The Village of Chester, approximately fifty miles west of the capital city of Halifax on Nova Scotia's south shore, is situated on a tree-clustered peninsula overlooking beautiful Mahone Bay and its many islands.

The Township of Chester is an area which encompasses one hundred thousand acres and stretches from Hubbards to Martin's River. The area was first settled in the middle of the eighteenth century, although there is some evidence that the French used this part of the Atlantic Coast as a fishing outpost well before 1750. 

The first settlers were English and German immigrants looking father afield than the already established settlements of Halifax and Lunenburg. A second wave of settlers arrived from the then English colony of New England, and in 1759 the Township of Shoreham, now Chester, was granted to Captain Timothy Houghton and seventy-three other settlers, mostly from the Massachusetts area. There were subsequent ebbs and flows in the population, with large numbers arriving in 1764, soon after the Seven Year's War, and again in 1783 when the Loyalists began their migration northward. Few Loyalists remained in the village, however.

The village of Chester became the Centre of the Township. By the end of the eighteenth century it was supplying Halifax with lumber and farm produce in considerable quantities. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as the population increased, the people of Chester began to diversify and specialize in their activities, and as early as 1850 tourism had become a factor in Chester's economy. It also had an influence on the architecture of the village, as the summer homes of the visitors and the hotels built to lodge them were much more elaborate than the simple Cape Cod houses of the original settlers.

Today Chester is a mixture of the original English, German, Scottish, Irish, and Loyalists settlers.

Chester Basin was settled in 1760 century and was part of the Shoreham Grant (mentioned above) of 1759 given to Captain Timothy Houghton and others, a number who were from the New England Colonies.

As time went on more communties started to develop and flurish in the area.

New Ross was founded on 7 Aug. 1816 when Capt. William Ross and 172 disbanded soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars arrived in the wilderness to take up their land grants along the proposed military road from Halifax to Annapolis. Sherbrooke (later New Ross) was the first of the military settlements made (probably the first such military settlement made in Canada) with soldiers from the Royal Nova Scotia Fencibles and the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles who where later augmented by disbanded soldiers from the 60th or German legion. For more information go to The New Ross Historical Society.

Blandford - According to the census of 1767, taken from Governor Franklin's return, there were on Blandford in that year:
41 men, 19 boys, 19 women, 16 girls, 72 Protestants, 23 Roman Catholics, 62 English, 22 Irish, 3 oxen and bulls, 8 cows, 10 young neat cattle, 60 swine, 18 fishing boats, 4 schooners and sloops, 508 quintals dry codfish, 1109 barrels of salmon, mackerel, etc., 1 barrel of oil.  Gradually the settlement grew.For more information go to The Blandford & Area Historical Society

Information and photos will be added to this site over time. If you have historicial information, photos or links to suggest concerning any of our communities in the Municipality, please conatct Angela.