About 140 people attended a book launch Saturday for a two-volume set outlining the centuries-long history of Upper Sackville, the village whose beauty the book says “stems from both the lake at its heart and the Tantramar Marsh on its east flank.”

“I was born here and lived most of my first 17 years here, but it was only by writing this book that I learned what the village truly was,” author Kathryn (Kathy) Fawcett Lewis told the crowd gathered in the Upper Sackville United Church on Pond Shore Road.

“We produce everything from world-class hay to senators and beauty queens with a few thieves and murderers thrown in,” she added.

“This history of our village will tell you those tales, how the people came and struggled to gain a foothold, struggled through hard times with the tough land, struggled through epidemics, depressions, and even two wars on their doorstep.”

‘Vagaries of time’

Lewis’s book outlines the history of the area from the first Mi’kmaq inhabitants through successive waves of European settlement including Acadians, New England Planters, Yorkshire immigrants and the American Loyalists.

“Those of us who come from Upper Sackville enjoy a common bond,” Lewis said.

“We come from enduring stock. Our ancestors didn’t just come here. They took root in the earth, sprang forth, and multiplied,” she said as she mentioned the many family names in her book including Estabrooks, George, Hicks, Fawcett, Sears and Wheaton.

She also spoke about how Upper Sackville “was born of the Baptist faith and born of Methodism” in close proximity to the first Baptist and Methodist churches in Canada.

“Old John Fawcett, who came from Yorkshire in 1774 as a seven-year-old boy, who gave his life to Methodism and who lived next door to this church, died an unhappy man,” she said, adding he felt betrayed in 1818 when some town Methodists chose to build a new church in Sackville without consulting the parishioners in his village.

“I wonder what he would have said if he had known that 200 years later, the beautiful Sackville Church would be razed to the ground and the little Upper Sackville Church would be left standing,” she said as the audience laughed.

“Ah, the vagaries of time.”

‘I could not resist’

“I grew up not too far up the road from here,” said artist Sharon Hicks, “and my Hicks ancestors first arrived in 1765.”

Hicks, who provided illustrations for the book, added that after returning to Upper Sackville 15 years ago, she spent many hours researching, then drawing and painting barns that once dotted the Tantramar Marsh as well as “our beloved covered bridge,” and in more recent years, began recreating local historic buildings.

“Kathy mentions in the book that when she asked if I’d be interested in this project, that I ‘didn’t hesitate to say yes,'” Hicks said, adding that kind of downplayed her actual reaction.

“It was more like: ‘Are you kidding me? You must have read my mind, I’ve been thinking about this for years!'”

She ended her book launch talk with a poem that included the lines:

An artist is what I’ve always been,
Depicting many things I’ve seen…
This project brought a different twist ~
A challenge I could not resist!

‘The land sighed’

Cover design by Kathryn Lewis & Sharon Hicks

Volume I gives a comprehensive history that includes the Mi’kmaq, the settlers and their religion, their education and their way of life.

Volume II gives a detailed, alphabetical listing and history of 51 prominent families.

Here is an excerpt from the opening of Volume I:

The land sighed,
the buildings creaked,
and the olde folk whispered,

“Remember us”

The wind sighs over the land from Cumberland Bay to the Mount View Ridge, waving the grasses on the vast Tantramar marsh and cooling the land between. Long known as ‘Windy Sackville,’ the epithet comes with both a blessing and a curse, depending on the season. If the land could talk, it too could sigh, as it carries memories of both pleasure and despair…

To read a transcript of Kathy Lewis’s book launch remarks, click here.

To read Sharon Hicks’s complete poem, click here.

Note: The first print run of 150 has already sold out. To order a copy of the two volumes for $40, e-mail author Kathy Lewis at: nanny.goat1943@gmail.com.