THE TRUEMANS.
WILLIAM TRUEMAN was born in Yorkshire, England, in the year 1720, and emigrated to America with his family in the year 1775.They were probably passengers in the ship JENNIE, Captain Foster, which came to Halifax that spring with a number of emigrants from Yorkshire.The family consisted of William Trueman, his wife Ann, and their son William, an only child, a young man in his twenty-fourth year.
Billsdale* was the name of the township they left in the Old Country.
They were Methodists in religion, but had been members of the Episcopal Church and brought with them the prayer-books and commentaries of that communion.
[FOOTNOTE: *Billsdale, Westside Township, is a long moorland township of widely scattered houses on the west side of the Rye, extending from six to eight miles N.N.W.from Helmsley, and is mainly the property of the Earl Haversham.Its area is 4,014 acres; its land rises on lofty fells at Rydale Head.Hawnby parish includes the five townships of Hawnby, Arden, Billsdale, Westside, Dale Town, and Snillsby, the area of the parish being 24,312 acres.END OF FOOTNOTE]
In addition to his business as a farmer, William Trueman, senior, had taken the legal steps necessary in England to enable him to work as a joiner if he were so inclined.The son William had been engaged in the dry goods business a year or two before coming to Nova Scotia.
After landing at Halifax they came by schooner to Fort Cumberland, and very soon after settled about four miles from the fort at Point de Bute, then called Prospect.
There does not seem to have been many of the name left in Yorkshire at this time, and those who were in Billsdale and vicinity shortly moved to other parts of the country.A nephew of the first William, named Harmon, moved to another township, married, and had a family of ten children.Mary, Harmon's youngest daughter, married a man named Brown, and they called one of their sons Trueman Brown.Charles, a son of Trueman, spent a year at Prospect in the eighties, and Harmon, a brother of Charles, visited the home in 1882-83.I have not been able to trace the family in Yorkshire in any but this one branch.There is a photograph at Prospect of John Trueman, a son of the Harmon here mentioned, which shows a strong likeness to some of the family in this country.