Settling In
Surveyor General B. R. Stevenson hastily secured tents from the militia so that the weary travellers would have temporary shelter. He also worked to obtain much-need supplies and to hasten construction of the log cabins. Dr. Moffatt was engaged to attend to the settlers' immediate medical needs. As well, Captain Brown remained in the colony for approximately a week to help the newcomers get settled. News of the colonists' troubles, however, soon filtered back home. A letter written by David Taylor, the former editor of the Stonehaven Journal, just before he left the colony for Scotland in the spring of 1873, was published in the Scottish press:
...The people that came out are leaving the place by the dozen, and I expect that before the summer is over they will all have vanished. Part of the colonists arrived here on Monday and the other part on Tuesday evening, and since that time their luggage has been lying about on the river bank and all is disorder and confusion.
There is only a road constructed for about six miles out, and the houses beyond that are not yet built. Several families are crowded together in one house, while a good many are lodged together in tents on the banks of the river.***
Taylor's prediction that all the newcomers would soon flee their new homeland failed to occur. Although a number of them did leave the settlement for the United States and elsewhere in the early days, an estimated 446 colonists remained to work their land. By mid-June about half of them had been settled in their log homes, the rest being housed in temporary shelters on their lots. After a short stay in Scotland, Taylor returned to New Kincardineshire and became postmaster for Stonehaven, taking up the position prior to 1875.
*** Quoted in 'A Family Affair': Colonising New Kincardineshire by Marjory Harper, published in History Today, October 1967, p. 46.