settlers. A bronze tablet commemorates the building in 1788 of the province’s first Methodist church.
Nathaniel Smith, the prosperous farmer from Appelton-by-Wisk, enjoyed a smooth transition to his new life in Fort Cumberland, but he knew some discontented people who felt they had been misled by Charles Dixon’s overly optimistic accounts of the region. He thought that a few of them might return to Yorkshire, but that if they did, they would not “bring a bad report” of the land: “One gallon of cream will yield as much butter as two in Old England upon the best of lands [that] I was ever concerned with.”70 Although the land was good, he wrote, “let none come here and expect to sit down at ease free from troubles, trials and disappointments … but according to human reason most of the English settled in Fort Lawrence71 and Cumberland have a hopeful prospect.” Nathaniel certainly expected to prosper quickly: “Any industrious man capable of purchasing two cows may do well … but the man of money is the man for Nova Scotia. Some have already made purchases of excellent houses and fine lands … and in a little time will be as compact and elegant as the most gentlemanly house in England.”72
Nathaniel might have been referring to John Weldon, from the North Riding village of Crathorne near Kirk Leavington. One of Michael Francklin’s 1772 recruits, he had wasted no time in equipping himself with cattle for his farm along the Petitcodiac River off Shepody Bay, to the west of where the main group had settled (see Map 2). In three years’ time he had twenty-two oxen, twenty-six cows, six horses, thirty-two sheep, and eighteen swine, and had acquired sufficient capital to change his status from tenant to landowner. Joshua Gildart, from nearby Carlton in Coverdale, who brought three servants with him, also prospered. He, too, rented 150 acres from Francklin on the Petitcodiac and within a year of his arrival had acquired even more livestock than Weldon. He later purchased five hundred acres farther up the Petitcodiac at Moncton, and spent three hundred pounds in improving his various landholdings.73 Obtaining a further 753 acres along the Petitcodiac, near its juncture with a river he called the Coverdale to commemorate his native origins (it was also known as Little River), Gildart demonstrated the Yorkshire flair for rapidly acquiring real estate.
At the other end of the social spectrum were farm workers like Jonathan Barlow, who struggled just to survive:
Tombstones of the early Yorkshire settlers at Five Points Baptist Cemetery, Coverdale, near Salisbury, New Brunswick.
I found everything very dear in Cumberland, and was glad to lay among the hay. So I fell to work for eighteen pence per day and victuals found some days. On June 3rd I hired to Samuel Rogers of Westcock [near Sackville] for £1, 15 s. per month; stayed with him most of the summer. I found the mosquitoes very troublesome, but the land was very good. Therefore I bought 150 acres of land, but having no house or habitation.74
And servants also faced difficult times:
I went to a place of service for three weeks, and had I been a poor beggar I could not have been worse used; and indeed the inhabitants in general seem to be poor miserable beings, which was very mortifying to me, who had been used to good living at home. It is a desolate, depressed, and almost uninhabited country, their food is chiefly fish, which is not very delicate, but cheap. If anyone should inquire about my situation here, pray describe the country as I have done, every word that I have wrote being truth. I am going to leave this place soon, and when I am settled shall let you hear further from me.75
Nathaniel Smith thought that “many of the poorer sort seem very discontented … as none is able to employ them,” partly because the wealthier farmers generally brought their own servants and farm labourers with them. “Some I believe will return … others would return but have not therewith to pay their passage; those I greatly pity.”76
According to Major General Eyre Massey, the commanding general in Halifax, some did return in 1776, and were helped to do so with government funds. They “seemed heartily sick of their jaunt,” having received “no encouragement in America.” Giving “some their passage to England,” he hoped that they would serve as a lesson to deter “the Old Country from losing so many of her subjects,”77 although the many hundreds who remained would prove him wrong.
The Yorkshire settlers scattered far and wide, choosing their locations according to land and job availability.78 In this respect they were very different from the Scottish Highlanders who came to the region at this time and relocated themselves as entire communities on land granted by the government. Highlanders sought to preserve their culture and traditions and so progressed in groups rather than singly. However, as Governor Legge explained to Lord Dartmouth, the Yorkshire immigrants “do not come with the expectation of lands [being] granted to them.” They did not wish to settle as one community, but as individuals. “Some come to purchase [land], others perhaps to become tenants and some to labour.”79 Having rented substantial farms in Yorkshire that had been handed down from father to son, they were accustomed to renting, and took their time before making the transition from renter to owner. And when they bought farms from their New England predecessors they became widely dispersed in the Chignecto Isthmus, including the area to the west, along the Petitcodiac and Memramcook rivers, off the Shepody Bay, and the region to the south along the River Philip. Several families went even farther afield, settling in Annapolis and nearby townships in the southwest of the province.80
Yorkshire settlers had to cope with the privations, drudgery, and isolation of pioneer life, and endured testing conditions that seem almost incomprehensible today. Yorkshire men had to turn wildernesses into cleared farms, while the women would have had to become completely self-sufficient in meeting the domestic needs of their families. To do so they would have had to remember old skills and learn new ones. They clearly rose to the challenge. As John Robertson and Thomas Rispin observed:
[T]he women are very industrious house-wives and spin the flax, the growth of their own farms, and weave both their linen and woollen cloth; they also bleach their linen and dye the yarn themselves. Though they will not descend to work out of doors, either in time of hay or harvest yet, they are exceedingly diligent in every domestic employment. The candles … soap and starch which are used in their families are of their own manufacturing.81
Methodism played its part in helping settlers like Charles Dixon find a moral dimension to their new life. They had wanted to escape from what they saw as England’s corruption and over-worldliness, and sought a refuge for themselves and their families in a British-held wilderness. Their Methodist religion provided a vital support mechanism by drawing people together regularly for worship, and it was also an important link with their English past. Methodist fervour was sustained by a great many of the immigrants, but by far the most outstanding example was William Black, who arrived in the Jenny in 1775 as a boy of fourteen with the rest of his family. Thirteen years later he had become the spiritual leader of the entire Nova Scotia Methodist community and thereafter became one of the most important Methodist leaders in North America.82
Having completed his tour, John Robinson concluded that he would have a far better life in Nova Scotia than in England, and so returned to Yorkshire to bring back his family: “A large sum of money would not induce me to stay any longer[in England].”83 A new world with no masters and servants had opened up, and soon the paucity of a population, which had held back the province’s development, would find a solution. Oddly enough, the outcome of the American War of Independence, which began in 1775 and ended in 1783, worked to its advantage. Having lost the war, the British government relocated large numbers of Loyalists, many of whom were English or of English descent, from the United States to Nova Scotia, thus beginning a new chapter in the province’s development.
