In 1871 Ambrose Finson Church completed a topographical township map of Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia [1]. On a scale of one mile to one inch, and measuring 55 inches by 54 inches, it included plans of Arcadia Village, Hebron Village, Maitland Village (below), Tusket Village, and Yarmouth Town (above). The map’s particular value is that it showed, as of about 1866, locations of shops and stores, and for each house it gave the name of the owner or principal resident. One can view an original copy of Church’s Yarmouth County map at the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives, while black and white photocopies can be obtained from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources.

Plan of Maitland Village on Church’s 1871 Map [1]

In the 1970s Charles Bruce Fergusson, Nova Scotia’s third Provincial Archivist, wrote articles about Ambrose Finson Church and the complex history of his effort to publish a complete set of topographical maps of Nova Scotia’s counties [2, 3]. The following excerpts will, I hope, give an impression of Church’s cartographic project, particularly as it concerns the making of the township map of Yarmouth County.

1. “Descended, it is said, from one of a legendary family of six Church brothers who arrived in America from Wales about the middle of the seventeenth century, Ambrose Finson, son of Greenleaf and Elizabeth (Finson) Church, was born in Hartland, Maine, where the family had resided for many generations, in the year 1836. ... Ambrose Finson Church became a civil engineer by profession, and he married Nancy Anne (or Mercy Anne) Saunders of Sydney, near Augusta, Maine. For a time they lived in Hartland, Maine, where their eldest daughter, Alice, was born about 1864. … Even before the birth of his daughter Alice, Church had become involved in making maps. According to his own statement, for four years before he went to Nova Scotia in 1865, ... he had been engaged in the work of making a map of the State of Maine for Jacob Chace, Jr., map publisher, of 55 Danforth Street, Portland, Maine.
   

2. “Evidently it was Church’s association with Jacob Chace, Jr., that led to his becoming interested in Nova Scotia. In 1862 the government and the legislature of Nova Scotia were thinking about procuring, by means of detailed surveys, maps of the province and its counties, and Jacob Chace, Jr., visited Halifax and conferred with a committee of the House of Assembly which had been appointed to deal with the matter. Chace explained his views and showed maps of parts of the State of Maine, the Province of New Brunswick, and the County of Halifax, similar in kind to those he proposed to make in Nova Scotia. Favourably impressed, the committee was of the opinion that such maps would be highly useful if obtained on reasonable terms. Chace offered to commence the necessary surveys of the County of Halifax and to furnish the maps, “provided reasonable encouragement be given him that a certain number of them will be taken for distribution by the Government, when he is prepared to furnish them, he to depend for further aid upon private subscription, and the sale of the maps when made.” The committee recommended that the necessary arrangements be made to take one hundred copies of the maps from Chace when they were satisfactorily furnished. The report of this committee was adopted by the House of Assembly on April 11, 1862.
   

3. “Two years later, perhaps after the death of Chace, Ambrose F. Church offered to furnish the proposed plans of the counties of Nova Scotia. … Having purchased from J. Chace, Jr., & Co., of Portland, Maine, and H. F. Walling, of New York, some surveys of a portion of Nova Scotia, Church went to Nova Scotia in 1865 to proceed with the work.” Instead of combining Halifax and other counties in one map, Church “now proposed to issue maps of the counties not in groups but separately, commencing with Halifax County, surveys of which had already been made by and under the direction of H. F. Walling.” [2, pp. 505–507]
   

4. “By the midsummer of 1868 maps of Halifax and Pictou Counties had been published––for which A. F. Church & Co. had received assistance from the government of Nova Scotia at the rate of $1,000 for each county––and accurate surveys of ten counties had been completed. Church and his associates then had in course of publication a map of Yarmouth County, which they hoped to issue during that season. ... He applied for a continuation of that assistance at the same rate of $1,000 per county for the map of the County of Yarmouth and of other counties to be published thereafter. Maps of Yarmouth and Digby Counties were either completed or in course of publication when a committee of the House of Assembly took into consideration A. F. Church’s petition in 1870. The members of that committee reported that Mr. Church had, in their opinion, performed the work well, so far as it was finished, and that it was very desirable that maps of the remaining counties should be published.” [2, p. 509]
   

But although the committee made recommendations about what the government should pay for any future maps, it made no recommendation about what the government should pay for the Yarmouth and Digby County maps. Early in 1871 Church again petitioned to be remunerated for those counties, and “this committee in 1871 recommended that the sum of one thousand dollars be paid Mr. Church in full payment of his claim for publishing and furnishing maps of those two counties.” [2, p. 510] Thus the Topographical Township Map of Yarmouth County finally was completed in 1871, but A. F. Church’s unsatisfactory financial dealings with the government of Nova Scotia persisted for the duration of the project.

1. “In 1879, for example, he had declared that the reduction of the government subsidy had caused very great injustice, rendering it impossible for him to proceed with the work with any satisfactory degree of rapidity and making it impossible for him to abandon the undertaking with honour or credit since at that time he had partially completed surveys in several counties for which payment had not been made.” [2, p. 516]
   

Ambrose F. Church, a Notman Photograph found online

In 1888, twenty-four years after undertaking this grand and worthy project, Ambrose F. Church completed the last of his eighteen Nova Scotia county maps. In 1920, at Rio de Janeiro, he died after a stroke. Church’s County Maps of Nova Scotia are his legacy to us.

Completion Dates of Ambrose F. Church’s

County Maps of Nova Scotia, found online

References and Notes

   [1] Topographical Township Map of Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. From actual surveys drawn & engraved under the direction of H. F. Walling. Published by A. F. Church & Co., Granville Str., Halifax. Entered according to law on the twenty-fourth day of March A. D. 1864 by Ambrose F. Church of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Despite the misleading date, the surveys in Yarmouth County probably were conducted about 1866, and the map was completed in 1871.

Legend from Church’s Map of Yarmouth County [1]

   [2] Charles Bruce Fergusson, “Ambrose F. Church, Map-Maker.” Dalhousie Review, vol. 49(4), pp. 505–516 (Winter 1969–1970).

   [3] Charles Bruce Fergusson, “Ambrose F. Church and his Maps.” Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, vol. 37, pp. 85–102 (1970). Also slightly altered in Journal of Education, vol. 19(4), pp. 19–27 (June 1970). Another variant appeared as “A. F. Church and His County Maps,” Cape Breton’s Magazine, issue 50, pp. 78–82 (1989) and is found online.

   [4] I thank Susan Young, who is responsible for the H. R. Banks Collection of Nova Scotiana at the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Library, for helping me locate and obtain copies of Charles Bruce Fergusson’s papers. My thanks also to archivist Lisette Gaudet, of the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives, for providing access to Ambrose F. Church’s map of Yarmouth County.