Scotland (named after the Gaelic Dùn èideann, “the fort on the hill”), and follow the notes of chamber music leading you from the Royal Mile, you will arrive at the Reid Concert Hall. This neoclassical stone building was named in honour of John Reid, who left his estate – composed largely of the small fortune left to him by Small – to the University of Edinburgh. An endowed professorship of music, the oldest collection of musical instruments in the world, and the music hall itself are John Small’s improbable and unacknowledged Nova Scotia legacy.