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

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Chain Migration into Stanley and Harvey

Some friends and relatives arrived over the next few years to join those who had settled before them at Stanley and Harvey, but the numbers were not large.   Neither settlement precipitated a growing tide of Borders immigrants.   Largely this was because the quality of the land and the underdevelopment of the colony allowed the possibility of a modest competency achieved through back-breaking labour, but held out little prospect of long-term prosperity or economic growth.   Furthermore, neither the land company nor the colonial administration proved able to counter the strong promotional campaigns being mounted in Britain by the Canada Company.   The Lower Canadian competitor, the British American Land Company, even entered into direct competition for Berwick emigrants, and the British press was awash with accounts of opportunities elsewhere.   Chain migration into both of the New Brunswick communities therefore was limited, and consisted largely of close relatives of those already there, with the bulk of these going to Harvey.   Most of the Company lands sold later at Stanley were acquired by existing residents of the province, rather than by new immigrants, and most later settlement on Company lands was in the southwestern part of its tract or to the north of Stanley rather than in Stanley itself.   Much of the Company tract proved not to be cultivable.   The New Brunswick Company staggered on till 1899, gradually selling off the lands they had spent so much money up front to render accessible.

The Company did make one more attempt at overseas recruitment.   Late in 1841 Col. Hayne asked established settlers for supportive letters.   These were published in London two years later in a Company promotional pamphlet entitled Practical Information Respecting New Brunswick, but their content was not uniformly enthusiastic.⁽⁹⁸⁾ 

 

Robert Waugh, ⁽⁹⁹⁾ the former Wooler schoolmaster who had chaired the protest meetings during the settlers' earlier disputes with the Company, acknowledged (from Grand Manan) that "the emigrants from Northumberland being now in a fair way of prospering here, ... [they] may be referred to as an example of what may be accomplished in the woods of New Brunswick by perseverance and industry."   He pointed to opportunities on the road between Cross Creek and Campbellton, and stated that its opening would facilitate trade with the Miramichi.   But he also highlighted the Company's failings in that regard:   "Its having been chopped down six years ago, a young growth of wood is now rising rapidly, and every year it remains unturnpiked it will be the more difficult and expensive to do."

 

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(98) London:   Pelham Richardson, 1843, CIHM N.21901.

 

(99) Robert Waugh (c1797-1854) was a teacher residing in Legget's Land, Haugh Street, Stockbridge, Edinburgh when he married in 1826 at Edinburgh St Cuthbert, in the shadow of the Castle, to Isabella Hood, daughter of Andrew Hood, a Jedburgh brewer.   He was a schoolmaster in Wooler, and an Anglican, and he continued to teach as well as to do survey work in New Brunswick.   He prepared the Company's early plan of Stanley village.   After teaching on Grand Manan, he returned to Stanley, where he died in the woods after becoming lost on a cold night in 1854.   There is a portrait in Frank Baird's 1950 history of Stanley, p. 132.