Pictou

History

Pictou was the location of an annual Mi'kmaq summer coastal community prior to European settlement. Pictou is part of the Mi'kmaw district, which also includes Prince Edward Island. The town was a receiving point for many Scottish immigrants moving to a new home in northern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island following the Highland Clearances of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first wave of immigrants arrived on September 15, 1773, on the Hector. While there were a significant number of Scottish people settled in other parts of Nova Scotia at the time Pictou was settled, the town's tourism slogan is "The Birthplace of New Scotland", which is based on it being the first primarily made up of Scottish immigrants, and the ship Hector being recognized as the first immigrant ship to sail directly from Scotland to what is now Canada. Pictou contains many examples of stone housing constructed by those early generations of Scottish immigrants, which have clear connections to architectural styles and designs in Scotland itself. When the Hector arrived, there were already a few families in Pictou that had arrived on the Betsy six years earlier. The town has an indirect connection to Scottish settlement in New Zealand; the Reverend Norman McLeod emigrated to Pictou from Scotland some years after the Hector but eventually re-settled with his parishioners at St. Ann's on Cape Breton Island. He later encouraged his parishioners to move to Waipu where there are still many descendants from Pictou and St. Ann's. During the American Revolution, in November 1777 at Pictou, American privateers from Machias, Maine captured the ship Molly, under the command of Captain William Lowden. Local resident Wellwood Waugh was implicated in the raid on Pictou and was forced to move to…