John Alphonsus Lanigan was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 12 November 1854 the son of John L. and Johanna (Magrath) Lanigan who were married on 14 November 1839. He attended Sulpician College in Montreal and St. Mary’s College in Halifax where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. He graduated with his medical degree from New York University in 1877 and practiced medicine in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Buffalo, New York; Toledo, Ohio; Boston, Massachusetts; and finally Niagara Falls, New York where he was head post-mortem examiner for Erie County. He married Theresa Beazley in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 26 March 1893. John was an author who had articles published in newspapers and magazines. He was also the author of Leisure Hours poems in 1869; the play The Siege of Armagh in 1871; Woodland Rambles poems in 1894 and The Theorem of the Geometric Scale in 1910. In addition he attempted to create a universal language which he referred to as “Tolien”. It was said by H. Herald that he “possesses much literary ability”. John Lanigan would also write under the pseudonym Kinel Araga for the Niagara Falls Journal. Dr. Lanigan was also known to write music and lyrics sometimes in conjunction with his brothers, James Aloysius Lanigan and Remigius William Lanigan. He died in his home in Niagara Falls, New York on 21 May 1919 and he was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Halifax on 29 May 1919.

Anna Barbara Webber was born October 15, 1884 in Dartmouth, Halifax County, Nova Scotia. Her parents were Jacob Richard Webber (1858-1940) and Eliza Ann (Rafter) Webber (1863-1941). Her family lived in Dartmouth from 1891 to 1901. From 1905 or earlier, Anna Barbara lived in Dartmouth and worked as a domestic servant with the family of Richard Romans. On September 16, 1914 Anna Barbara married William Wilson Webber (1882-1968), and probably around this time moved to Upper Lakeville, where William worked as a lumberman. Anna Barbara and William had three children, Allan Otto, Frances Rita Eliza, and Blois Milton. Anna Barbara died on December 18, 1922.

Alexander Joseph Owen Maguire was born in June 1855, the son of John and Margaret Maguire. He married Isabella Hadley in 1882, the daughter of J.W. Hadley, a merchant of dry goods, groceries and fishing supplies in Guysborough, Guysborough County, NS. On 22 March 1883, Maguire bought J.W. Hadley's merchant business from Levi Hart for $1200. The business was subsequently assigned to George Forsyth in 1885, and subsequently assigned to William Maguire, Alexander's brother, on 17 April 1886. At the time of his death, Maguire was the High Sheriff of the County of Guysborough, NS. He died in Guysborough on 17 February 1929.

Alexander Hamilton Leighton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 17 July 1908 the son of Archibald Ogilvie Leighton (b. 1880 in Ballycarry, Northern Ireland) and Gertrude Ann (Hamilton) Leighton (b. 1888 in Sligo, Ireland). At the age of 8, he was brought to Nova Scotia by his parents and was a frequent summer visitor from then until 1975 when he joined the faculty of Dalhousie University as a landed immigrant of Canada. In 1989, he achieved dual citizenship. As a young man, he became interested in photography as a medium for recording history and enhancing appreciation of the natural environment. Using the motion picture camera, he recorded a trip he made across Nova Scotia by canoe in 1927, and in 1936 he made a movie of a group of Mikmaw First Nation People hunting porpoise in a birch bark canoe and then of making oil to sell. He also used motion picture film to record his study of beaver in their natural Nova Scotia habitat. This study became his honors thesis at Princeton University where he received a BA degree in biology in 1932. He received an MS from Cambridge University in England in 1934 and an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1936 and became a resident in psychiatry but was also given leave for further study and field work in anthropology. He was called into service as a Naval Reserve Officer after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. During the Second World War he conducted a study of a Japanese Relocation Center and directed the Foreign Morale Division for the Pacific of the Department of War Information. After the war, he became a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Cornell Medical School and in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of Cornell University where he began the Stirling County Study, a longitudinal investigation of mental illnesses in the population at large with emphasis on relationships of prevalence of mental illnesses to social environmental factors. In 1966, he formed the Department of Behavioral Sciences of the Harvard School of Public Health and in 1975 joined the Dalhousie Faculty as a National Health Scientist of Canada and as Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology. At this time, his wife, Jane M. Murphy, who had been part of the longitudinal study since 1952 became its director. Alexander Leighton received numerous awards and honors including honorary doctorates from Acadia University and Laval University. He died at his home at the age of 99 on 11 August 2007.

John Gorham was born 12 December 1709 (OS) at Barnstable, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and died in London, England during December of 1751. Although descended from a number of generations of military men Gorham appears to have started a career as a merchant, landholder, whaler and trader before entering military service around 1741 in Massachusetts. During this phase of his life he was recorded as seeking a land grant on Sable Island and indeed appears to have been active in the affairs of the Island. He appears to have recruited, organized and led an auxiliary unit “of the Massachusetts provincial army” who became known as Gorham’s Rangers and who patrolled the inland waters in modified whaleboats that facilitated their ability to appear and strike anywhere. Some accounts suggest rangers also specialized in less conventional warfare taking more advantage of the natural ability to conceal and hide in the woods than would regular soldiers. As a captain in the military he was dispatched to Annapolis Royal in September of 1744 with his company of 50 described by Massachusetts Governor Shirley as “picked Indians and other men fit for ranging the woods,” to provide relief to the garrison then besieged by French forces based in Louisbourg, NS. The following year he returned to Boston and then was sent, with his Rangers, to Louisbourg where they participated in a series of actions that eventually led to the fall of the fortress. Although he returned to Boston in 1746 he was quickly back in the province and during the period 1746 to 1747 erected blockhouses at Chignecto and Cobequid to support the defense of Nova Scotia. In 1747 he was sent to London to unsuccessfully plead the case for imperial support to help Massachusetts subdue the remaining French forces in Nova Scotia and to ensure the safety of the Annapolis Royal settlement. The imperial denial of support left Gorham and his company of rangers the principal defenders of Nova Scotia in its then wider boundaries including modern New Brunswick. With the settlement of Halifax in June 1749 Gorham relocated to Halifax and was named a member of Council. To support the new settlement he built a fort at Sackville (head of Halifax Harbour) and was engaged in various skirmishes with French and Mi'kmaq forces. He died of smallpox in London in December of 1751 after having sailed there on his boat the Osborne, the first vessel built in Halifax. His death was reported in the first issue of the Halifax Gazette, 23 March 1752.

Stephen Skinner was born ca. 1735 at New Jersey. In 1762 he was appointed Treasurer of Eastern New Jersey. In 1775 Skinner was accused of theft by the New Jersey Assembly. He was apprehended and ordered to remain at Trenton on parole. When Skinner was eventually granted leave, he went to England to plead for compensation for his lost property. Rebuffed, he decided to join other loyal British-Americans and removed to Shelburne, N.S. in 1783. Skinner established a paint and hardware store, owned and operated the schooner Experiment in the fish trade, and held numerous positions in the town. In 1791 Governor Parr appointed Skinner agent for the Sierra Leone Company. The Company was formed to organize the relocation of the Black Loyalists, who had also come to Shelburne in the 1780s, to a new settlement called Freetown in Sierra Leone. The Black settlers, upon their arrival in Nova Scotia, had been relegated to the less desirable and fertile lands and were generally dissatisfied. They were forced to look for work in the town proper, which incensed many white residents. Skinner was responsible for conveying the emigrants to Halifax, for their departure to Africa. Skinner purchased many of the emigrants' land prior to their departure. From 1793 to 1799, Skinner represented Shelburne County in the Legislative Assembly. Between 1796 and 1797, Skinner's daughters Gertrude, Maria Theresa and Margaret died, his wife Margaret died in 1801, both of his grandsons died within a year of their births, and his son John died in 1804. Skinner died at Shelburne in 1808, survived only by his daughter-in-law Catherine.

Agnès Clémentine d'Entremont naquit le 11 décembre 1865 à Pubnico-ouest, Nouvelle-Écosse, fille de Jacques à Maximin et d'Agnès Dométhilde d'Entremont. Elle était l'une de trois enfants nés de cette union dont un meurt en bas âge. Tous les enfants de ce mariage vont mourrir célibataires ce qui explique pourquoi la succession d'Agnès d'Entremont passa à un ami. Nous connaissons peu de la vie d'Agnès d'Entremont sauf qu'elle était propriétaire d'une petite épicerie dans le village. Quant à son éducation, il n'y a aucune indication qu'elle en fréquenta une autre que l'école du coin mais elle avait sans doute le don de l'écriture comme l'atteste son journal personnel. Elle était également douée du sens d'observation et se permettait des commentaires ôsés pour l'époque lorsqu'elle posait sur papier ses pensées les plus personnelles sur les individus et les événement de son village à la fin du 19e siècle. Agnès d'Entremont est décédée le 12 mars 1957.

Alain Doucet naquit à Petit Ruisseau, Nouvelle-Écosse, le 16 décembre 1929, fils aîné d'Emile et de Zélée Doucet. Après ses études à l'école du village il entra au Collège Sainte-Anne en 1945 et en 1950 il gradua avec son baccalauréat ès arts. L'année suivante, il s'inscrivit à l'Université Saint-François-Xavier au programme de baccalauréat en éducation. En 1961, le Collège Sainte-Anne lui décerna le grade de maîtrise ès arts, suite à la présentation d'une thèse en ethnologie qui sera la base de son livre paru en 1965 et intitulé La littérature orale de la Baie Sainte-Marie. Alain Doucet consacra sa vie professionnelle à l'éducation. Il enseigna premièrement à Weymouth où il fut directeur d'école pendant trois ans. Par la suite, il fut nommé directeur de l'école de Comeauville, et au moment de son décès, le 28 janvier 1966, il était directeur adjoint de l'École supérieure de Clare, poste qu'il détenait depuis 8 ans. Très actif dans le domaine de l'éducation au niveau des activités extracurriculaires, Alain Doucet a toujours demontré un vif intérêt à connaître davantage le groupe ethnique dont il faisait partie. C'est pourquoi il s'est lancé sur une étude folklorique de son milieu. L'oeuvre que publia les Éditions Ferland en 1965 demeure l'étude ethnologique la plus exhaustive sur les Acadiens de la Baie Sainte-Marie et a grandement contribué à la préservation du patrimoine folklorique acadien de la Nouvelle-Écosse. Alain Doucet laissa dans le deuil son épouse, Camillette (née Comeau) ainsi que deux enfants, Adrienne et Joël.

Captain Francis K. Grant was a Wallace sea captain. He was born at Wallace in 1836. He married Matilda Nicholson, who was born in 1837, probably the daughter of Wallace shipbuilder Nichol Nicholson. Grant was the commander of the brig Cleo and the barque Cupid. Following Matilda's death in 1917, Captain Francis K. Grant died in 1920.