Acadiensis/Volume 2/Number 1/Bluenose

S to the origin of this word and its early application to the people of this province, I would refer to my note in Vol. I of the New Brunswick Magazine, p. 380. My authority for the statement there made is to be found in the N. S. letters of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the noted Loyalist Rector of Annapolis. The struggle for political supremacy between the Loyalist and pre-loyalist inhabitants of Western Nova Scotia in the provincial elections of 1785, and the special election held in this county in the following year in consequence of the unseating of the successful Loyalist candidates, was marked by surpassing acerbity and virulence. Perhaps in this respect it has never been exceeded in this province, the later contests being shortened, and the excitement mitigated by the simultaneous polling, unknown in the eighteenth century. Mr. Bailey's feelings were warmly enlisted in the cause of his fellow Loyalists, and he makes frequent mention of the struggle and its incidents. To his friend, Peter Fry, Esq., at Halifax, on November 18th, 1785, he writes of the pre-loyalist party, "The Bluenoses, to use a vulgar appellation, who had address sufficient to divide the Loyalists, exerted themselves to the utmost of their power and cunning. They seem to have adopted the resolution of Queen Juno: Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo."

On July 6th, 1786, writing to Rev. Dr. Peters, in London, he mentions several deplorable conditions of life in Nova Scotia, among them; "Violent contentions between the Loyalists and the old inhabitants called Bluenoses."

Unlike the term "copperhead," applied in the north to northern sympathizers with the southern cause during the ​American Civil war, the nickname seems to be a harmless one, not carrying any moral reproach, or sinster suggestion: and one is almost disposed to suspect that the pre-loyalist settlers had been already called Bluenoses by the people of the more southern colonies, perhaps in sarcastic allusion to the supposed effect of our colder winters on the human complexion, and that the Loyalists brought the word with them and used it as a convenient and disrespectful designation for the old settlers. But this is mere conjecture, and against it is the fact that Mr. Bailey deemed it necessary to explain it to these two New England Loyalists Whatever its origin as the name of a species of potato, I conclude it was first applied to people in the County of Annapolis not earlier than the arrival of the Loyalists. On September 28th, 1787, Mr. Bailey advised Rev. S. Parker, at Boston, of the shipment to him of six barrels of potatoes, of which No. 5 consists of "rose and blue noses."