FORT LAWRENCE, NOVA SCOTIA—Parks Canada archaeologist Charles Burke has found an intact, eighteenth-century surface at the site of Fort Lawrence, a British defensive structure overlooking the Isthmus of Chignecto, which connects Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. “Just inside the walls of the fort we encountered what we call essentially a 1750 walking surface,” Burke told CBC News. Fort Lawrence was abandoned in 1755 after the British took the French Fort Beauséjour, located across the border, and renamed it Fort Cumberland. Burke’s team also uncovered the brick-lined cellar of a large home built by Col. Joseph Morris at the site in 1762. “It would be the first house built in the area after the British military abandoned the property,” he said. The home was burned in 1776 after American sympathizer Jonathan Eddy’s failed attack on Fort Cumberland. Eddy was father-in-law to Morris’s daughter. “It seems likely and you can’t help but imagine that discussions about planning for the attack on Fort Cumberland in 1776 very likely occurred in or near that house,” Burke said. To read more about Canadian archaeology, go to "Canada Finds Erebus."
