note: The speech below is based on an account given in "Out of the Dark", the auto-biography of Mrs. Emma Bissett Sampson. It is used with the kind permission of Caral Ann Giammo.

Background Material

Most family out migration was not a rapid "exodus." It was a gradual process that generally took place over many years, and often involved movements back and forth. Emma Bissett Sampson’s family story provides and interesting story of family migration.

In 1868 Desire Sampson married Erma Maquet in D’Escousse. Erma was only fifteen years old at the time of her marriage. They had two children in the next two years, Victor and Mary. In November 1870, Desire, who was a mariner, died from wounds received in some kind of disturbance in Boston and Erma was left a widow with two small children. In the same year Erma’s father was apparently lost at sea leaving her widowed mother, Melanie, to support herself and her young daughter, Adele. Erma’s mother was a skilled midwife and practical nurse and was constantly called upon to provide her services. However, Erma’s options for earning a living were restricted by having to care for her babies. She decided to take in washing.

One day a young seaman, Alfred Bissett, arrived in D’Escousse. He needed to have some washing done and a local resident sent him to the young widow. In 1873 Alfred and Erma were married and over the next ten years they had five other children born in D’Escousse, Elizabeth, Walter, Melanie and twins, Anneis and Emma, born in 1884. However, there were few jobs available and Alfred went to Massachusetts to find work, along with Victor and Mary Sampson, Erma’s children from her first marriage.

After some time, Alfred sent for Erma. The plan was for Erma to leave the remaining children in D’Escousse while she joined her husband. Reluctantly she agreed. However, she disliked Massachusetts and missed her children. She returned to D’Escousse. Alfred began to prepare a home for the family in Newton and eventually sent for Erma and the children. Erma was reluctant to go, but the twins were delighted with the idea and this time the last members of the Sampson-Bissett family moved to Newton. Alfred had found a large house which became a boarding house for other Richmond County natives needing a place to stay while they made a new life for themselves in Massachusetts. The Bissett twins went to school.

After some time, Alfred became lonesome for D’Escousse. By this time he had accumulated some assets. He packed up the family again and moved back to D’Escousse where he built a new house. The employment situation, however, had not improved and by the end of the year the family assets had been used up. Alfred sold the house, and with Erma and Emma, moved back to Newton, leaving Anneis with her grandmother. This time, however, there was no large house. The family took a small upstairs apartment, and it appears that Alfred was only occasionally employed. Emma had to go to work in the textile mill in which her sister worked to help support the family. She was underage and her parents had to sign a waiver absolving the company of liability should she get hurt on the job. The job was tedious and dangerous, hours of work were long, and the pay meager.

Emma saw advantages in urban life. She enjoyed the theatre, and being able to purchase new fashions, and help support her family. However, she believed that the quality of life in D’Escousse was better. She missed the sense of security and community back home where you knew the dangers. She also missed the ability to pick berries, or go hunting or fishing with her father, something considered improper for an urban lady.

Eventually Emma accepted her place in her new country. She married John Ernest Sampson, a native of River Bourgeois, had a family of her own and died in New Jersey in 1951. Her mother used her skills as a midwife and practical nurse to find her niche in the new Richmond County economy and died at D’Escousse in 1918.

Families in Transition

As we are all aware, families are constantly in transition. Members go through various stages of development: birth, growth, leaving home, marriage, finally death. Most people at any one time live in nuclear households, defined as a household containing only a husband, wife and their children. However, in the nineteenth century few households were nuclear over their entire life cycle. Other people became members of the household: members of the extended family, servants, boarders and a range of other miscellaneous individuals. If we aggregate or put together the information on a large number of families, we often find that the results remain relatively consistent over time. However, there are periods throughout history in which change results in important variations in the overall data that shows that families were facing new challenges. This was the situation evident in Richmond County in the post-Confederation era. My work concentrated on the period from 1871 to 1901, using the four Canadian censuses taken at ten-year intervals, as the main sources of information. However, the data that was used was not just from the census; a wide variety of other sources were consulted such as church records, cemetery inscriptions, business records, newspapers, and a wide range of government documents. This provided a database of approximately 2,500 reconstructed families.

During the 1840’s Richmond County was moving out of the pioneer stage. However there was still unoccupied land available at a low cost. If a couple married they could expect to find property on which to build a house. If the family expected to make their living principally from farming it could find a piece of land in the’ backlands,’ the name given to the land behind the already settled communities. If the family expected to make its living from the sea, they would likely build a new house on family property close to the husband or wife’s parents. This situation continued throughout the 1840’s, 1850’s and early 1860’s.

Throughout these decades the economy of Richmond County, and the Maritime region in general was buoyant. The main problem encountered was a blight that destroyed the potato crops in the 1840’s and caused widespread suffering especially in the backland areas that were most recently settled. These were not as diversified as the older agricultural communities. During the same period there were problems in the fisheries, but these were short lived.

In spite of these setbacks, at mid-century it appeared that the overall economy of Richmond County was strong. It had a population of 10,381 or about 3.8 per cent of the population of Nova Scotia living in 1731 households. The main occupation was costal trade, employing 597. Farming employed 490, and 473 were employed in the fisheries. Another 171 workers were referred to as ‘mechanics,’ probably employed mainly in shipbuilding. If the census figures are accurate, it was the latter activity that provided a major boom for the economy. Thirty-eight per cent of the vessels built in Nova Scotia were built in Richmond County, and they accounted for 19.6 per cent of the tonnage. Richmond County outstripped all of the other counties in Nova Scotia in its output of vessels and came third in the province in the number of boats built with 355, or 12.6 per cent of the provincial output.

Richmond County was close to the provincial average in agricultural output. It was slightly above average in the production of oats and butter, but lower in its output of potatoes, probably because the affects of the potato blight were still influencing potato production, at the time of the 1851 census.

Although there were only 473 heads of families employed as full-time fisherman in the County, others found part-time or occasional work in the fisheries. Four hundred and fifty-six worked in the vessel fishery and another 860 in the boat fishery. At mid-century Richmond County fishermen produced 16.6 per cent of the cured dry fish, 15.4 per cent of the mackerel, and 8.5 per cent of the herring produced in Nova Scotia.

The reciprocity treaty with the United States in 1854 further strengthened the Richmond County economy. Although the treaty allowed American fisherman access to maritime waters, and maritime fisherman access to American waters, the admission of a list of natural products, duty free, increased even further the opportunities in the already lucrative costal carrying trade. The Civil War in the United States from 1861 to 1865 increased the demand for materials available in Nova Scotia, such as coal. Although some resented the entry of American vessels into the coal carrying trade, vessels from Richmond County continued to make acceptable profits.

With the strength of farming, fishing, costal trade and shipbuilding, it is not surprising that other forms of activity, such as manufacturing, lagged behind most of the province in development.

By 1861, however, there were dark clouds on the horizon for the local economy. The available land suitable for farming, much of which had only marginal agricultural potential, was already settled. The local supply of white pine, essential to the Richmond County ship building industry, was exhausted. By the end of the American Civil War economic and political changes had created opposition in the United States to free trade and in 1866 the reciprocity agreement ended. Meanwhile the railways had become the nineteenth century business "fad" (similar to the internet of today). Capital interests perceived that land based enterprises, such as financing railway construction, carried far less risk than overseas trade. In Canada the creation of an

East /West trading area, linked by the railways, became the focus of the economic and political elites. Confederation in 1867 was born partly out of these considerations. In Richmond County, however, almost two-thirds of the population seems to have opposed Confederation.

The general population’s antipathy towards Confederation seems to have been justified. A major and almost immediate reaction to the Canadian union was a withdrawal of capital from the area. Halifax capitalists withdrew their financial backing from several major merchants in the county. The result was a large increase in the number and value of cases going through the county courts involving debt. As Halifax interests demanded payment from the merchants, these merchants were forced to take their customers to court for the immediate payment of their accounts. The chain reaction appears to have caused hardship for numerous families.

By 1871 the impact of the problems facing the economy was already becoming evident. The decline in shipbuilding and costal trade closed the major sources of cash income. Workers in the costal trade and in shipbuilding lost their jobs and were forced to migrate or go into the fishing industry to make a living. In 1871, of the 1848 families residing in Richmond County, 41 per cent were occupied in the fisheries compared to 28 per cent in 1851. The percentage involved in costal trading had declined from more than 34 per cent in 1851 to less than 25 per cent by 1871. The percentage involved in farming had also increased from 28 percent to over 35 per cent, as more people turned to farming to try to make a living. The mechanics category had virtually disappeared.

The reallocation of the labor force tells only part of the story. The loss of the ship and boat building industry and the decline in costal trade caused hardship for the casual labourers, most of whom came from the farming and fishing industries during their seasonal slack periods. Farm families, established on poor land, could no longer find adequate supplemental work to provide for their families. Fisherman who had depended on occasional work in shipbuilding or boat building could no longer supplement their low incomes.

The altered economic situation meant that families had to adopt new strategies for survival and the options open to them were relatively narrow.

The most obvious solution was to move to a location where it was perceived that there were better chances for employment. Ship building entrepreneurs and many costal traders appear to have considered this their best option. Among this group were some of the most affluent families in the county, families that had the resources to move as a unit, and the confidence to believe that their assets would make it possible for them to succeed in a new environment. This was the first major group to migrate, and the only major group in the period under study that moved as complete nuclear family units.

The majority of families did not have the resources or the will to move. Farmers had heavy investments in their land and buildings. There was little or no advantage for them to move. The economic downturn had caused real estate values to decline. Fishermen had very little capital available to them to move their families. Getting into the fishing industry involved far less investment than farming, but it also provided much lower value in accumulated assets.

Some Acadian villages had been developing since at least 1764. They had become close-knit communities of largely extended families. The choice for those who could not or did not wish to move their families from these communities was to seek employment further removed from home, while leaving their families behind. At least since the beginning of reciprocity, American fishing vessels had called in costal villages to find experienced crews. More and more fishermen signed onto these vessels where they could bring home cash income. Local merchants usually provided only credit for the fish sold to them. After Confederation, the lower wages that the American vessels could pay Canadian fishermen verses their American counterparts opened up the market for unemployed or underemployed Canadian fishermen. "Pogy" fishing in American based vessels, for example, became a lifeline for many families. The small fish was caught for bait or used in a variety of manufacturing industries.

Those employed in shipbuilding had received important experience in carpentry and many were able to find work in the bludgeoning urban construction trades, especially in the northeastern United States. Expansion in mining had attracted workers to the mining regions and many others found part time work producing pit props for these mines. Large lumber companies hired woodcutters for the forest industries in Maine and New Brunswick and by the 1890’s companies were seeking workers to produce wood for the pulp and paper industry.

Working away for at least part of the year became a fact of life for a large segment of the population. With so many young men finding work away from home, the gender ratios, for at least part of the year became unbalanced. At the same time, there was an increase in consumer goods brought about by industrial development in cities, especially in northeastern United States. With the decline in trade, consumer goods that had been easily obtained in the 1850s and 1860s were no longer available. Even if goods were available there were few opportunities for making cash income, especially for women. Meanwhile, young women in the industrial centers were being drawn into the factories by higher wages and the opportunity of making new acquaintances in the work place. This left a high demand for household servants as the numbers of affluent urban families increased, and the former pool of urban servants moved into better paying factory work. Young women of the Maritme region were drawn to the cities where they could make their own money and take part in the growing consumer revolution. Household service jobs provided a good opportunity for these women in the short term because they generally included room and board leaving their monetary wages as discretionary income. Often the more affluent families that had moved in the earlier period provided the link with the cities and an eventual chain migration to specific urban centers.

Some historians claim that these young women were sent to the cities to help provide for their families back home and there is evidence of young women sending money back to their families. However, many others, probably the majority, earned barely enough to care for themselves and had nothing left over to send home. Nevertheless, having these women support themselves helped the family back home by reducing the number of mouths to feed, especially as the economic situation seems to have resulted in young people delaying marriage.

The number of mouths to feed was a major problem for many families because of the high birth rate in Richmond County. In 1871 the average size of a Richmond County household was six, based on the census records, but many families were much larger. In fact, a database of reconstructed families from Petit de Grat, River Bourgeois and L’Ardoise indicates that the average number of births per completed family was consistently around seven. During the next three decades the overall birth rate within the county dropped by about seven per cent. This did not mean that families declined in size. A decline in the death rate among children meant that families had more children living into adulthood, as well as an increased life expectancy for adults meant that couples faced a longer time as "empty nesters." In fact, the fertility rate among families in which the parents were in their childbearing years increased by twenty per cent. However, the overall household size declined from six to five. This was because the average age of the population increased and there were more households beyond childbearing years.

Families coped with the economic changes of the 1860s mainly by having children, as they became of age, move to the cities where they could either provide income for their families or support themselves. However, the number of families that entirely abandoned the county was small compared to other regions of Canada and the United States. In the majority, of families at least one child remained at home, took over the family home, and produced their own family. The maintenance of a family link with the former home was an important safety line. When economic declines forced workers out of the workplace they could return home and be assured of, at least, a place to live. In times of unemployment they could even sometimes rely on the family back home to provide enough money to help them weather the downturn.

With the ease of migration, the retraction of the economy did not have the dire effects that might have been expected. In fact, if anything, migration out of the region made it easier for the families left behind, not only to maintain their living standards but also, in many cases, to improve them. Some were able to maintain their former way of life with little change. Others found new ways to make a living. The persistency rate for families between 1871 to 1901 was 68 per cent and, when the figure was adjusted for known deaths, the rate increased to 80 per cent. Individual persistency was much lower. With correction for deaths, 40 per cent of the population was still found in the county after thirty years. While this figure may appear low, similar studies in the United States found rates over ten years of only twenty-one to thirty-one per cent. The ten-year persistency rate for Richmond County was 80 per cent for heads of families, 1871-1881, 1881-1891 an 1891 to 1901.

With so many people going off to various locations to find work, the population of the county began to age. In 1871 forty-six per cent of married women were under 40 years of age, but by the turn of the century, the percentage of women under 40 had dropped by over eleven per cent. In West Arichat, Arichat and Petit de Grat, the decline in the percentage of married women ages 20 to 39 was 60, 41 and 23 percent respectively.

These changes were largely a result of the increasing gender imbalance. In 1871 there were 99 men in the age group 20 to 24 years to every one hundred women in the same age group. By 1901 there were 125 men to 100 women.

Looking at the balance of unmarried young men and women shows an even more striking imbalance. In 1871 there were 125 unmarried men to 100 unmarried women in the ages of 20 to 24, but in 1901 the ratio was 171 to 100. In the older age group, 25 to 29, the ratio was 182 single men to 100 single women. The gender imbalance was approaching two to one and was even greater in specific communities.

The ability of the population to provide new families was becoming retarded. This trend might have depleted the population entirely but several factors intervened. There was always a core of young people who married and remained at home. The gender imbalance resulted in the gap of ages between husbands and wives beginning to increase as older men, once they were established, married young women before they had a chance to get away to the cities. Many young men began to migrate to the urban areas where the young women were working, either temporarily or for the long term. Some decided to remain and found jobs. Others married girls from their home communities and brought them back home.

In the 1930s agriculturists from Western Canada came to the County giving local people advice about farming. These westerners had no knowledge of local conditions and their advice was a source of ridicule among local farmers. At one meeting, a local farmer stood up and began his remarks by saying "I wasn’t good lookin’ and had to go far to get a wife." When I was told the story I was baffled because I knew that he had married a local girl. I soon discovered that the lady concerned had been working in Massachusetts for several years, and he had gone there to marry her.

The county elites often complained about the "brightest and the best" leaving the county. Some historians and economists argue that only the dregs of society were left behind. Evidence suggests that this is an extremely biased interpretation. In the post-Confederation period it took intelligence and creativity to survive in the Maritime region. Through education, and the finding of niches in the economy, people used a wide variety of strategies to survive. It could be argued that it was easier to leave than face the challenges that presented themselves to those who persisted. In fact, both groups had to use their ingenuity and intelligence to survive. The symbiotic relationship between those who left and those who stayed provided the best of both worlds. The links back home provided security for those who left. Families made the transitions necessary for coping with changes in the broader economy.

The young couple marrying in the last decades of the nineteenth century had expectations vastly different from the ones marrying in the previous three decades. There was a good chance that both had been working elsewhere before marriage and would be moving elsewhere within a couple of years after the ceremony. Others might be settling down on a family farm, moving in with the parents of either the husband or wife. Only a few would be establishing their own homes even in fishing communities. The high death rates in urban centers sometimes resulted in orphaned children being returned to live with their grandparents or other members of the extended family. The number of nuclear families, those with only one generation of parents and children, declined and the number of more complex households increased.

The transition in families in the later decades of the nineteenth century was not as traumatic in most cases as it had been for the ancestors of Richmond County families who had left their homes in Europe, or who had been forced from their homes by dramatic actions such as expulsion or war. Many left with the idea that they would or could return home if they wished. The complex transportation links that had developed between county and urban centers made travel easy. Individuals, and even whole families, moved back and forth as economy dictated. With strong families, they endured.

Isle Madame Summit 2000