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In 1772 the first organised emigration from the
Hebrides to Canada took place, not on the Hector to Pictou in Nova Scotia
as is usually assumed, but on the Alexander to Prince Edward Island. In
1771 MacDonald of Glenalladale on the western mainland of Scotland had
bought part of Lot 36 on the Island, around the area of the later Tracadie
and Scotchfort, with the intention of removing there with as many of his
tenants as would leave Scotland with him. To this extent the emigration
followed the standard pattern of a tacksman trying to set up a new clan
system in the New World, as was being tried in the Carolinas. But there
was a difference in the Glenalladale settlement, and the reason for it was
to be found on the Island of South Uist.
Colin MacDonald, tacksman of Boisdale, which comprised most of the south
end of South Uist, was a Protestant, and decided to force his tenants to
renounce their Roman Catholic faith by refusing to grant renewals of their
leases unless they changed to his religious beliefs. This they refused to
do, and the scheme was set for an ugly confrontation, which could easily
spread to other estates where a similar difference existed between
tacksman or proprietor and tenant. The Roman Catholic hierarchy in
Scotland had no wish to see their members forced to change, and started to
exert pressure on Boisdale. The most effective pressure available to them
was economic, as this was the period where the value of the kelp industry
- processing of seaweed - was at its peak. Kelp-gathering and burning was
a very labour intensive process, and Boisdale required to keep his tenants
as a labour pool. So the Church hierarchy started to arrange for the
Boisdale tenants to accompany Glenalladale to Prince Edward Island, which
would have left Boisdale in great economic difficulties, without a labour
force.
Arrangements were made for the thirty-six families most under threat to
join the mainland emigrants on the Alexander, but eventually Boisdale had
to back down, and withdraw his threats of eviction. Nonetheless, sixteen
families from Boisdale still showed an intention to leave, though by the
time the Alexander sailed, only eleven families from South Uist were on
board, and another five families from the neighbouring island of Barra had
to be taken on board to make up numbers.
The heads of the Boisdale families are recorded as Duncan MacInnes,
Charles MacKinnon, John MacIntyre, Angus MacCormaig, Donald MacDonald,
Donald MacIntosh, Angus MacKinnon, John MacMillan, John Cumming and Angus
MacDonald, together with John MacDonald from Stonybrig in the Middle
District of South Uist. The five Barra families were those of Neil
MacIntyre, Roderick MacIntyre, Angus MacIntyre, John MacMillan and Angus
MacNeil.
There were of course no records being kept in South Uist or Barra at that
time which would allow us to identify the emigrants, but it is sometimes
possible to detect a naming pattern in families remaining there which
would suggest relationship to one of these families.
It is strange that the story of the Glenalladale settlers has been so much
over-shadowed by that of the settlers who came to Pictou, Nova Scotia, on
the Hector in the following year, who are generally reckoned the first
Highland settlement in the area. Perhaps it is because of their privations
that the Hector settlers are better remembered, for their settlement had
none of the preparation carried out by Glenalladale - they were merely set
ashore and left to make the best of it.
Glenalladale, on the other hand, had provided supplies to take his
settlers through the difficult early years, and had offered leases of
three thousand years’ duration. Nonetheless his attempt to build a new
clan system failed, like those further south. His own tenants from
Glenalladale had the strongest ties to bind them to his land, but the
South Uist families had no such ties, and soon moved off to free land
further along the coast to the east, in the area of Savage Harbour. Like
all new settlers, they had their problems with unfamiliar land and
climate, but the reports reaching South Uist from them must have been
good, for there was a steady flow of settlers, leaving South Uist to join
their relatives on Prince Edward Island.
The surnames of the South Uist people were similar to those on the
mainland parts of the Clanranald estates, so it is not in general easy to
identify them but there are two surnames in South Uist which we have found
to be diagnostic - Steele and O’Henley. The first of these are claimed to
have been MacLeans who took the name Steele from the captain of the ship
which took them to Uist, and the latter have clearly an Irish origin,
though they have been in South Uist for centuries.
Where these names are found among MacDonald, MacIsaacs and MacEachans, we
can be fairly sure that we have a South Uist community, and a search of
the 1880 Historical Atlas of PEI shows such names concentrated in Lots 7 &
8 (West Cape) , 35,36 & 37 (Tracadie to Savage Harbour) 42 & 43 (Cable
Head) and 55 (Launching).
Emigration to Canada, and the PEI in particular, increased after the
closure of the new USA to British emigrants after the American War of
Independence, and the outflow of emigrants from the Islands began to cause
the same worries to the landlords of estates as had proved successful in
the case of Boisdale - too few workers meant reduced profits from kelp.
They persuaded the British Government to pass the Ships’ Passenger Act in
1803, ostensibly to increase the standards on emigrant vessels but in
reality to put the cost of the passage beyond the means of all but the
most affluent would-be emigrants.
It is doubtful whether the Act caused a great diminution in the numbers of
persons leaving the Scottish Islands. Timber merchants had ships crossing
the Atlantic to Britain and returning ostensibly empty, and it was easy
for them to pick up unofficial passengers in the remote sea-lochs of the
Hebrides. The main effect of the Act was to drive the trade "underground"
and it is for this reason that so few passenger lists survive for the
ships taking emigrants to Canada in this period - it was in nobody’s
interest to keep a record of an illicit trade.
Lord Selkirk’s settlements in PEI brought over hundreds of families from
Skye as well as further families from South Uist. A few Lewis and Harris
families seem to have come over also, but Prince Edward Island was never
their preferred destination.
The largest Lewis settlement of the period was along the Gulf Shore of
Nova Scotia, the south shore of the Northumberland Strait, between Cape
John and Pugwash. This settlement seems to have been virtually forgotten
on this side of the Atlantic, and I can still remember the thrill my wife
and I had finding tombstones such as that in the MacDonald cemetery "to
the Memory of Donald MacIvor, born Isle of Lewis, Scotland in 1800,
emigrated to this country in 1811, died October 7th 1872, aged 72", or
"Donald MacLeod, native of the Isle of Lewis, emigrated to Nova Scotia AD
1811, departed this life on 12th January 1838 in the 87th year of his age.
An even greater surprise was at Fox Harbour - "Rachel MacKay wife of
Roderick Morrison, died Nov.12th 1879 age 94. Native of Harris, Inverness,
Scotland" and "Angus Morrison Senr. Native of Harris, Inverness-shire. Feb
8, 1798 - July 30, 1885" - until then I had no idea that any Harris
families had come that way. Munros, MacAulays, Morrisons, MacIvers and
Nicolsons are in Fox Harbour also, and along the coast in Malagash a group
of MacKenzies, "from Lochs Parish, Lewis".
When discussing the Gulf Shore, we cannot omit Pictou itself, the centre
of immigration for this part of Nova Scotia. There were no doubt Island
families who settled in this area also, but we have not come across them
in any number. The bulk of the settlers appear to have been from
Sutherland and other parts of mainland Scotland, following on the arrival
of the Hector. Chris and I were very much impressed by the Hector Museum
there, and the replica of the ship itself - to see it is to realise, far
better than any words can convey, how small the emigrants ships were, and
how cramped their accommodation
The grouping of names along the Gulf Shore suggests that the bulk of these
emigrants were still of tacksman class, but the days of the attempts to
renew the clan system were gone. The tacksmen had lost their place in
Island society forever, and what we are seeing now appears to be the
younger sons of tacksmen quitting the Scottish Islands for economic
necessity. Their family source of income had gone, and they were leaving
their homes while they still had the cash to pay for their passage.
Very different was the next wave of emigrants, many of whom had become
penniless in Scotland, and were forced to leave by landlords and factors
wishing to clear their lands of encumbering tenants. The difference lay in
the collapse of the kelp trade at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. No
longer was a captive labour force required, and the tenantry ceased to be
an economic advantage to their landlords. Many of the tenants saw the
danger approaching, and emigrated while they still had the cash, but
others lingered on in the hope of better days to come at home, and it was
these who were the subject of the Clearances in the Scottish Islands.
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