The township was named after Edward Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
[1] While the name has fallen into disuse on maps, overshadowed by the growth of individual towns and villages within the township, many historical places and documents refer to Cornwallis.
After the French colonists, the Acadians were commanded to leave Nova Scotia in the Great Expulsion, the area was relatively desolate.
In the early 1760s the Planters brought with them the colonial pattern of land division; each town or township was to contain one hundred thousand acres.
A generation after the Planters, a sudden influx of United Empire Loyalist settlers arrived to escape the Revolutionary War in New England further changing township settlements.