Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  Encouragement to farmers to emigrate to Australia was more sporadic and qualified by warnings of heat, drought, disease, widespread speculation and overblown land prices. Yet the prospectus of the Australian Company of Edinburgh and Leith, founded in 1822, claimed that ‘the fertility of the soil’ and ‘the salubrity of the climate ’, along with the abundance of mineral resources and navigable waterways, ‘make Australia the most suitable of all our Colonies for the reception of British settlers’. Emigrants who wished to take advantage of these facilities during the Company’s ten-year existence had to be men of means, for the cost of passage from Leith ranged from twenty-four guineas steerage to fifty guineas cabin, although limited assistance was provided to

  3. The Caledonian Gathering, Melbourne, 1 February 1892, from Illustrated Australian News artisans. 30 During this period those with over £500 capital were encouraged to emigrate to Van Diemen’s Land ‘on account of its fertility and its general respectability’; it was, according to the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, a place where ‘the man who can muster a few hundreds, and who is fond of agricultural pursuits and rural pleasures’ could be enabled, within a few years, ‘to transmit to his family an estate sufficient for the subsistence of many generations’. 31 Those of more modest means might have to wait until the bounty schemes of the late 1830s brought the cost of passage within their reach, although even in that period the unassisted movement from Scotland was proportionately greater than that from England or Ireland. As we have seen, it was through assisted passages that large numbers of impoverished Highlanders were brought to Australia in the 1830s and 1850s. Some subsequently contrasted Scottish poverty and Australian prosperity in a way which the Highland and Island Emigration Society used to justify its policy, and which may also have encouraged further emigration. ‘It is no profit to me to tell you lies,’ wrote one satisfied emigrant. ‘I heard at home good accounts of Australia; but I never believed it till I saw it with my own eyes … They do not care about a sovereign here more than you of a penny at home.’ 32

  Would-be emigrants could also seek advice from a growing library of guidebooks, including those produced by the prolific pen of Dr John Dunmore Lang, the pugnacious Greenock-born cleric who, between his own emigration in 1823 and his death in 1878, encouraged hundreds of Scots to follow his example and used the colonial bounty scheme to introduce settlers to his brother Andrew’s extensive property in the Hunter Valley. New Zealand too was well promoted in guidebooks, newspapers and journals after it became a British colony in 1840. ‘Almost every man who has been here eight months has a piece of land in the town that costs £30 or £40,’ wrote Paisley emigrant James McDonald from Wellington in 1842. 33 ‘A very healthy country … the soil is splendid,’ reported Robert Donald, a gardener from Aberdeen, also of Wellington, in 1851, 34 and although by the 1860s and 1870s early enthusiasm was giving way to warnings of high living costs and poor prospects in a country where ‘farming is carried on in a very careless manner’, 35 some correspondents remained unequivocal in their encouragement:

  Father could get land cheap, and it costs nothing to keep the cattle. Here there are no byres, and the beasts are out all winter. There are stables for the working-horses; the rest are out all winter. Wood is cheap, and father could build very nice wooden houses. What splendid potatoes there are here, and peas and cabbages grow with no trouble, and very little manure. I am surprised at the easy way the men work. The food they get is also something very superior to what they have, for the most part, been accustomed to at home. 36

  ‘A farm of one’s own’ : the lure of the land

  This varied catalogue of commendation did not fall on deaf ears, particularly when the encouragement was contained in a private letter or verbal encouragement. In the 1830s and 1840s the neighbouring counties of Ashland, Richland and Huron in Ohio saw an influx of land-seeking Scots significant enough to have a ‘powerful influence ’ on the area’s development. Most were ‘relatives, friends and neighbours’ from a cluster of adjacent parishes in west Aberdeen-shire, several of whom emigrated in 1836 and 1837 aboard the timber ship Ark-wright from Aberdeen to New York. They included George Beattie, who arrived from Insch in 1837 with his wife, seven children and a £50 loan from Joseph Beattie, presumably his brother, ‘to enable him to purchase land in America’. Alexander Thom, an estate foreman who also came from Insch in 1837, having borrowed money to finance his family’s passage, took up share farming in Huron County, where he was joined several years later by his brother. The Scottish connections were perpetuated through intermarriage, but also extended geographically when a number of the Ohio settlers and their offspring moved west to Cedar and Poweshiek Counties, Iowa, generally to take up larger farms. 37 On the other side of the world, the Galbraith family was in 1881 attracted out from Glasgow to the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand’s North Island by the well-advertised settlement scheme of the Irish emigrant and speculator, George Vesey Stewart. They settled in Te Puke, where John Cameron Galbraith established and ran the Pioneer Store for many years, before settling on a dairy farm at Papamoa. As the area steadily filled up, he developed a thriving business with the neighbouring farmers, holding monthly cattle auctions as well as supplying his customers with hardware, groceries and clothing. He wrote regularly to his adoptive father, praising the climate, business opportunities and deferred-payment system for the acquisition of land, and before the year was out had succeeded in persuading him that the rest of the family should also emigrate:

  The climate of New Zealand is something superb. I would not go home supposing anyone was to offer me £500 a year. The air is so nice and you appear to be so free, not caring for anyone and have not the same appearance to keep up. No, I don’t think anything would tempt me to change home … [Mother] longs till you and the rest come out and I think you should come out as soon as possible … You must push out here to get on and if you do so, and don’t liquor, you are bound to succeed. 38

  Among the many examples of Scottish emigrants who purchased Crown land in Canada, the experience of the Fletcher and Farquharson families from Aberdeenshire demonstrates the close correlation between opportunities at home and abroad, as well as the relative affluence of the emigrants and, as in Ohio and Iowa, the importance of chain migration. In 1836 John Fletcher exchanged his life as a schoolteacher in Glengairn and Brechin for that of a frontier farmer in Tilbury East, Ontario, where in 1840 he purchased a bush farm. By his death in 1873 he had increased his holding to almost 1,000 acres, specializing in horse-rearing, although he continued to teach, and also served as township clerk. On two occasions he made further investments in wild land, on behalf of his son, James, and brother-in-law, Charles Farquharson, remaining convinced that such land offered the best bargain to the hard-working emigrant. In 1842 he was joined from Scotland by his brother William, who also bought land in Tilbury East, where he lived as a farmer and ‘bushman’ until 1847. For the next five years he too worked as a schoolmaster, after which he entered the Presbyterian ministry, holding charges in Ontario and Manitoba. His nephew John from Tilbury East joined him in 1870 in Manitoba, where both men took up homesteads. William Fletcher, however, had been investigating farming opportunities across the border, in Iowa and Nebraska, and in 1872 he settled in the latter state, where he died sixteen years later. In 1879 he was joined there by another nephew, George, son of his brother David, who had emigrated to Tilbury East in 1866 to buy his brother William’s original bush farm.

  When David Fletcher emigrated to Ontario in 1866, he did so as part of a contingent of twenty-six from the parish of Logie Coldstone in Aberdeenshire. He and his brother-in-law, Charles Farquharson, are the prime examples, among the members of the two emigrant families, whose decision to go to Canada was precipitated by difficulties in farming at home. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s David Fletcher maintained a correspondence with his brothers, and several times sought their advice on the propriety of emigrating. In April 1845, with two years of his lease still to run, and the prospect
of a rent increase thereafter, he expressed doubts about Canada on the grounds ‘that money is scarce, and the dealing mostly in barter’, but expected that William would in due time ‘tell us how we should do’. 39 Four years later local prices for cattle and grain were depressed, with little hope of improvement. David wrote to his brother John how times were not good for farmers at home, ‘for what we have to sell is very cheap, and what we buy is dear, and servants fees is very high’. He asked his advice on purchasing land in Canada, and predicted that other emigrants would follow their example, given the current economic crisis:

  If times be with you as I expect they are, I expect to go out with the St. Lawrence Ship in the Spring. I expect to get some pleasing accounts from you before that time. I would like to know [for] what I might buy a farm about 30 or 40 acres clear for the plough, as you have had experience of that … Our parents no doubt will be unwilling to let us go, but we can see little prospects at home. 40

  David had recently married Rebecca McCombie, also of Logie Coldstone, and she too was eager to emigrate. His wife ’s sister Margaret had likewise expressed interest in accompanying them if John and William Fletcher gave a good account of prospects in Canada. David Fletcher’s plan to emigrate in 1850 was thwarted, but his intentions were not altered. Charles Farquharson wrote to his brother-in-law in January 1851, ‘David is determined to go out to you, as he is free from any ingagement here.’ He continued in a postscript, ‘write as soon as you receive this, as David is now very ancious about going. Your father is not willin for David to go to America if he would be content to stop at home; but as he cannot be satisfied here, I think it is best for him to go.’ 41 James Fletcher senior recognized the limited prospects in Scotland and wrote frequently to John and William about the hard times in farming at home; and although in 1846 he took a new lease of his farm of Balgrennie, the terms were unfavourable.

  Charles Farquharson himself had more qualms about emigrating. His life as a tenant farmer at Parks of Coldstone was blighted by high-handed estate management and the fear of increased rentals, with no compensation for the improvements made by tenants. John Fletcher, aware of these difficulties, repeatedly highlighted the favourable openings for farming in Canada, and in 1861 purchased a bush farm in Tilbury East as an investment for Charles, in case he should decide to emigrate. ‘We can live easy here and are healthy generally but do not make much money,’ he wrote at that time. 42 Writing again in March 1865 as the expiry date of Charles’s lease drew near, he repeated his view that ‘this is a superior country for every man that has to work for his living as all of you have ’. But at the same time he tempered enthusiasm with caution. ‘What I have always studied to prevent is that no one should have too high an opinion as it causes disappointment,’ he added, explaining again in his next letter in July that he had deliberately not given unequivocal encouragement to emigrate because it ‘would not be to your advantage to have too high hopes of the country’. By then, however, he was convinced that it would clearly be to Charles’s and David’s advantage to come to Canada. Many people who had come out with nothing had prospered, ‘so if you have enough to pay your passage fear nothing. If spared I can help you the first year; afterwards if your family are in health you can do well enough — This is a poor man’s country.’ 43 Having still received no word from the indecisive Charles, he wrote again in December, urging him to make known his plans, so that if he were to come out a house and some ground could be prepared in readiness for his arrival.

  As his lease neared its end, Charles Farquharson was under growing pressure. The part of the Invercauld estate in which his farm was located had recently been sold at a high valuation to an English lawyer, and on 17 April 1865 Farquharson wrote to John Fletcher:

  The present here is a time of great anxiety. We have got a new Laird. Invercald [sic] has sold all his land in Cromar, so that we have new folks to deal with. The land is sold very dear, and our farms are all valued very high. Mine is valued at 150 pounds, a rise on the present rent of about 20 pounds in the year; and I am determined not to give that at any rate, and I do not expect to get it cheaper, so that I may say we have almost made up our minds for Canada, although I have not said so as yet. But the next letter I send you, which I expect will be in the course of three or four months, I think I will be able to say determinedly whether or no.

  According to his son Donald, the idea of settling on their Canadian investment, ‘free from rent and expiring leases’, 44 was an attractive one; yet, when his father wrote to Fletcher again on 3 July, he still had not quite made up his mind — the new laird was not going to visit his estate until August and he expected to reach his decision then. He was, however, moving more clearly in the direction of emigration, for, as he told John, ‘I have been reading over your letters and William’s, and I am quite satisfied that the chances of comfortable and independent livelihood is better with you than with us.’

  We learn from Donald Farquharson’s later memoir the probable cause of his father’s equivocation, which had to do more with domestic circumstances than his brother-in-law’s reservations:

  Mother was very unwilling to cut herself off from touch with her sole surviving sister and the scenes and surroundings of her youth, and father therefore did his best to find another farm in the county that would suit. One such appeared to be the farm of ‘The Knock’ … The owner of this farm was the Prince of Wales, the future Edward the Seventh. Dr Robertson, the Prince ’s Factor, would fain have favoured my father, whom he well knew, but a wealthy competitor had offered a higher rent than had my father, which, when both were submitted to the Prince, was by him naturally accepted…

  At that time, land hunger in Scotland was exceedingly acute, and the acquirement of a suitable farm extremely difficult, and generally called for a lengthened period of waiting, such as none of us was disposed to put in exercise. So, at once arrangements were made for a displenish sale of goods and chattels, and our passages were booked for the Port of Quebec and the town of Chatham in Upper Canada. 45

  The Farquharsons sailed from Glasgow on 6 June 1866, on the SS St Andrew, assisted and accompanied by William Fletcher, who kept the promise he had made to Charles in a letter six years earlier:

  I have always liked Canada and have never wished to be back in Scotland to live, but would enjoy a short visit very much; and although I am much pleased to hear of you all doing well in Scotland, I would welcome you all to Canada; and if you resolve to come, send me word and I will go home to help you pack your baggage, tell you what to bring, and accompany you across the ocean, and introduce you to many kind friends here. 46

  The striking connection between Upper Deeside and Tilbury East, which reached its climax in 1866 but was evident for many years before and after that date, was attributable not only to the way in which the difficulties of tenant farming in Scotland were set against the opportunities for landownership in Canada but also to the assurance that these opportunities could be enjoyed in a familiar and welcoming environment. John Fletcher himself had been drawn to Tilbury East by the proximity of the Coutts family, earlier emigrants from Deeside, and the steady creation of a ‘colony’ of Deesiders in that vicinity encouraged even the hesitant and fearful that emigration was not a step into the utterly unknown.

  The Scottish communities in the Eastern Townships and at Tilbury East were created through land company activities and the purchase of Crown land respectively. Similar colonies were established when land was purchased from speculators like Adam Fergusson, who had a specific interest in Scottish settlers. Following his exploratory tour of Canada and the United States in 1831, Fer-gusson emigrated with his family and business partner, lawyer James Webster, in 1833, founding the town of Fergus in Nichol Township, and using his guidebook to encourage Scottish settlement in the area. A number of wealthy Scottish emigrants did invest, most of them coming from Perthshire and the southern Lowlands. But Fergusson’s second wife belonged to Aberdeen, a connection which may have helped to bring about
the establishment of an explicitly Aber-donian settlement in the vicinity of Fergus in the 1830s. First to arrive, in 1834, were four friends who, with their families, made up a party of fourteen on the Aberdeen timber ship the Sir William Wallace and duly bought 100- and 200acre plots in Fergus at $4 (88p) per acre. One of their number, George Skene from Fyvie, whose main reason for emigrating had been his desire to purchase, rather than simply rent, land, was particularly impressed with the ‘independent spirit’ of the pioneer settlers in Nichol Township, and wrote approvingly in a letter home that ‘Whitsunday and Martinmas are words that are not in use here ’. 47

  Meanwhile, back in Aberdeen, Adam Fergusson’s writings, along with the publication of favourable correspondence and articles about emigration in the press, had attracted the attention of a group of friends who for some time had been meeting together to debate the pros and cons of emigration.

  They were well educated, intelligent, respectable people, with sufficient means to enable them to emigrate comfortably and to purchase land. They were led to think by the glowing accounts sent home by those whose interest it was to sell land that if they once owned a few hundred acres of land in Canada they must needs be independent, and they finally resolved to send one of their number to see, judge and purchase a block of land, one direction being that there must be church and school within reasonable distance. 48