Dr. Andrew Brown
(1763-1834):

Brown was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who came to St. Matthew's Church at Halifax in 1787; after a few years, in 1795, he returned to Edinburgh. To entertain himself, Brown determined to write a history of Nova Scotia. "Doctor Brown, during his residence at Halifax, availed himself of the opportunity to gather information from living and reliable sources ..." (Calnek, p. 141) Brown, once back in Britain, carried on with his research and had access to the Board of Trade papers in London. At the time of his death, Brown had completed a rough draft of his History of Nova Scotia, one that ran up to 1766. His colleagues (he had a position with the University of Edinburgh), family and friends apparently had little knowledge of Brown's character, or his work; his papers were treated as so much scrap. One story (there are others) is that these papers were found at a fish market by an observant fish buyer; its sheets were being used to wrap up the purchases. Thankfully, what was left of Brown's papers were rescued and saved. (Fergusson deals with Rev. Brown's work in his article on Akins "... A Centennial Commemoration," NSHS#31, p. 102; and see 'The Rev. Dr. Andrew Brown: Nova Scotia's Elusive Historian," by Sara Beanlands; NSHS, Journal #8 (2006.)