Minudie
Heritage Association
About Us
Our History
Minudie’s long history includes original habitation by the Mi’kmaq. They invited the French in Port Royal, who also made seasonal hunting trips in the area, to settle here with their families. In the spring of 1672, six French men arrived by boat and built shelters. Twelve families arrived the following year and a permanent settlement began. The Acadians enjoyed peaceful existence until their expulsion in 1755 at which time their community was destroyed.
Large Land grants around Minudie were given to Colonel Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres and Edward Barron by the British Government in 1763 and the community of Minudie was rebuilt and existed for many years by tenant farming.
In 1796, Amos Peck Seaman arrived in Minudie. During the 1800’s, he led Minudie to a period of industrial growth. In 1871, the population of this community was listed as 600. As time changed, the population shifted and declined.
Today, Minudie is a small rural community set among ancient fields and marshes with strong tides held back by dykes which were built by the Acadians and are still visible to this day.
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Prior to the fall of Fort Beausejour, Minudie was a prosperous Acadian settlement. The Acadians had dyked the marshlands and tilled the fertile slopes above them — they had virgin forests at their door, and at their front door the water way of Chignecto Basin, noted for its shad fishing. The inhabitants would not join other Acadians in raids against the English but lived largely to themselves. For more than 150 years the crops of Minudie were blessed by an annual rite. In 1755, however, the New Englanders raided the village and burned every dwelling, killing many persons and taking the remainder prisoner. The cleared land was granted to J. F. W. DesBarres in 1765, but at the turn of the century he sold the estate to Amos Seaman, who quarried grindstones from the ledges and made a fortune trading between Boston and the West Indies. "King" Seaman, as he was called, built a mansion at Minudie, and had another fine home in Boston. He established a large store at Minudie wharf. But with his passing in 1866 the prosperity of his estate waned, and today his name is but a memory.
Minudie is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Cumberland County about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from River Hebert.
Once a thriving town with a population peaking about 1870 at more than 600 people, Minudie today still has three churches but a population of just 20. Industries included shipbuilding, farming, lumbering and the manufacture of grindstones. It was settled, dyked, and farmed by Acadians in the eighteenth century. After the expulsion, the lands were granted to J.F.W. DesBarres, who leased it to displaced Acadians and others who farmed the marshlands, and cut grindstones along the shore. [2] Amos Seaman (1788-1864), the self-appointed "Grindstone King", assumed control of the grindstone quarries there about 1826 and was also largely responsible for the rest of the industries there as well.
