PRINT SOURCE: Thomas Raddall Fonds, Correspondence. From Thomas Raddall to Doctor D. C. Harvey, 4 February 1947. MS-2-202 41.94.
Subject HeadingsT. H. Raddall writes Provincial Archivist, Dr. D. C. Harvey, to thank him for sending some research material. He goes on to inform Dr. Harvey that he will pick up the Simeon Perkins diaries from the Public Archives on his next trip into Halifax as donor restrictions required that the diaries be located in Liverpool. On behalf of the Queens County Historical Society, Raddall relays the Society's unanimous opposition to the erection of a monument to Simeon Perkins and their wishes that the Perkins house be restored instead.
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February 4th, 1947 Doctor D.C.Harvey,Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax, N.S. Dear Doctor Harvey, Many thanks for your letter and for sending on the No.5 publication of the New Brunswick Historical Society1 (which I shall return in due course) and the copy of Miss Gilroy's "Loyalists and Land Settlement in Nova Scotia"2 (which I hope I may keep; I have been using the Queens County Historical Society's copy, which constant use has reduced to a very worn condition.) I shall call for the Perkins Diary3 the next time I have my car in the city. Personally I feel that the Archives is the proper place for it, since we have the typewritten copy available here for consultation at all times, and we are obliged to use a bank vault for safe storage of the original. Unfortunately the terms under which the diary was returned to Nova Scotia by one of Perkins' American descendants contained a strict injunction that the diary was to remain henceforth the property of the town of Liverpool and must not be removed. I persuaded the town fathers to let me take it to the Archives at Halifax, where it could be copied or inspected under the best conditions by a representative of the Champlain Society4; but I had to give my personal receipt for it and an assurance that the diary would be returned as soon as the Champlain Society had done with it. As you know, the Society has done nothing about it for two years, and I must return it to the town as soon as possible. With regard to the proposed cut stone monument and tablet in memory of Simeon Perkins, I put the matter before the Queens County Historical Society and they were unanimously opposed to it. The general feeling (with which I heartily agree) is that the obvious and proper memorial to Perkins and his fellow pioneers is the preservation of the ancient Perkins home. In this we are moved by the melancholy example of the old Cobb house.5 Colonel Jones put up a stone and tablet before the Cobb house 10 or 12 years ago, and it was unveiled with great eclat -- but in the years following the house was permitted to fall into semi-ruin, and finally it met the fate of all such empty houses and was utterly destroyed by fire. Forgive the apparent discourtesy in failing to notify you of the Society's decision; the fault is mine -- I thought our secretary had notified you long before this. With all good wishes, |
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