Deborah Cottman (How)

Loyalist educator and poet known as ‘Portia’

Deborah Cottman (1728 – 1806) was a Loyalist, a teacher, and one of the early women poets in Atlantic Canada. A determined educator and founder of multiple schools for girls, she also published poetry under the pen name Portia – a voice of grace and strength that continues to echo through the generations.

Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Deborah Cawley and Edward How, a leading merchant and official on Grassy Island, off Canso, Nova Scotia. Although her parents briefly returned to Massachusetts for her birth, they soon settled back on Grassy Island, where Deborah spent her early years and likely received her education at home. The family remained there between 1732 and 1744, until war intervened.

Deborah was married, at a very early age, to Samuel Cottman in 1743. At the time, Britain and France were competing for power and land in North America and in 1744 Canso fell to the French. Deborah’s daughter Martha was only eleven days old when many families, including the Cottman’s, were removed as prisoners of war and sent to Boston but the family soon moved to Salem, Massachusetts where Deborah opened a school for young ladies. She appears to have stayed in Salem for several years.

After the American War of Independence, she and Samuel, along with other Loyalists, moved to Halifax and by 1777 she was again operating a ‘French Academy’ for young ladies. The school taught reading, writing, arithmetic and French. Dancing and sewing were also taught. Many former students spoke very highly of the education they received at her school but, in general, the Halifax community did not appreciate her importance and so in 1786, when the Loyalist community in New Brunswick asked her to relocate her school to St. John she readily agreed.

In addition to teaching, Deborah Cottman was also a very accomplished poet and wrote under the pen name ‘Portia’. She was undoubtably the source of inspiration for both her students and certainly for her great-granddaughter, Grizelda Elizabeth Cottman Tonge who became a well-known poet and who had several of her poems published. In the March 5, 1825, issue of the Acadian Recorder, her poem ‘To My Dear Grandmother On her 80th Birth Day’, was published.

By 1793 Deborah had returned to Halifax but her final days were spent at her daughter’s Martha’s home in Windsor where she is buried.