Following the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, the area was settled by New England Planters in 1760 who named the river after the townships established along its banks. The river became known as the Horton River. after Horton Township, the major Planter settlement at the mouth of the river, named after the ancestral home of George Montagu-Dunk, the official in charge of English settlement in Nova Scotia. However, in the 19th century, settlement and commercial growth moved upriver to the Kentville area in Cornwallis Township, named after Edward Cornwallis, first governor of Nova Scotia. As a result, the river assumed the name Cornwallis River by 1829.