Lois Legge - Wounded Hearts: Memories of the Halifax Protestant Orphans Home

The names appear like phantoms on paper, buried deep in tattered records from another time.

Bess Hooper, sevendied of unknown causes in 1859.

Sarah Churley, twelvedied of some affection of the brain in 1876.

Five children, unnameddied of diphtheria in 1880.

Other orphanage inmates emerge as numbersadmitted or discharged, adopted or claimed.

Some of the Halifax Protestant Orphans Homes past is long lost, stored only in the memories of survivors. Some of it is incompletedetails missing among these yellowed records, in faded folders, tied with string.

The collection of annual reports, financial records, meeting minutes, letters, and handwritten notesstored at Nova Scotia Archivesincludes sanitized or mundane versions of a time former residents describe as far more sinister. Although occasionally, in later orphanage records, glimpses of a darker reality also emerge.

This photo of Halifax Protestant Orphanage founder Robert Uniacke hangs in the former orphanage building that is now known as Veith House. (Author photo)

The oldest of the documents are frayed now. And faded.

So fragile they cant be photographed or photocopied.

So thin they sometimes crumble to the touch.

Most veil as much as they reveal about the little waifs who were snatched as brands from the burning and rescued by their Heavenly Fathers love.

What happened to these childrenlittle wanderers and little outcastsin the days of paupers and poor houses, of orphanages and asylums, of pity and piety?

No one will ever know. Most of their stories arent written down or remembered.

But for the founder of the privately run institutionoverseen by an all-male board of governors and the Ladies Committee; staffed by all-powerful matronsits a different story.

By most accounts , Robert Fitzgerald Uniacke was a kindly pastor who dedicated his life to helping the poorespecially poor children.

Whatever became of his orphanage later on, his intentions appear to have been good, if tinged by the evangelical fires of his faith and the traditions of the times.

Old records portray a man who worked tirelessly on behalf of those less fortunate than himself, including the adults he ministered and the children who eventually ended up in his orphanage.

He took over as pastor of St. Georges Church, a congregation that then encompassed a wide geographical area of Halifax, in 1825, and he remained until his death in 1870.

During that time, according to archival accounts, he displayed an unwavering dedication to the taskfrom leading decades-long expansions to his parish, to building schools for the poor, to founding other churches, and, eventually, to founding the orphanage.

As Canon Henry Ward Cunninghamthe rector of St. Georges in the early 1900swrites in his History of St. Georges Church , Uniackes ministry went well beyond the church. He tended to the poor and the sick, in a time and in a city often plagued by poverty and deadly disease.