New Brunswick 19th Century Migration - International Institute

The Genealogical Divide
Thus far, we have noted immigrant groups and settlements, who they were and where they came from. By the time the 1861 census was taken New Brunswick, which is not that big, was almost full. The problem changes from “Where did they come from?” to “Where do they go?”


 * After this date very few of the new arrivals remained in the province. Most moved south or to other parts of Canada. A very small number stayed. In 1862 about fifty American Civil War draft-dodgers settled at Skedaddle Ridge behind St. Stephen. In the Early 1870’s a group of Danish immigrants founded the community of New Denmark. In the years after 1851 the population of New Brunswick continued to rise but it was primarily through natural increase rather than immigration. 

Some Stay Put - Some Go
Which is to say that the family farm, if the land was good, served to support one son’s family and probably the aged parents, often quite comfortably. If the land was not that good, and a lot was not, they might not live much better than the first pioneers. The members of a family that stayed on the family farm and raised another generation are the people whose marriages, births and deaths you will find in the local church records, in the census returns, and after 1888 the PANB vital record indexes.

Survival and Subsistence
Even quite prominent “establishment” families could fall on hard times, and for those less well off employment could be a “sometimes thing.” Nevertheless, for a hundred years, through the Great Depression of the 1930s, if you owned a piece of land, had a roof over your head, could keep a cow, some chickens, grow enough potatoes and vegetables, and had some skill at fishing and hunting, it was possible to survive and raise a family. There were trout in the brook, salmon in the river, lobsters in the bay, partridge in the fall, a moose or a couple of deer in the winter when it was cold enough to keep the meat. Send the children out to pick berries. Cut a little pulp-wood and sell it to the storekeeper for the flour, sugar and tea you needed, or work at some lumber camp.

It was not a comfortable life, particularly for the wife. Children had to leave home young. Girls might work as housemaids in the town and for the sons there were still labourers’ jobs, particularly if your politics were right. You can still tell when an election is coming by the increase in road repairs being done.

Those Who Go
Even prosperous farmers usually had more than one son, and the other brothers had to find work elsewhere: the lumber woods, the growing towns, the shipyards, the Boston States. Many got an education and moved into the professions in the growing towns, or the USA.

A recession or depression in Britain or the United States quickly spread to the Maritimes. A downturn in world trade would mean no market for lumber, or ships, and that meant no work. Mechanic Settlement, in rather bleak country 16 miles east of Sussex, was founded in 1843 by out-of-work mechanics and labourers from Saint John. A downturn in the late 1850s sent lumbermen and shipwrights off to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where I found them in the 1860 census. The water route was right there: sail down to New York, take a boat up the Hudson and the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes and so to Wisconsin.

Why did I look in Oshkosh? Because of an entry in a family history, The Genealogy of the Cleveland and Cleaveland Families compiled by Edmund J. Cleveland and Horace Gillette Cleveland (Hartford, Connecticut 1899):


 * Xenophon Cleveland has resided at Sussex to 1850, St. Johns [sic] to 1856, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to 1859, Moncton to 1866, Worcester to 1876, Moncton again to 1884, Waltham, Massachusett., 1885, Boston Massachusett., 1894, manufacturer of car head linings, artist. (#5688, page 1503).

The compilers apparently interviewed Xenophon Cleveland, and there were once some rough manuscript notes in the New Brunswick Museum. Xenophon knew most of his large family, his cousins, uncles and aunts. His information was not always correct, he thought his uncle, Lemuel Cleveland had died in Oshkosh in 1859 which sent me off to Wisconsin, where I found Lemuel and an extended family (Xenophon included), in several city directories. The American Civil War (1861-1865) drove a lot of them back to their wives and families, most of whom had remained at home.

Where Did They Go?
Ask yourself what skills they had? What does the family remember? or even mis-remember? Young, strong, unskilled men can go where the wood is being cut and milled; millwrights and other mechanics would be in demand there too. Blacksmiths are needed wherever horses work and they sometimes follow a railroad or canal as it is built. Shipbuilders are often skilled woodworkers.

Later in life, the Cleveland brothers seem to have developed some artistic talent to become decorative painters. By the 1880s, Xenophon and his brother George Miles Cleveland (#5690) were painting the canvas ceilings and head linings for the fancy railway coaches and could work anywhere railway cars were built or repaired. George returned to live in Moncton in 1882 working for the Inter-Colonial Railway.

Outmigration, to the USA, was ongoing, be it gold in California or jobs in the woods of Oregon and Washington state. Unless there were friends or family already established in Upper or Lower Canada, these colonies were not as popular destinations.

Strays
New Brunswick family historians, as well as family historians with roots in New Brunswick, are starting to work on the problem of where all these “Strays” went. Almost every issue of Generations will have some list such as these:

“List of Passengers on board the Brig Australia David Seely, Master, from St John, New Brunswick bound for Melbourne in Australia”, 88 names arrived in Melbourne 28 Dec. 1852, Generations, Issue 48, June 1991, pages 61-63.

“New Brunswick natives with naturalization papers in Humbolt Co. California-1800s”, compiled by Warren H. Hasty. On 4 October 1880 the County Clerk of Humbolt County. California prepared a list of all people who had received their naturalization papers and were residing in the county. The earliest date 1857 plus a few whose “father was naturalized.” Generations issue 43, March 1990.

Warren H. Hasty “New Brunswick natives in Upper Mississippi Valley Counties of Minnesota” from the History of the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1881 Rev. Edward D. Neilland J. Fletcher Williams, Generations, issue 40, June 1989.

“New Brunswick Strays”, contributed by Strays Project Coordinator (Shirley E. Lancaster), Ontario Genealogical Society, Generations, Spring 1997, page 43; more in the Summer 2000 issue, pages 19-20.

Strays Projects
Which brings us to that Ontario Genealogy Society Strays Project, which has now published six volumes of more than 1600 names each, and contributes regularly toGenerations:


 * A Stray is defined as a person who is described in a record of an event, but is from or connected with a place outside the area where the event took place. The individual must be found in a publicly available record or a published book. The OGS has established a program to collect any strays discovered… Anyone can find and submit strays. Information is exchanged with other locations too. Primary interest is in events prior to 1925. [OGS Newsleaf - Supplement to Families, Vol. 31, No. 3, page 85.]

Gone Out West?
When we lived for a year in Vancouver, I was surprised at the number of names on shops and signs that I recognized as Maritime family names. Then I thought of how many of my own family had “gone out west.” One Chapman uncle died in Alberta, one in British Columbia, and grandfather’s brother died in Vancouver, he was a tugboat captain. You can check British Columbia marriages and deaths on the Internet. Might be worth a look because skills learned on the Atlantic coast can be exercised on the Pacific.

Women Left Too
A focused study of women who left has been written by Betsy Beattie, Obligation and Opportunity: Single Maritime Women in Boston, 1870-1930 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2000). A scholarly look at two generations of working women whose income continued to support their farm families back in the Maritimes.

Those Who Stayed
Not every member of a family had to leave. The 19th century population were not all subsisting on marginal land, and there were many who were doing very well in the towns and cities.

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