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

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Thirty-five boys and a girl were among the 46 passengers for the Company who arrived at Saint John on 2 June 1836 aboard the Hinde (Custard) from London.   They were accompanied by J. Charles Forss, formerly agricultural master at the CFS school at Hackney Wick, who was himself becoming a settler at Stanley. Their arrival is comparatively well-documented, but let us allow one of the boys, John Harvey, to tell the story.

P. Harry, General view of Stanley, from the Road, August 1835, another view from the Company's 1836 promotional prospectus. Source: NA, c-41708.

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Harvey was neither parentless nor an illegitimate child.   His mother had placed him in St James's Workhouse after the death of his father.   Following her remarriage her new husband, Mr White, offered to take the lad as an apprentice, but she was convinced by the CFS that in New Brunswick he could "follow whatever trade he pleased" and "in every respect be comfortably situated."   She wrote to her son several times, but by the spring of 1839 had received only a single letter dated 12 March 1838.   In desperation she presented herself before the local police court in Marylebone and had the letter read aloud in hopes that the publicity would stir the Society to action.   A reporter was present, and John Harvey's letter was published in The Times :

              ... when I arrived at Sergons [Saint John], I sailed up to Fredericton in a Stem bot, and then we cum up to Starley, and then we had to slep in a Barn amongst horses and lay in amongst straw, and then we was put out to the woods in a camp by ourselves, and the meet we got only fit for hogs; and der Mother we was sent out to work, and we Could not walk Because we was all Ragged like a Begger and starved with Cold, and then we last winter was took out farther to the woods, and Mister Foss Had us choping down his trees, and all the boys mostly Left him ⁽²⁶⁾

He left Forss and "went to serve a man that Kep a Tavern, and I hav varey havey work to do, and i am vary Bad sitterwated for close."   He complained that all his possessions, including books given him by his mother, were in the hands of Mr Forss and he had been unable to retrieve them.   We do not know whether Mrs White ever heard from her son again, but by 1851 Harvey was farming at Lime Kiln near Stanley, married and with three children of his own.

 

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(26) The Times, 14 May 1839, p. 7.   Mrs Harvey's second husband was J. White of 33 James Street, Manchester Square, London.