YARMOUTH COUNTY LAND GRANTS

Also see: Yarmouth Township

Argyle Township

The land in Argyle Township was not granted in the same manner as the land in the rest of Yarmouth County. Fully two-thirds of the land in Argyle Township remains as Crown land (un-granted) in 2002.

The land that was granted in Argyle Township was dispensed by the Government at different times as various groups and individuals petitioned for grants. There were some very large grants in Argyle Township given to select individuals, many of whom never lived on, or occupied, their grants. In some cases these individuals never lived in Yarmouth County.

The grants approved for the early resident proprietors of Argyle Township tended to be much smaller than those made in Yarmouth Township, the average being around 150 acres. For instance, the first grants made to the New England Planters in Argyle Township in 1771, consisted of approximately 18 different grants of 150 acres each. Later additional grants were made in the same area to these same people & their descendants.

After 1785, grants were made to Loyalist settlers in the area of Tusket, Gavelton, etc. Grants were made to Acadian settlers in the areas of West Pubnico, East Pubnico, Ste-Anne-du-Ruisseau, Belleville, Quinan, Hubbard's Point, Amirault's Hill, Sluice Point, Surette's Island, etc. These grants were made at different times from the 1780's to the 1820's. Grants were made at East Kemptville from 1824 onward. Isolated individual grants of wood lands were made well up into the 1900's.

Due to the sporadic way in which lands were granted in Argyle Township, records pertaining to these grants are found in different locations. Not all records pertaining to grants have survived.

The largest collection of land grant records for Argyle Township is found at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (PANS). These can include such things as petitions for land, the original grants, surveyed plans, etc. The Crown Lands Record Office also has some land grant records. ATCHA holds photocopies of some of these records from both sources, plus a few original land grant documents. As with Yarmouth Township, modern copies of grant maps for different parts of Argyle Township can be purchased from:

Crown Land Records Office
Department of Natural Resources
Box 2345
Halifax, NS
B3J 3C8
(902) 424-8681

The plans for the division of land in some parts of Argyle Township (i.e. Hubbard's Point, Amirault's Hill, Sluice Point) have not survived and hence individual lot numbers are not always shown on the Crown Land Map series.

ATCHA holds copies of some of the Crown Land Map series, and a complete set of the maps is available in Yarmouth County, at the Dept. of Natural Resources, Tusket, NS.

ATCHA also has a microfilm copy of two volumes of land grants that are held by the Yarmouth County Registry of Deeds. These are land grants issued after 1854. Usually these are lots of timber land which were being purchased from the Nova Scotia government by various individuals or groups, as opposed to free grants of land given to people in order to encourage settlement.

The majority of the land grants found in these two volumes should pertain to land in Argyle Township, due to the fact that all the land in Yarmouth Township was granted at one time in 1787. There may be some exceptions to this, in cases where lots of land in Yarmouth Township had to be re-granted if the original proprietors had not fulfilled the terms of the original grant. There is an index at the beginning of each of the two volumes.

Note:
Although the term "grant" implies a gift of land, this was not always the case. "Grant" refers to any transaction whereby land was transferred from the government into private hands. By 1854 most "grants" were purchased.

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