THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK
When Governor Parr wrote to Sir Guy Carleton, commending in such warm
terms the advantages of Shelburne, he took occasion at the same time
to disparage the country about the river St John. ‘I greatly fear,’ he
wrote, ‘the soil and fertility of that part of this province is overrated
by people who have explored it partially. I wish it may turn out
otherwise, but have my fears that there is scarce good land enough for
them already sent there.’
How Governor Parr came to make so egregious a mistake with regard to
the comparative merits of the Shelburne districts and those of the
St John river it is difficult to understand. Edward Winslow frankly
accused him of jealousy of the St John settlements. Possibly he was only
too well aware of the inadequacy of the preparations made to receive
the Loyalists at the mouth of the St John, and wished to divert the
stream of immigration elsewhere. At any rate his opinion was in direct
conflict with the unanimous testimony of the agents sent to report on
the land. Botsford, Cummings, and Hauser had reported: ‘The St John
is a fine river, equal in magnitude to the Connecticut or Hudson. At
the mouth of the river is a fine harbour, accessible at all seasons of
the year—never frozen or obstructed by ice.... There are many settlers
along the river upon the interval land, who get their living easily.
The interval lies on the river, and is a most fertile soil, annually
matured by the overflowing of the river, and produces crops of all kinds
with little labour, and vegetables in the greatest perfection, parsnips
of great length, etc.’ Later Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Allen and Edward
Winslow, the muster-master-general of the provincial forces, were sent
up as agents for the Loyalist regiments in New York, and they explored
the river for one hundred and twenty miles above its mouth. ‘We have
returned,’ wrote Winslow after his trip, ‘delighted beyond expression.’
Governor Parr’s fears, therefore, had little effect on the popularity of
the St John river district. In all, no less than ten thousand people
settled on the north side of the Bay of Fundy in 1783. These came, in
the main, in three divisions. With the spring fleet arrived about three
thousand people; with the summer fleet not quite two thousand; and with
the autumn fleet well over three thousand. Of those who came in the
spring and summer most were civilian refugees; but of those who arrived
in the autumn nearly all were disbanded soldiers. Altogether thirteen
distinct corps settled on the St John river. There were the King’s
American Dragoons, De Lancey’s First and Second Battalions, the New
Jersey Volunteers, the King’s American Regiment, the Maryland Loyalists,
the 42nd Regiment, the Prince of Wales American Regiment, the New York
Volunteers, the Royal Guides and Pioneers, the Queen’s Rangers, the
Pennsylvania Loyalists, and Arnold’s American Legion. All these regiments
were reduced, of course, to a fraction of their original strength, owing
to the fact that numbers of their men had been discharged in New York,
and that many of the officers had gone to England. But nevertheless, with
their women and children, their numbers were not far from four thousand.
The arrangements which the government of Nova Scotia had made for
the reception of this vast army of people were sadly inadequate. In
the first place there was an unpardonable delay in the surveying and
allotment of lands. This may be partly explained by the insufficient
number of surveyors at the disposal of the governor, and by the tedious
and difficult process of escheating lands already granted; but it is
impossible not to convict the governor and his staff of want of foresight
and expedition in making arrangements and carrying them into effect.
When Joseph Aplin arrived at Parrtown, as the settlement at the mouth
of the river was for a short time called, he found 1500 frame houses
and 400 log huts erected, but no one had yet received a title to the
land on which his house was built. The case of the detachment of the
King’s American Dragoons who had settled near the mouth of the river was
particularly hard. They had arrived in advance of the other troops, and
had settled on the west side of the harbour of St John, in what Edward
Winslow described as ‘one of the pleasantest spots I ever beheld.’ They
had already made considerable improvements on their lands, when word came
that the government had determined to reserve the lands about the mouth
of the river for the refugees, and to allot blocks of land farther up
the river to the various regiments of provincial troops. When news of
this decision reached the officers of the provincial regiments, there
was great indignation. ‘This is so notorious a forfeiture of the faith
of government,’ wrote Colonel De Lancey to Edward Winslow, ‘that it
appears to me almost incredible, and yet I fear it is not to be doubted.
Could we have known this a little earlier it would have saved you the
trouble of exploring the country for the benefit of a people you are not
connected with. In short it is a subject too disagreeable to say more
upon.’ Winslow, who was hot-headed, talked openly about the provincials
defending the lands on which they had ‘squatted.’ But protests were in
vain; and the King’s American Dragoons were compelled to abandon their
settlement, and to remove up the river to the district of Prince William.
When the main body of the Loyalist regiments arrived in the autumn they
found that the blocks of land assigned to them had not yet been surveyed.
Of their distress and perplexity there is a picture in one of Edward
Winslow’s letters.
I saw [he says] all those Provincial Regiments, which we have
so frequently mustered, landing in this inhospitable climate,
in the month of October, without shelter, and without knowing
where to find a place to reside. The chagrin of the officers
was not to me so truly affecting as the poignant distress of
the men. Those respectable sergeants of Robinson’s, Ludlow’s,
Cruger’s, Fanning’s, etc.—once hospitable yeomen of the
country—were addressing me in language which almost murdered me
as I heard it. ‘Sir, we have served all the war, your honour is
witness how faithfully. We were promised land; we expected you
had obtained it for us. We like the country—only let us have a
spot of our own, and give us such kind of regulations as will
hinder bad men from injuring us.’
Many of these men had ultimately to go up the river more than fifty miles
past what is now Fredericton.
A second difficulty was that food and building materials supplied by
government proved inadequate. At first the settlers were given lumber
and bricks and tools to build their houses, but the later arrivals, who
had as a rule to go farthest up the river, were compelled to find their
building materials in the forest. Even the King’s American Dragoons,
evicted from their lands on the harbour of St John, were ordered to build
their huts ‘without any public expence.’ Many were compelled to spend
the winter in tents banked up with snow; others sheltered themselves in
huts of bark. The privations and sufferings which many of the refugees
suffered were piteous. Some, especially among the women and children,
died from cold and exposure and insufficient food.
In the third place there was great inequality in the area of the lands
allotted. When the first refugees arrived, it was not expected that so
many more would follow; and consequently the earlier grants were much
larger in size than the later. In Parrtown a town lot at length shrank
in size to one-sixteenth of what it had originally been. There was
doubtless also some favouritism and respect of persons in the granting
of lands. At any rate the inequality of the grants caused a great many
grievances among a certain class of refugees. Chief Justice Finucane of
Nova Scotia was sent by Governor Parr to attempt to smooth matters out;
but his conduct seemed to accentuate the ill-feeling and alienate from
the Nova Scotia authorities the good-will of some of the better class of
Loyalists.
It was not surprising, under these circumstances, that Governor Parr
and the officers of his government should have become very unpopular
on the north side of the Bay of Fundy. Governor Parr was himself much
distressed over the ill-feeling against him among the Loyalists; and it
should be explained that his failure to satisfy them did not arise from
unwillingness to do anything in his power to make them comfortable. The
trouble was that his executive ability had not been sufficient to cope
with the serious problems confronting him. Out of the feeling against
Governor Parr arose an agitation to have the country north of the Bay
of Fundy removed from his jurisdiction altogether, and erected into a
separate government. This idea of the division of the province had been
suggested by Edward Winslow as early as July 1783: ‘Think what multitudes
have and will come here, and then judge whether it must not from the
nature of things immediately become a separate government.’ There were
good reasons why such a change should be made. The distance of Parrtown
from Halifax made it very difficult and tedious to transact business
with the government; and the Halifax authorities, being old inhabitants,
were not in complete sympathy with the new settlers. The erection of a
new province, moreover, would provide offices for many of the Loyalists
who were pressing their claims for place on the government at home. The
settlers, therefore, brought their influence to bear on the Imperial
authorities, through their friends in London; and in the summer of 1784
they succeeded in effecting the division they desired, in spite of the
opposition of Governor Parr and the official class at Halifax. Governor
Parr, indeed, had a narrow escape from being recalled.
The new province, which it was intended at first to call New Ireland, but
which was eventually called New Brunswick, was to include all that part
of Nova Scotia north of a line running across the isthmus from the mouth
of the Missiquash river to its source, and thence across to the nearest
part of Baie Verte. This boundary was another triumph for the Loyalists,
as it placed in New Brunswick Fort Cumberland and the greater part of
Cumberland county. The government of the province was offered first to
General Fox, who had been in command at Halifax in 1783, and then to
General Musgrave; but was declined by both. It was eventually accepted
by Colonel Thomas Carleton, a brother of Sir Guy Carleton, by whom it
was held for over thirty years. The chief offices of government fell
to Loyalists who were in London. The secretary of the province was the
Rev. Jonathan Odell, a witty New Jersey divine, who had been secretary
to Sir Guy Carleton in New York. It is interesting to note that Odell’s
son, the Hon. W. F. Odell, was secretary of the province after him, and
that between them they held the office for two-thirds of a century. The
chief justice was a former judge of the Supreme Court of New York; the
other judges were retired officers of regiments who had fought in the
war. The attorney-general was Jonathan Bliss, of Massachusetts; and the
solicitor-general was Ward Chipman, the friend and correspondent of
Edward Winslow. Winslow himself, whose charming letters throw such a
flood of light on the settlement of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, was
a member of the council. New Brunswick was indeed _par excellence_ the
Loyalist province.
[Illustration: THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON—BUILT 1787]
The new governor arrived at Parrtown on November 21, 1784, and was
immediately presented with an enthusiastic address of welcome by the
inhabitants. They described themselves as ‘a number of oppressed and
insulted Loyalists,’ and added that they had formerly been freemen,
and again hoped to be so under his government. Next spring the governor
granted to Parrtown incorporation as a city under the name of St John.
The name Parrtown had been given, it appears, at the request of Governor
Parr himself, who explained apologetically that the suggestion had arisen
out of ‘female vanity’; and in view of Governor Parr’s unpopularity,
the change of name was very welcome. At the same time, however, Colonel
Carleton greatly offended the people of St John by removing the capital
of the province up the river to St Anne’s, to which he gave the name
Fredericktown (Fredericton) in honour of the Duke of York.
On October 15, 1785, writs were issued for the election of members
to serve in a general assembly. The province was divided into eight
counties, among which were apportioned twenty-six members. The right to
vote was given by Governor Carleton to all males of twenty-one years
of age who had been three months in the province, the object of this
very democratic franchise being to include in the voting list settlers
who were clearing their lands, but had not yet received their grants.
The elections were held in November, and lasted for fifteen days. They
passed off without incident, except in the city of St John. There a
struggle took place which throws a great deal of light on the bitterness
of social feeling among the Loyalists. The inhabitants split into two
parties, known as the Upper Cove and the Lower Cove. The Upper Cove
represented the aristocratic element, and the Lower Cove the democratic.
For some time class feeling had been growing; it had been aroused by the
attempt of fifty-five gentlemen of New York to obtain for themselves,
on account of their social standing and services during the war, grants
of land in Nova Scotia of five thousand acres each; and it had been
fanned into flame by the inequality in the size of the lots granted
in St John itself. Unfortunately, among the six Upper Cove candidates
in St John there were two officers of the government, Jonathan Bliss
and Ward Chipman; and thus the struggle took on the appearance of one
between government and opposition candidates. The election was bitterly
contested, under the old method of open voting; and as it proceeded it
became clear that the Lower Cove was polling a majority of the votes. The
defeat of the government officers, it was felt, would be such a calamity
that at the scrutiny Sheriff Oliver struck off over eighty votes, and
returned the Upper Cove candidates. The election was protested, but the
House of Assembly refused, on a technicality, to upset the election. A
strangely ill-worded and ungrammatical petition to have the assembly
dissolved was presented to the governor by the Lower Cove people, but
Governor Carleton refused to interfere, and the Upper Cove candidates
kept their seats. The incident created a great deal of indignation in St
John, and Ward Chipman and Jonathan Bliss were not able for many years to
obtain a majority in that riding.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CARD USED IN THE FIRST NEW BRUNSWICK
ELECTION, 1785]
It is evident from these early records that, while there were members
of the oldest and most famous families in British America among the
Loyalists of the Thirteen Colonies, the majority of those who came to
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and especially to Upper Canada, were people
of very humble origin. Of the settlers in Nova Scotia, Governor Parr
expressed his regret ‘that there is not a sufficient proportion of men
of education and abilities among the present adventurers.’ The election
in St John was a sufficient evidence of the strength of the democratic
element there; and their petition to Governor Carleton is a sufficient
evidence of their illiteracy. Some of the settlers assumed pretensions
to which they were not entitled. An amusing case is that of William
Newton. This man had been the groom of the Honourable George Hanger, a
major in the British Legion during the war. Having come to Nova Scotia,
he began to pay court to a wealthy widow, and introduced himself to her
by affirming ‘that he was particularly connected with the hono’ble Major
Hanger, and that his circumstances were rather affluent, having served in
a money-making department, and that he had left a considerable property
behind him.’ The widow applied to Edward Winslow, who assured her that
Mr Newton had indeed been connected—very closely—with the Honourable
Major Hanger, and that he had left a large property behind him. ‘The
nuptials were immediately celebrated with great pomp, and Mr Newton is at
present,’ wrote Winslow, ‘a gentleman of consideration in Nova Scotia.’
During 1785 and subsequent years, the work of settlement went on rapidly
in New Brunswick. There was hardship and privation at first, and up to
1792 some indigent settlers received rations from the government. But
astonishing progress was made. ‘The new settlements of the Loyalists,’
wrote Colonel Thomas Dundas, who visited New Brunswick in the winter of
1786-87, ‘are in a thriving way.’ Apparently, however, he did not think
highly of the industry of the disbanded soldiers, for he avowed that ‘rum
and idle habits contracted during the war are much against them.’ But
he paid a compliment to the half-pay officers. ‘The half-pay provincial
officers,’ he wrote, ‘are valuable settlers, as they are enabled to live
well and improve their lands.’
It took some time for the province to settle down. Many who found their
lands disappointing moved to other parts of the province; and after
1790 numbers went to Upper Canada. But gradually the settlers adjusted
themselves to their environment, and New Brunswick entered on that era of
prosperity which has been hers ever since.