Planters, Paupers, and Pioneers. Lucille H. Campey
pay [his] stock and interest in Hutton Mills,” he immediately persuaded his wife and family to move with him to Nova Scotia. They were among the group of sixty-two emigrants (seventeen families) from the North Riding who set sail from Liverpool in the Duke of York in 1772:3
We had a rough passage, none of us having been to sea before, much seasickness prevailed. After six weeks and four days we arrived at Halifax … and were received with much joy by the gentlemen in general, but were much discouraged by others, and the account given us of Cumberland4 was enough to make the stoutest heart give way.5
Fort Cumberland, near Sackville (later New Brunswick), was their destination, but upon their arrival in Halifax, Dixon and the others “heard all kinds of negative reports” about it — “enough to sway many peoples’ opinions.” When he actually reached Fort Cumberland, Dixon realized that the discontent felt by the local New Englanders “was mainly due to indolence and lack of knowledge.” The enormous potential of the land was immediately obvious to the Yorkshire group, and those with sufficient funds acquired land and livestock and some even helped friends and relatives to do the same. Fourteen Yorkshire settlers acquired over eight thousand acres in the Sackville area alone.6 Dixon set an example by purchasing a 2,500-acre farm from Daniel Hawkins for £260. Thomas Bowser, from Acklam near Birdsall,7 leased a 750-acre farm in the same area for four pounds, ten shillings per annum,8 while the thirteen-yearold George Bulmer, an apprentice mason, eventually purchased one thousand acres and obtained a grant for a further three hundred.9
Meanwhile, James Metcalf from Hawnby in the North Riding, who had also sailed in the Duke of York, bought 207 acres along the Maccan River farther to the south and shared with two others in the purchase of an additional forty-five acres. Writing to his fiancée, Ann Gill, in Huby, to the south of Easingwold, he described “a little fly called a mosquito that is troublesome in summertime and bites like a midge,” but added that was “the only thing I wish to say against the country.”10 He hoped that she would come immediately and advised her not to be fearful of the ocean crossing and not to listen to adverse comments about Nova Scotia:
If you come be not discouraged by anything in the country for it is good; if you come you will sail up to Fort Cumberland and when you are there write … to me at Maccan River … and I will come for you…. I will be as good as my word … the passage is paid at Liverpool before you go on board but, if you should not be able to pay, make friends to some that come and I will pay … may ye Lord bless you and conduct you safely hither.11
James’s letter took two years to reach her, but when it did, Ann reacted immediately. She left for Nova Scotia, and upon her arrival in Fort Cumberland (now known by its original name of Fort Beauséjour) dispatched a message to James, who rushed to meet her. They were married the following day in the stockade of Fort Cumberland, and, after producing a large family, both lie buried on the banks of the Maccan River.12
The Yorkshire influx to Nova Scotia had been encouraged and directed by no less a dignitary than the lieutenant governor. The Pooleborn Michael Francklin became one of Halifax’s leading merchants after amassing a fortune during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) by supplying troops to the British and privateering. He was the ultimate wheelerdealer who exploited his political office to the full, but his enormous appetite for land speculation was his ruination, since it left him heavily in debt. Having acquired thousands of acres in Nova Scotia, he failed to attract New England settlers as he had hoped, thus leaving himself with no revenue and a sizable bill in quit rents to pay to the Crown.13 His solution was to seek settlers from overseas, concentrating his efforts in the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, where he knew there was considerable discontent over enclosures and rent rises.
Map 2. Yorkshire Settler Locations in the Chignecto Isthmus, 1772–75.
Francklin offered one-hundred-acre lots at “Francklin Manor” — a choice tract in the Chignecto Isthmus that offered prime sites along the rivers that empty into the Cumberland Basin, especially the Hébert, Maccan, and Nappan (see Map 2). “None but Protestants will be admitted … and none need apply but husbandmen or artificers, and such as are possessed of at least £50 in money, that they may be able to carry on their improvements.”14 Each family that could satisfy these criteria was to receive “at least ten acres of cleared land for the immediate culture of grain, or providing winter fodder for not less than 20 head of horned cattle,” and for this the settler would pay “a yearly quit rent of one penny per acre for the first five years, sixpence per acre for the next five years and, after that period, one shilling per acre for ever…. The climate is healthy and temperate, and the lands are surrounded by settlements already made; the rivers abound with fish, the woods with game, and good timber fit for building.”15 And there was icing on this cake: “There are no game-laws, taxes on lands, or tithes in this province.” Francklin knew that emigration offered a welcome release from the feudal constraints and payments of the Old World.
Michael Francklin, lieutenant governor and sometime temporary governor of Nova Scotia between 1766 and1776, oil portrait by J.S. Copley, circa 1762.
Seeking settlers for the land he had previously hoped to populate with New Englanders, Francklin left for England in 1769 to personally direct a recruitment campaign in Yorkshire. He concentrated his efforts in the farming areas of the North and East Ridings, where the great upheaval being experienced by the creation of large consolidated holdings from former scattered strips in the common fields made farmers and agricultural workers particularly receptive to his offer. Through his family and business contacts he had inside knowledge of tenant grievances on the Duke of Rutland’s estate. Here, it was simply a matter of directing resentful tenants toward Nova Scotia. Francklin placed his agents in Rillington, Skelton, Thirsk, Hovingham, Sowerby, Whitby, and Burniston — all towns in the North and East Riding of Yorkshire. The agents located potential settlers and arranged for their sea crossings from the nearby ports of Hull, Scarborough, Stockton-on-Tees (Durham), and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (see Map 3).16 By 1775, when the American Revolution halted the exodus, eight vessels had carried around nine hundred emigrants from the north of England to Nova Scotia.17
Map 3. Yorkshire: The Main Region of Emigration, 1772–75.
Francklin’s campaigning efforts attracted “a fine quality of substantial, knowledgeable men to whom the land was remarkable for not needing manure and the terms unbelievably tempting.”18 The Reverend John Eagleson, an Anglican missionary sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, observed in 1773 how “the country is fast settling, many English farmers annually coming over and settling among us; whose favourable accounts of the country to their friends seem to induce still more to emigrate hither.” His hope that “in a short time, this district will be settled with a sober, industrious and religious set of people”19 was borne out, although not without controversy and setbacks, and few would support his religion.
As the exodus grew, emigrants had to withstand criticism from Britain’s ruling classes, who feared that emigration would seriously deplete the country’s workforce and armed services. A correspondent writing in the York Chronicle in 1773 thought “it a matter of astonishment to every rational being in this Island, that the Government should permit such numerous emigration from the mother country.”20 And in his view, Michael Francklin’s involvement made a bad situation even worse:
It may be said that