[3] The village was once part of the Acadian settlement of Rivière-aux-Canards who created dykes along the river beginning in the late 1600s.

After the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, the area around Port Williams was settled by the New England Planters in 1760 as part of Cornwallis Township.

In the spring of 1781, Samuel Bayard (promoted to major on February 9, 1781) was ordered to take a detachment of King's Orange Rangers overland from Halifax to Cornwallis (near present-day Port Williams) to overawe local Planters who were planning to erect a Liberty Pole and thereby break with the King.

There they fixed bayonets and "with bright weapons glittering, colours flying and drums beating, they marched up Church Street and back to Town Plot, where the barracks stood."

Months after the arrival of the King's Orange Rangers, American privateers were captured by the local militia in the Battle of Blomindon.

Bayard took an interest in the Annapolis Valley, and after the war he took up a grant of 4,730 acres (1,910 ha) at Wilmot Mountain.

A few months before disbandment, Brigadier-General Henry Edward Fox expressed: ... the great satisfaction he has received in seeing the two provincial battalions of Royal N.S.