THE NEW BRUNSWICK LAND COMPANY

Just as the Canada Company established the towns of Guelph and Goderich in Ontario, and the British American Land Company the town of Sherbrooke, Quebec, so the New Brunswick Company spent £80,000 preparing two townsites 18 miles apart: Stanley, on the Nashwaak 25 miles north of Fredericton, and Campbellton on the Miramichi (now Bloomfield Ridge). Company agents surveyed the townsites, built mills and houses, and began work on the roads, but less was accomplished than Company literature promised. Of the two, only Stanley achieved modest success as a magnet for settlers.

To populate its lands, the New Brunswick Company during the 1830s made four concerted attempts at direct overseas recruitment. The first targeted poor children institutionalized in London, the second farm labourers and tradesmen in the eastern Borders between England and Scotland. The third party was recruited, disastrously, in the Scottish highlands, and the fourth was a second party from the Borders. The first three parties were settled in and around Stanley, with varying degrees of success; the fourth escaped the Company's control and founded Harvey, south of Fredericton.

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