The English Emigrants Arrive
Beyond the juvenile immigration scheme, the land company's initial strategy of relying on newspaper advertisements to attract settlers proved ineffective. But the company's alternative plan of using land agents was not without challenges. Agents faced strong competition from other land companies, notably the Canada Company and the British American Land Company that were recruiting settlers for tracts in Upper and Lower Canada, later renamed Ontario and Québec respectively. Because these lands were deemed more fertile than the New Brunswick tract, potential immigrants were often lured to the Canadas.
Despite these difficulties, in 1836 company agents managed to entice several hundred settlers to the province. The settlement's second group of immigrants, numbering approximately 110, consisted largely of farm labourers and tradesmen primarily from the eastern Borders between England and Scotland: Northumberland County, England, and Berwickshire and Roxburghshire, Scotland. These adventurers were recruited by company commissioner or agent, E. N. Kendall, and company director, David Stuart. To educate potential settlers and encourage them to come to New Brunswick, the pair held information sessions at Ford Castle in Northumberland. They attracted listeners by circulating printed prospectuses and leaflets, which promised among other inducements 100-acre lots, a log house, low rent, and employment. The agents hoped that, once established in New Brunswick, the immigrants would encourage family and friends to join them across the sea.
Kendall and Stuart's Border recruits sailed from Berwick-Upon-Tweed, in high spirits, on 16 May 1836. They spent 33 days aboard the 230-ton brig D'Arcy, which the land company had chartered for them, before disembarking at Saint John in late June. Here they caught a boat to Fredericton, from where a team of horses brought them overland to Stanley on a wagon road described by a contemporary as "a bad horse path." These settlers were poor, but not destitute. They had left their home in hopes of creating a better life in New Brunswick.