Higgins family sites monument

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

The Advertiser

NovaNewsNow.com

Strong family values have resulted in a new monument marking the location of the church at the Lower Horton Cemetery.

The old United church burned down in 1961, but members of the Higgins family remember it fondly. They placed the monument in memory of their parents, David and Myrtle.

The family moved to Kentville from Masstown in 1923 and then several years later settled in Hortonville and grew to 13 children.

David Higgins was a blacksmith who became a machinist. He and his wife had five boys and eight girls. According to granddaughter Mary Smeltzer, they all attended the old church and were educated at the schoolhouse across the way.

In 1950, the widowed Myrtle transplanted to Halifax where most of her older children were working.

Jean Higgins Magee says she and her siblings were somehow closer due to the size of the family. “My mother was very family-oriented. We never fought. It would have been too noisy. There were no rifts.”

Today the extended family holds two functions every year, in December and during the summer. Sometimes 80 people turn out.

Two or three years ago, said Bob Van Buskirk, they decided to do “something to honour the memory of those who went before us. We had quite a few ideas of how to celebrate, but this is the one we agreed upon.”

Ron and Eva Van Buskirk led the dedication service Sept. 9. He said, “we gather together to dedicate this monument as a lasting reminder for each of us assembled here today and for generations to come of the value of a loving family and how it shapes our lives and even the community in which we live.”