Alexander McNutt

Alexander McNutt (1725, near Derry, Ireland – 1811, Lexington, Virginia) was a British Army officer, colonist and land agent, responsible for seeing an approximate 500 Ulster Scottish emigrants arrive in Nova Scotia during the early 1760s. McNutt emigrated to America some time before 1753 by which time he had settled in the town of Staunton, Virginia. In 1756 he was an officer in the Virginia militia on Major Andrew Lewis's Sandy Creek Expedition against the Shawnees on the Ohio River. By September 1758 McNutt had relocated to Londonderry, New Hampshire, a town settled by Ulster Scots. Between April and November 1760, McNutt served as a Massachusetts captain at Fort Cumberland near the present-day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, five years after the Expulsion of the Acadians. It was during this time that he became involved in the colonization of Nova Scotia. He concerned himself with the Cobequid Townships of Truro and Londonderry. Through McNutt's efforts, a group of fifty families from New Hampshire arrived in the spring of 1761 in the Cobequid (Truro) area of Nova Scotia. He had several proposals for settlement of some 7,000 to 8,000 Protestant Irish in Nova Scotia accepted by the Board of Trade in London, but he was not successful in getting the support of the Privy Council who feared such an out-migration would harm British interests in Ireland. He nevertheless went to the Ulster with just the Board of Trade's approval to seek out emigrants. In the spring of 1761 he advertised throughout Ulster with an offer to "industrious farmers and useful mechanics" of of land to the head of a family and 50 to each member. His effort resulted in 300 colonists arriving in Halifax in October on the ships Hopewell and Nancy.