The last ship to leave was the Jenny, which sailed from Hull in April 1775 with eighty Yorkshire passengers. They included households that came with their servants, such as the families of William Black, a linen draper, and William Johnson and William Robinson, both farmers. Christopher Harper, from Barthorpe-Bottoms near Malton, who came with his wife and seven children, had travelled alone the previous year in the Two Friends to visit Fort Cumberland, where he purchased a 143acre farm “with a good house upon it, elegantly furnished with barns and other conveniences besides woodland at a distance and 20 cows with other cattle etc. for which we were told he gave £550.”61
The shipping agents for the Jenny crossing included the same Christopher Harper and John Robinson, another affluent farmer, who, from his extensive travelling, could describe the region’s excellent agricultural potential.62 The Jenny was a superior vessel, being classed as “A1,” and unlike the others was almost new. She was reported to be “a remarkably fine and lofty ship,” suggesting that the steerage space was more spacious than normal.63 Quite clearly, the more affluent folk deliberated longest and were the last to leave, doing so just before the outbreak of the American Revolution brought a halt to emigration.
Most new arrivals were shocked by the scale of the wilderness that greeted them. As their ship neared Halifax Harbour, John Robertson and Thomas Rispin thought the coastline “appeared very discouraging and disagreeable — nothing but barren rocks and hills presented themselves…. This unfavourable appearance greatly dampened the spirits of most of the passengers and several of them began to wish themselves in Old England before they had set foot in Nova Scotia.” And, on the way from Halifax to Sackville they “passed through nothing but dreary wastes or forests of rocks and wood.”64 Robertson and Rispin blamed this “unfavourable appearance” on the place being “populated so thinly” and the failure of its New Englander settlers to adopt good farming practices.
However, the immense potential of the land soon became apparent, and the two men concluded that their economic future and that of the others lay in improving it. It was theirs for the taking: “A man may have as much land as he pleases; the first year he pays nothing; for the next 5 years a penny an acre; the next 5 years 3 [pence]; for 5 years after that 6 [pence]; and then 1 shilling an acre forever to him and his heirs.”65
Charles Dixon had recognized the importance of land drainage and, when he arrived in 1772, set to work almost immediately, building dykes and reclaiming more of the salt marshes at his farm in Sackville. By 1787 he had built dykes around 104 acres of his own marshland in Sackville, while Thomas Bowser had done the same for his forty acres. However, some settlers went through a longer and more traumatic period of adjustment.66
The Harrisons, from Rillington in the East Riding, had stocked their large farm with cattle and seemed to be doing well, but they hated their place along the River Hébert. John’s eldest son, Luke, wrote home to his cousin, complaining bitterly about the mosquitoes and climate:
We have all gotten safe to Nova Scotia but do not like it all and a great many besides us, and [we] are coming back to England, all that can get back. We do not like the country nor never shall. The mosquitoes are a terrible plague…. You may think that mosquitoes cannot hurt a deal, but if you do you are mistaken, for they will swell one[’s] legs and hands [so] that some is blind and lame for some days…. One is tormented all the summer by mosquitoes and almost freeze to death in the winter.67
However, the Harrisons did not leave, and twenty-nine years later Luke was extolling the merits of Nova Scotia to the same cousin back in Yorkshire:
I cannot help but praise up Nova Scotia for growing the greatest crops of potatoes and the best, which answer well to eat with the fish, as we have plenty…. Dear cousin you gave me an invitation of coming to purchase a place in my native country but I had rather ten to one to stay where I am…. People that come from England like the country very well and those that are advanced in years live to a great age.68
At first the Trueman family, from Bilsdale in the North Riding, disliked their place at Pointe de Bute, but after finding their bearings they flourished, and at least five successive generations of Truemans would live there.69
The memorial stone archway at Pointe de Bute Cemetery, New Brunswick, dedicated to the early Yorkshire settlers. A bronze tablet commemorates the building in 1788 of the province’s first Methodist church.
Nathaniel Smith, the prosperous farmer from Appelton-by-Wisk, enjoyed a smooth transition to his new life in Fort Cumberland, but he knew some discontented people who felt they had been misled by Charles Dixon’s overly optimistic accounts of the region. He thought that a few of them might return to Yorkshire, but that if they did, they would not “bring a bad report” of the land: “One gallon of cream will yield as much butter as two in Old England upon the best of lands [that] I was ever concerned with.”70 Although the land was good, he wrote, “let none come here and expect to sit down at ease free from troubles, trials and disappointments … but according to human reason most of the English settled in Fort Lawrence71 and Cumberland have a hopeful prospect.” Nathaniel certainly expected to prosper quickly: “Any industrious man capable of purchasing two cows may do well … but the man of money is the man for Nova Scotia. Some have already made purchases of excellent houses and fine lands … and in a little time will be as compact and elegant as the most gentlemanly house in England.”72
Nathaniel might have been referring to John Weldon, from the North Riding village of Crathorne near Kirk Leavington. One of Michael Francklin’s 1772 recruits, he had wasted no time in equipping himself with cattle for his farm along the Petitcodiac River off Shepody Bay, to the west of where the main group had settled (see Map 2). In three years’ time he had twenty-two oxen, twenty-six cows, six horses, thirty-two sheep, and eighteen swine, and had acquired sufficient capital to change his status from tenant to landowner. Joshua Gildart, from nearby Carlton in Coverdale, who brought three servants with him, also prospered. He, too, rented 150 acres from Francklin on the Petitcodiac and within a year of his arrival had acquired even more livestock than Weldon. He later purchased five hundred acres farther up the Petitcodiac at Moncton, and spent three hundred pounds in improving his various landholdings.73 Obtaining a further 753 acres along the Petitcodiac, near its juncture with a river he called the Coverdale to commemorate his native origins (it was also known as Little River), Gildart demonstrated the Yorkshire flair for rapidly acquiring real estate.
At the other end of the social spectrum were farm workers like Jonathan Barlow, who struggled just to survive:
Tombstones of the early Yorkshire settlers at Five Points Baptist Cemetery, Coverdale, near Salisbury, New Brunswick.
I found everything very dear in Cumberland, and was glad to lay among the hay. So I fell to work for eighteen pence per day and victuals found some days. On June 3rd I hired to Samuel Rogers of Westcock [near Sackville] for £1, 15 s. per month; stayed with him most of the summer. I found the mosquitoes very troublesome, but the land was very good. Therefore I bought 150 acres of land, but having no house or habitation.74
And servants also faced difficult times:
I went to a place of service for three weeks, and had I been a poor beggar I could not have been worse used; and indeed the inhabitants in general seem to be poor miserable beings, which was very mortifying to me, who had been used to good living at home. It is a desolate, depressed, and almost uninhabited country, their food is chiefly fish, which is not very delicate, but cheap. If anyone should inquire about my situation here, pray describe the country as I have done, every word that I have wrote being truth. I am going to leave this place soon, and when I am settled shall let you hear further