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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