| Anecdote |
- Thomas Huestis' grandson wrote down some of his recollections in a series of essays written for the Halifax newspaper in 1927. Martin B Huestis wrote of his grandparents:
My grandfather Thomas Huestis and grandmother Phoebe Maybee, and I suppose many other loyalists, from N.Y. came by vessel up the Bay of Foundy to the French Beaubassin the marshes of Amherst and Tantremar hoping to get land dyked by the French who had been driven out. When they found this land all taken up they came down the Northumberland Straits and up Remsheg and other harbours. How they managed to shelter themselves until shacks or log houses could be built and their lots of land secured, is a problem. Some think that effects brought from New York to Amherst by vessels were afterward carried on rafts made of cedar or other trees towed by boats down to points on the Northumberland Straits. There was no one to welcome them.
My grandfather, Thomas Huestis, it seems had drawn a lot on the North Shore but preferred this location in the centre of Remsheg Harbor and no doubt on account of a fine spring he found there. He dug a well about 6 feet deep. It stands there yet as stoned up by him, the stones now thickly moss covered. It has never, I believe, run dry and the water is good. A family of Dottens took up lots alternate lots sufficient to make a large farm for each family. A good school house stands among these lots but I do not know what disposition was made of the 500 acres each to Minister, School and Commons.
The loyalist movement was a greater one than many people think. I had read that over 80,000 were expelled from the U.S. forfeiting their estates. Everyman's Cyclopedia says "they emigrated to Canada after the United States had secured independence and formed the greater part of the population of Ontario and New Brunswick which they founded. It does not mention Nova Scotia. Murdoch's History of Nova Scotia says "In September 1783, 14,000 loyalist refugees were expected to come to Nova Scotia. Many vessels left N.Y. for N.S. in Sept. 1783, in which 8,000 refugees embarked." There may have been some romance in it as in the case of the Acadians from Grand Pre but the movement to and settlement in Nova Scotia was no glad picnic. Governor Parr writes from Halifax to Lord North in England. "I cannot better describe the wretched condition of these people than by enclosing a list of those just arrived in the Clinton transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly women and children, all still on board as I have not yet been able to find any sort of place for them and the cold settling in severe."
Possibly our loyalists who came up the Bay of Fundy to Amherst and thence to Remsheg had not such a hard time. They had land grants and it is said 2 or 3 years of provision given to them; but getting shelter over their heads, wells dug and land cleared was a serious enough matter. I have heard of a man carrying a large bag of seed potatoes on his back over a trail from Truro to Pictou. This was long before the days of matches and the lighting of fires must have been a difficult matter.
I must beg my reader's forbearance if I mention my own forbears more often than other loyalists or Wallace in these sketches. My excuse is that I know more about my own people than any others, and another reason is that they were fairly representative of all. I have been greatly interested recently in the early history of my grandparents. Thomas Huestis was born of English parents in White Plains, Westchester Co., New York in 1859. I remember when he died and was buried at Wallace in 1851. Pheobe Mabie his wife was born in Tappan New York in 1757 and died in Wallace July 1811 aged 54 years. I spent a day recently up the Hudson River near Tarrytown and visited the house in which she was born. It was built at Tappan, N.Y., solidly of stone in 1755 by a Mr. Mabie. He was a French Huguenot of good family who was expelled from France came out from Holland with the Dutch to New Amsterdam, now New York. I was told by Mr. Mabie of Mabie Todd and Co., gold pen manufacturers, New York, that but one family of that name came to America. The large number of Mabies now in the United States and Canada it would seem came from that stock. Hamilton Mabie the well known journalist came from the same family. The house is now called the '76 Stone House or Mabies Inn. It became historically famous on account of the imprisonment within its walls of Major John Andre the English Officer, messenger in the "Great Treason" between Benedict Arnold the traitor at West Point and General Clinton the Brit- [some words were evidently dropped here]. Andre was found guilty for five days then taken to a hill back of the house and cruelly executed by hanging. Phoebe Mabie, my grandmother, was born in that house. No doubt as a young woman of the family she waited on Major Andre and I hope she gave him a good breakfast.
Thomas Huestis was the only one of a large family who stood loyal to Britain. He served in the army during the revolution, was arrested by the rebel troops shortly before the end of the war, and imprisoned until its close. I think it likely that he also was held in the '76 house, met and married Phoebe and took her with him to Nova Scotia. His family were brought under the influence of the Wesley and Whitefield movement. I have a letter dated 1822 written to my father Joshua Huestis in Remsheg by his Uncle Joshua Huestis in Pelham, New York, in which he says: "I have to tell you of the death of your grandmother. She said she died in the Lord and we buried her body in the first Methodist graveyard in Marmoneck [sic] N.Y." This accounts I think for the open door for the Methodist preacher in the home of Thomas Huestis. He was a good farmer, a man of very loving nature, always happy in his family affairs and friendly with everyone. One of the modernists he was said to be a universalist because he could not accept the doctrine of eternal damnation as taught with fervor by preachers of his day. He was for a time a lay preacher, but the Methodist quarterly board objected to his using their pulpit on account of his liberal views.
Phoebe Mabie Huestis II We know very little about Phoebe Huestis, daughter of Thomas. Her nephew, Martin Huestis, says this of her, in his essays:
Simon Bolivar Newcomb, a cousin of the astronomer, was also born in Wallace. His mother was Phoebe Huestis, daughter of Thomas, the Loyalist. His mother and father went to Texas when Simon was a child, leaving him in care of an aunt and uncle. His mother died in Texas. His father came back to Canada and settled in Ontario. When the lad was 19 he sent for him and educated him in law. Simon practiced afterward in Ohio, but like all the Newcombs, he was a pioneer. He moved to border settlements and became a judge in El Paso, Texas, later holding the same position in New Mexico. A born Newcomb, always going to the outer bounds
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1759 - 1851 (91 years)
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