New England Planters

The farmers settled mainly on the rich farmland of the Annapolis Valley and in the southern counties of what is now New Brunswick but was then part of Nova Scotia.

The movement of some 2,000 families from New England to Nova Scotia in the early 1760s was a small part of the much larger migration of the estimated 66,000 who moved to New York's Mohawk River Valley, to New Hampshire, and to what later became the states of Vermont and Maine.

The Planters were soon joined by Ulster and Yorkshire emigrants from Britain and United Empire Loyalists, who left New York and the New England colonies after the American War of Independence in 1783.

However, the Planters laid the foundations of many still-existing communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and their political and religious traditions (see Henry Alline) had important influences on the culture of the region.

They are also commemorated by a Parks Canada exhibit at the Kings County Museum in Kentville, Nova Scotia.