There's much more to a life than a name, date and next of kin.
Skeleton genealogy-as in "John married Joan, and had A, B and C," accompanied by dates and place names-is fine for reference purposes, but it's the flesh and sinew that give a person individuality. Genealogy calls for a few words telling something of the character and career of those named, dated and located people. A life is a story and, if told well, may be a wonderful tale.
I have long been an admirer of Mr. Smith-how's that for an innocuous name? When he was 15, his Loyalist parents left Granby, Massachusetts, and came to Preston, NS, just outside of Dartmouth. Smith's father was a graduate of Yale University, a clergyman whose studies embraced theology, chemistry, botany, mathematics, medicine and Indian dialects. But for all his credentials or accomplishments, perhaps his most important role was as a father, raising an ecology- and community-minded son with an array of interests and influence that surpassed his own.
Young Smith was "remarkable for the vast and varied information he acquired in botany, natural history, etc," remarked the noted geographer Andrew H. Clark, while Professor Eville Gorham pronounced him "a pioneer of plant ecology in this continent." This son of a political refugee became a Renaissance man who knew much about many things and something about almost everything.
He supported his family of 14 children as a land surveyor and by selling seeds from flowers and vegetables that he acclimatised to Maritime growing conditions. He drew up petitions for neighbours, served as a road overseer, won agricultural competitions and, in later life, edited The Colonial Farmer. He gave evidence to the Durham Commission, lectured to the Halifax Mechanics' Institute, translated German stories and served as secretary to the Central Board of Agriculture. He selected and planted the trees around province house.
Sir John Wentworth was also a New England Loyalist, which is perhaps why he asked Smith, then 32, to "visit the most unfrequented parts, particularly the banks and borders of the different rivers, lakes and swamps, and the richest uplands." He was to report on "the soil, the situation of the lands, and the species, quality and size of the timbers; the quantity of each sort also, and the facility with which it can be removed to market..." Smith estimated the acreage, and "the possibility and means of rendering [land] fit for cultivation either by banks, drains, or otherwise." At intervals between May 1801 and October 1802, he made three lengthy trips through wilderness Nova Scotia, spending 150 solitary days in a region that had few roads. All he carried was a compass and a map he found "as much hindrance as help."
Settlers from Europe were unaccustomed to the spaciousness of this continent and tended to use wasteful methods of clearing and cultivating land. Smith repeatedly denounced the destruction of wildlife habitats, and praised the Mi'kmaq way of life that favoured reforestation. He urged for good stewardship of what he considered to be gifts given by a bountiful Providence. The solution to meeting human needs was not through more industrialization, but through more rational and intensive use of land and forest. As Smith put it in a lecture given in 1835, "Rough and rude as our forests appear, they form a portion of the 'garden of God.' In all their various productions, there is nothing superfluous or out of place."
No subject was too great or too small for him. On one occasion he might give precise directions for planting cabbages. In the 1840s, he persuaded Halifax to use the Chain Lakes as the source of its first piped water supply, which along with their neighbours, supplied good drinking water for more than a century.
Smith died in 1850 and was buried in a family plot (the stone there today was erected in his memory years later.) And who was he? Why, our very own "Dutch Village Philosopher," Titus Smith of Fairview. Surely his life story beats "Titus Smith, born 1768, died 1850; married Sarah Wisdom, 1803, and had..." Not every biography will have such a versatile person as its subject, but many an ancestor will warrant more than a name and a date. You may even find a story to tell.
Dr. Terry M. Punch is the resident genealogist on CBC radio and editor of Genealogist's Handbook for Atlantic Canada Research.