A clean copy of this important addition to the printing history and documentation of Saint John in New Brunswick.
Mary Hall emigrated to Canada in 1831. She spent much of her time drawing landscapes from Nova Scotia to Niagara Falls as well as the Hudson River and established her own drawing school. In 1835, she selected six of her best images and had them published. The titles are as follows, with the text excerpted from the lengthy, descriptive captions.
1. Partridge Island and the harbour of St. John, N.B.
“This Island is situated at the entrance of the harbour of St. John, three miles due south of the City … There is also an hospital recently erected by the corporation of the City for the reception of sick Emigrants previous to their entering the port. A Medical man is stationed on the Island during the Summer months, whose business it is to examine all vessels from Foreign ports, as a precaution to the importation of disease.”
2. The City of Saint John - New Brunswick.
“About fifty years since, (at the close of the American Revolution,) the steep and rocky elevation on which the City of Saint John stands was covered with a dense forest and some of the old inhabitants remember the most populous streets a mass of tangled brushwood and overhanging trees. At that time, in the space of one year, nearly twenty thousand Royalists fled from newly enfranchised American States, and throng the New Brunswick and Nova-Scotian rivers, suffering all the privations of primitive settlers …”
3. View of Digby, Nova Scotia.
“The Township of Digby was originally formed out of an extensive tract of land, granted to 475 Loyalists, and contained 91,600 acres, exclusive of as many more, reserved for Naval purposes … This place, from its situation at the mouth of these rivers, the shelter it can afford to vessels navigating the Bay of Fundy, and the advantages it possesses for prosecuting the Mackerel and Cod fishery, would naturally be supposed a place of great importance … Digby is one of the cleanest and healthiest towns in the British Provinces …”
4. Entrance to Digby from the North.
5. Winter Travelling on the Kenebekacis, New Brunswick.
“The Kennebeckacis is a branch of the St. John river, commencing 3 Miles above the city, and running into the country a distance of about 60 miles until it reaches one of the most fertile parts of the province, a beautiful spot called Sussex Vale, from whence quantities of Pork, Beef, and vegetables, are transported on the Ice in the wonder to St. John. The view is meant to illustrate the winter mode of travelling in this country which generally lasts about five months, during which period all the Rivers appear to convert into public roads, being covered with sleighs and sleds, traversing the country in all directions, which the scene is enlivened by the constant tinkering of bells round the horses necks.”
6. Falls of the St. John River, near Indian Town, taken from the Carleton side.
“The Falls of the Saint John may justly rank a month the phenomena of Nature … A tradition exists among the Indians, that the place now occupied by the Falls was originally a mass of rocks, and that the Saint John River then ran into the Bay of Fundy on the Eastern side of the City, the bed of which is now a very productive marsh - but that a convulsion of nature opened the present stormy passage, through which it now empties itself into the harbour … A story is current here, of a French frigate, which was once chased by an English ship, but not knowing the nature of the Falls, and entering at the improper time of tide, it was carried down by the whirls of this fathomless basin.”
The lithographs were sold by subscription in St. John. While Henry Chubb and John Hooper printed the captions, they were unable to undertake the lithography, and so the plates were done separately in Boston and then returned to St. John. She also produced two further series of views of Niagara Falls and the Hudson River.
Although this set lacks the caption for the fourth image and has been taken out of the wrappers, it’s remarkably rare to find a complete set of the plates themselves. AAS owns five of the plates, Yale just one. OCLC locates a single complete copy at the University of Alberta.
