The development of lumbering and milling in Queens County began along the Medway River in the early 1760s, soon after the county's original settlers had arrived from New England.

 Samuel Mack, who hailed from Connecticut, came to Mill Village in 1764 and, so enamoured with the prospect of the site and the state of the river, he purchased the surrounding land and milling sites from two settlers, named Smith and Mosley, who had previously established homesteads in the area.

 As fate had it, Mr. Mack passed on within a short period of time and his land and business fell into his wife's hands. Eventually, Mrs. Mack remarried and her new husband took over the business and proceeded to prosecute a modest milling operation along the river.

 Over the final three decades of the 18th century, the population of Mill Village grew, with some residents engaged in fishery and farming, while others continued exploiting the forest along the river by operating small mills.

 By 1829, renowned author and historian Thomas Chandler Haliburton had visited the region, and in his written remembrances, he remarked on the abundance of well-built houses and wealthy families residing in the Mill Village area.

 He also noted that the community had a spacious Methodist chapel and its own schoolhouse.

 And while the land that surrounded the river was suitable for agriculture, and thus encouraged many different farming operations, the most profitable ventures onthe river involved exporting lumber.

 Among the most prolific lumbering businesses along the Medway was one run by Edward Doran Davison. Young Edward was born in June of 1819 in Mill Village, but before he was even 12 years of age, tragedy had claimed the lives of both of his parents, Samuel and Eleanor.

 Raised for most of his youth by his aunt, Catherine Doran, Edward was brought up in an environment that placed a premium on understanding the value of the land and how to properly run a business.

 In due time, Davison inherited a modest farm, as well as fish and lumbering businesses, from his mother's estate, learning the basics of administration from his aunt until 1837 when, at the age of 18, he had taken over primary control of the operation.

 Between the late 1830s and the 1850s, Davison put his mechanical genius and affinity for the lumber business to work, building Queens County's first steam-powered milling operation along the Medway River.

 Davison reinvested the surplus money he earned selling his product into acquiring additional land in the interior of the county, thereby increasing the available land his labourers could harvest from.

 But in 1849, Davison's plans for Mill Village and the Medway system took an abrupt turn.

 That year, a major fire swept through a significant portion of Davison's land holdings - which by that point totalled more than 10,000 acres along the Medway River system - doing substantive damage to the area's forestry.

 By the 1850s, having lost much of his potential harvesting areas to the fire, and with natural regrowth still decades away, Davison was forced to search elsewhere for fertile timbering territory.

 Wisely, Davison sold his stock in the Medway operations to Benjamin Johnstone & Co.

 Johnstone, believing that there was adequate timber in the immediate area to sustain further lumbering operations indefinitely, expanded the Medway mill and continued to operate it profitably for several years.

 By the end of the 1860s, Johnstone and other smaller operators were harvesting up to 20 million board feet of lumber annually from the Medway region.

 Eventually, however, the surplus of accessible, usable wood on the Medway system began to dry up. Multiple fires had done a significant amount of damage, particularly the larger blaze of 1849 that so effectively marred the countryside.

 Johnstone ultimately was forced to close the business, sell off the land holdings and return to the United States for the final years of his life.

 Meanwhile, ever the shrewd businessman, Edward Doran Davison took the money he had made from the sale of the Medway mills and reinvested it in lumbering operations in neighbouring Lunenburg County, along the LaHave River in the 1860s.

 The first mill Davison purchased, the Glenwood Mill located near Bridgewater, had been the victim of flooding during a difficult spring, and a significant amount of equipment had been lost. Davison offered to purchase the property in 1865 and, after such a disastrous spring, the offer was gladly accepted.

 In order to ensure that such damage was not done again, Davison reinforced the support structures surrounding the mill. Impressed with the potential the LaHave River area offered, not to mention that most of the milling operations on the river were still quite small, Davison elected to invest his full energy and experience into developing a new series of mills along the LaHave system.

 After purchasing a number of smaller mills from locals, and a wealth of land along the upper reaches of the LaHave, Davison's business took off, and the LaHave River came to supplant others - including the Medway - as the chief source of lumber along Nova Scotia's South Shore.

 By the time the Davison business reached its height in the 1890s, upwards of 250,000 board feet of lumber was being produced daily, and more than 350 men in the county worked in one capacity or another for Davison and his sons.

 In the process of this massive expansion, the E.D. Davison and Sons Lumbering Company had acquired more than 200,000 acres of land in southern Nova Scotia, including land along the LaHave, Nictaux and, yes, even the Medway River - territory which Davison had reacquired at a discount some years later.

 Had it not been for the spark that wrought the devastating fire in Queens County in 1849, there is ample reason to believe that Mill Village and the Medway River system might have remained the centre of the Davison business empire.

 Edward had grown up in Mill Village, he had represented Queens County in government and he undoubtedly felt an affinity for the area which had given his family so much.

 As it happened, however, realizing the damage to the supply of lumber the blaze had caused, Davison removed his efforts to the neighbouring county. The result was that literally hundreds of jobs, and the wealth and prosperity associated with the wildly successful lumbering company, left Queens County with Davison.

 Sources: Pross, A. Paul, "Planning and Development: A Case of Two Nova Scotia Communities"; DesBrisay, M.B., "History of the County of Lunenburg"; More, James F., "The History of Queens County"; Pross, Catherine, "Davison, Edward Doran," from "Dictionary of Canadian Biography."

Written and researched by Patrick Hirtle.