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 1,500 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.
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.
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.