Author: Shiels, Andrew
Biography:
SHIELS, Andrew (1793-1879: ancestry.com)
The greater part of Shiels's literary life is outside the scope of this bibliography, most of his verse publications appearing in the 1860s and 70s, but the pattern was set as early as 1831 with the appearance of The Witch of the Westcot in Halifax, from the press of Joseph Howe, owner of the Novascotian newspaper. He was born in Oxnam, Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, son of George and Margaret (Mather) Shiels. He married a woman named Ellen, her surname not known, in 1814, and in 1818 they emigrated to Nova Scotia, where he earned his living as a blacksmith, first in Halifax (to 1826) and then in Dartmouth, where he also bought a farm and later a carding mill at a place he named Ellenvale. He began contributing poems to the local newspapers under the pseudonym "Albyn" (or "Scotland"). In the preface to his first collection of poetry he outlines some of the difficulties faced by an expatriate, uneducated Scot ("unacquainted even with the simplest elements of education"), but acknowledges authorial ambition as a primary motive. His wife having died in 1846, in 1847 he married Isabella Blair (d 1885). According to DCB, Shiels had a large family of children with his two wives, but most of them died young. He became a notable member of the community: JP in 1848, stipendiary magistrate in 1857, and in 1860 a member of the commission for the relief of insolvent debtors in Halifax County. He died in Dartmouth and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. (DCB 31 Oct. 2020; findagrave.com 31 Oct. 2020; ancestry.com 31 Oct. 2020) HJ