Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  We did not get a very favourable impression by our first view of Canada, for it is a very rocky and barren coast as you near Halifax. A steam launch came out to meet us with the medical inspector & a pilot.We got alongside the wharf at 10 o’clock. There were new immigration sheds built at Halifax last year, they are very large and finely fitted up buildings, you get into them from a gangway from the steamer.We had to go first and pass the medical inspector, in single file, he stamped our railway order with the word ‘passed’, then we went on to the immigration inspectors.We had to give up the cards we got on the steamer. They had shedules [sic] with all our names, they looked at the numbers on our cards, and turned to them for reference, then asked us the questions — ‘Were ever you in Canada before?’ ‘What occupation do you intend to follow.’We next went and got our railway tickets, then we went and got our trunks and got hold of the customs officer to pass them. He asked what they contained, and then put a mark on them with chalk.We next got our luggage checked, they have a better system of checking luggage here, they tie a check with a number on your luggage, and you receive a duplicate and they will not deliver luggage to anyone unless they can produce this duplicate check. After this we went out to buy provisions for the railway journey and have a look of the place. Halifax is a very dirty looking place, the people were stepping off the cars into about four inches of mud. There are a good many coloured people in Halifax…The train left Halifax at 4 P.M. the cars here are different, being seated, with two rows of seats along each side, each car is seated for 72. And you can get from one car to the other the whole length of the train. The seats can be made into beds, by pulling the seats together and letting the backs down.What serves as a luggage rack, during the day, can also be made into a bed, by placing the luggage under the seats. So where every four persons sit during the day they can lie down at night, two on the seats, and two up aloft in the scratcher. Although there are no cuschions [sic] on the seats one can make themselves pretty comfortable. The cars are all heated with steam pipes, and if there is any fault it is that they keep them too warm. There are stoves at the end of the cars where you can heat water…We went via St John& Sherbrooke, through the state of Maine. It is a very desolate region, for from daylight on Friday until five O’clock in the afternoon we did not pass over twenty miles of cleared land altogether. We only saw one man the whole day except at the staitons [sic] and settlements. It was trees alongside the line nearly all the way, the most of them mere scrub, the timber has nearly all been destroyed by the forest fires traces of which are clearly to be seen by the number of charred logs lying on the ground and the bare stumps sticking up above the scrub. 75

  11. Scottish immigrants on board train, Quebec, c. 1911.

  On the other side of the world, William Hamilton claimed on arriving at Sydney that he and his fellow ministers had been brought out to the colony under false pretences, for ‘our prospects of emolument were not such as we had been led to expect’. Hamilton was almost immediately dispatched by the Presbytery of New South Wales to be the first Protestant minister in the district of Argyle, involving an arduous journey to Goulburn in an open mail coach. When John Sceales arrived in Sydney a year later, he and his family took rooms in the city for two months while he advertised in the press for employment, eventually accepting work as a stockkeeper at Bungonia, in the same area as William Hamilton. When Grahame Todd landed at the undeveloped site of Wellington in 1840, he purchased a tent, which was blown down during a storm on the second night after he pitched it. Jane Bannerman was slightly more fortunate when she arrived at Otago with her parents in 1847, for, although it was snowing and their blankets had not come, they had at least a house with a roof, some weather-boarding, windows and doors to protect them from the worst of the elements. After a long period of enforced idleness at sea, William Smith found it difficult to cope with even light manual tasks when he arrived at Dunedin in 1862. Some of his fellow passengers on the Nelson in 1862 found temporary lodgings in the Emigration Barracks at Dunedin, but after a night in the Exchange Hotel Smith managed to rent a house for his family while he searched unsuccessfully for work, rejecting the immigration agent’s suggestion that he should go up country immediately. 76

  Some newly arrived emigrants became strangers in a strange land. Having forged friendships — or, at least, associations — during the voyage, they were obliged to disperse once the ship had docked, as they sought to make their solitary way as backwood or prairie farmers, pastoralists or gold miners, artisans or businessmen. Some, who had emigrated in extended family or community groups, settled communally in prearranged locations, while others teamed up with friends made on board ship. Still others joined kin, friends and neighbours who had previously emigrated in a chain movement that was a significant and enduring characteristic of the Scottish diaspora. For Scots, as for emigrants of many nationalities, the process of adaptation or assimilation was smoothed by employing a variety of settlement strategies which bridged the old life and the new, integrating memories of home into an unfamiliar environment.

  7

  THE EMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

  ‘Everything is so much different, and so much easier than in the homeland.’ 1

  If the transitional experience of the voyage gave some emigrants a sharp introduction to disparities between image and reality, in what ways were the ambitions of those who had been enticed overseas affected by the more protracted process of settlement? Although every emigrant’s experience was unique, success and failure were influenced by factors such as the circumstances under which the move had taken place, the type of employment undertaken, the strength of support networks in the area of settlement, and the attitudes of both settlers and host societies. It is therefore possible to look beyond individual, family and community snapshots to identify continuities and changes in the emigrants’ experiences during more than a century of Scottish settlement overseas.

  Were farmers more likely than tradesmen to succeed, or is that a misleading stereotype fostered by agencies that had a vested interest in promoting agricultural settlement? Did the experiences of prairie farmers in the late nineteenth century echo or differ from those who pioneered the earlier settlement of Maritime or eastern Canada, or even the Antipodes? Were there significant differences between the experiences of Highlanders and Lowlanders, or those from rural and urban backgrounds? Did artisans who settled in the eastern United States enjoy better prospects than those who tried to make a living in the less developed countries of the British Empire? Where, and in what sort of enterprises, did investor-emigrants reap their greatest rewards? In what occupations and locations were emigrants most vulnerable to fraud and malpractice, and were these dangers lessened or intensified by emigrating under the auspices of sponsoring bodies? What were the particular concerns, strengths and weak nesses of female emigrants and how did their experiences overseas compare with the adventures of their male counterparts?

  Articulating the emigrant experience

  Emigrants’ impressions and experiences were described in their private and published diaries and correspondence, and occasionally in commissioned reminiscences, as well as by agents, antagonists and neutral observers. By the end of the century they were also being conveyed visually, in photographs. Sometimes the request for information came from those who had stayed at home. Shortly after Barbara Argo Watt had emigrated to Bon Accord in Upper Canada in 1836 with her husband, Alexander, the settlement’s co-organizer, she was instructed by her sister Margaret in Aberdeenshire to:

  begin a letter to me as soon as you get this and write something in it every day when you have time and write it very close so that I may have something in the form of a definite correspondence with you, write any thing, write every thing and I will do the same … I will expect a letter from you every six months, and oftener if any thing particular happens.

  Margaret’s own letters were full of family and community gossip, not least about those who were emigrating, for, as she rightly predicted, ‘among such a
wandering race youwould not knowwho might alight at your house’. 2 Elizabeth Connon, an Aberdeen shopkeeper who knew the Argos and whose nephew Thomas, a wholesale grocer, also emigrated to the Bon Accord area in 1852, was equallykeenonmaintaining a two-way correspondence, and it was because of her advice — and financial assistance — that Thomas pursued a commercial rather than a farming career, ultimately becoming a professional photographer in Elora. 3

  But letters were not as straightforward as they might seem at first glance. The line between description and propaganda was often indistinct and, as we saw earlier, letters were used to deter and attract their readers, as well as simply to inform them about emigrant life. One emigrant from north-east Scotland clearly saw the provincial newspaper back home as a means of updating his acquaintances on his progress in Australia in the early 1850s:

  You will show this letter to as many of our friends as possible. I often think of you all; perhaps the best way would be to send it to the ‘Aberdeen Journal’, as all our friends on the Dee, the Don, the Spey and the Deveron, will then have an opportunity of seeing that I am living and liking the Antipodes well. 4

  William Gibson, who emigrated from Auchinleck in Ayrshire to Wolseley on the Canadian prairies in 1886, and kept the Ayrshire Post supplied with a regular stream of letters over several years, did more than simply inform his readers. He repeatedly justified his decision to emigrate and encouraged others to follow his example, as well as reporting frequent encounters with other successful emigrants from Ayrshire. 5 But the private letters of John McBean, a Nairnshire farm labourer and journalist, were more equivocal about the benefits of prairie life. McBean wrote home frequently from Manitoba during an illness-ridden four-year residence, initially to deter his brother from joining him, but later to encourage him. Writing to his sister in March 1903, he declared, ‘I would never think of advising Andy to sell out and come here, for I know he would hate the country, and the people he would never get along with.’ Predicting that Andrew would ‘die of homesickness’ and ‘never cease to blame me for misleading him’, he continued to oppose his brother’s emigration until an opportunity arose for John to purchase a prairie farm for $10,000. Since he was financially incapable of seizing the opportunity single-handedly, he began to correspond more regularly with his brother, in an attempt to persuade Andrew to invest the required capital and join him in the venture. Glossing over his earlier opinion that Andrew would rebel against the ‘monotonous drudgery’ of farm work, he had by April 1905 ‘no hesitation’ in advising him to sell off the family farm

  and come out here with all the money the sale will bring. If you remain there you will never, if you live a million years, be able to pay the lawful shares to the other members of the family. Out here I give you my guarantee that you can do so, with the same amount of exertion you would spend there merely to exist, in ten years or probably less. 6

  As these examples demonstrate, emigrant letters were shaped by the writers’ objectives and sometimes had a hidden agenda. They therefore have to be used with caution, not least because they reflect only a very selective and self-conscious view of the emigrant experience, conveyed by a correspondent who might wish to impress a sceptical family with tales of success or paint a picture of need in order to obtain a remittance from home. Equally, recipients were more likely to preserve, and perhaps circulate, upbeat correspondence or letters that discussed arrangements for further family or community emigration. But only a handful of emigrants wrote letters. While the illiterate were obviously unrepresented, those who emigrated in family groups, who left no connections or dependants behind or who adapted quickly often had little need or inclination to retain links with home. It has been suggested that the most assiduous letter writers were the unassimilated and lonely, who longed for news from home, perhaps because they had failed to establish themselves successfully overseas. 7 John McBean certainly seems to have fallen into that category. Despite his faith in the future of western Canada, he did not have an easy life or enjoy great personal success, health or happiness. The restlessness, discontent and inconsistencies in his letters were probably due to his failure to achieve the independence he so desired; his whole brief career in Manitoba was spent in the service of others, often performing what he deemed to be menial or degrading duties, generally without any security of employment, and his premature death in 1906, as he was on the threshold of an independent farming venture, denied him the opportunity to prove whether in becoming his own master he would have achieved the security and success he craved.

  If private letters were biased, those published by newspapers, periodicals and emigration agents were even more likely to reflect the outlook of the host publication. In reporting the deaths of most members of a Morayshire family in the United States in 1833, the anti-emigration Elgin Courier grumbled, ‘When any person prospers in America, we are sure to hear of it; but it is seldom we hear of the miseries which many of our countrymen suffer when they go there, unless in cases such as here stated, where whole families are almost swept away.’ 8 Forty years later, a correspondent of the Shetland Times in St Louis, Missouri, warned readers against going to the United States on the strength of misleading descriptions of ‘large wages, light work, good homes &c’ by young men in whose letters ‘good fortune is brought too prominently forward, and evils are glossed over and made to look like blessings’. 9 From the opposite perspective, Henry Jordan’s pamphlets on Queensland in the 1860s and James Adam’s Twenty Five Years of Emigrant Life in the South of New Zealand (1873) were authored by professional agents with a remit to stimulate emigration, while the very titles of publications such as Letters from Successful Scottish Ploughmen (1909) and Prosperity follows Settlement (1911) leave little doubt about the tone of the correspondence selected by the Canadian immigration authorities to attract more emigrants. Letters and anecdotes quoted in the published reports of female emigration societies such as the British Women’s Emigration Association or the Aberdeen Ladies’ Union were, like those in the Barnardo and Quar-rier propaganda, clearly biased towards success, not least for fund-raising reasons. Commissioned surveys, such as the questionnaires issued by the Saskatchewan Archives Board in the 1950s to settlers who came to the prairies between 1878 and 1914, give a colourful retrospective snapshot of pioneer life, although the advanced age of some of the respondents, and their tendency to recall achievements rather than failures, have to be borne in mind when evaluating the reliability of their reminiscences. 10

  The farming emigrant

  Much of our evidence about the emigrant experience comes fromthe agricultural community, not only because farming was the career most frequently recommended and pursued, at least until the 1860s, but also because men andwomen on isolated farmsteads with unevenwork patterns had the inclination and the opportunity to writehomeat fairly frequent intervals. Inthe early nineteenth centurythe farming emigrant from Scotland was most likely to be found in the backwoods of UpperCanadaor,if hewasaHighlander,intheMaritimes.Oncefirstimpressions, good and bad, had been dealt with, descriptions of daily life centred on work, wages, crop yields, business transactions, health and encounters with kinfolk and other fellowScots.When the Stocks family emigrated fromPaisley, they settled in the midst of acquaintances from the west of Scotland, in the vicinity of Sherbrooke, where Mary Stocks’s skills as a midwife were much sought after:

  It is now more than a twelve months since we came on our land: We have Reaped a pretty fair crop … Our clearance Rises Gradually to the north and therefore it lies to the Mid-Day sun — we as well as the generality of our Neight-bours are well pleased with our situations. We are very well off for Neightbours Robert Twidel, from Parkhead is our nearest it is not a quarter of a mile from us their clearence and ours is already mett against the Spring of the year our two families will have a clearence of 22 acre …

  Duncan McDugal and Daniel Ritche: Arch’d McDugal, Josiah Davies James Nisbet, John Porter, Alexander Young, Robert Simm, David Wilie, James and Robert Smith, Thomas Hall
, Antony Mcbrid: James Eson: James Gilmour and son, Captan Elliot and GeorgeWatson are all around us and within two mile distance of us: and a little farther lies: 3: Brown Lee Lads; and a Crawford. Duncan and Arch’d Campbell, Ouen Creiley, William Cristilaw and many more too tideous to mention. So you see we have maney neightbours and they are all agreeable and very helpful to each other…most of the young girls are gone away to service and gets fromit 2: to4: dolars a Month: our Daughter Betty has been away too for about 4 months: she is about 60milesdownthe country:Twidals,Gilmours andWilies Daughters are further away: I fill the want of Betty in the familywhen I amfromhome:when we were in the ship Earel of Buckinghamshire I was caled along with the Doctor that came along with the ship to assist Women in child labour [and] delivered [a] sone. . . and I delivered severals before we landed: and some as we came up the river with the Boatuoos [bateaux] — and ever since we came to Shearbrook there is no other sought and I have been with a good maney. 11

  Elsewhere in her letter, Mary Stocks hinted that not all settlers were content with their land. In 1831 Robert Seton, a retired army officer from Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire, bought 100 acres near Lake Simcoe from the government at a cost of £70, payable in ten annual instalments at 6 per cent interest. Two years later he made use of his military background to acquire a further 500 acres at a substantial discount as a speculation, ‘as land is increasing most amazingly in value from the great demand’, and he anticipated a further rise once communications with Toronto had been improved. By 1838, however, he had moved elsewhere, having become disillusioned with a property whose remote location and expense of clearing outweighed the advantage of its cheapness, and he claimed that many others who, like him, had ignored the much-repeated advice of guidebooks to invest in cleared farms were also selling out as they discovered their mistake. 12 When William Webster, a joiner from New Deer, also in Aberdeenshire, took his wife, children and grandchildren to Zone Mills in the 1840s to join another daughter and son-in-law, he had difficulty in obtaining a title to his 143-acre purchase of uncleared Crown land, discovering — after he had built a house and made a partial clearing — that the government land agent had no authority to sell the Indian land which he had bought. But undeterred by these legal problems, he had no regrets, since ‘I have had uninterrupted health since I left Scotland and my wife has been pretty well to [sic] … I have not for a moment repented of coming to this country. I only wish I had been here when I was younger than now.’ 13