And it was not only the living who travelled by water. Mrs. Catherine MacKay, mother of Duncan MacCallum, was visiting her son-in-law, Alexander Anderson, in Oyster Bed Bridge in 1790, and died there. Her body was placed in a canoe and conveyed across

Rustico Bay, through the “Narrows” to Brackley Point Harbour, (the coastline was quite different then, owing to storms and drifting sand), out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence via Covehead harbour, along the shore-line and into Long Pond, to be buried in Long Pond cemetery; quite an Odyssey. A little later, Alex MacMillan had a novel method of water travel. He owned land on both sides of the Black River, and at low tide he and his neighbours would ford the river with their wagons. At times Alex could not wait for low tide; instead, he would take his horse down to the water’s edge, sit in a half-hogshead or puncheon, hold the horse’s tail, and make the animal swim the half-mile of water, landing Alex safe and dry on the other side.

To return to land travel, in 1791 the Rev. James McGregor, the first Presbyterian minister on the Island, paying his first visit here hired a horse, and rode out to Cove Head, sixteen miles, on an agreeable road. (from Memoirs of the Rev. James McGregor, D.D., by the Rev. George Patterson). McGregor also mentions that at that time there was not a road on the Island with the exception of one between Charlotte Town and Cove Head. There was scarcely a blaze between other settlements. This was the road improved in 1780 under Governor Patterson.

The next road made in the settlement was in 1824; there is a surveyor’s map showing the new road opened by order of his Excellency Governor Smith, for the west settlement of Cove Head and Black River It runs from the Stanhope-Charlotte Town road westwards, crossing Mill Creek, with a short side road to the mill, and ends just over the Lot 33 line, between the McGregor and MacMillan lands. This line of road is almost all through burnt woods & without any swamps so that 25 men were more able to go through with it than 50 men could do in a straight line (referring no doubt to several dog-legs in the road, avoiding four swamps marked on the map); this years labor did all from the Black River to the Stake marked on the road west from the mill David McGregor, Surveyor.

In 1839 there was a petition to the House of Assembly of divers inhabitants of Cove Head, Brackley Point and Little Tracadie praying an aid of 25 pounds, to complete the road from Stanhope Farm to Corran Ban Bridge; and also an aid to drain two swamps on the line of said road. And next year there was a grant of 8 pounds towards completing road leading from Stanhope to Corran Ban Bridge. This road, now known as the Stanhope Eastern Road. was referred to in 1850 in a deed connected with the Methodist cemetery as the new

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