Antigonish had been the location of an annual
Mi'kmaq summer coastal community prior to European settlement. The original definition of the name has been lost as the
Mi'kmaq language has undergone many revisions over the last two centuries. The first European settlement took place in 1784 when Lt. Colonel
Timothy Hierlihy of the
Royal Nova Scotia Volunteer Regiment received a large land grant surrounding
Antigonish Harbour. Hierlihy and his party founded the Dorchester settlement, named for
Sir Guy Carleton, who was
Governor General of Canada and subsequently Lord Dorchester. Shortly after, Sgt Nathan Pushee of the
Duke of Cumberland's Regiment settled at Chedabucto (present-day
Guysborough), eventually establishing present-day
Amherst, Nova Scotia. In 1796 another settler named Zephaniah Williams (of which Williams Point just outside of town was named after), with the assistance of a
First Nations guide, blazed a trail from Antigonish Harbour to Brown's Mountain, using the shortest route. This trail became a guide for travellers and eventually evolved into a winding Main Street. By the late 1820s, Dorchester was commonly referred to as Antigonish. In 1852, a newspaper,
The Casket, began publication. It was purchased by Bounty Print in 2015.
St. Francis Xavier University was established in Antigonish in 1855, having been founded in 1853 in
Arichat,
Cape Breton and originally called the College of East Bay after
East Bay, Nova Scotia where an earlier institution had once existed (1824–1829). St.F.X. was originally a Catholic
seminary and was granted full university powers in 1866 by an act of the
Nova Scotia House of Assembly. The town is also the episcopal seat of the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish. The first hospital in Antigonish opened on June 10, 1906. Antigonish is notable for having a social movement named for it, the
Antigonish Movement, launched from St. Francis Xavier University in the 1920s by local priests and educators including
Moses Coady and
Jimmy Tompkins. == Demographics ==