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Capt. John McDaniel (1816 – 1882) was the second son of Henry McDaniel (1787 – 1842) and Catherine (Umlah / Hemlow) McDaniel (1795 – 1868). John McDaniel and his brother James ran a regular packet service, and in 1864-5, “ John McDaniel and Co.” ran two schooners, between Halifax and Sherbrooke. John held many public offices in Sherbrooke (River Pilot, Inspector of Weights and Measures, Fish Inspector, Beef and Pork Inspector, Coal Measurer, Trustee of Booms, Trustee and later Commissioner of the Court House and Jail, sat on the Grand Jury, and later was a Magistrate, and Judge of the Court of Probate).

He established two ferry services, one across Wine Harbour to the gold diggings (1862) and the other across the St. Mary’s River below Sherbrooke, connecting Sherbrooke to the Goldenville mining district. He established a dock on his land on the western bank of the St. Mary’s River and worked to have a road opened between his wharf and the main road to Goldenville, then instituted a ferry service across the river.

He established McDaniel’s Hotel (Sherbrooke Hotel) ca 1863, in the village of Sherbrooke. He operated a carriage service to transport guests from the dock to the hotel. He operated a store, had a stable and wagon shed, ran a livery service and transported freight from the wharf to his store and made deliveries to Antigonish. John McDaniel married Mary Bent, daughter of William Bent (also known as William Trowbridge).

Ruby Lillian Kaiser was born in Sonora, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia in 1930. The daughter of Asa and Edna (Burns) Jordan, she had five siblings. Ruby held a life-long interest in the local history and genealogy of Sonora and area, and collected relevant photographs, newspaper clippings, obituaries, memorials, and other genealogy records. She was a member of Sonora Baptist Church, the Sonora branch of the Women’s Institute of Nova Scotia, Women’s Baptist Missionary Society, and the St. Mary’s Garden Club. She married Victor Kaiser in 1953 and they had three children.

The dissenting congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Sherbrooke was established as an entity on 29 March 1838. Prior to that time, various clergy visited or labored on a part-time basis with services being held in homes or the school. The first church building (meeting house) was erected ca 1820-24. In 1824, Rev. Alexander Lewis was ordained and Sherbrooke received one-quarter of his services. By 1847, there was a need for a new church and in 1852, a building committee was appointed. On 29 September 1855, the Sessions met for the first time in the new church. In 1859, the Secessionist Congregation of Sherbrooke passed a resolution favouring the union of the Free Church with the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia. With the establishment of the Historic Sherbrooke Village Restoration in the late 1960s, the church building was included as a part of the restoration but the congregation continued to worship in the building until 27 June 2007, at which time the Sherbrooke Presbyterian congregation was dissolved. The ownership of the building was transferred to the Province of Nova Scotia in 2010. The building is used for weddings, funerals, and special events, as well as being part of the living history museum, and is maintained by Historic Sherbrooke Village.

The Stewart family owned and operated Eleven Mile House (or 11 Mile House), an historic inn and coach stop near the forks of the St. Mary's River at Melrose, Guysborough County located eleven miles from Sherbrooke on the Antigonish to Sherbrooke road. Eleven Mile House was an important social and economic center for Melrose and surrounding areas, offering lodgings, meals, coaching services, and mail delivery. James Stewart (born around 1836, died 1887 and buried in Riverside Cemetery, Sherbrooke) married Margaret Bollong, the widow of Isaac Cumminger, in 1863 and together they had four children. Their third son, Harry Edwin Stewart (born November 11, 1869) went on to operate Eleven Mile House. He also farmed and lumbered, operated a store from the house, and was involved in provincial elections as a reviser of voting lists. He married Sarah Tate on October 18, 1892 and together they had three children. He died September 10, 1950 in Berwick, Nova Scotia, where his son, William C. Stewart, resided. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Aspen, Guysborough Co.

Sherbrooke Village Restoration grew from a citizens’ movement to preserve the historic streetscape of the village of Sherbrooke in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia in the mid-1960s. In 1969, the Sherbrooke Restoration Act was passed in the Nova Scotia Legislature, which appointed the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission as the body responsible for administering regulations on the orderly development and restoration of a large area within the village of Sherbrooke, creating a living history museum. The Commission became the body responsible for making decisions on any and all development issues in the historic area. Their decisions, based on the powers provided by the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission Act, supersede any provincial or municipal law within the designated area. Sherbrooke Village Restoration is administered by the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission under the direction of the Nova Scotia Museum, part of the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture, and Heritage. In 1970, restoration of buildings began and the first visitors were welcomed in 1971.

The St. Mary's Genealogy Research Centre at Sherbrooke Village was founded in 2011 by a group of community-based genealogists and local historians in response to the need to provide a place to collect, preserve, and share historic records and resources of the St. Mary's municipal area (the western portion of Guysborough County). Included in its holdings are genealogy and archival materials gathered and donated to Sherbrooke Village over many years. The mandate of the SMGRC is to:
–– acquire primary and secondary records which will aid in the research of the genealogical, social, business, and natural history of the Municipality of the District of St. Mary’s;
–– preserve and organize archival materials and published materials using the most current standards;
–– provide members and the general public with efficient access to the Research Centre’s holdings through finding aids and other search tools;
–– respond to reference questions and aid researchers in their objective.

Samuel Burton Sweet was born July 31, 1857 in Black Rock, Kings County, Nova Scotia to Lorana and Leander Sweet. He moved to the Country Harbour area of Guysborough County sometime after 1881, where he ran a store in Country Harbour Mines before moving his business interests to Goldenville sometime after 1894 and before 1901. He married Alice Cox Eaton and together they had twelve children. He died July 29, 1903 and he and his wife are buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, Cross Roads Country Harbour, Guysborough County.

Cumminger Bros. was a prominent firm in Sherbrooke, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia from ca. 1860s to the end of the 19th century. John Cumminger (born 1827 in Sherbrooke, died 1892) was the senior partner, and at least three of his brothers, Ebenezer, Isaac, and Samuel were involved in the firm. The firm owned Cumminger Bros. general store on Main or First St., Sherbrooke, where they imported and sold British and other foreign merchandise. Adjacent to the store was the shipyard, and John Cumminger also held interests in sawmilling and goldmining. The Cumminger Bros. general store building was restored in 1970 as part of Sherbrooke Village Restoration.

The International Order of Good Templars [I.O.G.T.] is a fraternal temperance organization founded in 1851 that promotes total abstinence from alcohol. The Mountain Glen Lodge no. 627 was founded in 1911 in the community of Glenelg, within the Municipality of the District of St. Mary's. Meetings were held in the Glenelg hall.

Robert Ramsay or R.R. Sinclair was born ca. 18 October 1842, likely in Sherbrooke, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia. His grandfather, Donald Sinclair, was a merchant who emigrated to Sherbrooke from Thurso, Scotland around 1807. He took with him his two sons, Alexander and William. Alexander married Margaret Ramsay (originally from Edinburgh) in 1830 and together they had ten children, including Robert Ramsay. The family were Anglican. Alexander and his family lived in Sherbrooke before settling in Liscomb, likely in the late 1850s or early 1860s, where they operated a large, successful sawmill, producing over 500,000 board feet of lumber, laths, and staves in 1871. After Alexander Sinclair died in 1866, the mill was operated by his sons Donald Smith, Robert Ramsay, and William James as Donald Sinclair and Bros. The brothers were also involved in shipbuilding, and the James R. Lithgow (1872) and the Three Cheers (1873) were built in their yard at Liscomb. In 1873, the Liscomb sawmill was sold, and R.R. Sinclair moved to Sherbrooke where he worked as a merchant through to the first decades of the 20th century, selling groceries and general provisions. His first store was near the McDaniel's Sherbrooke Hotel on Mill St., where he also boarded, and in 1900 he built a new store located on Main or First St., just past the bridge to Goldenville and across from Anderson's grocery store. The building was demolished in 2018. R.R. Sinclair was also a dealer and exporter of lumber and farm produce. While most of his clients and customers were farmers within the St. Mary's River region, as well as townspeople from the villages of Sherbrooke and Goldenville, he also supplied local gold mining and lumbering companies with provisions, and exported lumber to Nova Scotia building firms like Chappell Bros. in Sydney, Cape Breton. Local memory recalls that "Bob," as he was known, would buy "rafts" of lumber floated down the river from Caledonia, which he then exported on the coastal steamer, S.S. Dufferin. It is likely that Sinclair owned a sawmill on the Northwest Arm Brook in Sherbrooke, as well as a large tract of land on present-day Cameron Rd., listed as the "Sinclair Property" on the 1876 A.F. Church map of Sherbrooke, and where the R. Sinclair shipyard was also located. Sinclair built at least two schooners at his St. Mary's shipyard, the William Hayes in 1874 and the Marshall S. in 1876. At some point, he purchased 124 Cameron Rd, a large Gothic Revival house that had been built for his brother, Marshall Sinclair, a merchant in Goldenville. Later, in 1896, R.R. Sinclair purchased 8149 Main St,. Sherbrooke, which he owned until his death on 19 January 1914, in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He is buried in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia. R.R. Sinclair was also a member of the 4th Guysborough Regiment, a militia formed in response to the Fenian raids of 1866, serving in the Liscomb area. He remained a life-long bachelor.