The Selected Letters of the Neilson Family of Galloway and Quebec 1789-1845
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the selected letters of the neilson family of galloway and quebec 1789-1845 THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 the SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 Edited by Kenneth Veitch Sources in Local History I THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 CONTENTS Preface iii Acknowledgements v Editing vi Maps vii Family Tree x List of Letters xi Introduction xix Letters 1 Appendices 152 Notes 156 Further Reading 173 II THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 PREFACE etween them, the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the Bibliothèque et Archives Bnationales du Québec (BAnQ) hold a large collection of documents relating to the Neilson family of Quebec. While it mostly comprises the business and political papers of John Neilson (1775-1848), a native of Galloway who emigrated to Quebec in 1791 and rose to become one of its most prominent public figures, it also contains a number of personal documents, including over 250 letters relating to Scotland. The majority of the Scottish letters can be divided into two broad categories. The first consists of correspondence between the Quebec Neilsons and their relatives in Galloway. It begins in 1789 with a letter from Isabel Neilson to her son Samuel, who had emigrated to Quebec a few years earlier, and ends with one sent by William Neilson to the aforementioned John in 1845. Although extensive, this part of the correspondence is far from complete. Most obviously, it is largely one-sided: very few of the letters sent from Quebec to Galloway survive, and then only as drafts or copies. Not all of the letters sent from Galloway, moreover, are extant. Some that are known to have arrived in Quebec were not included in the collections bequeathed to the LAC and BAnQ. Many others failed to reach their intended recipients (Isabel Neilson reckoned that at least half of the letters sent between Scotland and Canada went astray). The second category comprises letters relating to visits made to Scotland by the Quebec Neilsons. Some of them were written by John while he was on political business in Britain. The majority, however, date from 1816-19, when his eldest son Samuel was at Glasgow University, and 1825-26, when another son was at school in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire. Both John and Samuel Jr retained some of the letters they received from Quebec, making this the most rounded part of the surviving correspondence. There are also a small number of letters from friends, business associates, and would-be emigrants that fall into neither category. That the correspondence was maintained for three generations is remarkable, not least because many Scottish emigrants seem to have forgotten their relatives as soon as they reached their destination. In her reminiscences of early nineteenth-century Galloway, Maria Trotter claimed that, ‘In thae days whun folk gaed tae America it was juist like gaun tae Heaven for they were seldom seen or heard o again’; and the frequency with which William Neilson passed on the plaintive requests of neighbours for news about newly emigrated relatives appears to bear this out. The letters preserve the voices of more than thirty men, women and children from a wide cross section of society. The cast of correspondents includes farmers, farm servants, merchants, ministers, printers, school and university students, teachers, type-founders, and a sea captain, as well as various members of the Neilson family. Such first-hand testimony is rare, especially for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the insights it provides not only into various aspects of daily life, but also into the habits and mentalities of people who are otherwise silent in the historical record will be of interest to ethnologists. Encompassing a period of significant economic, political and social change in the history of both Scotland and Canada, the letters also offer much to the historian. They provide a local perspective on national and international events, such as the wars with France and the United States of America, the post-war British depression, and the political upheavals on both sides of the Atlantic. They also show how long-term trends (including changes in agriculture, the growth of commerce and industry, and developments in communications) reshaped the lives of individuals and communities; and how a range of factors (including the increasing availability III THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 of newspapers and the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas) influenced attitudes to education, language, politics and religion. First and foremost, however, the letters tell the story of one family’s experience of emigration from the perspective not just of those who left, but also of those who remained and those who left and came home again. IV THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS he editor is grateful to Mr Fergus Neilson of Sydney, Australia, not only for bringing the TNeilson correspondence to the attention of the EERC, but also for generously supplying notes he had made in the course of researching a book on his family’s history, The Corsock Neilsons: A Galloway Family. Thanks are also due to Library and Archives Canada and to Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec for providing electronic copies of the letters in their collections. The help of Fiona McParland in translating the letters written in French is also gratefully acknowledged. The front cover shows The Lower City of Quebec from the Parapet of the Upper City by James Pattison Cockburn (Wikimedia Commons) and View of Gatehouse of Fleet by Robert George Kelly (Dumfries and Galloway Council). V THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 EDITING n preparing the letters for publication, the aim has been to create an edition that is both true Ito the originals and accessible to a wide readership. To achieve this, a number of editorial conventions have been adopted, as set out here. The letters have been arranged chronologically (rather than by recipient or collection), and presented in a standardised format. Headers provide the name of the sender and of the recipient, and a number by which each letter can be identified. The salutations and valedictions have been reproduced as they appear in the originals, but the dates when the letters were sent have been standardised and placed immediately after the headers. The original spelling has been retained. Its standard varies greatly across the letters, reflecting largely the aptitude of the writer, but also an inconsistent approach typical of the period. To prevent the text from becoming congested with editorial insertions and corrections words that have been misspelled but are readily recognisable have not been annotated. Familiar archaisms have similarly gone unmarked. Missing letters have been inserted in [ ] only when the meaning of the word would otherwise be unclear or hinder easy reading. Sic has been used sparingly, mainly to indicate irregular or archaic spellings or constructions that might otherwise be mistaken for transcribing or typographical errors. For misspelled words that are not immediately obvious, or that might be confused with another word, the correct form is provided in [i.e. ]. In addition, superior numbers and letters have been lowered, and abbreviated words (including ampersands) have been silently expanded. Expansion involving some degree of conjecture is indicated by [ ]. It should be noted that a different approach has been taken when editing the letters sent to Marie Neilson. Written in French of varying quality, they have been translated into standard, modern English with their grammatical errors silently corrected. Although punctuation had been standardised in printed works by the late eighteenth century, it remained highly individual in everyday writing, and a range of approaches can be found in the manuscripts. Some correspondents used dashes and/or spaces of varying length to denote pauses and stops, the sense of which is difficult to convey on the printed page. Others used punctuation erratically, while a few omitted it altogether (or their marks were applied so lightly that they have faded over time). In the interests of clarity and readability, therefore, punctuation throughout the current edition has been modernised, and further punctuation introduced. The cost of posting a letter increased with the number of sheets used, and so correspondents rarely wasted space by dividing their letters into formal paragraphs. Where a new paragraph has been indicated by other means, such as an elongated dash, or where the topic of the letter clearly changes, paragraphing has been introduced. In addition to all these interventions: words that are unclear in the original manuscripts and have been transcribed tentatively are given as [?word]; and, where necessary for sense, missing words are supplied in [ ]. VI THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 Map 1. A detail from John Ainslie’s Map of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright (1797), showing Gatehouse of Fleet and its environs. Lagganorie, where the Neilsons resided briefly before moving to Gatehouse, has been circled. (Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. http://maps.nls.uk) VII THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 Map 2. A detail from John Ainslie’s Map of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright (1797), showing Castle Douglas and its environs, including part of the parish of Balmaghie. Dornal (usually spelled Dornald in the letters), where the Neilsons had farmed, has been circled, as has Nathaniel Neilson’s estate of Springfield. (Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. http://maps.nls.uk) VIII THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THE NEILSON FAMILY OF GALLOWAY AND QUEBEC 1789-1845 Map 3.