Alexander McNutt

Who was Alexander McNutt?

Alexander McNutt 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 Staunton, Virginia. In 1756 he was an officer in the Virginia militia on Major Andrew Lewis's 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 in 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 area of Nova Scotia.