Thomas Huestis [H1] (1759 - 1851) was born of English stock in White Plains, NY and moved to Remsheg (Wallace) in Nova Scotia shortly after the American Revolution (aka American War of Independence). He lived all of his life in Wallace, and was a respected member of the community.

The history of several generations before Thomas has been assembled by Charles Dixon Huestis, and is available on this site (on the main page) as a PDF file.

Thomas Huestis (1759-1851) m. 1st Phoebe Mabie (1757-1811) m. 2nd Elizabeth Smith

• Catherine Huestis [H11] (1786-1863)
• Joshua Huestis [H12] (1788-1868)
• James Huestis [H13] (1789-1879)
• Nathaniel Huestis [H14] (1793-1894)
• Peter Huestis [H15]
• Phoebe Mabie Huestis II [H16]
• Abigail Huestis [H17] (1821-1897) nm
• John Huestis [H18] (1823-1900) nm
• Jasper Huestis [H19] (1825-1910) nm
• Charlotte E. Huestis [H1-10] (1828 - 1916)
• Joseph Fulton Huestis [H1-11] (1837- ) probably died young

It is hard to reconstruct much of the life of a man who lived and died before local newspaper were common, before Vital Statistics were collected, before photography was invented. Fortunately, Thomas' grandson wrote down some of his recollections in a series of essays written for the Halifax newspaper in 1927 (available on this site on the main page). 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.

The story of how Methodism became established in Wallace is recounted in several books. It is suggested that the community started out as a fairly peaceful place but after a while the community got into some serious backsliding. There was a story that a young man drowned after he fell through the ice of the Wallace Harbour on an errand to cross over to Wallace to pick up a case of rum that had come by stagecoach.

The story continues from The History of Methodism in Eastern British America:

Wallace - This community, early known by its Indian name Ramsheg, was settled in 1784 by Loyalists, who, in the absence of religious services, became dissipated and inattentive to all moral and religious duties. Shortly after the settlement had been scourged with disease and death, it was visited, in 1791, by William Grandin, a Methodist preacher, in company with Mr Donkin, a Christian layman from River Philip. On the night of their arrival a dance was to be held at the home of Thomas Huestis, and Grandin asked the privilege of preaching to the assembly which was granted. A deep impression was made, and on the following night, at the home of Stephen Canfield, several were converted. This was the beginning of a great change in the community and the establishment of Methodism in all the settlements round about.

This was the beginning of Wallace's long association with the Methodist Church (now the United Church of Canada), and the names of many of the original families are well represented in the lists of ministers and officials of the church throughout Canada. There are many Huestis' in the church, and even a few of our people in other denominations - Reverend George Huestis of Truro told me that he had jumped the fence to the Baptists. Among Thomas' grandchildren we find the Reverend Doctor Stephen F. Huestis, a very distinguished and prominent Methodist clergyman, and Reverend George Oxley Huestis, who served many charges in the Maritimes. In the next generation we find Reverend Charles Huestis, also a prominent Methodist. I am having a bit of trouble tracking him down as most of his career was in the West. And even in this generation we have Reverend George Huestis of Tulsa, Oklahoma, now retired from a lifetime of missionary service in Brazil. George's father left Wallace Station as a young man, just before the First World War.

In 1991 the congregation of St John's United Church in Wallace celebrated the anniversary of the first service in Wallace by holding an outdoor service on the lawn of Thomas' house in North Wallace. The minister arrived in a horse-drawn buggy and preached to the assembly. Photos of that event are available here

Catherine Huestis [H11] (1786-1863) married Benjamin C Stevens of Lower Wentworth and became the matriarch of a very important family in the area. The small cemetery in Lower Wentworth is still called the Stevens Cemetery, and was probably on a portion of the Stevens farm. A Methodist minister named Reverend C.H. Johnson produced a typewritten history of a number of Wentworth families, including some details on the Stevens family. I cannot find a date on the manuscript (now in the Nova Scotia Public Archives in Halifax) but I suspect that it was written sometime in the 1930's or 40's. The writer uses Stevens/Stephens throughout. I have left out a few details of subsequent generations. Rev. Johnson says this of Catherine Huestis:

Benjamin Stevens of Connecticut, USA married Catherine Huestis, a sister of Joshua Huestis of Wallace Harbour and settled on the east side of Wallace River at Lower Wentworth. Their children were Joshua, Nathaniel, Annie who married John Teed (a son of the original Moses Teed), Levi, Phoebe who married Samuel Angevine of Middleboro, Elizabeth who married William Nairn of the same place, Charles, James who died young, Peter, Benjamin, James, Thomas, William, Mildred who married Thomas Flemming who drowned while bathing leaving her with three young children. Fourteen children. Of the boys who grew up Joshua married a Miss Tuttle, a daughter of Guy Tuttle of Wallace Bay. He lived on a part of his wife's farm and was a shoemaker. Nathaniel married Peggy Fulton of Economy and bought a farm of Six Mile Road (where the Hall now stands).

Levi married Amelia Fulton of Economy and settled in Lower Wentworth. Charles Stephens, another son of Benjamin, grew to a man's estate and married Angela Seaman. He lived in Lower Wentworth for many years and then went to Londonderry. A fifth son of Benjamin Stephens Peter married Joanna Stephens of Middleboro. Sixth son Benjamin married Jane Flemming of Folleigh Mountain. No family. Seventh son James married Margaret Stephens of Richmond and settled in Lower Wentworth. Eighth son married Eliza Angevine of Middleboro and settled there. Ninth son married Bridget Patriquin of New Annan and settled in Londonderry.

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.

See also the last note on Jasper Huestis, in the very next essay.

Abigail Huestis [H17] (1821-1897), John Huestis [H18] (1823-1900), Jasper Huestis [H19] (1825-1910)

I think that these three never married, and lived their lives out on the Thomas Huestis family farm in what is now North Wallace. I can remember Mrs Seretha Huestis Reid telling me that when she was young she heard stories of the two bachelor brothers riding their horses all over the countryside regardless of the time of day, leaving their poor sister (who was their housekeeper) to guess when they might be home for meals.

They were subsistence farmers, which means that essentially, they fed themselves. The entire rural economy of Nova Scotia was maintained on subsistence agriculture right up until the 1930's, including the farm on which I (Alan) now live in Wentworth, 20 miles from Wallace. I expect that the Huestis siblings raised their own grain and livestock, cut some logs in winter, perhaps fished a bit in summer, and generated some cash from the sale of eggs and other produce. The Wallace Area Museum has an old account book from a store in the community, and you can see Thomas Huestis' transactions there as he bought and sold. It would have been a hard life as the three children aged; they all lived into their late 70's and Jasper was 85 when he died. This was before Old Age Pension, and with no children to help on the farm Jasper took in a lodger and his wife, as shown in the Census of 1901. By this time there were few of his nephews left in Wallace - just George and family out in Wallace Station - although he would have had quite a few nieces married locally.

When I was looking through the Baptism Register (on microfilm) for St John's Methodist Church in Wallace I came across a most intriguing entry in 1871. Jasper Huestis had arranged for a boy named Albert Newcombe to be baptised. No other identifying information was given. In the 1871 census a boy named Albert Huestis, age 7, is shown living in the household with John, Jasper and Abigail. I wonder if this story is in any way linked to the story of Phoebe Huestis, their sister, as related in the essay just above this one?

Charlotte Huestis [H1-10] (1828 - 1916) married John Read, a farmer. In the 1881 census they are shown as living in the Pugwash district, with several children at home. Brenda Heinsma's family data suggests that Charlotte had four children: Joseph Oxley Read in 1852 (may have been a sea captain); Elizabeth Anne Read in 1854 (married Horne Cameron); Amy Jane Read in 1857 (married D. Bush); and Albert S. Read in 1864. The children's names in the Census are a bit different.

Charlotte Huestis Read lived to be 91, and according to the certificate of her death she was living in Toronto at the time. She was buried in Pugwash, but I have been unable to find the stones for her or her husband.