- Municipality of the District of Argyle Fonds 1879-1926
- Scope and Content
- Series A: Minutes 1880-1926
- Series B: Reports to Municipal Council 1880-1918
- Series C: Provincial/Municipal Legislation 1880-1925
- Series D: Deeds and other Legal Agreements 1880-1925
- Series E: Financial Records 1880-1927
- Series F: Argyle Officers/Employee Records 1879-1926
- Series G: Correspondence 1880-1926
- Series H: Petitions 1880-1924
- Series I: Elections 1879-1926
- Series J: Road & Bridge Records 1880-1918
- Series K: Overseers of the Poor Records 1880-1925
- Series L: Poor Farm Records 1898-1926
- Series M: Public Health Records 1882-1926
- Series N: Militia 1917-1918
- Series O: Railways 1894-1899
- Series P: Fire Prevention 1879-1926
- Series Q: Animal Control 1880-1900
- Series R: Jury Lists 1916-1926
- Appendix 1- Correspondence Item List
- Appendix 2- Published Minutes in Broadsheet/poster format
- Appendix 3- Minute Book Descriptions
- Appendix 4- Municipal Clerks & Chief Administrative Officers
- Municipality of the District of Argyle Fonds 1879-1926
- Scope and Content
- Series A: Minutes 1880-1926
- Series B: Reports to Municipal Council 1880-1918
- Series C: Provincial/Municipal Legislation 1880-1925
- Series D: Deeds and other Legal Agreements 1880-1925
- Series E: Financial Records 1880-1927
- Series F: Argyle Officers/Employee Records 1879-1926
- Series G: Correspondence 1880-1926
- Series H: Petitions 1880-1924
- Series I: Elections 1879-1926
- Series J: Road & Bridge Records 1880-1918
- Series K: Overseers of the Poor Records 1880-1925
- Series L: Poor Farm Records 1898-1926
- Series M: Public Health Records 1882-1926
- Series N: Militia 1917-1918
- Series O: Railways 1894-1899
- Series P: Fire Prevention 1879-1926
- Series Q: Animal Control 1880-1900
- Series R: Jury Lists 1916-1926
- Appendix 1- Correspondence Item List
- Appendix 2- Published Minutes in Broadsheet/poster format
- Appendix 3- Minute Book Descriptions
- Appendix 4- Municipal Clerks & Chief Administrative Officers
Scope and Content
This fonds consists of records created or received by the Municipality of Argyle while carrying out its normal business activities. Some activities are business/administrative, such as elections, and some are more operational, such as the administration of roads & bridges. This fonds is divided into eighteen series of records including council minutes, reports to Municipal Council, provincial and municipal legislation, land records, financial records, officers’ and employees’ records, correspondence, petitions, municipal election records, road and bridge records, Overseers of the Poor records, Poor Farm records, public health records, militia records, dealings with railways, fire prevention, animal control and jury lists.
The Minutes of Municipal Council, as recorded by the Municipal Clerk and Treasurer in the Council’s minute books, provide the best overall view of the activities of Argyle’s municipal government. For the time period covered by this fonds, there were relatively few active committees and the only other minutes found in the fonds are for the Board of Health, Overseers of the Poor and the Mayflower Engine Co. (Tusket’s Fire Dept.), and many of these minutes deal more with financial than administrative functions.
The Municipality of Argyle was also responsible for compiling lists of their citizens who were eligible for jury duty and were responsible for keeping these lists current.
The records found in this fonds concerning the administration of justice deal mainly with joint expenditures for court and sheriff services after 1925, and with the compilation of jury lists.
The records are arranged essentially in chronological order within each series or sub-series. Item lists, which were compiled by grant workers in the 1980s, have been retained, when possible, and added as appendices to the end of this finding aid.
Municipal records for the Municipality of the District of Argyle and for the Township of Argyle have been divided into four fonds for purely practical reasons. The pre 1926 records for both the municipality and the township were arranged, and item lists compiled, by relatively inexperienced and untrained grant workers in the early 1980′s. The original order of these records had hence been compromised. After sufficient RAD training, the current archivist decided the most practical course to follow was to apply RAD first to the municipal records for the period 1926-1986, which had retained much of their original order.
In 1997, through a retro-conversion grant from the CCA, it was decided to attempt to apply RAD to the pre 1926 records. Where possible item lists were retained and added as appendices to the finding aids. Otherwise, records were arranged into series that were felt to resemble the ways in which they were originally created and used.
Grant workers with limited training had also previously isolated the taxation records from the body of other municipal records. It was decided in 1997 that these records should be kept together and form a fonds of its own, because of the specific demands made on these records by users. This decision was also taken to avoid the massive job that would have been involved in re-arranging the taxation records yet another time.
Notes:
Title based on contents of fonds.
The majority of the fonds is in English; however, some of the correspondence is in French.
Restrictions on access apply to some of the records within the following series: Overseers of the Poor (Series K), Poor Farm (Series L), and Public Health (Series M). Records which are restricted are closed to the public for 80 years from the date of their creation.
Credit must be given to the Argyle Township Court House Archives when material from this fonds is used or reproduced.
Further accruals are possible.
Related groups of records in different fonds:
- Municipality of the District of Argyle Taxation Fonds (1863-1986) – RG1
- Township of the District of Argyle Fonds (1771-1879) – RG 2
- Municipality of the District of Argyle Fonds (1926-1986) – RG 4
- Argyle Township Court House & Gaol Fonds (18__-19__ ) RG5
- Municipal School Board of the District of Argyle Fonds (1860-1982)– RG 10
- Town of Wedgeport Records (1910-1947)-TMS34
- Photograph collection for photographs of Councilors and Wardens
This project has been made possible by financial assistance from the federal government, through the National Archives of Canada, the Canadian Council of Archives, through their Control of Holdings Program, and through Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions. Financial assistance and advisory support has also been provided by the Council of Nova Scotia Archives and their Outreach Archivist, Johanna Smith.
October 1997