Smith’s epistolary practices were not particularly unusual. What is distinctive about his correspondence is that it turns the spotlight on a collection which has never been subjected to historical analysis. More importantly, it comprises a lengthy sequential narrative, rather than a brief snapshot, of emigrant life, allowing the reader to drill down (albeit one-sidedly) into the life of a specific family and the medium- and long-term priorities and experiences of one individual. While extensive sets of emigrant letters are not unique, they demonstrate continuities, changes, contradictions, and ambiguities in the writer’s attitudes and practices over time in a way that is not possible with single or sporadic missives.^[1]

The Scott letters are part of a substantial family collection that covers four centuries, with the migrant correspondence itself spanning more than four decades. The archive was handed down through the generations until 2008, when it was deposited in Aberdeen University Library by Timothy Fraser Everitt, William’s great-great nephew.^[2] William was the son of James Scott, factor at Castle Fraser and tacksman of the nearby farm of Acath, which was inherited by William’s elder brother David. Following the forty-five letters written by William to his widowed mother, brother, and sister Catherine following his emigration to Canada in 1835, there are twenty-two letters he subsequently wrote from New Zealand to his sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew, the antipodean correspondence ceasing only with William’s death in 1882 at the age of seventy. Many of the letters are crossed, frayed, or torn at the edges, and are therefore extremely challenging to decipher.

It is particularly appropriate that this essay should have at its core the study of a collection of emigrant correspondence that links the north-east corner of Scotland with Ontario. Not only have Elizabeth Ewan and I enjoyed each other’s company when undertaking research or attending conferences in both locations, most of my visits to Guelph have also involved—to a greater or lesser degree—investigations of the individual and family lives of Scottish emigrants, through the letters they wrote and received. My doctoral research and early publications drew heavily on the writings of emigrants from Aberdeenshire who in the 1830s and 1840s settled in the area around Fergus, Ontario, and whose correspondence is preserved in both the University of Guelph and the Wellington County Archives. In this essay I am therefore delighted to return to my nineteenth-century roots, analyzing the emigrant experience through the lens of an unexplored collection of letters whose author settled in the same region as several other Aberdeenshire emigrants whom I have previously studied.

Deploying Emigrant Testimony

The historiography of emigration has expanded hugely in both depth and breadth during the four decades since I began my research and in recent years it has engaged intermittently with the personal testimony of emigrants. The Scott letters can therefore be contextualized within a wider corpus of scholarship than would have been possible in the 1980s. Charlotte Erickson made an early—and compelling—case for the study of migrant correspondence as a source per se when in 1972 she analyzed the way that such letters allow scholars to track the experiences of otherwise invisible individuals.^[3] The trail that she blazed was then neglected for two decades, although historians of migration continued to make use of letters to exemplify a number of themes relating to migrants’ motives and experiences. In 1994, David Fitzpatrick took up Erickson’s baton in his ground-breaking study of 111 Irish migrant letters between 1843 and 1906, arguing that such correspondence consoled both those who went and those who stayed behind, maintained bonds, and triggered chain migration.^[4] Interest in the subject was reignited in 2003, when Bruce Elliott organized an international conference and subsequent publication on the theme of migrant letters, focusing on topics such as writing conventions and practices, silence and censorship, editorial interventions, negotiations of identity, and hidden agendas.^[5] One of Elliott’s contributors and co-editors was David Gerber, who subsequently published a monograph that drew on seventy-one collections of North American immigrant letters to showcase the way in which such correspondence functioned as an active psychological agent in the processes of removal and resettlement.^[6] Others who have highlighted the significance of emigrant letters, some with a focus on Canada, include Sarah Gibson, Laura Ishiguro, Angela McCarthy, Kathleen Venema, and Elizabeth Vibert.^[7]

Until the invention of the telephone, letters were almost the only way of maintaining a relationship or transacting business across countries and continents. Sometimes such correspondence was just a conduit for the straightforward transfer of information about experiences. Sometimes it was a mechanism for issuing warnings or recommendations. In other cases, support might go further, with the enclosure of remittances so that family reunions could be effected. Private correspondence often offered a cumulative weight of encouragement, beginning with the reassuring presence and advice of a contact who was already settled overseas; leading on to practical assistance in arranging the relocation of family members or friends; offering a welcoming hand to new arrivals; or conveying information about a land purchase already made or a job secured in advance for those who followed the pioneer. Jane Errington has demonstrated the significance of transatlantic networks of kin and community in her study of emigrants from Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales who ventured to Upper Canada between 1815 and 1845, demonstrating how decisions were made within that framework and migrant identities were shaped by family relationships.^[8] Whether or not there was an anticipation of secondary movement, it was certainly expected that emigrants would write home. Disappointment, consternation, and alarm were therefore common sentiments if letters failed to appear. Even private correspondence was a subject of public interest, with letters commonly being passed around the emigrant’s home community for wider consumption and discussion.

Epistolary testimony must be subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny as other documentary evidence, not least with regard to the omissions, exaggeration, bias, and grandstanding that pepper William Scott’s correspondence. One common problem, which also affects the Scott collection, is that of asymmetry. Letters clearly involved an exchange, but it is very unusual for both sides of a narrative to have been preserved. The most obvious bias is that not all emigrants wrote, the illiterate and the poor being particularly disenfranchised. Success generally dominated the narrative, unsuccessful emigrants being more likely to remain silent or to return. Narratives were also tailored to the anticipated readership, which might be confined to the family or extended to the local community through informal transmission or publication in a newspaper or periodical. The same letter-writer might tell a very different story to different correspondents, as we shall see with William’s early correspondence from Liverpool.

Drilling Down into William Scott’s Correspondence

^[9] Finance is, as already noted, the stand-out theme of William Scott’s correspondence, being woven even into issues which were ostensibly about his journey to Canada, the construction of the Erie Canal, or the impact of the 1837–38 Rebellions. The family and ethnic networks that he cultivated were overwhelmingly focused on his pecuniary priorities, rather than on any social or emotional need to retain or cultivate ethnic connections, and self-centredness characterized his complaints about infrequent communications from home.

Travelling and Arriving

The correspondence began in Scotland in 1831, when William was employed as a surveyor in Sutherland. From the very start his focus on finance was evident, when he wrote home to his mother and brother from Golspie, asking for money. He also requested some shirts and a consignment of Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, and gave some details of his work, accommodation, and travels.^[10] By August 1834 he was in Liverpool, where the minister of Echt (Aberdeenshire) had given him letters of introduction to two tobacco merchants, and from where he wrote twice to his brother David. The first missive contained instructions for David to ship to William’s former surveying colleague, Gregory Burnet (who lived in Invergordon), a number of Lord Byron’s works which Burnett had commissioned him to purchase. The second letter, penned a fortnight later, described the journey from London to Liverpool, the state of farming in different parts of England, and William’s impressions of Liverpool—“a very large town fully 4 times the size of Aberdeen,” which, despite “a number of fine buildings,” was poorly laid out. The harbour, however, he exempted from any criticism. It was, he wrote, “really splendid,” capable of accommodating 300 vessels at a single tide, with docks that covered more than one hundred acres and a burgeoning import-export trade.

William did not mention Liverpool’s pre-eminence as an embarkation port for emigrants, perhaps because he wanted to withhold from his mother the real reason for his being in that city. William was about to take ship for America, but he imparted that information to his brother in a postscript penned on a separate page.

If my Mother wants to see my letter, you can tear this page off and shew the other to her. I have been looking at some of the American packets. They are sertenly splendid vessels and have every convenience for passengers of which they can accomodate from 30 to 40 in their cabins which are elegantly fited up. The cabin fair to Newyork is 30 to 40 guineas including wines and 30 guineas without.^[11]

Adjudging the fare by packet to be too high, however, William had taken a £20 cabin passage on a new American ship, the Portsmouth, on which he was to embark the following day. He anticipated a more comfortable crossing than on a crowded packet ship, as the captain had assured him there would be a maximum of three cabin and fifteen steerage passengers. In dashing off a quick note to his brother after arriving in New York in October, he admitted that the fifty-one-day voyage had been stormy but insisted he had been “not in the leas[t] seasick,” sang the praises of the new world, and instructed his brother to tell their mother he was in America.^[12]

Despite his intention to write at greater length the following week, William’s next letter to his brother was dated 2 December and sent from Dundas in Upper Canada. It contained little of substance, other than an assurance that he was well, a repetition of his endorsement of the “splendid country” through which he had been travelling, and a request that his brother should “write immediately on receipt of this as I am very anxious to know how my mother is.”^[13] Just over a month later—now in Waterloo Township—he finally got round to writing to his mother, explaining that his subterfuge was “very much against my own feelings,” but had been prompted by concern for her “uneasy state of mind” if she had known he was afloat on the Atlantic.^[14]

Perhaps William had also anticipated maternal opposition. However, now separated from his home by 4,000 miles, he attempted to justify a step which he implied was still something of an experiment.

You will perhaps think that I was very foolish in coming to this country at all—No one could have felt more regret at leaving their friends and native country than I did, but when I considered the great risk of embarking my capital in farming in the Old country (in America Britain is called the Old Country) I made up my mind to visit America, and as yet I have seen no reason to repent of the step I have taken.^[15]

William’s letter conformed to the pattern of most emigrant correspondence in offering a detailed account of his travels. He described a stormy voyage, his impressions of New York during his eight-day stay there, and his subsequent journey by “very splendid” steamboat to Albany, Erie canal boat to Rochester, and steamboat across Lake Ontario to Lewiston on the Niagara River.

New York is a very fare city with a population of 260,000 inhabitants carrying on an immense traffic from all quarters of the glob—There is more bustle in it than in any city I ever was in, with the exception of London to which it has a considerable resemblance—There are a great many handsome streets of buildings, and in Broadway which is upwards of 3 miles in length, there are some shops or stores which vie in splendour with any of the London shops, many of the public buildings are of white marble altho some of them are built of granite, a butiful stone to which the Aberdeen granite can bear no comparison.

The 145-mile trip up the Hudson River to Albany was covered in just over ten enjoyable hours, whereas canal travel was slower—“very cheap but tedious.” The Erie canal was, however, a “splendid undertaking” which had generated round-the-clock freight and passenger traffic and had “amply repaid the expenditure” of “an emensity of moneys” by the State of New York. A visit to Niagara Falls was de rigueur, and William was not disappointed. “I spent two days in doing nothing but looking at them, and would willingly have spent a month if I could have afforded time. I think myself repaid for crossing the Atlantic by having seen them.” During several weeks of travels in Upper Canada he had visited his maternal uncle and his family in Toronto, reporting that they were doing well, and concluding “I have no doubt but that he is making money.” Following subsequent visits to the Toronto family (including. on one occasion, to attend his cousin’s marriage) he reiterated his opinion that his uncle was doing a “great business” and “must be making money fast as baking is an excellent business in this country, but in fact from what I can learn he is already worth a deal of money.”^[16]

Settling and Investing

Perhaps William did not think his mother would be interested in his recent purchase of a 350-acre property in Woolwich Township, or—more likely—he knew she was not the person who could help with the urgent financial requirements that dominated his thinking. In a lengthy letter to his brother, enclosed in the same envelope, William reported that he had paid $2,350 (equivalent to £383 10s 9d) for the house and land, 150 acres of which were cleared. The property was located west of the Grand River and bounded on one side by one of its branches, the Canastoga. His neighbours were mainly Dutch settlers who had come from Pennsylvania, whom he described as honest, industrious, and “capital farmers.” About two miles away was a settlement of English and Scots, including several from Aberdeen, some of whom he already knew. William assured David, perhaps a little too fulsomely and repetitively, that his business acumen was much admired in the locality, not least by his countrymen.

Every person says that I have got a great bargain. In fact I have been offered nearly as much for one half of it as I paid for the whole. The reason I got it so cheap is that it belonged to a family of eleven who are in very embarrassed circumstances. They were obliged to sell it to any one who could pay the cash down, no easy matter in this country as money is very scarce. When I offered to pay ready money they made up their minds to let it go.

William intended to build a grist mill so that he could harness the waters of the creek that ran through his property and profit from the needs of farmers who had to grind their grain before taking it to market. But in order to exploit that opening, he needed to liquidate capital from Scotland, and most of the letter was taken up with explaining how David should help him. It is unclear exactly how William’s money was tied up back in Aberdeenshire, but the negotiations probably related to his late father’s estate, the settlement of which lay in the hands of an apparently dilatory legal agent, James Edmond, whose procrastinations had “humbugged” William’s plans considerably.^[17] As well as releasing his own funds, he wanted his sister Catherine to lend him £1,100 to invest in his mill and farm, promising to pay her 6 per cent interest.

My property when I build mills will be double that value, but if you consider there is any risk in giving so much until the mills are built, you could send only as much as I paid for the property … I hope Catherine will consent to lend me her money. It will be an advantage to her as well as to me and without risks—even if I was to purchase Bank shares with it I can get 10 p. Cent—you can consider it and let me know as soon as possible—at any rate get my matters arranged and send all the money belonging to me you can (It is useless letting it ly getting only 4 p Cent when can easily make 20 or so here).^[18]

By December 1836, William had been elected as one of three commissioners for Woolwich, with duties that included regulating the affairs of the township and seeing that government money given for roads and bridges was properly spent. By June 1837, he had rented his farm “to a Scotchman from Aberdeenshire,” whose mother William employed as cook and washerwoman. A year later he sold all his farm stock at a profit, while continuing to rent out the farm itself, since “I think it will rise in value very much in the course of a few years … and the rent pays good interest.”^[19] By May 1838, he had relocated to Hamburg in nearby Wilmot township, where he had entered into a store-keeping partnership with one William Davidson. Together, they were “sure of doing a good business,” not least with the many different nationalities of settlers (especially Germans) who frequented the store.^[20] Less than a year later, however, he pulled out of that investment, and in March 1839 he married Marion Henderson, whose family had emigrated from Scotland four years earlier. “They are a most respectable family and are well of[f],” he assured his mother.^[21]

William’s obsession with money was dominant even when transmitting information about his impending marriage, the raising of his barn, or the productivity of the area’s orchards. Of the thirty-six letters written between his departure for Canada and his mother’s death in 1856, twenty-eight were sent to his brother. They focused heavily on his investments, in particular his persistent need to secure money to implement his plans. These initially included the purchase of more land and the erection of farm buildings as well as the construction of the mill. He frequently reprimanded David for failing to remit funds and provide “a statement of our affairs,”^[22] and gave him very precise instructions about how money was to be sent. In June 1837, when he demanded that David send £200 “immediately,” William instructed him to “get a Bill of Exchange from the Bank of Scotland payable at their agents in London. You better get two sets of Bills & send them in different letters as one set might be lost. Be sure and get the bills from the Bank of Scotland as it is better known than most other Scotch banks & consiquently I can sell it to more advantage.”^[23] The bills duly arrived in October, eliciting a sharp comment from William that “if they had arrived a few weeks sooner it would have been about £20 more in my pocket. This is owing to rate of exchange having fallen so much of late.”^[24]

William was particularly aggrieved that David was holding back money from their sister Catherine, who—despite William’s insistence that she was “her own mistress” with “a perfect good right” to dispose of her funds as she pleased—seems to have been a passive observer of her brothers’ arguments. She was, he asserted, willing to give the money, which would be perfectly safe in his hands, and for which he had offered “unquestionable security” at a higher interest rate than she could obtain in Britain.

I cannot comprehend your reason for not sending it. When I asked a thousand Pounds you told me I might have half of it. When I ask the half you tell me you don’t think you can give any of it & put me off with mean excuses. You might just speak plain at once & tell me you are affraid to trust me … I think you have not used me altogether as you ought.^[25]

William’s accusation that David had behaved badly in respect of Catherine’s money was repeated in a letter to their mother sixteen months later, in which he also complained about David’s failure to write for more than six months.^[26] Indignation at the infrequency with which he received letters from his siblings was another hallmark of William Scott’s letters and was closely allied to his obsession with money. For every letter he wrote, he felt he was entitled to receive two or three in return. More than once, he protested that David and Catherine had more time at their disposal than he had. Writing to his mother on 31 July 1836, he complained that three months had elapsed since David’s last letter, in which he had promised to write again “immediately.” His failure to do so was, in William’s view, “very singular as I know he cannot plead the want of time as an excuse.”^[27] A year later he addressed his complaint directly to David, when he reminded him, “It is now 5 months since I had a letter from you. The reason that you have not writing I am quite at a loss to imagine. I would have written some time ago but have always put off expecting to get a letter from you.” His irritation was compounded by not having received a promised letter from an acquaintance, Duncan Cadenhead, and he urged his brother to “put him in mind” of that promise to write.^[28] In demanding a letter by return of post to a letter he wrote to David in October 1837, he commented acerbically, “I ame sure you cannot complaint of my letter being to[o] short & short that you will take my example in future, for your two last were certainly NOT of the longest”. He also played on his brother’s conscience, pointing out that “you have been little from home & are not aware of the pleasure one has of getting a letter or you would write a little oftener.”^[29] The strategy apparently failed, for William repeated his plea in sharper tones seven months later.

In your last letter to me you mentioned that you was to write me again very soon. I have been long expecting your promised letter but as I have never received it I conclude you have either forgot your promise or perhaps you have been troubled with a fit of laziness. I think if you knew how anxious I am to hear from you, you would write oftener. You have always lived amongst your acquaintances & don’t know what it is to be amongst strangers who speak a language you cannot understand. Catherine might write me oftener.^[30]

William’s letters are peppered with contradictions, not least when discussing his favourite topic of finance. On the one hand he repeatedly declared his confidence in Canada as a place to invest, usually when trying to persuade his brother to remit money. “The country at present is in a very flourishing economic state,” he assured him in January 1837, before going on to insist that David send him “at least £200” so that he could pay for some extra land he had just bought, with the expectation of doubling his investment within two years.^[31] Six months later, when David still had not remitted any funds, he urged him to send “5 or 6 hundred pounds of Catherins money,” pointing out “There are so many ways of making money in this country that one can hardly invest money wrong.”^[32] Only two weeks earlier, however, he had confided in David that he “would leave Canada tomorrow if I could sell out or if I ever could get money to speculate on.” He was confident that the rapidity of settlement in the USA guaranteed that “if a person purchases land he will be almost sure of doubling his capital in a year.”^[33]

By October, however, his faith in Canada had been reignited thanks to the development of a transport infrastructure and other “public emprovements” in his area, coupled with a tax on immigrants to New York State that he expected would drive new arrivals to Canada. Over-speculation had also created a financial crisis in the USA, which he predicted would take some time to resolve, and he subsequently declared himself “well pleased that I did not settle in a country where the inhabitants have such deep rooted prejudices against every thing British & where the Government is unable to protect their own subjects agains[t] popular violence.”^[34]

Cultivating Scottish Connections: Family and Community

In making frequent reference to other emigrants from his native county who had settled in the Nichol area, Scott gave no indication that his own decision to locate there was influenced by their presence or by tapping into ethnic networks. Characteristically, his main interest was in the exercise or absence of financial acumen they had displayed or were likely to display in their investments.

An expanding nucleus of Aberdeenshire settlement in and around Nichol had been fuelled in large part by encouraging accounts of farming opportunities transmitted in the letters of one George Elmslie, who in 1834 was sent out by a group of friends and fellow investors to investigate the region’s potential. As well as reporting favourably on the quality of the land, Elmslie was delighted to find himself “in the midst of a knot of Scotch, many of them from Aberdeenshire.”^[35] Guelph University Library contains the correspondence of another Aberdeenshire family who subsequently settled in the same area as part of a chain migration. In 1839, William Beattie emigrated from Strathdon with his family to join his brother George in Nichol. The move had been preceded by an exchange of letters in which George had been asked for his “fair and candid opinion” whether other members of the family should try their hand at farming in Upper Canada, after several bad harvests and problems with the tenancy in upland Aberdeenshire.^[36]

Unlike many of his countrymen, Scott’s letters contained no remittances or encouragement to family members or acquaintances to join him, other than two indirect comments, initially to his mother in 1836.

I don’t despare of seeing you here yet. People nowadays think nothing of crossing the Atlantic. Mrs Littlejon came out here last year for the purpose of seeing her two sons who are settled about two miles from this. She intends [to return home?] in the course of two years. She is much older than you are.^[37]

Two years later, after referring to the fast passage of two steamships from Liverpool and Cork to New York, he told his brother:

Crossing the Atlantic will now be no more thought of than going from Aberdeen to London. I expect to see you at Hamburg some of these days. You can easily come here & see all the wonders of the new World & be back again looking after your affairs in the old in less than 2 months. It would not cost a great deal either. I think £30 would be sufficient to take you here & back again.^[38]

He did, however, refer frequently to acquaintances who had either emigrated to the area, or were apparently contemplating such a move. His comments were not always favourable. In his first letter to his brother after arriving in Woolwich, he criticized the unwise purchase made by one Mr Brown, “Carnegie’s brother-in-law,” who had bought uncleared land ten miles up the Grand River from Scott’s property.

He is completely in the woods, and when I saw him he was living in a miserable log shantie but he expected to get his house finished soon. He purchased wild land along with some others from Aberdeen. I think it is a very bad plan for a person that is not accustomed to work hard, or indeed any person from the old country, to purchase wild land as the native[s] [are] accustomed to the ax from their infancy, and are on that account able to clear land at much less expense than people from the old country, and when it is cleared the stumps or roots take about 10 years to rot. A person can plough 3 times as much in a day when the stumps are out, so that you can farm the same quantity of ground at one third of the expense after the stumps are out.^[39]

Subsequent letters gave a more positive, but still qualified evaluation of Brown’s investment. Although the lot was “very nice” and even “very beautiful,” William was still concerned that progress was impeded by its location in “a new part of country” where “the roads are in a most retched state.” He suspected that Brown’s predictions of prosperity had been over-optimistic. “I rather think he finds his funds won’t go so far in Canada as he expected,” he mused. But Brown and his wife were both in good health “and seem to be liking the country well.”^[40]

The danger of imprudent investment in frontier areas—not least by gullible emigrants from Aberdeenshire—was a recurring theme of William’s correspondence. In January 1838, he wrote to his mother, both to emphasize the risks and to highlight—by implication—his own sagacity in purchasing a partially cleared property:

Many old country people lay their money out very foolishly and most of them have an ide[a] that money goes further in this country than in Britain but they soon find out their mistake, generally when it is to[o] late. Most of them purchase wood land in back townships where provisions & other necessarys are high. The consequence is, that before they are able to clear much, their money is ex[h]austed & they have nothing to depend on. I am affraid this will be the case with some of your acquaintances who came out some years ago.

He went on to assert that “those who purchased cleared farms generally do well,” illustrating his point by contrasting two groups of emigrants who had come out to the area from Aberdeen. The first group, “who had some capital” had invested in bush land but “have now spent all their money & have little to shew for it.” Others, however, who had arrived at the same time “with very little money” and purchased cleared farms on credit “have now paid for their farms & have money besides.”^[41]

Robert Seton was not known to William Scott, but his testimony, penned later the same year, illustrates Scott’s sentiments about wise and unwise investments. In December 1838, six years after leaving Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire for Lake Simcoe, Seton wrote to his brother expressing regret for his precipitate investment in 500 acres of inferior land in a remote location where the cost of clearing outweighed the benefits of a cheap purchase price, and where the anticipated communication with Toronto had not materialized.^[42]

Duncan Cadenhead was a farming acquaintance of the Scott’s whose anticipated emigration was not implemented. William initially offered general encouragement but no tangible assistance. In January 1837 he wrote, “If Cadenhead intends coming out he should be [sic] all means come this season as land is increasing in value every year. There is a farm on the market just now about 2 miles from my place. It can be got very cheap and would suit Cadenhead well.”^[43] In June, he offered more detailed advice to bring “warm stout clothing” and bed linen, but not footwear. He suggested bringing bills of exchange which could either be used to purchase Canadian dollars in New York or—less riskily—taken on to his final destination: “As he is unacquainted with the bills in this country (there are a great many bad bills & strangers are very apt to get cheated) I think it would be fully as saif to bring them on here before selling them.”^[44]

In June, William still felt emigration was a good option for Cadenhead, whose lease was about to expire: “I wish he would come out here. I think he would do better here than where he is,” he told David. But when Cadenhead decided to remain in Scotland (perhaps because his brother, who had intended going to Canada, opted for India instead) William thought it might be for the best. “Perhaps he is upone the whole as well to stope where he is—Duncan is of rather to easy a disposition to doe much good here,” he wrote.^[45]

William also cautioned against believing too readily the assertions of emigrants who returned to Aberdeenshire. They included one McKenzie, who went back in 1837, having failed to increase his capital. “I told him to call upon you when he returned to Aberdeen,” William informed his brother, but added, “He is a notorious liar so that what he says about this country and settlers you may believe only as much as suits you. Of course he will run down this country because he was not likely to succeed in it himself.”^[46] At the other end of the spectrum he cast doubt on the claims of another returner: “I heare that Smith has returned with £30,000—that he has made money I have little doubt but I am not enclined to believe that he has made so much as stated.”^[47]

Like many emigrants, William tried to arrange for packages and money to be brought out in the safe-keeping of visitors and emigrants from Aberdeenshire, and sometimes sent items back to his family by the same means. His requests for miscellaneous items from Scotland and his desire to stock a library suggest that he was not a complete Philistine but did have some interest in transferring markers of Scottish culture and identity to his new environment. In 1837, he was particularly keen to acquire a set of maps of Sutherland, books, a thermometer that had to register temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees, a canteen of silver spoons, and some warm winter clothing, which he suggested could be sent either by Duncan Cadenhead or by Mr Brown’s brother-in-law. The sub-text of his precise instructions implied that he had put on weight.

If you receive this letter before Cadenhead leaves I wish you would send my books, also the map of Sutherland, some striped cotton shirts, 2 or 3 pair of very strong moleskin trousers & a new coat of very thick Pilot Cloth lined with shepherd’s plaid. The great coat I want made short to reach above the knee. Stot the Tailor has my measure but he must make them much larger than he used to do … I should like them if possible before winter. It is no joke being out when the thermometer is 20 degrees below zero. I wish you would also send money with Cadenhead, that is if he sails in time.^[48]

In the event, the maps were sent with another individual—one Mackie—although William was appalled at their poor state of repair. “The Map of Sutherland is completely botched in paisting together—it is a disgress to Collie to allow such a piece of work to go out of his shope. I wish you had sent it out in sheets as I could have easily paisted it myself.”^[49] He was better pleased with a consignment of clothes and books sent by his mother and sister in 1839, including Sir Walter Scott’s poetical works.^[50]

The Canadian Rebellions

Two years after William emigrated, Lower and Upper Canada were convulsed by armed uprisings, events which he also viewed through the lens of their impact on his investments. The Rebellions of 1837–38 were triggered by political and economic tensions, including resentment at the denial of democratic reform and responsible government, as well as jealousies surrounding the land grant system. Writing to his mother on 15 January 1838, William was unequivocal in his condemnation of the rebels’ “hellish attempt to overturn the Government” which had broken out in the Lower Province before spreading to Toronto and Brantford. He gave her a detailed description of recent events, including William Lyon Mackenzie’s seizure of Navy Island in the Niagara River, which had been retaken the previous day.^[51] By the summer, William was confident that recovery was well under way and the prospect of war with the United States was receding, though he claimed the British government’s failure to take punitive action against the rebels ran the risk of further trouble and tested the loyalty of Canadians.^[52] By November, however, the outbreak of the second rebellion had plunged him into pessimism, and he repeated his accusation of the British government’s culpability.

This Country is now in a dreadfull State—nothing talked of but war—& I am affraid it is but to true. The French in the Lower Province are again making preparations. If we had them alone to deal with it would soon be settled, but there are more discontented now than ever. In fact there are very fiew but what are careless which way it goes. The Loyalists are determined not to fight for a government that are doing every thing to encourage rebellion by allowing those guilty of rebellion to escape without punishment. But government will not have it again [in] their power to allow prisoners to scape as the Loyalists are quite determined if there is fighting to give no quarter. It is generally understood that there are about 40 thousand sympathising Yanke[e] scoundrels ready to come to the assistance of the rebles (or Patriots as they call themselves).^[53]

Although geographically distanced from the events he described, the unsettled state of the country had caused him to give up his share in the store at Hamburg, and he intended to concentrate instead on expanding his milling business.

Scott’s Epistolary Legacy

This analysis has utilized only the small fraction of correspondence that covers William’s initial emigration and settlement and has not considered the letters that he continued to write home from Canada until 1867. The collection allows us to fit another piece into the epistolary jigsaw that linked Aberdeenshire and Canada in the nineteenth century as emigrants articulated their expectations and experiences. For William, those expectations and experiences revolved around his obsessive concern with business issues and his persistent complaint that he had been cheated in the settlement of his father’s estate. There is no indication in the letters that William’s Scottish family ever received any of the promised interest or profit from the money that they remitted to him.

It is unclear whether William felt he had made the right decision in coming to Canada, and his divided mind is reflected in his written reflections. Although he would have preferred to live in Scotland, he felt he would not be able to settle in his native land and indicated that he would stay in Canada as long as he could make a living. Like several emigrants and commentators, he painted it as the poor man’s country, particularly for farmers, where success was almost guaranteed to those who persevered.^[54] But in 1867, by which time his mother and brother had both died, William and his family relocated to New Zealand in pursuit of a kinder climate.

In many respects William Scott’s letters followed the familiar conventions of emigrant correspondence that have been explored by Elliott, Errington, Gerber and others. He made frequent references to encounters with countrymen, used some of those contacts as a postal service, and offered general advice on the benefits and pitfalls of emigration. Surprisingly, given that his decision to move to New Zealand was based on climate, he said much less about the Canadian weather than we find in many contemporary letters, simply claiming in one passing comment that “the only thing which I dislike in this country is the extreme length of winters.”^[55] He also expended relatively little ink on the formulaic salutations that characterized much emigrant correspondence, a linguistic device that has been highlighted in some scholarship.^[56] On only two occasions did William write in these terms to his mother. In 1838, he confessed that:

often when I think of my early home & the friend which perhaps I shall never have the pleasure of seeing again in this world I sometimes think that I was foolish in leaving my native land, but my choise is made & I have only to regret that we should be so far from each other & that it is so little in my power to add to your comfort.^[57]

 A year later, in expressing regret that he could not pay a visit home “at least for some time,” he added the familiar platitude that “there is on[e] consolation, that if it is not our fate to meet in this [way?] we may meet in a better and happier world were [sic] we will not be again divided.”^[58] Another notable difference from much emigrant correspondence—not least that of other Aberdeenshire Scots in the area—was that William made no reference to the death either of any of his fellow settlers or of acquaintances back in Scotland.

William’s political opinions are clear in his horror at the Canadian Rebellions and his criticism of the British government’s response. The letters also provide occasional flashes of his cultural interests, notably his enthusiasm for Sir Walter Scott, which was first evident during his time in Golspie in 1831 and persisted after he had crossed the Atlantic. It is possible that his complaints about infrequent communications from his siblings may have reflected an element of homesickness. But that interpretation is highly speculative. William was selfishly preoccupied with preserving and enhancing his financial health, and he deployed his pen primarily—and repeatedly—in pursuit of that objective. Study of the remaining correspondence may reveal whether it was a trait that persisted beyond the teething years of his overseas settlement in both Canada and New Zealand.