The ‘sewers’ are the ditches used to drain water from the marsh, especially after marshland had been enclosed by dykes. The task of the Commissioners of Sewers was to manage both drainage and dyke building and maintenance. Legislation providing for the appointment of Commissioners of Sewers dates from 1760 in Nova Scotia (which at that time included present day New Brunswick). Operating through the Court of General Session initially (which regulated a variety of local affairs such as road building, fence-viewing, and fence regulations as well as dealing with civil suits), Commissioners of Sewers were able to impose levies on land-owners, at rates set by the General Session. These rates were to be paid in ‘work, wheat or butter,' for the reclamation of marshland and the building and repair of ditches and dykes. The micro-scale geographies of the activities of the Commissioners of Sewers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a key means of intensifying agricultural production on the Tantramar Marshes. Marsh hay was an increasingly valuable product with an expanding market throughout the nineteenth century in particular. The documents selected here demonstrate the way in which the management of the marshes brought together the pursuit of individual economic gain with a strategy of collective action whereby the whole agricultural community benefitted.

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