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

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Part of the reason for the limited long-term appeal of the two New Brunswick settlements was the wide publicity at home given to alternative possibilities.   Upper Canada had long been the preferred destination for emigrants from the Borders, but even the appeal of such traditional destinations was being tempered by the rise of alternative fields for emigration.   The Berwick press carried advertisements from landowners in Prince Edward Island, though noting that property there was leasehold and that "none need apply who cannot command £100 or upwards, to commence cultivation".⁽¹⁰⁴⁾  More attractive to the labouring class was an advertisement for shepherds in New South Wales, offering wages of £20-£25 yearly with board, lodging, and free passage.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾  The New Zealand Company was promoting its Colony of New Edinburgh,⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ and an article reprinted from the Scotsman even puffed emigration to the Falkland Islands.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

 

By this time, too, Berwick-upon-Tweed was dropping out of the emigrant trade, which was being prosecuted by ever-bigger vessels sailing from larger ports.   In 1837 several ships had departed Berwick for British America with passengers, and in 1838 two went out in ballast.   After that two or three a year brought Canadian timber to Berwick for sale, but no longer cleared from there for North America.   The sole exception was the Berwick Castle, a new vessel launched locally in 1842 that took out intending settlers for the Canadas, mostly agricultural labourers and mechanics from the rural area, "not more than one or two of the town".⁽¹⁰⁸⁾   The following year a local agent offered to lay on the Rhodes for a sailing from Berwick to Quebec provided 100 passengers came forward, but the requisite number failed to materialize.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾  The newspapers were advertising sailings for Montreal from Newcastle and North Shields, and for Port Philip, Sydney, and Hobart from Leith (the port for Edinburgh).⁽¹¹⁰⁾

By studying the years of arrival noted in the 1851 census, and the genealogies of the Northumberland and Borders settlers, one can see that the nature of later overseas migration into the two New Brunswick communities of Stanley and Harvey was fundamentally different.   The Company was never able to restore its tarnished reputation in Northumberland, and so Stanley saw few new arrivals from the Berwick area, though it did draw a continuing trickle of immigrants from other English regions.   There was more chain migration into Harvey from Northumberland and the Borders as relatives and acquaintances of the 1837 settlers arrived to join them, but Harvey attracted few immigrants from elsewhere in Great Britain.   Let us begin with the Stanley settlement.

 

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(104) Berwick Advertiser, 26 March 1842, p. 1, col. 3; 4 March 1843, p. 1, col. 1.

 

(105) Ibid.,   9 December 1837, p. 1, col. 5.

 

(106) Ibid., 5 August 1843, p. 1, col. 2.

 

(107) Ibid., 8 January 1842, p. 4, col. 6.

 

(108) Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office, shipping data base; Berwick Advertiser, 7 May 1842, p. 2, col. 1; 25 June 1842, p. 4, col. 4.

 

(109) Berwick Advertiser, 22 April 1843, p. 1, col. 4.

 

(110) Ibid., 12 February 1842, p. 1, col. 2; 4 June 1842, p. 1, col. 1.