Diary of Adolphus Gaetz, The

Full text: INTRODUCTION about a decade after that he was promoted to Lieutenant. He did duty as a juror and he was the foreman of the Grand Jury. He was a trustee of schools, an overseer of the poor, a church warden, and a commissioner for giving relief to insolvent debtors. In 1847 he was appointed County Treas- urer, an office which he held for over fourteen years. On May 1, 1855, he received the appointment of Clerk of Licenses for the County. On January 18, 1860, he was commissioned as Registrar of the Court of Probate for Lunenburg County, and he filled that office for eight years. Mr. and Mrs. Adolphus Gaetz had a family of six,—three sons and three daughters. Their first child was a daughter, Anna Frederica, who was born on June 11,1834 and who died at the age of eight months. The others grew to adulthood. The second child was Henry Reginald, who was born on December 29,1835. He became a clerk in the store of his uncle, William N. Zwicker in Lunenburg, and he held a commission of First Lieutenant in the Lunenburg Militia. On February 25, 1866, he married Martha Eliz- abeth Frederick. The third child was Amelia Caroline, who was baptized on March 19, 1837, and who died in New York on April 11, 1872. The fourth child was Eliza Matilda, who was born on December 11, 1838. The fifth child was Arnold John, who was born on May 29, 1841 and who grew up and moved to New York, where he was an employee of A. T. Stewart & Co., a large dry goods establishment. The last child was William Adolphus, who was born on May 6,1845, who became a First Lieutenant in the Lunen- burg Militia, who worked in his uncle's store in Lunenburg, and who, like his father before him, was appointed Registrar of Probate for Lunenburg County. After being Registrar of Probate until the end of September 1923, William Adolphus Gaetz moved from Lunenburg to Ottawa, where his son Jack then resided. Adolphus Gaetz, the diarist, died of heart disease in Lunenburg, N.S., on April 12, 1873, at the age of 69. m When Adolphus Gaetz took up residence in this South Shore town, Lunenburg was a compact, tidy, community of upwards of 100 houses, with a population of about 1,000, in a county having about 9,000 people. It was noted for its beauty of situation, as well as for its neatness in appear- ance. "It is built upon the ascent of a hill," so stated a reporter in the Novascotian of November 2, 1826, "which rises gently from the water's edge, and has a southern aspect. A number of substantial wooden houses, some of them neatly painted, arrest the glance of the observer; three churches with spires shoot up in the midst of them, & wharves with stores project from the base into the water. It is flanked to the right by a lofty elevation upon the crown of which a kind of tower is erected; further on a cultivated island shuts the view of the sea; in front and across the harbour, land gently sloped and cultivated in regular fields inclines upwards with a verdant aspect, while to the left the scenery of a distant settlement called