The United Empire Loyalists: A Chronicle of the Great Migration [1920 ed.]Wallace, W. Stewart (William Stewart)
History
The United Empire Loyalists: A Chronicle of the Great Migration [1920 ed.]
Wallace, W. Stewart (William Stewart)
American loyalists; United Empire loyalists
The settlers on the Upper St Lawrence and the Bay of Quinté did not
perhaps fare as well as those in Nova Scotia, or even the Mohawk Indians
who settled on the Grand river. They did not receive lumber for building
purposes, and ‘bricks for the inside of their chimneys, and a little
assistance of nails,’ as did the former; nor did they receive ploughs
and church-bells, as did the latter. For building lumber they had to
wait until saw-mills were constructed; instead of ploughs they had at
first to use hoes and spades, and there were not quite enough hoes and
spades to go round. Still, they did not fare badly. When the difficulty
of transporting things up the St Lawrence is remembered, it is remarkable
that they obtained as much as they did. In the first place they were
supplied with clothes for three years, or until they were able to provide
clothes for themselves. These consisted of coarse cloth for trousers
and Indian blankets for coats. Boots they made out of skins or heavy
cloth. Tools for building were given them: to each family were given
an ax and a hand-saw, though unfortunately the axes were short-handled
ship’s axes, ill-adapted to cutting in the forest; to each group of two
families were allotted a whip-saw and a cross-cut saw; and to each group
of five families was supplied a set of tools, containing chisels, augers,
draw-knives, etc. To each group of five families was also allotted ‘one
firelock ... intended for the messes, the pigeon and wildfowl season’;
but later on a firelock was supplied to every head of a family.
Haldimand went to great trouble in obtaining seed-wheat for the settlers,
sending agents down even into Vermont and the Mohawk valley to obtain
all that was to be had; he declined, however, to supply stock for the
farms, and although eventually he obtained some cattle, there were not
nearly enough cows to go round. In many cases the soldiers were allowed
the loan of the military tents; and everything was done to have saw-mills
and grist-mills erected in the most convenient places with the greatest
possible dispatch. In the meantime small portable grist-mills, worked by
hand, were distributed among the settlers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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