The last barrack-master of the garrison is responsible for the planting of the trees which ornament the street from the fort to the Hillsdale Hotel. By the Court House an old French willow grows which served as a whipping-post for slaves. Next door to the Corbitt homestead is a cottage nearly two hundred years old known as the Barclay House. The first owners had many slaves. The mother of the family is buried outside the town with her black servants about her.
Judge Haliburton, who practised law in Annapolis before being elected to the Assembly, lived in a house next to the Clifton Hotel. The latter is near the business section of the long thoroughfare which curves from the old wharves to the hill above the town's best dwellings. On one of the occasional side streets there is a modest bake-shop where one may enter and buy a loaf of bread from a great-grandniece of Oliver Goldsmith. For two generations back, descendants of the poet's brother have lived in this part of Canada. One, also named Oliver Goldsmith, wrote in 1834 The Rising Village, based on the rejuvenation of St. John, N. B., and intended as a companion to The Deserted Village[1] of his illustrious uncle. There is a tree planted to his memory on Queen Square, St. John. On a farm outside Annapolis dwells another Oliver, but without poetic aspirations.
- ↑ The Deserted Village was Auburn, England.
