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Elliott, Bruce, 2004-2005: Emigrant Recruitment by the New Brunswick Land
Company:
The Pioneer Settlers of Stanley and Harvey.

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Officials asserted that part of the difficulty was that the Scots were Gaelic speakers, and that a man who had come on the same ship and been recruited as an interpreter proved himself a thorn in the Company's side and was dismissed from its service.   Nonetheless, 15 of 33 who signed a petition of complaint appended their signatures rather than their marks and so had some measure of literacy in English.   In the end Governor Harvey concluded that their recruitment had been injudicious at best, as most were fishermen unacquainted with the requirements for beginning agriculture in a wooded wilderness.(70)  In the end the Company paid £6 per household to assist 38 or 39 of the families to move to Canada in 1838, which along with cancelling their debts cost the Company £4,000.(71)  By 1851 only four families remained.

Table 4   Highland Scots remaining in Stanley, 1838 & 1851

C.O. 188/60, f. 144, 1838:                         Stanley parish census, 1851:


  Age Occupation res.
Hossack, Donald, wf Margaret, 5 daus 50 his Widow Scotch Settlement
Macdonald Austin, wf, 9 chn 72 Farmer Green Hill Road
McDonald Widow [Margaret], 5+ ch (X)             79 Widow Scotch Settlement
McDugall Duncan (X)      

McGillivray Donald

     
McKinnon James, wf Anne, 4 ch 45 his Widow Red Rock
McLennan James      

McLennan John

     

McMillan Donald

     

MacPhee Donald

     

Nicholson Samuel (the NB Co.'s interpreter)

     
       

38 or 39 families assisted on to "Canada"

     

X denotes signature with a mark

     


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(70) C.O. 188/60, ff. 134-5, reel B-14.

 

(71) C.O. 188/61, ff. 143, 148.