Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  60. Donald McLeod, Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland: versus Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories in (England) a Foreign Land: or a faithful picture of the extirpation of the Celtic Race from the Highlands of Scotland (Toronto, 1857), p. 164. James Cameron suggests that in only twenty cases were Gordon’s emigrants actually manhandled aboard the ships. James Cameron, ‘A Study of the Factors that Assisted and Directed Scottish Emigration to Upper Canada’, pp. 345—56, quoted in Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances, p. 254.

  61. MacKenzie, The History of the Highland Clearances, pp. 285, 268.

  62. PP 1884, XXXII—XXXVI, Report of H.M. Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland [hereafter Napier Commission], Q. 14301.

  63. Ibid., Appendix A, pp. 117, 119.

  64. Ibid., Report, p. 8. See also Wayne Norton, Help Us to a Better Land: Crofter Colonies in the Prairie West (Regina, Sask., 1994).

  65. ‘The Large Farm System’, Free Church Magazine, vol. V (1848), p. 112; C. Hope, George Hope of Fenton Barns: A Sketch of his life, compiled by his daughter (Edinburgh, 1881).

  66. Comment of a Fife minister in Free Church Magazine, vol. VIII (1851), p. 249; see also Ian Carter, Farm Life in North-East Scotland, 1840—1914: The Poor Man’s Country (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 157.

  67. PRO, CO384/3, 25 May 1818; CO384/5, 20 March 1819; NSA, vol. IV, p. 539; E. J. Cowan, ‘From the Southern Uplands to Southern Ontario: Nineteenth-century Emigration from the Scottish Borders’, in Devine (ed.), Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society, p. 72.

  68. NAS GD 224 511/20/5, 8 November 1842, William Ogilvie to the Duke of Buccleuch; Cowan, ‘From the Southern Uplands …’, pp. 69, 62, from James Hogg, TheWorks of the Ettrick Shepherd, vol. 1 (London, 1865), p. 426.

  69. James Leslie (of Aberchirder), Willie and Meggie’s Marriage; with a hundred cuts of homespun yarn therewith interwoven (second edition, Aberdeen, 1837), pp. 32—3, 35.

  70. Aberdeen Herald, 4 December 1852.

  71. Ibid., 3 June 1854.

  72. NAC, RG 76, C-10294-5, vol. 405, file 590687, Report of John MacLennan, in Department of the Interior, Annual Reports on Immigration, 1909—10.

  73. PP 1906 [Cd 3273], XCVI, 583, pp. 15—16.

  74. A. D. Hall, A Pilgrimage of British Farming 1910—1912 (London, 1913), pp. 383—4.

  75. Aberdeen Journal, 23 January, 22 March and 10, 13 and 14 April 1888, 28 May 1889; Jill Wade, ‘The “Gigantic Scheme”: Crofter Immigration and Deep-sea Fisheries Development for British Columbia, 1887—1893’, BC Studies, no. 53 (Spring 1982), pp. 28—44.

  76. Fraserburgh Herald, 14 February 1888.

  77. Aberdeen Journal, 27 December 1889.

  78. Ibid., 26 December 1890.

  79. Aberdeenshire Archives, MS 6/27/23: Fraserburgh Parish Council, Record of Applications, 1907—1911, p. 24.

  80. Aberdeen Journal, 9 January and 26 December 1911.

  81. Ibid., 10 May 1912.

  82. PP 1914 Cd. 7462, XXXI, Report of the Scottish Departmental Committee on the North Sea Fishing Industry, Part II, Evidence, QQ. 928—31.

  83. Ibid., QQ. 4051—2 , 4058—65.

  84. Ibid., Q. 4648.

  85. Ibid., QQ. 5758—60, 1798.

  Chapter 3: Attracting the Adventurous

  1. Counsel for Emigrants (Aberdeen, 1834), p. 30.

  2. PP 1857 (14), X, Sess. 1, Despatches relating to emigration to the North American Colonies, p. 28, Report for 15—21 July 1855.

  3. Viola R. Cameron, Emigrants from Scotland to America, 1774—1775 (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 44 (Magdalene), 50—51 (Sally), 67—9 (Friendship).

  4. Ibid., pp. 53, 73—5.

  5. Dumfries Weekly Magazine, vol. 1 (1772), p. 135, quoted in Ian Adams and Meredyth Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope: Scottish Emigration to North America, 1603—1803 (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 120.

  6. Quoted ibid., p. 114.

  7. Witherspoon and the Pagans were also behind the land speculation that brought the Hector and its Highland passengers toNova Scotia in 1773. See pp. 115, 198.9, 200, 335.

  8. Cape Archives Depot, A 394, Benjamin Moodie’s notes on his experiences in Cape Colony, 1817—21, typescript, 18; Lieutenant J. W. D. Moodie, Ten Years in South Africa (London, 1835), 2 vols.

  9. Carol Bennett, The Lanark Society Settlers, 1820—1821 (Renfrew, Ont., 1991), p. 49.

  10. Ibid., p. 52. Boag died in 1830.

  11. Quoted in Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances, vol. 2, Emigration, Protest, Reasons (London, 1985), p. 272, from An Teachdaire Gaidhealach, 1 August 1857.

  12. PP 1826—27 (550), V, 223, Third Report from the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the expediency of encouraging emigration from the United Kingdom, extracts from correspondence quoted in the evidence of William Spencer Northouse. William Davie to his sons and daughters, 25 November 1821; Andrew Angus to his parents, 12 January 1822; James Dobbie to his father and friends, 24 April 1826; Dobbie to his cousin, 26 June 1826.

  13. Anon., A statement of the satisfactory results which have attended emigration to Upper Canada, from the establishment of the Canada Company until the present period; comprising statistical tables, and other important information, communicated by respectable residents in the various townships of Upper Canada, with a general map of the province; compiled for the guidance of emigrants (London, 1841), p. 14.

  14. Napier Commission, Appendix A, p. 138, letters dated 23 and 20 September 1851.

  15. The six townships were originally in Buckingham County, later renamed Sherbrooke County, which in 1853 became Compton County. Laurel Doucette (ed.), Cultural Retention and Demographic Change: Studies of the Hebridean Scots in the EasternTownships of Quebec (Ottawa, 1980), pp. 10, 22.

  16. Robert MacDougall, Ceann-Iuil an Fhir-Imrich do dh’America mu-Thuath (The Emigrant’s Guide to North America) (Glasgow, Oban, Inverness and Dingwall, 1841), translated and edited by Elizabeth Thomson (Toronto, 1998).

  17. Margaret Bennett, Oatmeal and the Catechism. Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec (Edinburgh, 1998), p. 9, interview with Duncan McLeod.

  18. Ariel Dyer, The Laird of Woodhill (Waterdown, Ont., 1983), p. 30. See also Adam Fergusson, Practical Notes, made during a tour in Canada and a portion of the United States in 1831 (Edinburgh, 1833) and Practical Notes … second edition, to which are now added notes made during a second visit to Canada in 1833 (London, 1834).

  19. PRO, CO384/1, 21 April 1817, William Shaw to John Campbell, on behalf of Robert Weir; CO384/3, 13 April 1818, Francis Hall to John Campbell; CO384/3, 14 November 1818, John Campbell to Henry Goulburn; CO384/3, 1818, James Whyte to Colonial Department; CO384/4, 6 November 1819, John Haldane to Lord Bathurst.

  20. Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. IV (1832—4), p. 216.

  21. Counsel for Emigrants p. 45.

  22. Ibid., p. 124. Letter dated 22 October 1833.

  23. Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, vol. III, no. 112 (22 March 1834), p. 64. Letter from a former naval officer to his brother in Edinburgh.

  24. Ibid., vol. I, no. 19 (19 June 1832), p. 150, quoting from Martin Doyle, Hints on Emigration to Upper Canada (Dublin, 1832).

  25. Ibid., no. 456 (21 September 1872), p. 594, quoting a report by the Canadian Minister of Agriculture.

  26. Napier Commission, XXXII, Appendix A, 125—6. Emigration from the Long Island. Letters of emigrants from the property of Lady Gordon Cathcart, letter dated 17 June 1883.

  27. Ibid, p. 129, letter dated 11 August 1883.

  28. Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, vol. VI, no. 292 (2 September 1837), p. 252.

  29. Counsel for Emigrants pp. 35—7, letter dated 9 March 1834.

  30. Eric Richards, Alexia Howe, Ian Donnachie and Adrian Graves, That Land of Exiles: Scots in Australia 1788—1914 (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 70—71.

  31. Edinburgh Evening Courant, 23 November 1822; Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. III, p. 356. See also James Dixon, The Narrative of
a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in the ship Skelton during the year 1820. With observations on the state of these colonies and a variety of information, calculated to be useful to emigrants (Edinburgh, 1822).

  32. Quoted in Richards et al., That Land of Exiles, p. 75.

  33. Paisley Advertiser, 14 May 1842. James McDonald to Rev. Dr Thomas Burns.

  34. Aberdeen Herald, 3 July 1852.

  35. NRA(S), Survey no. 1150, Drummuir Castle MSS, bundle 203, letter from Alexander Walker of Elgin to his uncle in Scotland, 13 March 1867.

  36. Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal (18 July 1874), p. 464, written by an Aberdeenshire woman from an unspecified part of New Zealand.

  37. Rae Bailey, Old Keys: An Historical Sketch of Clear Creek Township, Ashland County, Ohio, and of Savannah, the Township’s Only Village (Washington, 1941), pp. 27—8. See also A. J. Baughman (ed.), A Centennial Biographical History of Richland County, Iowa (Chicago, 1901); The History of Cedar County, Iowa (Chicago, 1878); The History of Poweshiek County, Iowa (Des Moines, 1880); Marjory Harper, Emigration from North East Scotland, vol. I, Willing Exiles (Aberdeen, 1988), pp. 249—53. Thanks to Paul F. McWilliams of Fallbrook, California, for genealogical information relating to the Ohio and Iowa Scots.

  38. Galbraith correspondence (eleven letters), courtesy of Mrs F. E. Young, Grant House, Main Street, Tomintoul, John C. Galbraith to George Galbraith, 16 May and 15 July 1881. See also A. C. Bellamy (ed.), Tauranga, 1882—1982: The Centennial of Gazetting Tauranga as a Borough (Tauranga City Council, 1982).

  39. NRA(S), Survey no. 1345. Private correspondence in the possession of Mrs J. J. Grant of Banchory, Kincardineshire. David Fletcher to William Fletcher, 13 April 1845.

  40. Ibid., David Fletcher to John Fletcher, 6 August 1849.

  41. Ibid., Charles Farquharson to John Fletcher, 21 January 1851.

  42. Ibid., John Fletcher to Charles Farquharson, 24 October 1861.

  43. Ibid., John Fletcher to Charles Farquharson, 27 March and 13 July 1865.

  44. Donald R. Farquharson, Tales and Memories of Cromar and Canada (Chatham, Ont., n.d. [1930s]), p. 164.

  45. Ibid., p. 165.

  46. NRA(S) 1345, William Fletcher to Charles Farquharson, 1860 (n.d.).

  47. ArthurW.Wright, Pioneer Days in Nichol: Including Notes and Letters Referring to the Early Settlement of the Township of Nichol and its Villages (Mount Forest?, Ont., 1932), p. 96.

  48. Ibid., p. 26.

  49. John R. Connon, Elora (Elora, Ont., 1930), pp. 70—71. Elmslie ’s diary, preserved in the Wellington County Museum near Fergus (A 984.15 MU 59), describes in full the pioneers’ search for a suitable tract of land.

  50. Counsel for Emigrants (Aberdeen, 1838), p. 105, letter dated 13 September 1834.

  51. Guelph University Library, Special Collections, XS1 MS A099. Correspondence and rental accounts relating to the Beattie family of Broomhill farm, Strathdon, John Beattie to George Beattie, 29 October 1838. See also William Beattie senior to George Beattie, 13 June 1836 and William Beattie junior to George Beattie, 10 June 1837.

  52. William Chambers, Information for the People, nos. 4, 5. Quoted in Counsel for Emigrants (Aberdeen, 1834), p. 20.

  53. PP 1841 [298], vol. XV, 86, week ending 11 July 1840; PP 1857 (125), vol. XXVIII, Sess. 2, 31 July to 16 August 1856; PP 1854—55 (464), vol. XXXIX, 27, 16 to 23 June 1855, dispatches relating to emigration to the North American colonies.

  54. Illustrated London News, 25 April 1857, p. 384.

  55. James Thompson, For Friends at Home: A Scottish Emigrant’s Letters from Canada, California and the Cariboo, 1844—1864, edited by Richard A. Preston (Montreal and London, 1974), pp. 199—200.

  56. Lord Teignmouth, Sketches of the Coasts and Islands of Scotland (London, 1836), pp. 85, 86.

  57. North British Daily Mail, 17 and 21 June 1847; Napier Commission, Q 44731. See also T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine. Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 199.

  58. Scotsman, 26 July 1848, 21 July 1849.

  59. Napier Commission, Appendix A, pp. 130, 131, letters of emigrants from the Long Island. John McCormick to Salina McDonald, 20 August 1833; Lachlan McPherson to his brother, 24 August 1883.

  60. Eric Richards, ‘Australia and the Scottish Connection, 1788—1914’, in R. A. Cage (ed.), The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750—1914 (London, 1985), p. 128. For discussion of New Zealand and South American enterprises, see ibid., pp. 172—7, 230—3.

  61. AUA, MS 2580/639, Walter Davidson to William Leslie senior, 30 June 1836. Information on the Leslies has been quarried partly from this archive and partly from additional correspondence in the private collection of Mr and Mrs W. de Falbe of Somerset. In addition, use has been made of K. G. T. Waller, ‘The Letters of the Leslie Brothers in Australia’ (unpublished BA thesis, University of Queensland, 1956), the original letters being in the John Oxley Library, Brisbane. The reference to ‘surplus younger sons’ is taken from Malcolm D. Prentis, The Scots in Australia. A Study of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, 1788—1900 (Sydney, 1983), p. 30.

  62. De Falbe letters, Patrick to William and Jane Leslie, 24 February 1837.

  63. Waller/Oxley collection, George to William and Jane Leslie, 10 July 1839.

  64. Waller/Oxley collection, Walter Leslie to Mary Anne Davidson, 15 December 1839.

  65. AUA, MS 2580/705, Patrick Leslie to William Leslie senior, 29 May 1839, written from Vineyard.

  66. Waller/Oxley collection, Patrick Leslie to William and Jane Leslie, 9 October 1838.

  67. AUA, MS 2580/705, Patrick to William Leslie senior, 29 May 1839.

  68. De Falbe letters, L1 19E, William Leslie senior to Walter Leslie, 20 August 1840.

  69. De Falbe letters, Jane Leslie to Walter Leslie, 28 August 1839.

  70. Waller/Oxley collection, Patrick Leslie to William and Jane Leslie, 11 September 1840.

  71. De Falbe letters, L1 13D, William Leslie to George Leslie, 23 March 1841.

  72. AUA, MS 2580/812, Francis Middleton to William Leslie senior, 19 January 1845.

  73. AUA, MS 2580/1/876, William Leslie junior, to William Leslie of Warthill, 3 May 1844.

  74. Sir John Fleming, Looking Backwards for Seventy Years, 1921—1851 (Aberdeen, 1922), p. 185.

  75. AUA, MS 2580/1/876, William Leslie junior, to William Leslie of Warthill, 3 May 1844.

  76. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 146 (October 1884), p. 468.

  77. Paul Edwards, ‘Scottish Investments in the American West’, in Scottish Colloquium Proceedings, vols 4—5 (University of Guelph, 1973), p. 73.

  78. Ferenc M. Szasz, Scots in the North American West, 1790—1917 (Norman, Ok., 2000), pp. 103, 106.

  79. See, for instance, Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (New York and Oxford, 1970).

  80. ‘The emigrants from Scotland were respectable tradesmen and farmers; 104 were mechanics, principally connected with railroad work,’ reported Alexander Buchanan of the arrivals at Quebec during May 1853 (PP 1854 [1763] vol. XLVI, papers relating to emigration to the North American Colonies, p. 32.)

  81. Adams and Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope, p. 112.

  82. R. T. Berthoff, British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790—1950 (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 19.

  83. Ibid., pp. 30—46; Bernard Aspinwall, ‘The Scots in the United States’, in Cage (ed.), The Scots Abroad, pp. 96—7.

  84. Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, vol. II (1833—4), 356—7, 364—5, 374—5, 381—2, 405—6, 413—14; ibid., vol. IX (19 December 1840), p. 379; ibid., vol. XI (17 December 1842), pp. 282—3.

  85. NLS, Acc. 11416, Kerr correspondence, 1820—83.

  86. Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-century America (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 229, 231.

  87. Connon, Elora, p. 85.

  88. Aberdeen Herald, 23 July 1836.

  89. NRA(S), Survey no. 1
345, Charles Farquharson to John Fletcher, 3 July 1865.

  90. Cuairtear nan Gleann, vol. 2 (1840), p. 31, quoted in Sheila Kidd, ‘Caraid nan Gaidheal & “Friend of Emigration”: Gaelic Emigration Literature of the 1840s’, Scottish Historical Review, vol. LXXXI, 1: no. 211 (April 2002), pp. 52—69.

  91. See pp. 134, 331, 339.40.

  92. J. H. Tremenheere, ‘New Zealand: Its Progress and Resources’, Quarterly Review, vol. CVI (October 1859), p. 355.

  93. Aberdeen Journal, 22 November 1837. See also Harper, Emigration from North East Scotland, vol. I, pp. 320—30.

  94. Donald McLean to Norman Macdonald, 20 September 1851, in Napier Commission, Appendix A, p. 164.

  95. Kidd, ‘Caraid nan Gaidheal & “Friend of Emigration”’. The poster was produced by Nahum Ward.

  96. Counsel for Emigrants, pp. 128—9. See also Counsel for Emigrants — Sequel (Aberdeen, 1834), p. 51.

  97. See, for instance, ibid., p. 33; William Thomson, A tradesman’s travels in the United States and Canada in the years 1840, 41 and 42 (Aberdeen, 1842), pp. 39—40, 197—207.

  98. Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, p. 32.

  Chapter 4: The Recruitment Business

  1. Canadian Sessional Papers [hereafter CSP], vol. 6, no. 6 (1873), Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture for the Dominion of Canada for 1872, appendix 23, Report of Proceedings in England and Scotland, March to August 1872, by special agent, James Ross.

  2. See pp. 34, 161.

  3. Aberdeen Journal, 17 January 1749.

  4. Ibid., 5 February 1751, 2 January 1753, 28 May and 16 July 1754.

  5. Ibid., 26 July 1773, 5 July 1784.

  6. Ibid., 24 December 1751.

  7. The Pictou enterprise was also promoted by sub-agents at Inveraray, Maryburgh (Fort William), Portree, Fort Augustus and Inverness (Glasgow Journal, 17 September 1772).

  8. Anthony Parker, Scottish Highlanders in Colonial Georgia: The Recruitment, Emigration and Settlement at Darien, 1735—1748 (Athens, Ga, 1997), p. 39.

  9. The Colonial Records of Georgia, vol. 21, pp. 13—14.

  10. For discussion of the relationship between military recruitment and emigration, see Andrew Mackillop, More Fruitful than the Soil: Army, Empire and theScottish Highlands, 1715—1815 (East Linton, 2000), pp. 139—67.