The Shelburne County Museum is part of a museum complex in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

One of its centerpieces is one of the oldest fire pumpers in North America and one thought to be the oldest in Canada.

Leah Griffiths, curator of the museum, offered information about this piece of equipment: “The Newsham fire pumper was built in 1740, and purchased by the Shelburne Chamber of Commerce in 1785. Patented by English inventor Richard Newsham, the pumper was designed to be a ‘new water engine for quenching and extinguishing fires.’

“It was able to provide a continuous stream of water up to 45 meters (150 feet), and was available in six sizes. It was operated by using the levers and treadles to pump water through an air vessel and out of a pipe aimed at the fire.”

An article from the Hungerford Museum in the United Kingdom explained Newsham’s early fire pumps “were little more than open troughs with hand-powered pumps  on wheels.” The trough of the pumper would be filled with water using buckets, then inside the trough were two pistons attached to two large handles.

The operator would pump the handles up and down and this squeezed the pistons and pushed the water out of a swiveling copper spout on top of the pump.

After being removed from service, the Newsham pump residing in Shelburne was used as a flower box. Griffiths wrote, “It was bought by the Shelburne Fire Department in 1889 for $12, and was displayed during parades.

“The scarcity of these pumpers was such that in 1928, Henry Ford offered to purchase Shelburne’s pumper for his museum. Fortunately the pumper stayed, and in 1979 was sent to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa to be restored to its current condition.”

Although the pump appears to be almost like a big wooden toy, it was foremost in fire equipment at the time. The company built pumps into the 20th century.

After Newsham died in 1743, he passed his company on to his son, Lawrence. After Lawrence’s death, his wife took over and joined forces with her cousin George Ragg. Together the Newsham and Ragg pumps were still in use in the late 1930s.

The fire pump is just part of the information available at the Shelburne County Museum.

It also includes displays of Mi’kmaq, Loyalist, African and Welsh heritage, along with permanent exhibits of shipbuilding in Shelburne and the Shelburne Loyalists, and temporary and traveling exhibits.

The town of Shelburne has a unique history because this is where many of those who sided with King George III during the American Revolutionary War ended up. In 1783, 400 families of refugees arrived with the promise of free land, tools and provisions.

According to the walking tour map: “Within a year, the Town mushroomed to a population of 10,000. The region however, could not support so large a settlement, and most of the refugees moved back to England or to other parts or the province or to New Brunswick, while others returned to the United States.”

There is also a resource center which includes microfilms of 18th to 20th century Shelburne newspapers, private papers and Court of Session records. Genealogy of many Shelburne County families is also available.

For more information about the Shelburne County Museum and the Newsham Fire pump, log onto www.historicshelburne.com/scm.htm

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.