The following is a fictional story based on loose facts.

I was born on May 15th, 1735 at Chatham, Mass. to William and Sarah Nickerson. My husband was a pioneering, adventurous man, and had sailed away seeking a place we could settle and raise a family. When he sent word to join him, I left immediately.

The trip was hard. The easiest tasks were time intensive and required a lot of hands. When I was midway through the journey, my husband wrote a second letter advising me to stay in Chatham due to unrest with the local Indians; this was a message I would not receive. When I arrived, my spouse had already left to fetch the framing for our future home. The ice shut in, and he was unable to return that winter. I was alone.

Local Miq'maq Indians provided me with a make-shift shelter, but for every courtesy I was given there was a matching hardship. I used a branding iron from the fireplace to ward off a bear, and more than once I was assaulted by Indians. The land was a wet, wind-swept one, and when the Spring finally broke I welcomed my husband with tears of relief.

I was a tall, outspoken woman, which complimented the mild-mannered and quiet nature of my husband. He was a shoe-maker, a fisherman, a surveyor, a magistrate...in truth, whatever he needed to be. We lived at Barrington head, and later moved to Centreville. Our family occupied all the land between Northeast Point and West Head. We provided the area with the first European descendants. There was no B.B.Oaks or Pizza Delight or Radio Shack, only trees. We had 8 children: Susanna, Hezekiah, Mercy, James, Stephen, Archelaus, Hannah, and Eunice. Nothing came easy, and when we weren't working we were sleeping.

You have heard of my husband, I'm sure. His name was Archelaus Smith, and he is honoured with a museum that celebrates our accomplishments. He died on April 3, 1821 in Cape Sable Island. I would die 6 years later in the same month, at the age of 93. I reflected on our life in my later years, and besides my wonderful children, my memories were clouded with days of fatigue and anxiety. Barrington was not an easy frontier land, and the fish had to be worked for.

My story is not an exciting one, and will probably never be on television. It is hard to predict how the impact of your life will affect the generations after it, and I can only hope we have served our descendants well. I know that times invariably change, and good things are made better. Tasks that used to take a day will eventually be done in an hour, and one man will someday do the work of twenty. As life becomes easier and filled with more leisure, I can only pray that the towns that rise up from our footprints will remember Archelaus and I.

Where an apple tree stands and sheds its apples year after year, the surrounding ground will give birth to smaller trees, which in turn will shed apples of their own. If the land is inpenetrable and contrary, there will be few trees. If it is rich and bountiful, there will be fields of trees that owe their wealth to that first fateful seed.

And if someday there is something called the Internet; and if on that Internet there is a web site focused on my homeland; and if many people from that place visit that web site and find a dull and uninteresting account of Archelaus Smith and his wife...well, I will be proud to have taken the road less travelled so many years before.

My name is Elizabeth Nickerson, and most of your great-great-great-great-great grandparents would have known me. When we were not working or child-rearing, we were speaking softly about how great our land would one day be.

Visit the Archelaus Smith Museum in Centreville, or go to http://museum.gov.ns.ca/musdir/archelaussmithmuseum.htm.