Alexander McNutt (1725, near Derry,

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

– 1811, Lexington, Virginia) was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

officer, colonist and land agent, responsible for seeing an approximate 500 Ulster Scottish emigrants arrive in

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

during the early 1760s. McNutt emigrated to America some time before 1753 by which time he had settled in the town of Staunton, Virginia. In 1756 he was an officer in the Virginia

militia A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...

on Major

Andrew Lewis Andrew Lewis may refer to: Law and politics * Sir Andrew J. W. Lewis (1875-1952), Scottish businessman and politician; Lord Provost of Aberdeen * Andrew L. Lewis Jr. (1931–2016), American railroad executive and US Secretary of Transportation *And ...

Sandy Creek Expedition The Sandy Creek Expedition, also referred to as the Sandy Expedition or sometimes the Big Sandy Expedition, (not to be confused with the Big Sandy Expedition of 1851) was a 1756 campaign of Virginia soldiers and Cherokee warriors into what is no ...

against the

Shawnees The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky an ...

on the Ohio River. By September 1758 McNutt had relocated to

Londonderry, New Hampshire Londonderry is a town in western Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. It sits between Manchester and Derry, the largest and fourth-largest communities in the state. The population was 25,826 at the 2020 census. Londonderry is known f ...

, a town settled by Ulster Scots. Between April and November 1760, McNutt served as a Massachusetts captain at

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near the present-day border between Nova Scotia and

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, five years after the

Expulsion of the Acadians The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, the Great Deportation, and the Deportation of the Acadians (french: Le Grand Dérangement or ), was the forced removal, by the British, of the Acadian peo ...

. It was during this time that he became involved in the colonization of Nova Scotia. He concerned himself with the Cobequid Townships of Truro and Londonderry. Through McNutt's efforts, a group of fifty families from New Hampshire arrived in the spring of 1761 in the Cobequid (

Truro Truro (; kw, Truru) is a cathedral city and civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its population was 18,766 in the 2011 census. People of Truro ...

) area of Nova Scotia. He had several proposals for settlement of some 7,000 to 8,000 Protestant Irish in Nova Scotia accepted by the Board of Trade in London, but he was not successful in getting the support of the Privy Council who feared such an out-migration would harm British interests in Ireland. He nevertheless went to the

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with just the Board of Trade's approval to seek out emigrants. In the spring of 1761 he advertised throughout Ulster with an offer to "industrious farmers and useful mechanics" of of land to the head of a family and 50 to each member. His effort resulted in 300 colonists arriving in Halifax in October on the ships '' Hopewell'' and '' Nancy''. The next autumn, 170 more settlers arrived out of Londonderry on the same two ships and settled the New Dublin area in present-day Lunenburg County and elsewhere in the province. McNutt also worked to settle a group of disbanded New England soldiers, which included Israel Perley, along the Saint John River. In 1764 he began negotiations with John Hughes of Philadelphia, an undertaking that culminated two years later with 60 Pennsylvania-German settlers establishing The Township of Monckton on the

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. Plans for huge settlements on some of land fell through as the land boom in Nova Scotia petered out by the mid-1760s. McNutt spent time in the later part of the decade living with his brother on McNutt Island in Rosebay Harbour (near present-day Shelburne) as well as in the Cobequid region where he appeared in the 1771 census. He seems to have supported himself at this time cutting timber. He was elected on October 26, 1767 to the General Assembly of Nova Scotia for Londonderry Township, but his seat was declared vacant on Nov. 8, 1769. He was ordered to pay several debts and forced to sell his land at Port Roseway. Other land he held on the

Minas Basin , image = Lookout On Way to Cape Split - 25006718579.jpg , alt = , caption = Looking east across the Southern Bight of Minas Basin from The Lookoff , image_bathymetry = , alt_bathymetry = , ca ...

, on Beaver Harbour, and on the eastern coastal boundary of the

Philadelphia grant The Philadelphia grant describes of land along the south shore of the Northumberland Strait between Tatamagouche and Pictou, Nova Scotia. Following expulsion of the Acadians, the British government distributed Acadian land to various landlords un ...

Pictou Pictou ( ; Canadian Gaelic: ''Baile Phiogto'') is a town in Pictou County, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Located on the north shore of Pictou Harbour, the town is approximately 10 km (6 miles) north of the larger town of New Gla ...

were escheated. He left the colony around 1780, returned around 1786, and left for good in 1794 and finally settled in

Rockbridge County, Virginia Rockbridge County is a county in the Shenandoah Valley on the western edge of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,650. Its county seat is the city of Lexington. Rockbridge County completely surrounds the in ...

in 1796. McNutt rose to the army rank of colonel.

References

*W. O. Raymond, "Colonel Alexander McNutt and the Pre-Loyalist Settlements of Nova Scotia," ''Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada,'' 1912, 3rd Series, Vol. 5 *John Bartlett Brebner, ''Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia,'' (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969) *Leonard W. Labaree, ed. ''The Papers of Benjamin Franklin'' (American Philosophical Society, 1968) Vol. 12, pp. 345–50 *William Otis Sawtelle, "Acadia: The Pre-Loyalist Migration and the Philadelphia Plantation," ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' Vol. 51, 1927

External links

Biography at ''the Dictionary of Canadian Biography on line''Colonel Alexander McNutt and the Pre-Loyalist settlements of Nova Scotia by Raymond, W. O. 1911
{{DEFAULTSORT:McNutt, Alexander 1725 births 1811 deaths American people of Scotch-Irish descent British colonial army officers People from Colchester County People from County Londonderry People from Londonderry, New Hampshire People from Rockbridge County, Virginia People from Staunton, Virginia Irish emigrants to pre-Confederation Nova Scotia Canadian people of Ulster-Scottish descent Colony of Nova Scotia people Nova Scotia pre-Confederation MLAs