The Last Laird of MacNab: An Episode in the Settlement of MacNab Township, Upper Canada
History
The Last Laird of MacNab: An Episode in the Settlement of MacNab Township, Upper Canada
MacNab, Archibald, 1778?-1860
With regard to the assertion of the Petitioners that the McNab
"cannot show where he has laid out one shilling for their behoof,"
I have to state that after the most minute enquiries on the
subject, both amongst the settlers and others in the neighborhood,
I have not found it in a single instance contradicted. The roads,
except where naturally hard and dry, are in a most miserable
condition; and the settlers state that they have been prevented
from working upon the regular lines of road by the McNab's
exercising his authority as a magistrate, and calling them to work
upon roads which they allege was either to conduce to his own
personal advantage, or gratify his caprice. They state that they
have been frequently called upon by him to expend their statute
labor upon a new road in one season, and before the next, it was
laid aside and another projected. The two roads of approach on the
south-east side of the township are most wretched--one of them all
but impassable, a horse going to the belly every few rods, at least
on one of them, for miles together, in the month of August. And yet
I have not been able to discover that the MacNab ever laid out one
shilling for the repair of roads, beyond his ordinary
statute-labor. I heard, indeed, that he subscribed L20 to assist
in building a bridge across the Madawaska at Arnprior; but he paid
it in oak cut off the Crown or settlers' lands, hewn by the
settlers, either on their own private time, or time which they had
subscribed for the bridge, and sold to the contractors at so much a
foot. Therefore, whatever he might have subscribed, I conceive he
paid nothing.
McNab has stated (and he has done so in my presence), that he had
to convey all the provisions for his settlers at the commencement
upon men's backs, from Bolton's Mills in Beckwith. It is most
confidently affirmed--and that in the most general way--that one
pound of provisions was never conveyed from hence, or anywhere
else, at his expense for the benefit of the settlers. They were
under the necessity of travelling into Beckwith and Ramsay amongst
their friends and acquaintances to procure provisions for
themselves and families upon credit. And many of the settlers and
others state that had it not been for the generosity of the
Beckwith people they possibly might have perished; and worse than
all, McNab wrote to one or more of the inhabitants of Beckwith,
cautioning them against trusting or crediting his settlers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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