Researching a House or other Building in Antigonish

"The building may smile or frown or rest serene, its structural elements may chatter or chant, do their work with drilled precision or with playful exuberance."
A. Macphail, 1937

The history of every community is mirrored in its buildings and crafted from stone, concrete and wood. Architecture represents a tangible expression of a society’s values, physical environment and traditions, and opens up vistas on such topics as interior design, construction, engineering, urban planning and heritage conservation. Every building has a story to tell, especially as the researcher deciphers its mysteries and unearths answers to the questions of who built it and when, and who owned and lived in it.

Although there are no official building records for Antigonish, the following sources offer useful leads.

INVENTORY

• The most useful starting point is the multi-volume Inventory of Pre-1914 Buildings or Homes in the Town of Antigonish: Book 1 "Antigonish Town Acadia Street-College Street"; Book 2: "Court Street-Main Street"; Book 3 "Antigonish Town Pleasant Street-West Street". Organized by street and address, this illustrated inventory offers brief profiles on Antigonish’s historical buildings and lists dates of construction, material of construction, and identifies building styles and owners. This source is available to the researcher at the Antigonish Heritage Museum.

RECORDS

• The records of land transactions are also a useful tool for building research. Deeds, for example, enable the researcher to establish construction date, and identify property owners, dates of purchase and sale, transfer through will, and mortgage arrangements. These records are currently stored at the Land Registry Office in Antigonish. The researcher should be advised that one must know the lot number and address in order to trace a particular building.

• Assessment rolls, also available at the Land Registry Office, offer the researcher information about heads of households and assigned value of real and personal properties. They also enable the researcher to trace change of ownership over time.

• Census data usually enable the researcher to identify the tenants of a dwelling, indicating names, sex, relationship to other occupants, and occupations, or what company occupied a building, during a specific year. The Antigonish Heritage Museum possesses a full range of census material, including the censuses for 1817, 1827, 1838, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, and 1901. Please note that early census records list only the head of household, ages of family members, outbuildings and livestock. The censuses for 1871 and 1881, by contrast, are more detailed; they list all the members of the household, ages, sex, marital status, origins, birthplace and occupations.

• Researchers can also glean vital information from wills. This source provides invaluable data for determining status and wealth and reconstructing room use and the material culture of a household. Wills sometimes include inventories listing real and personal property along with appraised values. For example, the detailed will of Alexander MacDonald "Sandy the Carpenter" [4 April 1861, Antigonish Registry Office, File #A 284] itemizes his household effects by room.

• Antigonish Town maps such as the Fire Insurance Maps for 1922 and 1934, provide the researcher with information about the placement of dwellings, street addresses, dimensions and construction materials. These maps, along with a copy of the famous A.F. Church Antigonish County Map (1877) which features topographical details as well as directories of the principal settlements, can also be consulted at the Antigonish Heritage Museum. These will assist the researcher in pinpointing the location of a building and establishing its antiquity.

• Family papers will also help in documenting the social and historical context of buildings and their owners; these sources can provide rich details about lifestyles, class backgrounds and community roles. The St. Francis Xavier University Archives includes among its holdings personal and business correspondence relating to such prominent Antigonish families as the Whiddens, Harts, Bernasconis and Harringtons. There are finding aids to assist with these collections. Corporate papers are also useful. For example, the extensive records for St. Francis Xavier University which include correspondence, maps, drawings and blueprints contain important information about the architectural landscape of this institution of higher learning. This collection is also housed at the St. F.X. University Archives. As well, the Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade Files at the Antigonish Heritage Museum offer insight into town planning and the built environment of mainstreet. The Museum also possesses such useful sources as Dellie Sweet's Scrapbook (indexed) and The Mercantile Agency Reference Book (1882).

ON-SITE INSPECTION

A site inspection is essential, especially in the preliminary stage of research. This inspection will reveal evidence about scale, design, construction material, setting, orientation, and renovations. The Nova Scotia Museum has prepared an online "Infos" sheet entitled Looking at Masonry.

NEWSPAPERS

• Antigonish’s main newspaper The Antigonish Casket commenced publication in 1852. It was originally published and edited by John Boyd. This newspaper is available on microfilm at the Angus L. Macdonald Library, St. Francis Xavier University. There is also a partial index to this publication to assist researchers. Nineteenth-century newspapers offer detailed glimpses into the life of a community. The advertisements and notices of services are particularly enlightening for architectural research. See, for example, the sale notices for John Boyd's house in 1861 and G. Bernasconi's Pleasant Street residence, or the advertisement for John McDonald, Contractor and Builder in 1894. As well, obituary notices will enable one to reconstruct the personal histories of the wide spectrum of people and classes that lived and worked in Antigonish during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

PHOTOGRAPHS

• Photographs provide an invaluable type of visual documentation. The Photograph Files at the Antigonish Heritage Museum contain a range of photographs, including house portraits and streetscapes. The latter help establish building type, relationship to neighbouring buildings, and architectural and social milieu. The Nova Scotia Museum has prepared an online "Infos" sheet entitled Take a closer look at photographs.

BOOKS

• The following printed sources offer useful information on the social and political history, leading families, and lore of Antigonish. It should be noted, however, that they give scant attention to the subject of architecture. These titles can be located on Novanet.