Joseph Bigney Huestis [H13-11]
1837-1922

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Joseph Bigney Huestis [H13-11] (1837 - 1922) m. Kate McNutt (1853 - )

Joseph Bigney Huestis (1837 - 1922)

Here's another son of James Huestis, one of the youngest. He married Kate McNutt in Wallace on 27 April, 1871. He is listed as a bachelor, age 32, farmer, the son of James and Melinda Bigney Huestis. Kate is listed as a spinster, age 18, living in Wallace, the daughter of Phineas McNutt, a ship's carpenter.

In the 1871 census they are shown as a just-married couple in their own household, and I cannot find them in the 1881 census. Perhaps they were living elsewhere, and out of reach of my data. But in 1891, they turn up again, with a big family!

Joseph married at 32, which was a typical age for farming men to marry as it took them some years to acquire land and stock to set up their own household. Many would marry women of their own age, who were also living at home, learning to run a household, and generally helping on their own father's farm. But Kate was a town girl (her father worked in the shipyards) and she married at 18.

In the census of 1891 we find the family in Wallace, with Joseph (53), Catherine (38), Lenora (19), Borden (17), Oressa (16), Gervase (14), Maud (10), Florence (8) and John (6). None of these names (except John) appears anywhere else in the Huestis family tree, and I doubt that they were in the McNutt family line either. Perhaps Kate was a great reader of Victorian melodrama, or Dicken's fiction, or perhaps stories serialised in the papers of the day. It would take a strong woman to name these children in the Methodist town of Wallace in the 1880's.

By the census of 1901 the family has moved. The railway came to Wallace in 1889, and by this time the shipbuilding industry would have been quite over, except perhaps for small coastal vessels and fishing boats. I expect that the family saw economic opportunity elsewhere, and moved. And that was all that I knew from the Nova Scotia records.


It turns out that they did move, as a family, to Massachusetts. The various USA censuses that they appear in suggest that they moved to Worcester County, MA around the year 1890. My guess is that they moved by rail, as there was by that time a good connection from Wallace to Oxford and Moncton, and from there to MacAdam NB and into the USA.

In the census of 1900 they were living in a rented house in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Joseph was then 56 and Katherine was listed as 46, and they had three children at home: Lenora, age 28, a trained nurse; Florence, age 18 and John, age 16. Joseph's occupation was listed as janitor.

They do not turn up again until 1920, when Joseph and Kate are living in Holden, Mass and Joseph is age 82 and working as a watchman in an electric plant. There are no children at home. Joseph died two years later, and Katherine survived him for a quite a while longer.

Joseph was thought to be very musical, like his father and other of his brothers and sisters. He gave music lessons in Massachusetts.

Joseph's life would have been an interesting one, and probably a hard and uncertain one. He was a farmer and the son of a farmer, and while he was assuredly literate and numerate he probably did not have many skills that would have been well rewarded in the marketplace. A farmer at Wallace Station would have been a subsistence farmer, eating what you could raise, and trading or selling extra agricultural production for the other necessities of life. The house would have been cold in winter, and farm labour would have been heavy, although not onerously so.

I bet that Joseph had two problems in the late 1880's. Problem number one was that he had a large family for whom he probably wanted good lives (who wouldn't?), and problem number two was that the technology of agriculture was changing in that decade. Harry Brown records the introduction of agricultural machinery into the Wallace area in his book Valley of the Remsheg and he reports that the first of the horse-drawn mowing machines arrived in 1872; prior to that all hay was cut with a scythe. An early horse-drawn hay-rake was in Wallace in 1865. Improved and all-steel ploughs and harrows appeared in those same years, and horse-drawn machinery for seeding and weeding row crops were being introduced at the same time. All of this required capital, and it is a fair bet that many farmers did not have the savings or access to borrowed capital that would be required to upgrade a farm to more-modern equipment. This technological change was in fact the first major change in about 100 years in Nova Scotia, marking the move from farming equipment made in the community by blacksmiths and woodworkers, to equipment made in factories and bought for cash.

There would also have been pressure to emigrate from other family members who were already established in the New England States. Joseph had uncles and cousins there, and indeed there were many of Joseph's nieces and nephews who turn up there in the early 1900's. I imagine that Kate McNutt had family in the Boston States as well.

Whatever the reason, Joseph and his family moved to Massachusetts and they seem to have prospered. Joseph was working as a janitor at the time of 1900 census and was working as a watchman in a power plant in 1920. At that time he would have been in his early 80's and still working, because there were no pensions or Seniors' Allowance. Someone in the household had to work if all were to eat.

I think that the life of the older daughter of the family is closely intertwined with the life of Joseph and Kate. Lenora became a nurse and worked for a wealthy man and perhaps inherited from him. Notes written by Lenora's grand-niece and namesake read:

Lenora Evelyn Huestis: 86 years old - spinster - nurse - after father's death moved all of the family to Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. There she nursed a wealthy man for years. Educated her bothers and sisters and was quite wealthy herself and never without servants.

And Gervase Huestis, her brother, would occasionally grumble good-naturedly about his rich American sisters when they came to Toronto to visit him.

Amid all of this there is a small undercurrent that makes me think that Kate McNutt Huestis may have been the powerhouse in the family, and she may well have precipitated the move to the USA.

A reference for Kate Huestis turns up again in 1926, in the obituary of her brother: (Oxford Journal)

Jan 21, 1926 - Thomas MacNUTT Wallace Station, Jan 12

The death occurred at Wallace Highlands on Sunday, Jan 3rd of Thomas MacNUTT, in the 71st year of his age. The funeral was held on Tuesday 5th, from the residence of his brother, James MacNUTT, at Wallace Highlands. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Alfred THORPE of Wallace. Interment was at Bay Head cemetery. The deceased is survived by three brothers, James of Wallace Highlands, Talbot of Wallace Grant and Arthur of Worcester, Mass and three sisters, Mrs. Joseph HUESTIS, Mrs. ROPER and Matilda all in the States.


Borden Huestis [H13-11-2] (1873 - unknown)

According to family notes, Borden Huestis was in the Spanish American War and then was involved in the Gold Rush (which one, I am not sure) and he simply disappeared from the lives of the rest of the family. In our modern day and age we are accustomed to being in steady communication with family members spread out all over the continent and the globe, but 120 years ago communication would have been much less assured. When people moved to other countries there may not have been any expectation of their families seeing them again, especially when travel was both expensive and irregular.


Mary Oressa Huestis [H13-11-3] (1877 - abt 1930)

Oressa Huestis married Garfield A. Wells about 1899. They lived in Worcester, MA and later in Shrewsbury, MA. She is reported to have died in a freak accident when she was 53. Her husband is variously reported to have been born on PEI or in Nova Scotia, that he emigrated to USA in 1880, and that they were both naturalised in 1898. Their children were Huestis I. Wells (1900); Bertha Wells (abt 1902); and Harold E. Wells (abt 1910).

In 2007 I received an email from Roseanne Dickey to say:

My grandfather was Huestis Wells. His mother was a Huestis from Nova Scotia and married a Mr.Wells from England who was related to H.G.Wells. I grew up hearing the story about my ancestor Thomas Huestis leaving his farm in White Plains, New York and settling in Wallace, Nova Scotia. My grandfather grew up on a family farm in Worcester, MA. He was one of the first airplane pilots. He flew for Pan Am from 1920 to 1930. Juan Tripp was one of the pilots that flew with him. His picture is in the Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. He always went by H. I. Wells.


Florence Alice Huestis [H13-11-6] (1882 - ) m. George Slocum, lived in Massachusetts.
children Quincy, Katherine, Elizabeth, George, Robert


Thanks to Roger Park, and Bill and Karen Huestis, for information and details on Joseph and his family in the Massachusetts years.

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