New Brunswick 19th Century Settlement - International Institute

After The Loyalists
About the time the Loyalists were settling in, the French Revolution came along and the next thing, in January 1793, Britain went to war with the new French Republic. Wars need men, in the army, the navy, and in making all the things the army and navy need. When there were jobs at home, there was no great need to emigrate to a wilderness that had to be cleared of trees before you could farm the land.

Well, actually, there was one need, all those trees. The Napoleonic blockade cut Britain off from her normal supply of masts, spars and timber from the Baltic countries and she turned west to her few remaining colonies in North America.


 * Nowhere were the consequences of the Napoleonic blockade and the colonial timber preference more marked than in New Brunswick. Exploitation of the province’s forests increased enormously after 1805, and in forty-five years the province was transformed from an underdeveloped backwater of 25,000 people to a bustling colony of 190,000 with a “reputation for commerce and enterprise.”


 * To travelers and residents alike, it was evident that the timber trade had built the towns of Saint John, Chatham, St. Andrews and Fredericton. The forest industries supplied a market for the produce of provincial farms and offered the New Brunswick farmer the opportunity of off-farm work in the winter. (page 34)

Graeme Wynn’s book is a fascinating look at the geography, the economics and the developing forest technologies and how this all influenced immigration and settlement. Settlement and Opportunity in a Timber Colony, pages 79-86 examines the cost of land, domestic animals and establishing a farm, which rose steadily, and contrasts this with the opportunities to make money in lumbering. The bibliography is excellent and the notes point to further sources of information on life in the growing colony.

After Waterloo - June 18, 1815
When a war ends, soldiers are disbanded, ships decommissioned, and officers put on half pay. The army and navy cut back on purchases, everything from ships and cannons to cloth for uniforms and food for the troops. The weaver, the tailor, the miner and the farm labourer are all affected as jobs disappear. Emigration starts to look like a good idea.

In The Historical Atlas of Canada, Vol. II, plates 9 and 10 show the trans-Atlantic immigration 1831-1851, and population growth to 1851. Between 1831-1836 New Brunswick received 31,000 immigrants, between 1846-1851, 38,900 arrived. In these years much of the trans-Atlantic migration to New Brunswick was into the port of Saint John, and much of it was from Ireland, though many Irish also came to the Mirimichi area to work in the timber trade.

The Historical Atlas, Plate 11 illustrates “Timber Production and Trade to 1850”, and plate 12, “Agriculture in Atlantic Canada, 1851”, both with special reference to New Brunswick, the data being derived from the 1851 census. A careful study of these, and other related plates gives a good idea of how the population of New Brunswick grew, and who did what and where. The hay grown on the farms in southern New Brunswick fed the horses that worked in the northern woods, and some of the wood went into building ships (plate 16) to carry the timber to markets across the Atlantic. Often the ship was sold as well as its cargo.

Plate 25 shows “the Emergence of a Transportation System” and here you see the importance of the shipping routes, the limits of stage coach service, and “travel times from Liverpool, England”. Many ships sailing from Great Britain to the American colonies departed from Liverpool and it was here that several Maritime Province shipping firms established branch offices, or partnerships with British firms. It may be where your sea-captain ancestor found his wife.

Where Did They Come From?
The genealogist’s problem in these years of population growth is “Where did they come from?” Let’s start with some of Alan Rayburn’s place names:

Cardigan: 15 miles north west of Fredericton. PO North Cardigan 1913-1918. Settled 1819 from Wales.

English Settlement: 2 miles south of Stanley. Immigrants from Northumberland, England, settled in 1836—English Settlement: PO 1860-1897 in Highfield. See also Pearsonville.

Pearsonville: 12 miles north west of Sussex. PO Pearsons c.1885-1897, W.W. Pearson first postmaster. Joseph Pearson settled 1823 from Cumberland, England. Formerly part of English Settlement. English Settlement: see Wayerton.

Wayerton: 16 miles north west of Newcastle. PO c.1885-1970. John Way, first postmaster. John Way was a settler c.1820 from England. Formerly called English Settlement.

Irish Settlement: 11 miles north west of Sussex. PO Thomond c.1885-1914. Settled c.1824, Irish Settlement: see Waterloo Corner.

Waterloo Corner: 15 miles west of Sussex. Settled 1819 by Irish immigrants who had fought with Wellington at Waterloo 1812 [sic]. Also called Irish Settlement.

Irishtown: 7 miles north Moncton, PO 1859-1967. Settled 1821. Irishtown.

Seaview: In Saint John, 9 miles south west of city centre. PO Pisarinco West c.1893-1903; PO Seaview 1903-1914. Formerly called Irishtown.

Scotch Lake: 16 miles west of Fredericton. PO c.1889-1915. Settled 1820 by immigrants from Roxburgh and Dumfries, Scotland.

Scotch Ridge: 8 miles north west of St. Stephen. PO c.1885-1921. Settled 1804 by Reay Fencibles from Sutherland, Scotland.

Scotch Settlement: 10 miles north of Moncton. PO c.1885-1935. Settled c.1835 by immigrants from Scotland and Cape Breton. Scotch Settlement: former settlement, 6 mi SE of Stanley at Tay River. Settled c.1835, but soon abandoned.

Scott Brook: Flows north into Robinson Creek at Murray Corner. Named for Adam Scott, a settler 1834 from Scotland.

There is a lot to be learned from these place names. You can see that many of the emigrants in the first half of the 19th century came from the British Isles. Places named “German…” were settled before 1800, and New Denmark was only founded in 1870.

Upper Saint John River and North-West New Brunswick
The Saint John River was an important military route from the Bay of Fundy to Québec, but from Woodstock to Madawaska, it was wilderness, so in 1791 military outposts were built at Presqu’ile and the Grand falls.

During the War of 1812-1814, when troops were desperately needed in Upper Canada, the 104th regiment left Fredericton in February, “marched” (using snowshoes) the 400 miles to Québec (in 24 days), then on to Montréal and Kingston, 52 days in all. In December 1837, the 43rd light infantry made the same march, in far better weather and over better roads well provided with bridges. 1837 was the year of the so-called Aroostook War with Maine over the ownership of a tract of timberland. The border with the United States and Maine was finally settled in 1842 and since then, the river, between Grand Falls and Edmundston has been the border.

Soldier Settlements
To protect the river route the government was encouraged by Great Britain to allot land to various groups of disbanded soldiers at various times.

A major military settlement was in Upper York County (now Victoria and Carleton Counties) along the river. Linda and Winston Fairly assembled details of one land grant: “1825 Military Settlers Granted Land in the Upper Saint John River Valley,” Generations, Vol. 18, No. 1, Issue 67, Spring 1996, pages 19-21.

In the next volume is another list by Linda Fairly of “Royal York Rangers Disbanded at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1819.”

Large organization, like the British Army, tend to keep records of everything. In particular, of supplies and rations given out to groups of deserving soldier settlers. Because it was not available on microfilm, I was asked to examine a “British Army Commissariat” book which is now at Library and Archives Canada. Kept from November 1818 through most of 1819, this 86-page ledger is now in MG24 F82, one of many “Nineteenth-Century Pre-Confederation Papers.”

It turned out to be an ongoing record of food, fuel, supplies and implements, distributed to “the Troops, Departments and Military Settlers,” with abstract tables with totals of everything from salt beef to candles and iron hoops.

The lists include groups from the 98th, and 104th Regiments, the New Brunswick Regiment and the Royal West Indian Rangers, all of whom had arrived in the settlement by 1819. There are also a few references to individuals of the 74th Regiment.

Because the lists cover monthly or quarterly distributions, most names are repeated a number of times. The lists serve to place people at a specific place within a fairly narrow window of time. Since wives and children got rations, they are numbered (though not by name), studied sequentially, the lists may indicate the size of the family unit and changes in the unit, as well as changes in the ex-soldier’s status. Such military records, particularly if kept in ledger-books, can turn up in many places, local museums as well as national or provincial archives. They might be indexed under the regiments involved. If you are dealing with a settlement of disbanded soldiers such as Waterloo Corner, commissariat records may be well worth searching out.

Madawaska
The settlement of the “Republic of Madawaska” (that name is a local joke) was unusual in many ways, not in the least because until the border with the USA was finally established by the Ashburton Treaty in 1842, jurisdiction over the region was claimed by New Brunswick, Québec (Lower Canada, Canada East) and the State of Maine (which for much of the time was still Massachusetts). The Madawaska river flows into the St. John River; near its mouth are the rapids known as “Little Falls” (Petit-Sault) where the city of Edmundston is now. Dr. Webster’s Historical Guide informs us that:

When in 1784 it was decided to remove all the French people who were settled at the lower end of the Saint John, an amicable arrangement was made by which they were placed in the Madawaska region. (1947 edition, page 80).

Unlikely as that “amicable” sounds, apparently a great many of the Acadians living around Fredericton and in Kings County were quite happy to leave a region that was English-speaking, Protestant, and where they were surrounded by settlers from Loyalist regiments. Through 1786 and 1787 they moved north, settled around Petit-sault and “a few years later 16,000 acres were granted to eighty families.” The interval land along the rivers was good for farming, and the forests in the rest of the disputed territory made the timber trade a major economic factor.

There was also an exodus of French-speaking families from Québec into New Brunswick, “owing to the exactions of the seigniorial system not only to the Upper St. John but to the eastern shore as well.”

In Madawaska the two French elements, Acadian and Canadian, fused into a single community that was uncertain of the fountain of civil authority. Three governments, those of New Brunswick, Québec, and Massachusetts asserted jurisdiction.

The eight volume, typescript record of Madawaska marriages (1792-c.1940), made by Père Henri Langlois, follows some of these families back into Québec, to older settlements along the Saint Lawrence. Also remember the Drouin and Loiselle marriage indexes.

North East New Brunswick and The Gulf
Gloucester County was cut out of the northern portion of Northumberland County in 1826, and Restigouche County out of the northern portion of Gloucester County in 1839, probably indicative of the growing population in northeastern New Brunswick, lured there by timber and salmon. Dalhousie is the Shire town of Restigouche, Bathurst of Gloucester. As late as 1850 settlement in Gloucester and Restigouche was restricted to a narrow fringe along the sea coast, with Acadians concentrated in the far northeast and along the coast of Chaleur Bay. Gloucester County includes the Shippegan peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and there the economy is based more on the fisheries, cod, mackerel, salmon, lobster and these days, as fish stocks decrease, crab. The population is predominantly Acadian. In other areas where the fishery was important, English-speaking settlers from Scotland, the west of England and the Channel Islands formed small pockets of settlement.


 * By the winter of 1836-7, the Douglastown, Bathurst and Dalhousie branch houses of the Glasgow timber merchants Pollok, Gilmour and Company dominated the trade of a vast area and their pre-eminence was challenged only by Joseph Cunard’s enterprise in Chatham.

The Glasgow merchants doubtless account for some of the Scottish arrivals, but look at Plate 54 in Volume I of the Historical Atlas of Canada. It details early settlement, seigneuries, townships, population, and origins of settlers.

As for Joseph Cunard (Sam’s brother) and Chatham, if your people settled around Chatham, look for James A. Fraser, By Favourable Winds: A History of Chatham, New Brunswick (Chatham: Town of Chatham, 1975). James Fraser (1946-1986) was an archivist and adept at searching out documents as well as combing the local newspaper for relevant items. About half the book is devoted to short biographies of residents of Chatham. He is also the author of histories of Douglastown, Loggieville, Caton’s Island, the W.S. Loggie Co. Ltd., 1873-1973, and St. Thomas University.

The Gulf is a region where the coastal schooner was considered the normal mode of transportation. Roads and railways came later. Looking at a map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it should be apparent that it is easy to sail around Gaspé to Québec City or to Newfoundland or even Pictou or Chéticamp in Nova Scotia, but not easy to get to Halifax much less Saint John. This northeast region looks outward to the Gulf and beyond, not to the provincial capital, or Saint John.

Kent County - Between Mirimichi and Westmorland
Another region slow to be settled was south of the Mirimichi; Kent County was separated from Northumberland in 1826. Today it is almost entirely Acadian country, though a few English-speaking families, descendants of the store and wharf owners, still live in big family homes in a few towns.


 * Along the Gulf shore, in Westmorland and Kent counties, settlement was generally confined to the coast and the tidal reaches of the rivers. English-speaking New Brunswickers, and Scottish and Irish immigrants dominated in the Richebucto area, an important, old-established shipbuilding, sawmilling and ton-timber shipping centre.

Inland, settlements only developed after the railway was built. Look in Rayburn for the stations along the CNR: Adamsville, established 1879; Coal Branch Station, PO c.1885-1970; Harcourt, established 1869 when the railway was built; Kent Junction, PO c.1885-1970; Rogersville, settled in 1874.

Outmigration
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. 

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.