Colony student works with Scottish Portal Project

Kathleen Farquhar is from Upper Kintore!
(the article is from a newsletter of the New Brunswick Scottish Cultural Association)

Scottish Portal Project Summer Update

By Spencer Thompson

The New Brunswick Scottish Portal has hired three students for the summer.

The goal of the Portal is to create a comprehensive online database of New Brunswick’s Scottish settlers. Students Kathleen Farquhar and I, Spencer Thompson, from St Thomas University, and Ian Forbes from McGill will be hard at work all summer helping to make the Portal a reality.

Spencer Thompson Ian Forbes and Kathleen Farquhar
Left to right: Spencer Thompson, Ian Forbes and Kathleen Farquhar

NB Archives Home Base

The New Brunswick Archives is our main base of operation. The archive is host to the majority of the information needed, whether it is books, letters, government documents, or photos.

Ian and I have been tasked with combing through New Brunswick Land Petitions looking for Scottish immigrants. Kathleen was tasked with New Brunswick Teacher’s Petitions and has already finished.

James Brown Diary

Kathleen’s job hasn’t stopped there. Kathleen is  looking through the diary of James Brown, an interesting Scottish immigrant who penned such works as the Devil’s Reply to Robbie Burns and an essay about emigration to New Brunswick. James Brown often identified fellow countrymen in his diary sometimes listing where they were from in Scotland or even what year they arrived in New Brunswick. She is creating an index of Scottish immigrants as identified in said diary.

Land Petitions

The Land Petitions Ian and I are looking at will most likely take all summer, but we also have additional work to tackle. Ian is currently transcribing the letters of James Crabb, a young immigrant who came from abroad to look after his ailing uncle.

James Brown, the diarist Kathleen is studying, mentioned James Crabb in his journal. This crossover between the Brown diary and the Crabb Collection makes a fascinating connection between archival documents and collections.

 

Travels of John Mann

I am also responsible for writing a brief summary of the travels of immigrant John Mann, an interesting fellow who held New Brunswick in disdain and went back to Scotland, but returned and settled. I also transcribed the ship list from the Favorite, which brought John Mann and more than 100 others from Scotland to New Brunswick in 1816. This was the first government funded emigration scheme. It would also be one of the last planned 19th Century emigration schemes funded by the New Brunswick provincial government.
The three of us also spend time with the Archives’ photograph collection searching for any images for possible inclusion in the Portal.I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we enjoy our jobs and we hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour when the Portal is complete. I know we’ll be proud of it.

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