Old English Church at Guysborough, 1910.
The English-owned and managed General Mining Association, which controlled operations at the Albion mines near New Glasgow (Pictou County) and the Sydney mines in Cape Breton, sought its skilled workforce initially from Britain. The Acadian Recorder had first alerted its readers to the arrival of English miners and labourers in 1827 when the Margaret came to Pictou from Liverpool “with 85 miners and all the necessary engines and machinery to work the mines at this place.”68 Miners from the north of England played an important role in laying the foundations of Nova Scotia’s coal-mining industry, as shown by the larger than average number of English passenger arrivals between 1827 and 1832, in 1838, and again between 1842 and 1847.69 However, English settlers were only ever going to be a small fraction of the total immigrant population in the coalproducing regions, which was heavily dominated by Scots.70
Lord Dalhousie had been astonished to learn of the thickness of the Albion coal seam: “They have bored 47 feet and did not get through the pure seam.” By comparison, “the thickest seam in England … is 30 feet of solid coal.”71 Oddly enough, the province’s lucrative coal mines were first owned by a firm of London jewellers. In 1826–27, Rundell, Bridge and Rundell acquired the rights to virtually all of the province’s mineral resources in settlement of the Duke of York’s debts.72 Taking its acquisition very seriously, the London jewellers formed the General Mining Association and invested large amounts of capital in state-of-theart machinery.73 Although initially many of its workers were recruited from Britain, most of the later workforce were locally based. Coal was extracted through the use of steam-driven mining equipment,74 and by 1830 the province’s first railway line was in place to take coal from the pits to Pictou Harbour, where it was shipped onward, primarily to the United States.75 While Cape Breton’s coal mines had been worked much earlier, their productivity had initially been very low.76 But with the General Mining Association’s involvement, coal production and the numbers employed rose sharply beginning in 1830.77 By 1846 the company had invested some three hundred thousand pounds in Pictou’s and Cape Breton’s coal mines.78
Thomas Neville, from Lichfield in Warwickshire, had sailed on the Thomas Battersby to Pictou in 1828 with his wife, Frances Bridgen, as part of a larger group that had been recruited in England by the General Mining Association. Working initially at the Albion Mines as an engineer fitter until 1841, he later found work at the Sydney mines in Cape Breton, being paid six shillings per day, “and having his travel expenses paid.”79 With the money accumulated from working in the mines, he then went on to buy a farm at Denmark, near Tatamagouche in Colchester County, in 1849.80
The 1840s were difficult years for family and friends still living in the Midlands. Joseph Bridgen, Neville’s brother-in-law who lived in Coventry, described the “very great distress in this town and everywhere; there is no work to be had of any kind.”81 The large number of ribbon-makers who were concentrated in Coventry suddenly found that their jobs were being taken over by machines: “Three parts of the hands are out of employ[ment] and everything seems to be getting worse. I am sorry to say that my father has not had scarcely a day’s work this summer … my brothers were all out of work last winter.”82 This calamitous situation would stimulate further emigration, although it was directed principally to the United States and Upper and Lower Canada, but not to the Maritimes.
Meanwhile, Thomas’s brother Simon had immigrated to Quebec in 1840, where, as a skilled tradesman, he easily found work in stencilling, plastering, and brick setting. But he wondered whether he should join Thomas in Nova Scotia: “Please send me word as I can do well in almost any place, and send me word how far you are from Saint John, New Brunswick and the name of your landing place, as a gentleman wanted to hire me to go to there; but I did not know what sort of place it was.”83 However, Thomas was clearly thinking about doing the reverse. Asking Simon about conditions in Quebec, he was told that “engineers get from 6 to 7 [shillings,] 6[pence] per day; and as you wanted to know the price of land, you can buy 100 acres of good land and a house on it for £30 and there is 20 acres cleared of it…. If you think of coming please to send me word and I will look out for a comfortable [place] for you.”84 Yet, despite these tempting advantages, Thomas remained in Nova Scotia.
Peter Barrett was another English recruit. The son of a Cornish farm labourer from St. Mellion, he had found work in 1865 in the Cramlington Colliery in Northumberland, unwittingly arriving as a blackleg “to fill the places of native miners” during a strike. Emigrating a year later, he sought employment at the Albion Mines, but initially was turned away.85 The local Wesleyan Methodist minister, the Reverend Chapman, came immediately to his aid. He took him to the “mission house,” where he lived for a few days, and helped him to secure a job at the mines. Peter was clearly shocked by the “old dilapidated log houses” that were used to accommodate local workers and their families. He disapproved of the “herding together of the sexes” and the use of the same room for sleeping and cooking.86 “There were to be seen one to three beds in the room where cooking had to be done.” However, to his relief, he learned that General Mining Association employees of his status were to be housed in “nice cottage rows.”87
Miners’ dwellings, Sydney, Cape Breton, photograph circa 1890.
Two years later Peter became “deputy under boss,” a position he held for two years, after which time he went gold prospecting in the United States and, after visiting Ontario, returned to the Albion Mines.88 While in Ontario he wondered “why tenant farmers in England don’t leave their high rented farms with their cursed game laws and other grievances shackled upon them? Why don’t they go out by the thousands to that free and prosperous country of Canada and become their own landlords?”89 Moving to Stellarton, he took up employment with the Acadia Coal Company at the Drummond colliery “and, by dint of hard work and economy was able to save several hundred dollars.”90 Marrying Hortense Langille, daughter of John Langille, a farmer and miller from River John, Pictou, in 1873, Peter Barrett was fast becoming a man of substance. That same year a tragic explosion occurred at the colliery, causing seventy deaths, some of whom were Cornishmen.91
Peter and Hortense then moved to Springhill Mines (Cumberland County) and boarded briefly in temporary accommodation “until a company house was ready for us.” In the meantime, Peter’s entrepreneurial talents had led him into property speculation and moneylending. Having bought land “at between £100 to £200 per acre,” he sold it “as small building plots at £800 to £900 per acre.” He claimed that he “accumulated property fast and there were not wanting those who envied my prosperity.”92 Possibly it was envy that triggered off his swift downfall. He became embroiled in a legal battle that resulted in the loss of all his property and a spell in prison. Claiming that he had been defrauded, Peter felt bitter that he had ended up “a pauper (thanks to Nova Scotians).” After working hard for twentyseven years and “having been nearly 12 years in North America,”93 he and his family returned to Cornwall with no money except what Peter had borrowed from his brother-in-law to finance their crossing.
Few men would have experienced Peter Barrett’s rapid rise and downfall. Most English immigrants were like the Yorkshire-born Adam Bousfield, who found work at the mines in Stellarton and later moved on to the Sydney mines as job opportunities presented themselves.94 Thomas Dixon, born in Exeter, ended up in South Harbour, Cape Breton, after becoming shipwrecked near the entrance of Cape North Harbour in 1834. After marrying Martha Fitzgerald, a local girl, he turned his hand to fishing, and together they “left many descendents [sic].”95 In fact, Cape Breton had a fair sprinkling of English inhabitants who struggled to make a living as fishermen. A plaintive request was sent in 1819 to the London Missionary Society96 by householders
