Brooklyn is a Canadian rural community located in western

Hants County Hants County is an historical county and census division of Nova Scotia, Canada. Local government is provided by the West Hants Regional Municipality, and the Municipality of the District of East Hants. History Formation The county of Hants ...

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 ...

with a population of 916 people in 201

The community was Nelegakumik by the Mi'kmaq people, Mi'kmaq Nation (meaning "broken snowshoes"). Brooklyn is unusual in that its post office is officially called Newport.

History

The

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

of Newport was established on 31 March 1761 'from the part of Falmouth east of the Pisiquid (now the Avon River) which was known as East Falmouth.' Named by Charles Morris, chief surveyor, he wrote: 'I have proposed to have it named Newport from my Lord Newport, a friend of Mr. Belcher's, and I believe that it will be agreeable to the people.'

Jonathan Belcher Jonathan Belcher (8 January 1681/8231 August 1757) was a merchant, politician, and slave trader from colonial Massachusetts who served as both governor of Massachusetts Bay and governor of New Hampshire from 1730 to 1741 and governor of New J ...

, had served under Belcher and was in 1761 serving as Lt. Governor of Nova Scotia. Two years later, Morris reported:'The inhabitants have imported large quantities of cattle and have this year cut hay sufficient for supporting them. The river Pisiquid running through his townshipis navigable for sloops to all the settlements. The town vondaleis situated in the centre.' Many early settlers to the township under British rule were

New England Planters The New England Planters were settlers from the New England colonies who responded to invitations by the lieutenant governor (and subsequently governor) of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, to settle lands left vacant by the Bay of Fundy Campaign ( ...

from

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New Yor ...

, which probably explains why Morris felt that residents might be agreeable to Lord Newport's name being attached to the new township. The initial grant was given to John Nutting (loyalist). The former township of Newport incorporated all of modern-day

Windsor, Nova Scotia Windsor is a community located in Hants County, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is a service centre for the western part of the county and is situated on Highway 101. The community has a history dating back to its use by the Mi'kmaq Nation for sev ...

and rural communities east of the Avon River. Although the township disappeared, many community names remained, including: * Newport (now the community of Brooklyn) * Newport Corner * Newport Station The centre of the community is located at the junction of Routes 14 and 215. Brooklyn saw increased development during the late 1800s after the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It ama ...

built a line across Hants County between Windsor and

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 ...

. Thus Brooklyn Station was created, although its post office would be called Newport (P.O.) and this was approved on 5 July 1951. "Brooklyn Station", located 1 km north of Brooklyn on the banks of the Herbert River, became an important station on the

when the line was completed in 1901 and the station became the site of a large sawmill and a feed mill, later becoming part of the

Dominion Atlantic Railway The Dominion Atlantic Railway was a historic railway which operated in the western part of Nova Scotia in Canada, primarily through an agricultural district known as the Annapolis Valley. The Dominion Atlantic Railway was unusually diverse for a ...

system in 1905. The community name was shortened from Brooklyn Station to simply Brooklyn on 30 August 1966 while still maintaining its post office name of Newport. This was subsequently confirmed on 22 July 1993 and in the Nova Scotia Civic Address Review on 14 November 2005. For the purposes of clarification, the provincial government's Geographic Names Board confirmed Newport as a post office within the community of Brooklyn on 10 November 2005. Railway service was declining through Newport during the 1960s and the line would be subsequently abandoned by the

in 1986. The economy of the Brooklyn area has historically been dominated by agriculture, logging, sawmilling, and gypsum mining, but in recent years it is becoming a bedroom community for Halifax. West Hants Middle School (formerly Hants West Rural High School) is located in Newport.

References

{{coord, 45, 0, 22.80, N, 64, 0, 40.10, W, region:CA-NS_type:city, display=title General Service Areas in Nova Scotia Communities in Hants County, Nova Scotia