uncles’ farm at Newtown, near Belfast,

described by Sir Andrew Macphail:

as

Many pine trees remained and they were easily converted into money. When one of these old men at last found that he had need of a doctor, he cut down one of the pine trees, hauled it to the mill which was now near at hand, had it sawn into boards, and sold

them for thirty dollars.593

Inevitably, there would come a time when even these last remaining trees would succumb to some need or other on the farm or in the home, and so be hauled off to the mill.594

THE TIMBER EXPORT TRADE

The export markets Four different export markets for the timber and wood products of Prince Edward Island are mentioned in the sources, the most important by far being the British domestic market. Newfoundland, which had only a limited supply of suitable wood, was also a market of some importance, and there was a small-scale trade to the United States and the West Indies. (There seems to have been only a sporadic export of wood to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — each of which, of course, had their own abundant supplies of timber.)

The timber trade to Britain in the eighteenth century — Within two years of the formal transfer of the island to Great Britain in 1763, British entrepreneurs were already beginning to harvest and export the island’s timber resource. The first attempt that we know of occurred in October 1765 at ’Three Rivers’ where the vessel Diadem of London was seized by two Royal Navy ships for ”breach of the Acts of Trade in Lading masts without producing [a] Certificate that Bond had been given as the law directs”. The Diadem was escorted to Halifax, but a few months later it was lost at sea on its way to England.595 The masts

593 Macphail 1939.

59‘ In 1906 what was called “the largest oak tree on the Island — 53% feet in length and 26 inches at the top end" was finally ‘cashed in' by someone — it was harvested by John Bolger of Lot 11 (Morrison 1983, p. 155).

595 Lockerby 2004, p. 13. The two Royal Navy ships were HMS Magdalene and HMS Senegal. Earle Lockerby (personal communication) has provided me with the source for this information: Captain's Journal of HMS Magdalene, PRO, Admiralty [Adm] 51/3893, entries for 11 October - 11 November 1765. See also Captain‘s Journal of HMS Senegal, Adm 51/885, entries for 11 October - 21 November 1765. For the loss of the Diadem at sea,

89

were presumably of pine, but how many were ’laden’ and their intended destination, we do not know.

Then three years later, and again at Three Rivers, we have detailed evidence of the harvesting of some twelve hundred white pine trees, two hundred of which were "more than two feet through at the butt”, the rest being ”upwards of twelve inches over”. All were from ”less than one hundred and fifty yards of the high water mark”. We may presume that, like the trees of three years earlier, these pines were also being cut for export to Great Britain (there were as yet no British settlements on the island), with the larger trees probably having been cut for masts.596

With the beginnings of British settlement on the island in 1770, some of those proprietors who were especially active in the settling of their townships made attempts to exploit the timber for export to Great Britain and elsewhere: David Higgins, a co-proprietor, with James Montgomery, of Lot 59 (on the south side of the Montague River) continued in the early 1770s the exploitation of the timber in the Three Rivers area by building a sawmill there and by sending twenty- two shiploads of timber to Great Britain”; Robert Clark, the proprietor-founder of the New London settlement on Lot 21, also had a sawmill built there and he is also reported to have exported timber to Great Britain and the West Indiesm; and

see: Francklin to Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, 22 November 1766, CO 217/21, pp. 384—385v.

596 Smethurst 1774. See Appendix 1, footnotes 21 to 23 for further comment on this logging.

59’ Bumsted (1987) (p. 52), citing the “Scroll Memorial 1791' [Scottish Record Office GD 293/2/79/1]. l have not seen the Scroll Memorial, but have come across a memorial from the sons of James Montgomery [PAROI Montgomery Papers, GD 293/2/18], (seemingly undated, but written after 1801) which says that the 22 shiploads of ‘Timber‘ came from Montgomery‘s lands (which, if true, must be from Lot 59). The sons also say that “from the low prices of the article in those times, [the enterprise] did little more than clear expenses". The statement of David Lawson (post 1777) concerning a man killed in 1770 “by the falling of a large pine tree that was cut for loading the vessel" is probably a reference to one of these twenty-two vessels (see Appendix 1: footnote 25). I also note that a century later, the Rev. Stephen [Lawson] (1877- 1878), a descendant of David Lawson, was presumably citing family tradition, when he said that “the first ship laden with timber that ever left this island was his, from Georgetown".

5“ So writes the visitor, Patrick M’Robert (1776). Robert Clark himself, in promoting his settlement, stressed that it was “well situated" for the trade in ‘lumber' to the West Indies ([Clark] 1779). See also Thomas Curtis’ (1775) comments on Clark‘s promotion of the potential for the settlement‘s timber trade, as well as on the inefficiency of the sawmill, and the daybook of Benjamin Chappell