Early Pioneer Journeys
The journeys across the ocean to new lives in the Americas were
not easy. Nor were journeys within countries from one area to another. As I said on our
Home Page, "Genealogy is more than the
research of names, places and dates. It is also the gathering of stories of the lives of
the men and women who came before us. We dedicate these pages to our ancestors who came to
the Americas on ships . . . to seek lives of opportunity and adventure for
themselves and their posterity. We dedicate these pages also to all pioneers of any land
who left their homes to seek new opportunities for themselves and their posterity."
Here are the stories. (Those with an asterik are stories of our own families. The rest are about other groups, often relating to the experiences of our own ancestors.)
*Early Protestant
Settlers Had Terrible Time in Nova Scotia By Bessie F. Mason. (Includes
Publicovers)
Journeys from Germany to Pennsylvania, 1734
to 1775 By Harvey H. Wimmer.
Pioneer Migration from North Carolina to
Tennessee By Jan Philpot.
Across the Plains
in the Early 1860s By Abbie Brown
*Sweden to America: Karin Ersson (Lundquist)
*Scotland to America: Margaret Morrison (Mrs. John McNabb)
*Scotland to America: John McNabb
*Jacob and Charlotte Bushman (Across the Plains)
*Martin and Elizabeth Bushman (Across the Plains)
*John Henry Bushman (Hamburg to America)
*Isaac Turley (Crossing Plains, Travel in American and Mexico)
*Theodore and Frances Amelia Turley (England to Canada, Crossing
Plains)
*John Peter and Sabina Bubickhoffer (Publicover) (Palatinate to
Canada)
*Karin Errson (Lundquist) (Sweden to America)
*Margaret Morrison (Scotland to America)
*John McNabb (Scotland to America)
*Tolton Family (America and Mexico)
*Sarah Greenwood (England-America-Mexico)
Early
Protestant Settlers Had Terrible Time in Nova Scotia
By Bessie F. Mason
(Newspaper article, date and place unknown) Italics added.
In 1749 and 1750 to induce protestants from Germany and Switzerland to emigrate to Nova
Scotia, the British Government sent agents to those countries, offering grants of land,
and transportation to be paid off in labor after arrival in the new home.
Only protestants would be admitted. Life in central Germany and in Switzerland was hard
for these people, they were serfs and misery, hunger, religious strife, and oppression,
were hard to endure.
Permits to leave there were necessary, but officials could be bribed, and serfs could buy
their freedom from ruling princes. Casper Heckman paid 17 florins for freedom from
serfdom, and 15 gulden for permission to take his personal property to America.
A Meissner family got a pass to leave, which stated that if they ever came back, they
would again be serfs. In their mother-country, these people would be forced into military
service, and lured out as "foreign legions," to fight other nations' battles.
John Dick was in charge of emigration, and was paid one guinea for each emigrant he
secured. Among the names of those willing to leave their homeland were Robar, Bailly,
Vogler, Boutillier, Millard, Uhlman, Lowe, Schlaagentweit (now Slaunmwhite), and many
others, French-speaking Germans from Monbeliard, many of them, and recommended as
"frugal and laborious people, who would not only improve and enrich their property,
but pertinaceousy defend it." Dick assured them that "Nova Scotia farming
offered them all the comforts and conveniences of life." They believed him--perhaps
the British government did too! They little knew what hardships and heartaches lay ahead!
SICK AND DYING
In 1750 came the first ships Ann, Speedwell, Alderny, Nancy,
Gale, and Pearl, with the poor seasick men, women and children packed
between decks, not more than four to six feet of room to stand upright, and scarcely area
in which to move about; the food was putrid, the water was foul and little wonder was it
that many died at sea!
Those who had any money, saved it for comforts in the new home, and promised to work for
the government, to pay for their passage-fare. Aboard ship, cooking accommodations were so
limited, the passengers had to eat their ration of meat raw, the only sanitary measure was
the occasional sprinkling of vinegar to kill odors--"which carried infection
(?)." On the Pearl was a Ysendhau and a Bubickhoffer
names later to be spelled "Eisnor" and "Publicover," believe it or
not!
The ships docked at Halifax, and the disembarking passengers were a sorry sight. Ignorant
of the English language, they suffered much from dishonest men who had been appointed to
ration food to them, but instead, held it back. Sickness or death was a fate of many. The
parish-records of St. Paul's church give the names of 50 deaths among those who came on
the Ann alone. The government paid the well ones to care for the sick among
them, and provided extra bedding and suitable food.
In Halifax North, a piece of land was laid out for a little Dutch church, (old St.
George's), and a burying-ground. Orphans whose parents had died aboard ship, or later,
were boarded out, at government expense. They were a sickly lot, and many of the younger
ones died. The rest were apprenticed at nine or 10 years of age, or were taken as
servants. They had a dreary life, but "no orphan was apprenticed to a publican or
such other useless destructive occupation."
Their master promised food and clothing, and to teach them a trade, and how to read and
write; and when the orphan was 21 years old, he was to receive a complete outfit of new
clothing, and his old ones also. The master gave a 20 pound sterling bond to this effect.
A big building, intended for a school and orphanage was built, but it had to be used
instead to shelter German emigrants from the cruelty of savages instigated by French
treachery. This building was outside the palisade, on the present site of St. Matthew's
church. Musket-proof log huts were built for many newcomers; there were few chimneys and
many of the occupants were sick.
SETTLERS CAPTURED
Some of these early settlers had reached Halifax in July, 1751. One night in the previous
May, a band of Indians and renegade Acadians from Chignecto had raided the English
settlement of Dartmouth, killing or carrying off for torture or ransom, men, women, and
children. Those left fled in terror.
When the emaciated Swiss and German protestants landed in Halifax, they were given no
chance to rest, but were at once sent to Dartmouth to picket the road approaches of the
settlement, between the head of Northwest Arm and Bedford Bay, to work out their
"passage-debt." It was a dangerous task without much protection, as there were
only three blockhouses, with a patrol-road between them. Log houses were built, but no
chimneys, although charcoal was provided.
Men were set to work clearing five-acre lots of land in Halifax peninsula, on which to
raise crops to feed the population. Rev. Mr. Tutty held religious services for Germans
among the houses. It was a bitterly cold winter, but the men worked on. A complete
palisade was built across the Isthmus (a distance of one-and-three-quarter miles), by the
foreign protestants. Trees were felled to make lurking by Indians less likely. More
shiploads of protestants came, and for two years there were at least 200 men, besides
women and children living in Halifax and Dartmouth.
In 1753 many of them moved to Lunenburg. These settlers had been told by government agents
to sell most of their belongings before leaving their homelands, as everything needful
would be provided them in their new homes.
Now that they were here, the officials complained that it was costing too much to feed
them, and Mr. Dick suggested paying them three pence a day, and let them feed themselves!
Later, some of those who had gone to Lunenburg returned to Halifax, and settled at what is
now called Dutch Village, outside the line of defence, and exposed to Indian and French
raids.
They objected to doing "public works" in Halifax and Dartmouth as was demanded
of them, and they wanted to get settled on the land, as had been promised them by Dick. It
was publicly said that overseers Clarke and Claphham had forced the protestant settlers to
work for them personally; had demanded that they work Sundays; and had treated them
brutally. These overseers had been appointed by a bogus justice of the peace, not a
citizen; therefore they had no legal authority over the settlers whatsoever.
The latter claimed they had been forced to hard labor, and made sick by lack of
nourishment; in some families, everyone had died.
Out of their meagre allowance, the authorities had kept one shilling each month "for
doctor bills," when neither they nor the doctor knew anything about it! Medicine had
even been refused to the dying. If a protestant German worked for New Englanders, the pay
was slow, and had to be taken in goods not wanted, at exorbitant prices, and "Damn
the Dutch rascals" if they complained.
OPPRESSION
The starving and oppressed Germans appealed for justice, and lands as promised them and
supplies, assuring the officials of loyalty to Britain--citizens--not as
"foreigners." Some of them claimed they were obliged to sleep on bare boards,
and those who had brought any money from the homeland had spent it to feed their children.
What farming they did was
among trees and stumps, as they had no oxen with which to work.
But after a while it was made known that many of these complaints were made by those who
had not tried to help themselves, not kept their promises to the government, not made any
improvements when given a chance. Both Governor Cornwallis, in Halifax, and Mr. Hopson, in
Lunenburg, tried in vain to persuade the grumblers to pay their passage money as promised,
but this "redemptioner indebtedness" as it was called, was a thorn in the flesh
of all concerned, a sore spot and the settlers knew they had the upper hand, because
England could not afford to send them back home, and needed colonists.
Cornwallis discharged several officials for irregularities, and without a doubt they
covered their tracks by destroying all records they might have kept that could incriminate
them. Some of them fled to New York which had been settled in 1710 by protestants from the
banks of the Rhine, where their lives had been made unbearable by King Louis XII.
Some who were Roman Catholics but had sneaked into the colony, went to the French, who
promptly sent them back again, refusing to feed them. Some Swiss who [?] from Lunenburg
were described by Col. Lawrence as "the very dregs of the people, and no real
loss."
When the British took Louisbourg in 1753, they found there a number of protestant Germans
and Swiss deserters, and sent them to Lunenburg. For the relief of settlers in Lunenburg,
England sent 4510 pounds sterling, "in proper species of money," in casks. And
when the "redemptioners" refused to work off their passage money either in
Halifax or in Lunenburg, eventually the government cancelled the debt.
Back to Top (Home Page for this series)
Home | Biographical
Index | Cornwallis Document
Wallace F. Gray Ancestor Chart | The
Publicover Family
John Peter Bubickhoffer
The Value of Genealogical Stories
