Chapter I

THE IMMIGRANTS

Bridget McCarvill was just twelve years old when she emigrated to Prince Edward Island in 1841. Years later she told her grandchildren about that experience. She was in a group of mostly women and children who walked from the Charlottetown harbour where their ship docked to what is now called Kinkora, carrying their personal and household belongings — a distance of about twenty miles. Little Bridget’s task was to carry a sack of oat bread loaves baked in Ireland as food for the journey. Tired from clim— bing the hilly road, she fell behind the others, and threw away a few loaves to lighten her burden. They eventually came to a clearing in the thick woods where her father and other men, who had come out from Ireland a year or more earlier, had built small cottages..1

Mrs. Mary (Monaghan) Johnston, a widow with four young children, also arrived in 1841. Her memories were of the unpleasant month—long voyage on the ship “Margaret Pollock”, on which twenty-nine people, most- ly children, died from an outbreak of measles; and the ship being quarantined for several days in the Charlottetown harbor.2 The Johnston family settled near Middleton in Township 26.

These early Irish immigrants were not, however, the first to settle in Townships 26 an 27, Prince County, Prince Edward Island. The following note made by the census enumerator in 1841 suggests the settlement at Kinkora, identified as the Irish Settlement on the Anderson Road,

began about 1833.

The Anderson Road Settlement, called by some, Irish Town, is on the new road from Bedeque to Charlot- tetown, called the Anderson Road. . . . Situated on the back end of the lot . . . . [it] has all been settled within the last eight years.3

The Anderson Road was opened in 1832.4 The Irish settlement on it probably extended from the South West Branch of the Dunk River through what is now Kinkora and Shamrock. The road, though hilly, is straight and is the shortest route between Bedeque and Charlottetown. Table 1:1 contains the names of the settlers in that com— munity in 1841, as well as the number of persons in each household and the earliest year, prior to 1841, when householders became registered as owners or leaseholders. (Note that the year of registration does not necessarily in- dicate the year of arrival on Prince Edward Island; in some cases several years elapsed before settlers registered their land). All the settlers were farmers; three have other oc— cupations as indicated; but only the wheel wright was not

also a farmer. The settlement at Middleton is identified in the 1841

Census as: “South West, being on the South West branch of the Bedeque [Dunk] River.” Older than the settlement at Kinkora, its first occupants were probably the four Wright families named below in Table 1:2. Stephen Wright, father of Job, John, Stephen and William, registered 800 acres in Township 27 in 1832;6 but a history on the Wright family indicates he owned, and divided the 800 acres among his four sons in South West in 1821.7 Stephen Wright senior was a son of William Wright, a Loyalist and member of a Quaker community in New York state, who fled from there to P.E.I. (then known as the Island of St. John) in 17 84, following the American War of In— dependence. For his loyalty to the British Crown he was given land in Townships 19 and 26.8