Edition used: Historical Record of the Posterity of William Black, Amherst, N.S.: Amherst Gazette Steam Printing House, 1885.
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PREFACE

The object in compiling these pages is that the present and future generations may have a knowledge of their ancestors. An effort has been made to procure the name of every descendant of William Black, Esq., who, with his family, came from Yorkshire, England, to this country in the year 1775.

The difficulties encountered in the prosecution of this work, entailing research over more than a century, are such that we feel obliged to appeal for sympathy, which few, except those engaged in a similar work, have the power to bestow. Documentary information was not to be found, and many of the descendants are widely separated. In order to procure a correct knowledge of facts, many families have been visited in various parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, many have been solicited by letter, and very many others interrogated on the street and at their homes. Yet with all the effort put forth it is impossible to get the whole of the names required, though the success has been excellent. Wherein there are failures the writer claims forbearance.

The names given in the Black connection are so numerous that it appeared requisite to define the relationship held to the first William Black. The reader, therefore, will find that in the introduction of his grand-children the names are in small capitals.

It was at first intended that this History should be limited to William Black's descendants; but the work is enlarged by notice of many of the first emigrants from Yorkshire and their families, and also of Loyalists from the United States, and others from the British Colonies, as then existing, to whom were granted large tracts of land.

The work lays no claim to literary merit, the object being to give concise statements of facts.

The record is brought down to 1883.

The persons to whom the writer is indebted for assistance in the work are too numerous to mention; but he desires to express special obligations to R. B. C. Weldon, Esq., of Boundary Creek, Westmorland County, Rufus S. Purdy, Esq., of Wentworth, and S. Hiram Trueman, of P.E. Island.