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The Homestead - Pugwash, Nova Scotia
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Our family lived in Pugwash and the surrounding area from the late-1700's through the early part of the 20th century. In the original town survey, they had a plot of land slightly to the south of this house and this property belonged to a family named Pineo. In the early 1800's my great-great-great(?) grandfather Oliver King married Lavinia Pineo, so I assume that is how the house came into our family's hands. This house, which continued to be known as Pineo Lodge, would have left the family, I would guess, in the 1920's. My great-grandfather was killed in WWI, and I know that by WWII, my great-grandmother had left Pugwash for Amherst, NS. I have a great aunt in Sydney, NS, who was the one who identified this as the family house. I never met her. I am surmising the rest of the details, so some of the accuracy may be suspect.
An alternative explanation could be that our family owned a separate house in Pugwash that Eaton bought as well. This fits other details I have that suggest a later ancestor lived in a different part of town. The thing that keeps me thinking that this was the house is that my aunt mentions it by name.
This house came to prominence because of a later owner. A Pugwash-born industrialist named Cyrus Eaton bought the house (I have no idea whether he bought it from our family or there was another owner in between. In the late 1950's, he hosted the first of the "Pugwash Conferences" in this house. These conferences drew some of the great thinkers of the day and they discussed world peace and nuclear disarmament. In the depths of the Cold War, this was pretty forward thinking. The Pugwash Conferences now get held all over and were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. When Eaton died, he left the house to the town. It is now a conference centre.
Eaton also had a school built in the area for a beloved teacher, Margaret King. She was part of another branch of the family.
I would love at some point to get some more details on the house. I would like to verify that it actually was part of the family, when this was, and when it was sold.
This house seems to have had two major additions. I don't know when they were put on. It may well have been Eaton who did them. The centre appears to be original.
The major claim to fame right now of Pugwash is that it is the home of Seagull Pewter.
