Chapter One: “Roots Along the Sissiboo” – Early Family Origins

He was born into a world carved from resilience. The Cromwells were among the early Black settlers of Weymouth Falls, a village that had become a refuge for people who had escaped bondage in the United States only to arrive in Nova Scotia with little more than hope. His father, likely Joseph Cromwell, appeared in later records as a free Black man settled in the area. It is possible that Joseph had come as a Black Loyalist or a refugee of the American Revolution, granted land—or the promise of it—by the British Crown. But promises were easily broken. Many Black settlers were given plots of barren, wooded land while white Loyalists received fertile pastures and coastal farmland. Yet they cleared the forest with their hands, built homes from pine and birch, and called it freedom.

William was raised in one of these homes—sturdy, warm, and ringed with woodsmoke in the colder months. The Cromwell family, like most in the community, depended on what they could grow, trap, or barter. The river gave trout and eels, the forests provided game, and the soil—thin and stubborn—reluctantly yielded potatoes, turnips, and cabbage if coaxed with ash and sweat. William grew strong in this life. By the time he was ten, his palms were calloused from carrying kindling, his ears trained to the low snap of a rabbit snare and the rustle of wind in uncut hay.

The 1810s brought hardship to the region. War returned—this time, not revolution, but a second conflict between Britain and the newly formed United States. The War of 1812 brought uncertainty to every community in Nova Scotia. Though William, only a teenager then, did not serve, he would have known men who did—perhaps older cousins or neighbors. British soldiers occasionally passed through Digby, and rumors spread faster than gunpowder: Americans landing at Annapolis, ships blockading the Bay of Fundy, towns fortifying themselves with makeshift militias. For the Black settlers, there was fear—not only of war, but of being used, forgotten, or blamed. History had taught them not to expect fairness.

But amid this era of turbulence came light. On a crisp spring day in 1815, not long after his nineteenth birthday, William Cromwell married Harriet Moore. No official record survives to tell us what she wore or whether a preacher from Digby made the journey, but we can imagine them—young, proud, and hopeful—joining hands in a small church or before their elders, perhaps with a simple gold band or none at all, pledging their lives to one another. Their union marked the beginning of a legacy that would ripple through generations.

Their first child, Mary Ann, was born the following year, on May 19, 1816, and baptized that June in Weymouth. She was followed by Joseph, born March 10, 1818, also baptized in the warm light of summer. The church clerk wrote their names plainly: "Mary Ann, daughter of William and Harriet Cromwell, Weymouth. (Blacks)." The stark label—"Blacks"—underscored how society continued to view their family: always marked, always noted. But within the walls of their home, Mary Ann and Joseph were simply children, loved and protected.

The Cromwell household grew quickly. Over two decades, William and Harriet would welcome fourteen children. Their home must have been alive with the sounds of infant cries, laughter, and the ever-present rhythm of daily labor. Harriet—strong, steady, and tireless—kept the hearth warm, the children clothed, and the garden weeded. William likely tended fields, chopped wood, and perhaps fished or traded in town. On Sundays, the family would gather for worship, their voices joining others in the village to sing the old hymns—“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” or “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”—verses passed down from generation to generation like braided hair or patched quilts.

Their community, though small, was tightly knit. Black families in Weymouth Falls shared labor, sorrow, and celebration. Midwives helped with births, neighbors helped raise barns, and food was shared during lean seasons. William’s name appears in the 1816 tax list alongside another Cromwell—Jerome—perhaps a brother or cousin. The listing affirmed something remarkable: he was not simply a settler, but a recognized citizen, participating in civic life despite the barriers of race and prejudice. For a Black man in early 19th-century Nova Scotia, that was no small feat.

The landscape around them was breathtaking—tall trees standing like sentinels, the river carving its way through mossy rocks, snow in winter so deep it swallowed fenceposts. But it was not an easy life. Winters could kill livestock and freeze hands raw. Illness struck without warning. A simple infection, a bad birth, a blight on the crops—any of these could tip a family toward tragedy. Yet William and Harriet endured. Their children learned early the value of perseverance and faith. At night, by the flicker of a tallow candle, William might have recited Scripture from memory, his voice low and even, while Harriet mended stockings or cradled the youngest child to sleep.

They built more than a home. They built a legacy.

As the 1820s unfolded, and more families settled in the area, the Cromwell name became rooted in the soil of Weymouth Falls. That name—once imposed by enslavers or taken from British captains—was now theirs, reshaped by dignity, labor, and the bonds of kinship. In time, William would see his eldest children become adults, marry, and start their own homes just down the road. But in those early years—when he and Harriet were still young and strong—their story was just beginning.

Chapter Two: “Winds of Revolution” – Major Historical Contexts and Eras

The war came not with soldiers marching, but with whispers on the wind and ships on the horizon.

By the summer of 1812, young William Cromwell had just turned sixteen. He was old enough to swing an axe from dawn until dusk, to walk miles into the woods alone, and to carry a sack of salt cod on his back without complaint. But war—that was different. No one in Weymouth Falls was truly prepared for its return.

The British Empire was at war again with the United States, and though Nova Scotia lay far from the frontlines, the tension found its way into every hamlet and heart. Loyalist descendants—many of whom had fought in the first American rebellion—now braced themselves for a second wave of conflict. Digby’s harbor bustled with more than trade; it became a place of rumor, of royal orders, and of returning sailors. William likely heard stories of raids on settlements, impressment into the navy, and prize ships captured in the Bay of Fundy.

The war was less visible in the forests of Digby County than in the towns of Upper Canada, but its effects were deeply felt. Prices rose. Salt, flour, and gunpowder became scarce. British regiments passed through towns recruiting men and requisitioning supplies. For the Black communities—many descended from Loyalists or refugees—the conflict brought unease. They had once fought alongside the British and been promised land and liberty. But two decades later, they still found themselves clearing rocky fields while white settlers built mansions in Annapolis and Halifax.

William, still on the cusp of manhood, watched and listened. While there is no military enlistment record bearing his name, it is likely he contributed in quieter ways—hauling timber, repairing roads, perhaps helping dig defensive trenches near the coast or ferrying news between communities. Such support roles, while unpaid or unrecognized, were critical. In villages like Weymouth, the war effort depended on labor and loyalty, and the Cromwells had plenty of both.

The War of 1812 ended in early 1815 with little territorial change, but for William, it marked a turning point. That spring, just as peace was declared, he married Harriet Moore. Perhaps it was symbolic—this beginning of new life just as conflict ended. As warships withdrew from Nova Scotia’s shores, a quieter revolution took place: William became a husband, a father, and—by 1816—a man listed among the official taxpayers of Digby County.

That tax list, though brief, tells us something vital. William was not a transient laborer or a boy dependent on others. He was a citizen—contributing to the colony, supporting a household, and recognized (if only marginally) by the system that once sought to ignore men like him. The list also included a Jerome Cromwell, possibly William’s brother or cousin. If so, the Cromwells were not merely surviving. They were building something enduring.

Beyond taxes and farming, William lived through an era of sweeping change. The early 19th century in Nova Scotia brought both opportunity and limitation. Churches were expanding—Anglican and Methodist missions reached into rural Black communities, offering baptisms, marriages, and sermons on Christian submission. For many, faith was both refuge and resistance. At home, William and Harriet would have read the Bible, sung hymns, and passed moral lessons to their growing children. But they likely also knew the bitter taste of sermons preached by white ministers who spoke of heaven but refused to shake a Black man’s hand.

Education remained elusive. Though some missionaries offered schooling to Black children, many communities lacked the resources or political will to fund them. William’s children likely received only minimal formal education, learning instead from their parents and elders. Practical skills, scripture, and oral tradition were their schoolbooks.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia’s economy shifted slowly toward modernization. Agricultural reform movements encouraged crop rotation and soil enrichment. Roads were built. Steamships began to replace sailing vessels in the Bay. Yet for rural Black families, much remained unchanged. Land was still unequally distributed. Labor was still underpaid. And prejudice, though quieter than in southern plantations, hung in the air like woodsmoke—always present, impossible to ignore.

Yet William endured. He tilled his fields. He raised his children. He taught his sons to plant in rows and his daughters to make bread from scratch. He may have served as a trustee in the local church or helped organize a burial when a neighbor passed. Men like William did not make headlines, but they were the spine of their communities.

By the end of the 1830s, the world beyond Digby was convulsing again—slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, and thousands of enslaved people in the Caribbean were suddenly declared free. The news reached Weymouth Falls, carried in letters, papers, and sermons. Though William had never been enslaved, the implications were profound. The tide of justice, however slow, was still rising. Perhaps William stood outside the church one Sunday morning, hands clasped behind his back, discussing it with a neighbor. "Maybe now the Lord’s hand is moving," he might have said. "Maybe freedom’s reach is longer than we thought."

He was entering middle age then—his children nearly grown, his beard shot through with gray. The world was changing around him, but his place within it remained anchored by duty: to his family, his God, and the land beneath his feet.

Chapter Three: “Tending the Hearth” – Migration, Family Life, and Career

The house stood low and square, built of cedar planks weathered gray by salt wind and time. It crouched against the cold like an animal, its chimney puffing woodsmoke into the Nova Scotia sky. In this modest home at Weymouth Falls, William and Harriet Cromwell raised fourteen children across nearly three decades—one child born every other year, each swaddled in Harriet’s arms, each added to the tapestry of a family stitched together by toil and tenderness.

Their days began early. In spring and summer, William would rise before the sun, pulling on wool trousers and worn boots before stepping out into the cool fog. His breath would cloud before him as he hitched their horse to the plow, guiding it across stubborn soil he had long since memorized—each rock, each furrow. He grew potatoes, turnips, cabbage, and beans. If he could coax enough from the earth, some would be bartered at the Weymouth market for sugar, flour, or lamp oil.

Harriet kept the home humming. With the older girls helping, she kneaded bread before breakfast, stirred porridge on the fire, swept ashes from the hearth, and rocked the baby while humming hymns under her breath. The children spilled across the property like seeds—some fetching water from the creek, others weeding the garden, a few snaring rabbits or carrying kindling. In winter, they huddled together under quilts, reading from the Bible or listening to stories told in the flickering firelight.

They were poor, but never destitute. They lived, like most rural Black families in early 19th-century Nova Scotia, at the edge of survival and the heart of grace. They owned little, but what they had they preserved with care: Harriet’s black kettle, passed from her mother; William’s axe, its handle worn smooth from decades of use. Their wealth lay in their resilience—and in the laughter of children filling the one-room cabin with life.

The children’s names chart the growth of the family, like rings in a tree trunk: Mary Ann, Joseph C., Maria Jane, Margaret J., Edward James, Olivia, Oliver, William Jr., Charles Henry, Sarah Elizabeth, Peter, Angeline—and others lost to time or known only by initials in baptism ledgers. The family likely slept three or four to a bed. Harriet would have nursed each child, sewn their clothing by hand, and sung them to sleep with spirituals remembered from her girlhood.

Their home also echoed with mourning. In a time when child mortality was high, it is likely that not all fourteen children lived to adulthood. Harriet may have buried more than one baby—wrapping them in linen, brushing a hand across a still cheek, and whispering, “God holds you now.” These losses, though not recorded, would have left indelible shadows on the family.

Despite sorrow, the Cromwells were not alone. Weymouth Falls was a Black village sustained by kinship. Families supported one another with shared harvests, weddings, and funerals. Neighbors gathered to shingle roofs, welcome newborns, or grieve the dead. The church—perhaps Anglican or Methodist—was the village’s backbone, a place of praise, gossip, courtship, and resolve. William likely served as a deacon or trustee; he was known to the community, his name recorded in county records as early as 1816.

As William approached middle age in the 1830s and 1840s, Harriet’s health may have faltered. She had borne over a dozen children—more than many women survived. Her death is not marked in surviving documents, but we know that by the 1840s, William had entered into a second marriage with Genevieve Hatfield, a woman from a neighboring family. Whether she was widowed or never married before, Genevieve became part of the Cromwell family’s daily life—perhaps raising the younger children, sewing quilts, helping with the harvest.

Their courtship is unrecorded but can be imagined: conversations on the porch after church, shared grief over lost spouses, and a quiet recognition that love can come not only from youth but from companionship. Genevieve brought a second wind to William’s life. He was no longer the robust young man who cleared fields with a broad axe, but a man of steady hands and deep knowledge. His children were beginning to marry and raise their own families, some staying in Digby County, others moving toward Yarmouth or Halifax in search of land or opportunity.

Throughout these years, the Cromwells endured harsh winters, poor harvests, and the long ache of racial exclusion. They were taxed but could not vote. They were baptized but often denied church leadership. They contributed labor to a province that refused them full inclusion. But still, they persisted. Their home rang with scripture and song, with the smell of fried salt pork and the sound of babies crying. And when visitors passed through Weymouth Falls—ministers, census takers, or wandering sailors—they heard a name spoken with respect: William Cromwell. A good man. A family man.

He would live long enough to see grandchildren toddle through the doorway of his home, to sit on the front stoop with Genevieve and hear the rustle of wind through the pines, and to know that his life—though not grand in the eyes of history—was a testament to faith, labor, and the enduring strength of kin.

Chapter Four: “A Grave Beside the Pines” – Death, Legacy, and Cultural Memory

The cold wind off the Bay of Fundy swept through the trees that October morning. In the clearing above Weymouth Falls, where tall spruce stood like mourners and yellowing leaves fell softly to the earth, the Cromwell family gathered to bury their patriarch.

William Cromwell Sr. died in 1856, likely in the same home where he had raised fourteen children, planted fields, and grown old beside two wives. He was sixty years old—older than many Black men of his generation lived to be. No tombstone has survived, and no obituary appeared in the local papers. But his name lived on—in the mouths of his children, in the records of baptisms and marriages, in the whispered stories passed down by grandchildren seated at their elders’ feet.

His funeral was probably held in the village church, simple and wooden, where sunlight poured through plain glass windows and settled on the pine floor. A lay minister may have presided, Bible in hand, reading from Ecclesiastes: “To every thing there is a season…” Outside, the grave was dug shallow but firm in the hillside—marked with a wooden cross or fieldstone—and laid beside others from the community, perhaps near his first wife Harriet, or not far from where their youngest children played beneath the cedar limbs.

Genevieve, his second wife, likely stood wrapped in a shawl, flanked by stepchildren and neighbors, her face composed but pale with grief. She had not known William in his youth, but she had known the steadiness of his hand in middle age—the kind of man who repaired his fence before his own shoes, who rose in prayer before bread, and who called each child “blessing” regardless of blood.

Around the grave stood children grown and gray at the temples. Mary Ann, the eldest, her face lined like the rivers near Weymouth, whispered to her own daughter, “Your grandpapa built all this.” Joseph, now a father of boys taller than himself, pressed his hat to his chest, remembering the man who taught him to fish and to fear God.

Their grief was not only for the loss of a father but for the passing of a generation—a generation that had cut its way through forest and frost to stake claim to freedom in a land not always ready to grant it.

William’s legacy cannot be measured in monuments or wealth. He left behind no diary, no portrait, and no formal will. But his imprint remains—etched into Nova Scotia’s landscape and its living descendants. The Cromwells of Weymouth became teachers, preachers, farmers, soldiers, and laborers. They carried the name into church registries, census ledgers, schoolhouses, and union halls.

Many remained in Digby County, marrying into the Hatfields, Moores, and Diggs families. Others joined later migrations—to Halifax, to Boston, or to Ontario, where opportunities for work and schooling opened gradually in the late 19th century. In time, one might hear the name “Cromwell” on a job site in Dartmouth, or read it on a class roll in Amherst. And always, behind that name, was the memory of a man who once split cedar logs by hand and walked behind a plow in Weymouth soil.

In oral histories, William became more than a farmer. He was remembered as “one of the first,” “a quiet man,” “a provider.” Children grew up hearing, “Your great-great-granddaddy cleared that land,” or “He raised fourteen children with nothing but his back and his faith.” These stories, while blurred by time, formed a kind of truth deeper than any certificate or photograph.

And today, in cemeteries across Digby and beyond, the name Cromwell still rests beneath lichen-covered stones—some with carved dates, some unmarked, but all tethered to that first William who lived through storm and sun, and who now sleeps beneath the pines.

William Cromwell Sr.’s life was quiet, but not small. Born at the edge of empire, he grew into manhood as war raged, raised a family through struggle, and died in the only home he had ever known. He helped build a Black community not only through labor but through legacy—a legacy of survival, of moral dignity, and of love that outlasts the grave.

His story, like so many of his generation, is rarely found in textbooks. But it lives where the real history of a people is kept: in baptismal ledgers and burial plots, in family Bibles and fire-lit stories, in the lines on a grandmother’s hands and the songs hummed without words.

In that, William Cromwell remains not simply a name on a record—but a living root in the great tree of Black Canadian history.