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

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Gravestone in Wooler churchyard erected by Harvey settler Thomas Kay, himself a stonemason, to his brother John and parents Thomas and Isabella. Source: Bruce S. Elliott, 2002. Medium sized pop up image 700 X 980, 72 dpi 285 k Full sized pop up image 1623 X 2272, 400 dpi 2437 k

  Even so this number excludes Henry Craigs and his wife Isabella Kay ⁽⁸⁵⁾ , William Patterson, and the Davidson family, all of whom were always understood to have been aboard; Craigs does appear on subsequent lists of members of the party allocated lands.⁽⁸⁶⁾  What is most striking about this party is the size of the families concerned.   Few single men had been recruited, and many of the families had teenage or adult children who would be seeking land of their own within a few years.   Perhaps this had been in the mind of the Company's agent.   This time more of the settlers came from the Northumberland side of the border, and more were from the town or immediate vicinity of Wooler itself, probably a consequence of the letter sent home from Stanley the year before.⁽⁸⁷⁾  Thanks to this list, the occupational status of the males in the party is not in doubt:   two-thirds were labourers, one a teacher, and eight were practitioners of various trades:   2 millers, 2 carpenters, and a mason, blacksmith, tailor, and shopkeeper.   Where the individuals can be located in church registers, more exact descriptions of labouring occupations can sometimes be determined, as can the farms on which they were working when they had children baptized.   Thomas Piercy, for example, was married at Ford in 1812.   In 1813 he was steward at Fenton in Wooler parish.   In 1814-16 he was in Readsford farm in Kirknewton parish, occupation not stated, but then in 1818 he was a husbandman in Thornington, and he worked as a hind there for most of the 1820s.⁽⁸⁸⁾

 

 

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The cottages in Reedsford Farm, Kirk Newton, Northumberland. Harvey settler Thomas Piercy was a steward at Fenton in Wooler in 1816, worked here at Reedsford from 1814-16, and then was a hind at Thornington farm from 1818-27. He attended the Presbyterian meeting house at Crookham throughout. Source: Bruce S. Elliott, 2002.

 

A number of the families in the 1837 Harvey group were related to one another.   Thomas Brown was a brother of Alison Messer and Mary Wilson, Thomas and James Mowitt were brothers, Matthew Piercy was a married son of Thomas Piercy; William Embleton was a brother of Isabel Herbert, and three of the younger Embleton siblings accompanied the latter family.   I have been able to identify no family relationships linking the D'Arcy and Cornelius parties, but some clearly knew one another.   Jonathan McDougall from the D'Arcy, who was living at Gagetown in 1838, invited John Thompson, the schoolmaster who had arrived aboard the Cornelius , to come there to teach.   Thompson replied that he had also been offered the Company school at Stanley, but that "there is no money and things [offer?] a very gloomy aspect and are becoming mor so every day.... there are several talking about clearing out in the spring if the Company does not go on".   He had "made up my mind to go to Harvey's settlement along with my Countrymen ... although I may expect to undergo more privations for one year then in that you recommend me to".   Thompson had already learned of the death of McDougall's wife and had reported it home in a letter to his father-in-law.⁽⁸⁹⁾

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(85) Helen C. Craig, The Craigs of Harvey Settlement, Red Rock and the Pontiac (Fredericton, 1999), 463.

 

(86) Bear in mind that two families were said not to have gone on to Fredericton immediately after landing.

 

(87) C.O. 188/60, ff. 153-4, NA reel B-14, addressed to "the Inhabitants of Wooler & Ford".   Though signed by all the adult males of the D'Arcy party, the only document that is, it was likely written by Robert Waugh, the former Wooler schoolmaster, whose signature appears first.

 

(88) Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office, Crookham Presbyterian Church baptisms.

 

(89) PANB, MC 167, Dunham and McDougall family collection, John Thompson to Jonathan McDougall, Stanley, 1 February 1838.   Robert Waugh, the teacher from the 1836 Stanley party, was working as a surveyor for the Land Company, but about 1840 opened a school on Grand Manan; he returned to Stanley a few years later.   PANB, RS 655, petition of Robert Waugh, reel F10327.   Thompson was licensed by the York County Board of Education on 2 April 1838 and taught at Harvey for many years.   RS 655, reel F10334.