Doreen and Laura's Excellent Adventure: Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia - part 10

(sightseeing)

August 2, 2018 - August 6, 2018

Highland Village Museum in Iona

This living history museum celebrates the Gaelic experience in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia actually means New Scotland. Thousands of people from Northwestern Scotland and the Hebrides Islands came to Nova Scotia in the late 1700's and early 1800's. Slightly over half were Catholic, the rest were Presbyterian. Almost all of them spoke Gaelic. They came because of the prospect of owning their own land and making a better life for their children. This museum is designed to show their living conditions in Scotland before they emigrated, then show their progress through the years in Nova Scotia. They also want to preserve and foster an appreciation for the Gaelic language. Most of the costumed interpreters speak Gaelic to one another. The village is located on a beautiful piece of donated land which sits high on a hill overlooking Bras d'Or Lake.

This stone house represents life in Scotland before emigrating.
Notice the view of Bras d'Or Lake from the beautiful piece of land.

Inside the stone house it's very cozy.
It has dirt floors with a fire ring in the center for cooking and minimal furniture.
As they reflected on leaving Scotland they knew they could only take items they could carry forcing them to leave most of their belongs behind. However, the excitement of eventually owing their own land, something they could never do in Scotland, added to the excitement of their upcoming trip.

View of this beautiful country over the stone walls.

Once in Nova Scotia they had to clear the land and build homes. Initially those homes were log cabins such as this.
Their furniture was sometimes primitive but workable.
This young lady is using a drop spindle to spin wool into yarn.
She goes around the area in bare feet, saving her shoes for winter.

Three older women from the area get together to wash, spin and dye wool.
Their dyes are all from natural sources such as bark, lichens, berries, roots, vegetables, etc.

As the years go by they can afford to build better homes.

This Clydesdale horse is used for most of the heavy work on the farm, from plowing to hauling to cutting, etc.

View of Bras d'Or Lake from the barn and pasture.

Farm garden. They grew and preserved much of their own food. It had to last them through the long cold winter.

Horse treadmill.

Cradle churn for butter.

Anyone ever use butter paddles?
My grandmother had them and she had me make butter balls for holiday dinners.
I thought it was fun!

After nearly 100 years in Nova Scotia the Scots can afford home with cast iron stoves and nicer furniture.

Their kitchens now have wood stoves for cooking and baking.

By the turn of the century kitchen appliances that save time can now be bought for homes.
The wood stove now has a more modern appearance and the family owns a washing machine.

They can also afford a wash tub and wall paper.

Textile arts have always been important in furnishing a home.
Quilting, sewing, rug hooking (above), spinning, knitting, etc. all produce items the family needs.

Church was an important part of their daily lives.

View of the church from "down the hill."

One room schools were the norm

Writing in cursive was definitely one of the subjects taught, along with math and spelling.

And now we get to the most exciting exhibit for me. My 4th great grandfather, Almanzor Denslow, owned and operated a carding mill in Hartford, Connecticut. To see a carding mill in operation was pretty amazing. Carding by hand is a very labor intensive process. It's purpose is to disentangle, clean and intermix wool fibers to produce a continuous web of wool suitable for spinning. It was originally done using two hand paddles as shown below. Just imagine carding the wool from a single sheep using just these two paddles.

Families bring their washed wool to the carding mill to be processed.
First it is put through this machine two times to break up any clumps.
The loose washed wool is loaded on the right side of the machine and comes out on the left side as fluffy pieces.

Here is the machine in action!

Next the fluffy pieces are loaded on the left side of this machine. This is where the 'carding' is actually done.
It comes out on the right as feathery rolls which are actually to fine for spinning purposes.

Here's the first carding machine in action.

Wool as it comes out of the first carding machine. It's very thin and breaks apart easily.

The rolls are put through a second carding machine which sends the wool out in nice rolls, just perfect for spinning.

The final product of the second carding machine.
These rolls of wool are ready for spinning (or possibly for making wigs for British barristers to wear in court 😉).

Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck (pronounced Ba DECK)

Alexander Graham Bell was born and educated in Scotland. Both his father, grandfather and uncle taught elocution, that is to say they methods of oral delivery including both voice and gesture. He became interested in his father's work at an early age but it was his grandfather who taught him to speak clearly with conviction and sparked his interest in furthering his education.

He was also profoundly affected by his mother's gradual loss of hearing. To assist her he learned a manual finger language which allowed him to sit by her side and tap out the conversations occurring in the family parlor.

Alexander's father studied the position of the vocal organs (i.e. soft palate, hard palate, tip, top and back of the tongue, back of the pharynx, upper and lower lips, vocal cords and nasal passage) when making different sounds. He then assigned to each sound a symbol that represented the position of the vocal organs. He compiled his list of symbols until he had a complete phonetic alphabet. He called the chart and methodology Visible Speech. He then taught his three sons how to write Visible Speech as well as how to identify any symbol and it's accompanying sound. Here is an example:

I confess - I have a hard time getting from the individual symbols to the final 'blended' Visible Speech symbol.
Nevertheless, the Bells were very successful using this method to teach the deaf how to speak.

I'm sure with some instruction I might understand how these symbols translate into sound.

Typewriter used to type words into Visible speech symbols.

When Alexander was 18 the family moved to London. His younger brother died two years later of TB. Three years after that his older brother died of TB. That lead the Bells to move to Canada, settling near Brantford, Ontario. Alexander was invited to teach visible speech to the instructors in a school for the deaf in Boston, Mass. From there he went on to teach it at a school in Hartford, CT and then in Northampton, Mass. When he returned home to Ontario but decided to return to Boston as a teacher in private practice. He opened his own school for the deaf in 1872. Bell believed that deaf people should be taught to speak rather than use sign language. He felt this would better integrate them into areas of society where they were often excluded. It was a controversial stance and one that was rejected by those embracing "deaf culture."

Although his work with the deaf was his greatest love, Bell had a very wide variety of interests. He experimented with many different things and is, of course, best known for the invention of the telephone. It made him a rich man.

By this time Bell and his wife and children were living in Washington D.C. His interests were wide and varied - genetics, x-rays, artificial respiration, water reclamation, artificial cooling, water transport, drinking water, air planes, hydrofoils, etc.