Tonight I am making another post in my They Lived Near: series. The first two posts were about people my ancestors lived near. This one is about a location they lived near.

During recent seasons of The Curse of Oak Island members of the the team have often visited a blacksmith in Kentville, Nova Scotia to learn more about items they have found.

Tonight I decided to see how close Oak Island and Kentville were to where my ancestors lived in Nova Scotia. Newport is about 30 miles from Kentville and 50 miles from Oak Island.

In the episode tonight they again talked about a large French fleet that had been sent to Nova Scotia in the 1740’s.  This was shortly before the expulsion of the Acadians and the fleet had been sent to Nova Scotia to recapture Acadia from the British. Along with the fleet was a treasure ship and there are some detailed ship logs that may indicate that the treasure was bound for Oak Island.

Not long after this in the early 1760’s my 6th Great Grandfather Stephen Chapman was living only 50 miles away from Oak Island in Newport, Nova Scotia. Stephen Chapman died there in 1770 and the rest of his family returned shortly thereafter to New England.

Some of the structures in Smith’s Cove have been dated to the time when he lived in Nova Scotia, and many recent finds have been from the mid 1700’s.

However, the Money Pit on Oak Island was found in 1799, so my ancestors had already moved from the area.

Chapman was part of a group called the New England Planters who had migrated to Nova Scotia from New England after the Acadians had been kicked out of the area. There has been some speculation in the past that they may have been involved in the works at Oak Island and in the past couple of years several episodes have also talked about how perhaps the Founding Fathers (Franklin, Jefferson and Washington) had some connection to Oak Island. I do know from past research that Franklin had some involvement with the New England Planters in persuading them to take up the abandoned farms in the area.

Here you can see how far away Newport is from Oak Island. Near is of course a relative term, and in this case is about 50 miles as I mentioned earlier. I am sure that if something big was going on at Oak Island, they would have heard something.

This would have definitely been an interesting time in Nova Scotia as the population was in transition and for some time very few people may have lived in the area. Is there some connection between this transitional time and Oak Island?

Perhaps we will find out soon.

Steven