Nova Scotia stretches 500 kilometres on a southwest-northeast axis from Cape Sable to Cape North, the shape of the province is often compared to that native delicacy, the lobster, with Cape Breton Island representing the outstretched claws, preparing to nip unsuspecting Newfoundland across the Cabot Strait.
The coastline of the uplands region is deeply indented, forming many good harbours, some of which are considered outstanding. Hundreds of islands dot the landscape along the entire Atlantic coast, most notably at St. Margarets Bay and Mahone Bay. Reefs and shoals abound, accounting for the many lighthouses erected along this coast. In many ways the Atlantic uplands coast epitomizes the North Atlantic coastline with its bare granite sheets plunging headlong into the raging surf to produce an awesome cataclysm between land and sea. When people think of Nova Scotia, they usually envisage the rocky granite shores of the uplands. Discoverers of Oak Island
The most reliable account of the discovery of the Money Pit, so-called, is given by Judge Mather B. DesBrisay in the second or 1895 edition of his History of the County of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, first published in 1870. DesBrisay lived in Chester in the days of his childhood and was always in contact with those who were exploring the mystery of the Money Pit. He was an ardent and accurate student of the law of evidence and of the history of his native county.
In his History, he says: “The first settlers on the island were John McMullen, and Daniel McInnes (or McGinnis)… one of the early residents was Samuel Ball, a colored man, who came from South Carolina where he had been a slave to a master whose name he had adopted. His wife Mary had been a domestic in the house of Provincial Treasurer Michael Wallace, at Halifax.” They were married in 1795.
His firm comprised thirty-six acres (lots 6, 7, 8, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32) on which he lived and “cleared.” He died December 14, 1845, aged 81 years, and under his will the property passed “to my servant, Isaac Butler who had resided with him on condition that he take the name of Ball.”
Daniel McInnis, to whom reference was made above, came from New England and took up land on Oak Island. One of his sons, also known as Daniel, his son James and his grandson John McInnis were all interested in the Oak Island enterprise. John McInnis, the grandson, was born on the island about 1865 and lived and died there.
At this point two others should be mentioned who with McInnis discovered the pit and worked to recover the treasure, and passed on the facts of the original discovery from father to son until a very late date in our story.
Anthony Vaughan was one of seven brothers, residents of Rhode Island, descendants of Rowland Vaughan who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. Three of them settled in Chester, john in 1768, Anthony and Daniel in 1772, all of them being residents in 1783. Anthony took up 200 acres on the mainland, near Oak Island, and Daniel owned lots 13 and 14 on the island, which he sold in 1790 to Nathaniel Melvin.
According to the parish records of Chester, Anthony and his wife, Anna Vaughan, had four children - all born in Chester,
Anthony Vaughan, his son, was the chief source of the story of the discovery of the Pit. In 1849 he related the facts to Robert Creelman, who worked on Oak Island in that year.
Four grandsons of Anthony - namely, George, James, Harris, and J. Albert, aged respectively 80, 82, 84, and 90 - were all living on the Vaughan homestead at Western Shore in September, 1930. James died on October thirteenth of that year.
The various pits or shafts dug in search of the treasure were dug in the period 1795 to 1850, all on the farm of John Smith.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 20, 1775. He married Sarah Floyd on September 28, 1790. John, their first child, was baptized at Chester, along with twelve other children, by Rev. Robert Norris, on April 15, 1798. On June 26, 1795, Smith purchased Lot 18 on Oak Island from Caspar Wollenhaupt, a merchant of Chester. About 1795 he built a house near the Money Pit, and later purchased Lots 16 to 21, and there he and his family lived until his death in September, 1857. He brought up his children in very respectable circumstances. His daughter Mary lived in the family of Judge M. B. DesBrisay for sixteen years, first at Chester and later at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Mid Summer 2005 Canadian First Nations Keith Ranville set out from his Vancouver home to investigate a at the time a Oak Island’s diminishing place of interest. But a new Oak Island begining emerged through Keith’s traveling research studies a simple unencrypted solution was generated to resolve this elaborate now 213 year-old treasure mystery. The close examination of Oak Island clues proclaimed a interesting triangle theory’ in-which was instrumental in locating the core to understanding and reviving the Oak Island treasure mystery. Cont.. http://oakislandmoneypitblogspotcom.blogspot.com/
Comment by Oak Island — February 27, 2008 @ 12:14 am