Cape Breton Post 09/03/09 Columnist receives more insight into the life of Nehemiah Martell LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post When I wrote my piece last week on Nehemiah Martell, (1847-1875) I was hoping to learn more. My wish was granted. Not only did Wayne MacVicar, who knows the Martell clan far better than I do, supply me with new information, he also corrected some of the information that I had included. For example, Nehemiah Martell (b. 1847) did not drown in Halifax Harbour in December, 1869. He drowned sailing in the Bay of Fundy in 1875. As Stephen Vincent Benet has said, "Truth is a hard deer to hunt." Wayne MacVicar, however, has cornered much of the truth on Nehemiah Martell and for good reasons: he is a closer relative than I am and he has valuable material about his grand uncle even if it only opens the ancestral door a small amount. Nehemiah was Wayne's great-grandmother Emma's brother. Emma married John Wesley Nicoll, one of the founders of the Phillips and Nicoll Company. They operated steam ferries on the Mira River. Wayne says that Emma and the rest of her family lived on the north side of Mira Gut, where the Martell house still stands. I knew that the original Charles Martell had land grants in Main-a-dieu and on the south side of Mira Gut. Joseph Martell, his son, lived on the south side as well, but Joseph acquired a grant of land on the north side in 1803 and his son Charles, the father Nehemiah and Emma, built a house and farmed there. Nehemiah returned from the Boston States in 1870 and worked at a lumber mill in Salmon River. It was there that he wrote a series of letters to Emma, letters which I will discuss at a later date. He spent some time going to school in Pugwash and may have studied seamanship. His great-grandfather Charles Martell taught seamanship from his own home in Main-a-dieu in the late 1700s and many of his descendants became seafarers as well as captains of schooners and brigantines. More than one was lost at sea. It appears that in 1871 and 1872, Nehemiah went to sea. He was part owner of a schooner, the Sylvan, with his brother Joseph Anthony. It was built by Phillip Spencer and Nehemiah's father, Charles. He spent some time, as well, on the brigantine Alice Starrat in 1874. The two-masted schooner, Sylvan, had a gross tonnage of 61 tons and was employed as a cargo ship, transporting coal primarily from Cowbay (Port Morien), likely from the Gowrie Mine, to Lynne, MA. Two logbooks relating to shipping survive. In Nov. 1875, we find Nehemiah in Boston. He indicated in a letter to his sister Emma that he was leaving for home. However, he was washed overboard in a storm on the Bay of Fundy on Nov. 22. His sister Emma wrote: "God seems to be dealing very hard with us. Our family circle is growing smaller and smaller. Nehemiah was a kind and good brother." Then she adds this poem: "If life be not in length of days/In silvery locks or furrowed brow/But living to the Saviour's praise/How few have lived as long as thou." Nehemiah's brother, Joseph A., was also lost at sea and a monument was erected in their memory in the Mira Bay Baptist Cemetery. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post