Sailor's Hope: The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions 9780773581173

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Sailor ’ s Hope

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Sailor ’ s Hope

The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions

Rusty Bittermann

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2010

ISBN 978-0-7735-3773-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-3774-3 (paper) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2010 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% postconsumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication Bittermann, Rusty, 1951– Sailor’s hope : the life and times of William Cooper, agrarian radical in an age of revolutions / Rusty Bittermann. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7735-3773-6 (bound).—ISBN 978-0-7735-3774-3 (pbk.) 1. Cooper, William, 1786-1867. 2. Reformers—Prince Edward Island—Biography. 3. Legislators—Prince Edward Island—Biography. 4. Prince Edward Island—Politics and government—To 1873. I. Title. FC2621.1.C66B58 2010

971.7’02092

This book was typeset by Em Dash Design in Sabon 10.5/14

C2010-904584-X

This one is for Margaret

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Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations ix Preface xi 1 Rural Scotland and the Sea 3 2 A Mariner’s Life 21 3 Sailor’s Hope 44 4 Struggles for Justice 68 5 “Making Property” 95 6 California Bound 134 7 The Return 173 8 Persistence in Adversity 210 9 Reflections 242 Notes 255 Bibliography 299 Index 323

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List of Maps and Illustrations maps 1.1 Forfarshire (Angus County), Scotland, birthplace of William Cooper ca. 1813 /4 1.2 Dundee, Scotland, ca. 1792 /13 2.1 Map of Prince Edward Island (St John’s Island), drawn from Samuel Holland’s Survey /30 2.2 London, 1824–1826, showing places of importance for William Cooper /32–3 3.1 Prince Edward Island, ca. 1819, showing locale of William Cooper’s farm /46 3.2 Lot 56, 1811, showing head of Howe Bay and hay lots on marshes along the upper reaches of Fortune River /47 3.3 Lot 56, c. 1860, showing the locale of William Cooper’s lands at Howe Bay /49 6.1 Official Map of San Francisco, 1849, showing locale of Cooper family lots /171 7.1 Northern California, 1855, showing locale of Cooper family farms /182 7.2 Yager Creek and Lower Eel River, 1865, showing the locale of the Cooper family sawmills and grist mills /183

illustrations 1.1 Glamis Castle, Forfarshire, near Cooper’s place of birth /7 2.1 Royal Exchange, London, 1798 /22

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List of M a ps a n d Illust r at ions

2.2 Thames below London Bridge, 1799 /34 2.3 West India Docks, London, 1817 /35 2.4 St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 1810, place of marriage for William Cooper and Sarah Glover /37 2.5 View of harbour at St John’s, Newfoundland, 1823 /42 3.1 Mi’kmaq family walking near Charlottetown, from J.S. McGill farm, ca. 1836 /52 3.2 Plymouth Harbour and Customs House, ca. 1820s, as Cooper would have seen them on arrival with the Hackmatack /64 5.1 Coopers’ Mills, Grand River, PEI , ca. 1900 /108 5.2 View of Grand Surrey Docks Canal, with timber raft, 1826 /122 5.3 Shields Harbour, mid-nineteenth century /131 6.1 New Orleans, ca. 1851 /141 6.2 Advertisement in the Royal Gazette, 2 October 1849, for passage on Success (later renamed the Packet) /149 6.3 Cape Horn as seen from the deck of the Packet /156 6.4 San Francisco, waterfront with “forest of masts,” seen from the roof of the Jenny Lind Theatre, autumn 1850 /158–9 6.5 San Francisco before the gold rush, autumn 1848 /160 6.6 San Francisco during the gold rush, ca. 1851 /160 7.1 Women from the Packet in San Francisco, ca. 1850, perhaps Rowena and Caroline Cooper /181 7.2 William Cooper Jr (?), 1850 /181 7.3 Van Duzen and Eel River Valley from Hydesville, California /184 7.4 Charlottetown from Government House, ca. 1850 /186 8.1 Portrait of William Cooper by Robert Harris /211 8.2 Rowena Cooper, ca. 1855 /225 8.3 Logging with oxen in Humboldt County in the late nineteenth century /229 8.4 Early Dwelling on Cooper Farm near Hydesville, California /230 8.5 Logging in the redwoods, Humboldt County /230 8.6 Mill Farm Meadows, looking up the Yager Valley /231 9.1 William Cooper’s gravestone, Bay Fortune /243

Preface William Cooper is a central figure in the history and folklore of Prince Edward Island. He is also an enigmatic figure. He entered Island history first as a visiting sea captain and then as an immigrant coming to settle in the colony soon after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. By then the Island had been a British possession for half a century. Most of the land in the colony was in the hands of landlords, some resident, some absentee, and some a bit of both. Rural residents acquired land for farming by leasing lands, or squatting, or by purchasing freeholds from landlords or other private owners. While these property relations met the needs of some Islanders, be they landlords, land agents, or lawyers, many others resented the burden of rents and the economic, social, and political power of landlords and those associated with them. Cooper is remembered for the central role he assumed in mobilizing Islanders to confront the power of landlords and to transform the Island’s land system. The experience drew Islanders into broader patterns of popular challenge and change occurring in the Americas, Britain, and elsewhere in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Cooper’s significant role in the struggle for land reform is easily discerned from the historical record. The character of the man himself and the quality of his leadership, though, have been more difficult to establish. In part this is because little is known about his life before he emigrated to Prince Edward Island, and after he arrived in the colony, little is known about him beyond his political participation in the struggle for land reform. As well, because Cooper’s leadership stirred controversy and generated opposition, we are left

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with competing visions of the man, many originating with his political opponents’ desire to discredit him. This book provides a fuller understanding of William Cooper’s life, character, and contribution to the struggle for land reform on the Island. It also explores how his experiences and those of his family fit within the extraordinary political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental changes sweeping through much of the world in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and seeks to understand how these changes shaped the Cooper family’s choices and their contributions to broader changes. This book would not exist in its present form were it not for the generosity of another researcher who also set out to understand William Cooper. His quest began when, as a young man in his twenties, he was handed a box of family papers. Inside were faded letters, documents, and receipts from the mid-nineteenth century. Many bore his surname, Cooper, but most concerned people and places he did not recognize. Prince Edward Island? Where was that? And what did it have to do with his history and that of his family? The young man was Edward Cooper, William Cooper’s great-grandson. His father, who might have answered his questions, had died when Ed was five. In the mid-1960s, Ed spent a winter in the hills of northern California near Mount Shasta, keeping an eye on his herd of Angus cattle, and reading and arranging the contents of the box by oil lamp in the evenings. His interest in unravelling the mystery of his family’s past led him eventually to Dave Hunter’s valuable web-based contribution to Prince Edward Island history: the Island Register. And from there, and from other contacts, he was able to learn more about Prince Edward Island and his family’s profile in its past. Ed’s generosity in making available to me the papers that were in the box was central to my own quest to understand William Cooper. I had several audiences in mind as I wrote this book, Ed very much included. I hope it helps to answer some of his remaining questions concerning his Prince Edward Island family, and their role in Island history. His contributions to helping me answer mine have been enormous, and I am deeply grateful. My debts to others who have helped me along the way are many. Dr Steve Turner of the University of New Brunswick and Dr Martin Hewitt of Leeds University took the time to review documents I had on Cooper’s scientific theorizing and on his aunt’s interest in

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Chartism. Both offered me valuable advice and suggestions. Any errors of interpretation in the book, however, are mine alone. I have been assisted as well by many kind people at libraries and archives in Canada, the United States, and Britain – indeed too many for me to attempt to thank by name. That said, Yvonne Carroll of the National Library of Scotland deserves special mention. Seeing me struggling to transcribe nearly illegible letters that I was not permitted to copy, and knowing I was losing the race to be done before my time in Edinburgh was up, she lifted the most difficult file from my desk and took on the task herself, sending me a typed, electronic version of the correspondence by email after I returned to Canada. Ann and Rob Roberts of Ferndale generously shared research materials with me while I was in California and have continued to share information with me since. I have benefited from many such unexpected kindnesses. And then there are the good people at the Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island. I cannot thank them for unexpected kindnesses, as they have been consistently kind and supportive across many research projects and many years. So I will simply say thanks, yet again, for all that they do. St Thomas University provided crucial financial support for some of my early Cooper research. I wish to acknowledge as well the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Don MacGillivray assisted this project in many ways, including an invitation to present my ideas on Cooper as the 2007 J.B. McLachlan Memorial Lecture. I am enormously grateful as well to Margaret McCallum, who has been involved in every step of this book project, providing support when it was in the planning stage, helping with the research, and bringing her superb editorial skills to bear on draft after draft of the manuscript. But for her contributions, it would be a longer book.

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Sailor ’ s Hope

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1

Rural Scotland and the Sea Some of the first sounds the infant William Cooper heard were probably those of the banging of the beater on a loom, pushing linen weft into place after each throw of a shuttle. He would hear the creak of the harnesses pulling warp threads apart, the pause for the shuttle throw, and then the sharp blows of the beater with its reed, knocking the most recently woven weft thread into place. It was a rhythmic sound: creak, bang bang, creak. In time William would know the kee-kee-kee of kestrels hovering over the grasslands of the glens of Scotland, the crunch of ice floes grinding against one another in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the calls of draymen manoeuvring their carts through the alleyways of East London, the shrieking of wind tearing at ropes and masts and spars, the thump of his gavel as he called the Prince Edward Island House of Assembly to order, and the cacophony of different languages and accents in the streets of San Francisco. But in the months after his birth on New Year’s Day in 1786, he would have heard only what was occurring within his parents’ cottage in Lochee, Scotland. According to a note in the Cooper family Bible, which would eventually make its way to California, William was the first child of James and Mary Cooper, both of whom were natives of the Dundee region, “of the Parish of Liff and Glams.” This may mean that one of his parents was from the parish of Liff, which abutted the port city of Dundee to the west and included Lochee, and the other from Glamis, ten miles north of Lochee, or it may mean that both originated in Glamis and had moved to Liff1 (see map 1.1). Whatever the

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Map 1.1 Forfarshire (Angus County), Scotland, birthplace of William Cooper ca. 1813. From Rev. James Headrick, General Views of Agriculture of the County Angus.

case, mother and child and whoever else were present in the Cooper household in January 1786 would have been happy for the dwelling’s shelter. The wind could blow cold off the North Sea and the River Tay, and there was little to stop it from reaching Lochee. The American Revolutionary War had been concluded by treaty three years before William was born; the French Revolution would begin three years later. In London, where he would marry and his first child would be born, ships bearing the commerce of overseas trade and empire were struggling to find space to discharge their cargoes in the increasingly crowded reaches of the Thames. The city itself was nearing a million inhabitants as it drew migrants from elsewhere in the British Isles and abroad, some fleeing unwanted political and economic changes, others seeking a share of the benefits of

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the growth of industry, trade, and empire.2 In Prince Edward Island, where William Cooper would spend most of his life, there was little of the bustle of London as the five hundred or fewer families living in the small colony faced another winter’s isolation until spring melted the ice in the surrounding waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence.3 Although it had been more than two decades since the British had acquired the colony from the French in the Seven Years War, old fields cleared during the earlier French regime were probably still succumbing to the encroachments of the forests more quickly than new fields were being opened.4 In California, where William Cooper would move in the mid-nineteenth century, imperial growth and vitality were more discernible. Under the authority of the Spanish Crown, Father Fermin Lasuén was overseeing the construction of a mission at Santa Barbara, which would further strengthen the Spanish presence in California. Eight missions had already been built along the stretch of coast between San Diego and San Francisco over the previous seventeen years. Lasuén’s efforts would double these numbers by the end of the century, creating, among other things, the foundations for the expansion of European agricultural practices in California and subsequent urban growth.5 In the short term, however, events closer to home were of greater importance to young William Cooper. His parents too had been born into an era of change that must have seemed nothing short of revolutionary to them. In their lifetime the countryside around Dundee in Forfarshire (Angus County) had undergone an extraordinary transformation. Where once there had been open lands stretching without break, by the 1780s the countryside was divided into fields bounded by hedges, ditches, and stone fences, and these barriers were being extended with every passing year.6 As well, new roads and turnpikes increasingly linked rural hamlets to one another and to coastal ports such as Dundee.7 The grain fields and indigenous pasture of an earlier era now shared the landscape with recently introduced crops such as sown grasses, clovers, turnips, and potatoes, the last having gone from being a garden curiosity in the mid-eighteenth century to being an essential crop on every farm and croft.8 Fields that had once lain fallow for years now sustained complex annual crop rotations.9 Even the cattle of the district had changed. Not only did

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they no longer wander freely over an unenclosed landscape, checked occasionally by the efforts of herders and dogs, but they had grown larger and more numerous, thanks to the use of turnips as fodder, the enhanced productivity of hay and pasture lands, and greater attention to breeding.10 The pace of rural change in Angus County and other areas of Scotland with good farmland was among the most rapid in all of West Europe at this time.11 The rate of agricultural change within Angus, however, varied. In the southern portions of the county that bordered the Tay, and in the great central valley that lay inland along the base of the Grampians, gently sloping lands with good soils and a climate moderated by proximity to the Tay and the sea provided a base suitable for enclosure and improvement. The northern portions of the county, though, were for the most part rough mountainous terrain, with the Grampians rising to three thousand feet in some places. Here, where the scale of farms was measured by the livestock they might support rather than the acres they encompassed, the opportunities for tillage and crop production were more limited and the pace of agricultural innovation was slower.12 Nonetheless, overall in the region where William Cooper was born, the countryside was changing rapidly; Angus was, as one contemporary observer said, “a seat of the most flourishing agricultural industry.”13 The new developments were not only agricultural but residential. At the homes of local proprietors, workers were busy removing and altering old construction and erecting new to reflect the wealth and tastes of the age. At Glamis Castle, seat of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, these changes involved eliminating some of the older features designed for military defence and constructing new wings to entertain guests and impress visitors (see illustration 1.1). At Glamis Castle and elsewhere, the region’s proprietors lavished attention on the creation of pleasure grounds with planted trees, gardens, ponds, and fountains laid out, as one contemporary observer noted, “with great taste.”14 The region’s proprietors also invested in the construction and renovation of housing for their tenants and workers, and in barns, mills, and business premises, increasingly with mortared stone walls and slate or well-thatched roofs.15 These alterations in the physical landscape were mirrored by equally dramatic changes in the social order. Farms that had once

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Illustration 1.1 Glamis Castle, Forfarshire, near Cooper’s place of birth. Photograph by author, April 2006.

been let to multiple tenants now were being leased to single, commercially focused agriculturalists capable of meeting the rising rents expected from the new improved agriculture. Reverend Roger, a local clergyman writing in 1794, estimated that on average tenants in Angus were being required to pay twice the rate of rent that had been asked at mid-century.16 The labouring population of the countryside too was forced to shift as the old seasonal patterns of sowing and harvesting grain gave way to the more complex and persistent labour demands of root crops, pulses, sown grasses, and clovers. Labourers were needed to plough fields more regularly, to spread marl and other soil-improving dressings, and to ditch, hedge, fence, and drain fields, as well as erect new rural buildings. With increased rents, many rural residents found it increasingly difficult to acquire land from landlords and major tenants. For some of the rural population, this meant abandoning the life of a cottar and joining the landless full-time labourers and their dependants on the region’s estates. For others, it meant moving to villages and towns and finding new ways to make a living.17 William Cooper’s parents were, it seems, in the latter category. The new economic order transforming the Lowlands of Scotland included not just revolutionary shifts in agricultural practices but also changes in manufacturing. Judging from contemporary descriptions of Angus,

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there was hardly a hamlet or village in the county where one would not have heard, at least seasonally, the slap of beater bars on looms or the creak of heddles and harnesses, as weavers transformed linen warp and weft into yardage for export.18 In the second half of the eighteenth century, Lochee was a leading centre in the growth of the handloom linen industry.19 Writing a few years after William Cooper’s birth, one of the local ministers described how the reconfiguration of the rural economy had emptied people out of the western regions of Liff and Bervie and greatly boosted the numbers on the eastern side, particularly in and around Lochee.20 The “native inhabitants” were, he reported, “few in comparison with the strangers who have lately settled.”21 According to his account, 172 of the 348 householders in Liff and Bervie as a whole were weavers; the next most numerous occupational group thirty-five households headed by day-labourers.22 In Lochee itself, linen weaving was the central occupation and the enterprise that had brought the town into existence, though weavers might seasonally do other sorts of work.23 Lochee became a magnet for workers in the linen industry for a number of reasons. Proximity to the busy port of Dundee, just two miles away, made it relatively easy to obtain the materials weavers needed. It also gave them easy access to a market for their finished rolls of linen yardage – webs – as they might carry them into town themselves, though most, it seems, sold their work to local “merchant weavers.” As well, Lochee benefited from having a small stream running through it, providing a plentiful supply of water for washing and bleaching the linen after it was woven and thereby enhancing its value. Water, access to pot-ashes, and the space to spread the completed webs in the sun were crucial elements for gaining the value added from bleaching. In addition, the proprietor of the estate on which Lochee was located had subdivided the land into small crofts that permitted weavers to acquire a residence of their own and allowed space where they and their families might tend a garden and fruit trees and keep a cow, even as they plied their trade.24 William Cooper, then, was born into a household that was in many ways part of a new world taking shape in rural Scotland. Neither of his parents were likely to have originally come from Lochee; nor were their neighbours likely to have. But most of those inhabiting the cottages that had sprung up along the stream

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running through Lochee had not travelled far to take up a new life there. According to William Cooper’s oldest son, William’s father, James, had been a mason. In the context of the family’s residence in Lochee, this likely meant that James plied his trade seasonally, working on construction jobs in the months when the weather was moderate and weaving in the months when there was no masonry work to be had.25 William’s mother, Mary, may have supplemented the household income, like many other women in the region, by spinning, which could earn a shilling a week, and by making butter, which could earn two shillings a week for three months of the year.26 No doubt William’s parents raised as much food as they could on their own land, and, like others in Lochee, they may have taken the opportunity to purchase standing crops from local farmers.27 In the late eighteenth century, James and Mary would have been able to carve out a life for themselves and their growing family, which soon included a daughter and a second son, by combining self-employment in the textile industry with wage work and small-scale agriculture – as did their neighbours. It is unlikely, however, that their labours would have produced enough of a surplus to allow them to easily weather hard times, much less get ahead. Sometime after William’s brother and sister were born, disaster struck. James was killed in a fall from a building where he was working. According to his grandson, John Cooper, the building was “being erected for the proprietor of the estate on which he was living.”28 Assuming that the Cooper family were then still residing in Lochee, which seems likely, given contemporary descriptions of the patterns of local migration, John’s reference is probably to the Duncan of Lundie family, proprietors not just of the land on which Lochee was founded but of an extensive estate with lands extending to the north and west of Lochee.29 According to John Cooper, his grandmother Mary Cooper and her “three small children” were left “in very humble circumstances.”30 No doubt. As there was no assessment for the support of the poor in Liff, Mary would have had to rely on her own family’s resources and the voluntary support of others. 31 According to John Cooper, again, the “gentleman of the estate offered to help her in various ways.” Although there do not seem to be relevant account books from the Duncan estate for the period around 1790 when James died, John’s story is consistent with

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what Duncan estate records reveal for the first and second quarters of the nineteenth century. Entries under the rubric of “pensioners, Widows & other charitable objects” and similar headings record the Duncan family’s support of people in need.32 No doubt there were other local proprietors who provided similar assistance. Mary, however, according to her grandson John, “did not wish to accept aid without compensation.” As a result, the oldest child, William, was “put to work on the estate.” Neither John Cooper’s account nor local records reveal when James Cooper died and thus at what age William became a farm worker for one of Angus County’s proprietors. Indeed, there seems to be no local record of James and Mary’s marriage, nor of the baptisms of William’s brother and sister – dates that would have shed light on the timing of James’s death. The silences are consistent with other evidence suggesting that William Cooper’s parents were among the rural poor struggling to adjust to the new order taking shape in much of rural Scotland. As the local minister in Liff noted in the 1790s, baptisms and church burials cost money, and the burdens these fees posed were a significant factor in making the parish registers much less than a full record of marriages, births, and deaths in the region.33 Allowing two-year intervals for the birth of William’s brother and sister and assuming that it was the death of his father that kept family size to three children, William may have been around five when his father died and his life was thereby transformed. As the oldest son, given his class circumstances, he would normally have been expected to find employment to help support his family when he was eight or nine.34 Of necessity, his life as a wageworker began earlier. William’s opportunities for acquiring a formal education would have been limited even without his father’s death, given the circumstances in Lochee. All Scottish parishes were required by law to provide schooling for children, but the parochial school in Liff was both poor and poorly attended, and the alternatives were not good.35 As it was, William’s first schooling was in the routines of the new improved agriculture of rural Angus. Certainly there was no shortage of opportunities for applying a boy’s labour to assist with erecting stone fences, planting hedges, picking stones from fields, cleaning seed, harvesting turnips and potatoes, moving sheaves of grain,

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hauling tools, or a myriad of other farm tasks. At some point after he began working, young William assumed the responsibilities of a “herd boy,” living away from home. It would seem that this was a mixed blessing. On the positive side, an “elderly widow” in the “cottage where he lodged” took it upon herself to provide him with the “rudiments” of an education.36 On the negative side, William found the life of herding lonely, as according to his son John’s account, he had “only his dog for a companion for months at a time.” This sounds like a characterization of the life of a herder in the glens in the north of the county rather than in the enclosed landscape of the south, but it may have been a description of herding routines in the Seadly Hills, which were nearer at hand and bordered the Duncan estate. Whatever the case, it would seem that William’s unhappiness with the life of a herder boy pushed him to consider alternatives. When he was eleven, he fled rural employment for the sea.37 So what had William learned by this point in his life? According to his son John, he had taken to the lessons offered by the elderly widow and been “an apt scholar.” He likely had learned from her the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, assets on which he could build in the future.38 No doubt too he had learned a great deal about the ways of the new agriculture being practised in rural Angus. Perhaps as well he had had opportunity to study not just the workings of the omnipresent hand looms and threshing machines but of the many new mills and shops that were using waterpower to saw wood, roll and grind grain, chop snuff, clean yarn, spin thread, and undertake a variety of other tasks.39 Surely as well he had learned something of the history of his part of the world, of William Wallace’s struggle against English occupation, the valour of Robert the Bruce, General Monk’s bloody siege of Dundee during the English Civil War, and the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. Perhaps he also learned of more recent and contentious matters, such as the causes of landlessness and the significance of the French Revolution. In his 1799 account of Dundee, Robert Heron described the Lochee side of town as being an area “chiefly inhabited by those whom monopolizing oppression has driven from the adjacent country,” and Reverend Scott of Auchterhouse, just north of Lochee, writing at roughly the same time, critically noted “seditious” people from a neighbouring town who had sought to “disseminate French

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doctrines and poison … honest minds.”40 The writings of both men highlight political issues that were part of more general popular discussions in Angus during William Cooper’s youth. The publishing houses of Dundee printed versions of Thomas Paine’s and Benjamin Franklin’s writings as well as more radical works, and the periodical Dundee Repository of Political and Miscellaneous Information included reflections on the French Revolution.41 Certainly, too, William had learned something of contemporary Dundee as he was growing up, for surely it was to here that he fled to escape the life of a herder and to find work as a cabin boy. A map of Dundee from the early 1790s shows a town of roughly twenty thousand inhabitants focused on its harbour on the Tay, with its medieval core just to the north of the harbour42 (see map 1:2). An eighteenth-century writer described the layout of Dundee’s principal streets in terms of a human body stretched out on its back, with Murraygate and Seagate being thighs and legs extending to the east, High Street as the trunk, and Steeple Church the head. Nethergate following the shore up the Tay and Overgate leading to the rising land to the west were the arms, which were “more elevated towards heaven … indicating a devout mind panting after celestial joys.”43 By the late eighteenth century, the panting on Overgate was more likely to have arisen from the exertions of those transporting heavy webs of linen into Dundee from Lochee, just off the map to the northwest – and from other rural districts further afield – and hauling fibre and thread from the dockside back into the countryside. The principal business of Dundee in the years of Cooper’s youth was the linen trade, and the town flourished with the productivity of its own weavers and spinners. As well, Dundee prospered by supplying imported raw linen to the rural districts of Angus and shipping finished weaving to London and to foreign markets.44 Although much of Dundee’s fleet of more than one hundred vessels was engaged in the movement of goods associated with the linen trade, the town was involved in many other activities. Dundee was a major market town for the surrounding agricultural districts, and a significant portion of the grain and black cattle exported from the region passed through its harbour. In addition to the usual trades associated with a town of its scale, there were manufacturers producing cordage, soap, and snuff, and experimenting with spinning

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Map 1.2 Dundee, Scotland, ca. 1792. From: Robert Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee in the Year MDCCXCII .

and weaving cotton, and making bottles and windows in a recently erected glassworks along the harbour on the east side of town.45 The warehouses for Dundee’s whaling fleet were on the waterfront near the glass works, and a row of new public warehouses faced the inner harbour and its piers. Behind these were the town’s markets, and to either side of the harbour were wood yards and an active shipyard for the construction of new vessels.46 It must have been a fascinating place for a young man in from the countryside, given all the movement of people and goods, the work of the town’s various industries, and the merchandise for sale in the markets and stores. On High Street there was the medieval tower of Steeple Church to admire, as well as the impressive town hall, Meal Market, and the recently constructed Trades Hall, with rooms for each of Dundee’s nine incorporated trades. Along Nethergate, past the hospital and its gardens, the houses of some of Dundee’s leading citizens were set amidst well-kept grounds. By contrast, the town

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centre had areas of dense housing where many families were, as a contemporary observer noted, “living by half-dozens, as formerly in Edinburgh, under the same roof, with common stairs, and without backyards or courts.”47 Such circumstances provided the setting for a short work by J. Forbes published in 1800 entitled The Boy of Dundee: A Youth to Fortune and to Fame, Unknown.48 The hero of Forbes’s story was a young man who, not unlike William Cooper, was the son of a widowed woman living in poverty. In the case of the “boy of Dundee,” the mother had been able to provide her son with an education before she suffered a stroke and became too ill to work. Subsequently, Forbes’s young hero cheerfully accepted a life in which he spent his mornings preparing breakfast and making his mother comfortable, his days working a loom in a linen manufactory, and his evenings tending to his mother’s needs yet again and teaching her how to read the scriptures. William Cooper too might have traded the herding life for the life of a worker in the linen industry. Instead, at age eleven, he left Dundee as a ship’s cabin boy.49 Had William’s family had money to spare, he might have begun as an apprentice, and with that status been assured of the training necessary to advance rapidly within the merchant marine. The fees for apprenticeships varied depending on the trade route, with those to masters on the large vessels of the lucrative East India routes requiring £100 or more, and those on the smaller vessels of lesser trades more commonly requiring from £10 to £20.50 As a cabin boy, William might well have received no wages on his first few voyages, and no promise of training – simply an opportunity to earn room and board in exchange for keeping his master’s cabin clean and doing whatever tasks he might be assigned.51 Such was the case, for instance, with Samuel Kelly of Cornwall, who began his working life at sea in the late 1770s when he was fourteen.52 The position of cabin boy provided, however, opportunities for learning new skills and for modest advancement, depending on the character of the ship’s master, mates, and crew and on a boy’s willingness and ability to learn. After several voyages without pay, he might expect to begin earning monthly wages and to have these increase over time as he gained more experience and skills.53 The London-born Jack Cremer, who began his career at sea in the early 1700s when he was

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eight, made his first voyage without pay, but he earned five shillings a month on his second voyage and fifteen shillings a month on his third.54 A shift from the status and pay scale of a ship’s boy to that of a seaman usually occurred in late teens. A young man might then work his way up from the status of ordinary seaman to able seaman and from there hope to advance to boatswain or higher.55 For the most part, the skills necessary for advance within the lower ranks of the merchant marine concerned the physical operation of the boat. Thus, William Cooper would have needed to develop an understanding of the ways of ropes, knots, canvas, rigging, and wood, and the specialized marine vocabulary associated with these, as well as learning about tide, wind, and weather. He would have needed also to develop the physical abilities necessary to perform complex and dangerous work while at sea. To become a master or mate, however, required other skills, including an ability to read, write, keep books, and ledgers and do the mathematical calculations necessary for navigation. The odds were against William Cooper ever making it to master, given that he had not begun as an apprentice and he lacked the capital and connections typically a necessary part of being made the chief officer of a vessel. Nonetheless, he managed to become a captain less than a dozen years after he first went to sea.56 The quality of life at sea depended a great deal on the character of a ship’s officers, but it offered good opportunities for building literacy and numeracy. Diligent and ambitious boys could benefit from the upward mobility available to those who could read, navigate, accurately manipulate numbers, and keep logs and ledgers. Young Samuel Kelly noted that he began to learn how to navigate on his first voyage by holding the quadrant for the captain as he measured the sun’s altitude at noon. Subsequently the captain taught him more of the skills of navigation.57 In his time at sea as a boy on a naval vessel, Jack Cremer benefited from formal lessons in math, reading, writing, astronomy, and Latin.58 Later, the captain of a merchant vessel on which Cremer sailed left him between trips with a merchant in Bilbao, Spain, so that the young Cremer might learn Spanish and, one assumes, record-keeping and accounting as well. Robert Hay, who was born three years after William Cooper and escaped the poverty of Scottish textile work by going to sea when he was thirteen,

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relates in his memoirs that he expanded his literacy at sea, thanks to the libraries and knowledge of some of his superiors.59 Edward Mangin, who served briefly as a chaplain on a British naval vessel in the first years of the nineteenth century, discovered that the combined libraries of the officers on board his vessel amounted to five hundred volumes “and these not at all despicable.”60 Books, Mangin noted, were among the items vendors brought to sell to sailors as they were leaving port.61 Robert Wilson, who was pressed into naval service in 1805, observed that the sailors on board the vessel on which he served used their leisure time at sea for various activities including music, handiwork, and self-education: “Those who are not employed sewing or mending you’ll see either learning to read or write, or ciphering, or instructing others.”62 The extent of the opportunities for acquiring the skills necessary for significant upward mobility within the work of sailing varied a great deal from ship to ship, and trade to trade, and even voyage to voyage, and as well between the world of the navy and that of the merchant marine. Within this world, however, a bright young man might build on the opportunities that came his way. As well, he might negotiate with his betters to expand these. Jack Cremer’s discussion of terms for accepting a berth on a vessel sailing out of Boston included having the captain “instruct me in what I did not know” regarding the responsibilities of a first mate.63 Later in his career, Cremer noted that the death of the captain with whom he was sailing to the Mediterranean closed down a plan he had had to gain a “Knoledge in Marchant’s Accounts” from him and thereby acquire one of the skills necessary for becoming a master. 64 John Cooper described his father as a prodigious reader and a good mathematician. These were attributes that he probably began to cultivate and develop in his early years at sea. Given that Dundee was likely to have been William Cooper’s home port in his early years with the merchant marine, his first voyages as a cabin boy were probably to the Baltic, and perhaps to London as well. Dundee’s customs records from the late 1790s are dominated by the busy trade in flax, hemp, and linen yarn, coming from Riga in particular. In June 1798 the Dundee customs house reported thirteen vessels had arrived from the Baltic in just two days, with cargoes of flax and hemp.65 Vessels plying the Baltic trades

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typically made two round trips per year.66 This incoming traffic in the raw materials of linen manufacture generated outgoing cargoes of coarse woven linen, which for the most part were shipped to London. From there much of Dundee’s linen made its way on larger vessels to the West Indies, where it clothed the slaves whose labour sustained the Caribbean sugar industry.67 When William Cooper first went to sea, Britain was at war with France and had been so for four years. They would remain at war almost continuously for the next eighteen years. Inevitably this affected Cooper’s experiences as a sailor. The Baltic and coastal trades were less troubled by privateers than were Britain’s oceanic trade routes, but even these were at risk. From early on, William would have learned something of the perils of armed conflict at sea and the ways of defence. As of 1798, merchant vessels on the Baltic routes as well as Britain’s other oceanic routes were required by law to travel in convoy, unless exempted from this requirement.68 William would also have learned of the threat that the coercive power of the state might pose to workers in the merchant marine. The ubiquity of press gangs looking for sailors for the navy, and the fear they engendered, are central to virtually every British sailor’s account of life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. John Nicol, who was pressed into service with the navy in the French Revolutionary Wars and who married following his discharge with the Peace of Amiens in 1802, had to give up his harbourside occupation as a cooper and work in the Scottish countryside near Dalkeith for more than a decade in order to avoid being captured by press gangs during the Napoleonic Wars.69 Nicol and others describe attempts to hide from the press parties that boarded returning merchant ships before they arrived in port and the difficulty of avoiding the press gangs that scoured the streets of British port cities.70 Although William Cooper would have been free from the risk of impressment in the years before he turned eighteen, at least in theory, others of his shipmates were vulnerable to being taken by force, both on land and at sea, and being underage was not always a sufficient defence from the coercion of press gangs who cared little for legal niceties.71 Given the long duration of Britain’s war with France and the centrality of the British navy to that struggle, it must have seemed

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almost inevitable to William Cooper that his years in the merchant marine would give way to service with the navy. He was sixteen when, following the Treaty of Amiens, Britain sharply reduced the size of its navy, but then, fourteen months later, war resumed and Parliament voted to rebuild naval forces.72 Cooper turned eighteen a few months after that decision. Had he volunteered for service, he would have been eligible for significant enlistment bounties.73 As well, he would have had cause to anticipate reasonable wages. By the time he was eighteen, he had seven years of experience at sea behind him and might have rated as an “able seaman” with wages of £1/3/6 per month.74 Indeed, he might have been found suitable for a gunner’s crew, which was composed of the best seamen and earned an extra shilling per month.75 Personnel in the merchant marine, however, did not overwhelmingly answer the call of patriotism and rally to serve in the British navy. Indeed, sailors’ accounts from the period emphasize the contrary, and highlight the extraordinary efforts that sailors took to avoid naval service.76 Wages in the merchant marine during the war were attractive, reflecting the sellers’ market occasioned by naval demand for sailors, and the merchant marine offered a freedom that the navy did not – thus, the necessity for press laws and compulsory service. According to an account of Cooper’s life published in a California newspaper in the 1930s and subsequently repeated in other works, his early experiences at sea led to service with the imperial navy and to his being at Trafalgar on the fateful day in October 1805 when the British fleet under Admiral Nelson encountered the French and Spanish fleets off the southwest coast of Spain.77 There are several reasons for doubting this claim. One is that no mention of naval service or of Trafalgar appears in the detailed description of Cooper’s life written by his oldest son, John. It seems unlikely that John’s description of his father’s life and achievements, which includes the exact time and place of his birth, the date and place of his marriage, when he first went to sea, and when he became a captain, would neglect to mention his being in the navy and at Trafalgar. The silences of John Cooper’s account are consistent with the muster records for British naval service at Trafalgar. These records have been carefully studied and assembled in their entirety and do not record a sailor or officer named William Cooper.78 This is not definitive evidence

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for Cooper’s not being at Trafalgar, as some among the many men who were pressed into service with the British navy gave false names at the time of their impressment, in the hope that this would be of benefit should they be able to jump ship.79 But other evidence too weighs against the likelihood of William Cooper being at Trafalgar. According to John Cooper, his father became a captain before his twenty-third birthday, on 1 January 1809. Despite the victory at Trafalgar in the fall of 1805, Britain’s war with France was far from over, and the demand for naval personnel certainly did not come to an end. In Dalkeith, John Nicol continued to hide his real identity and dread the threat of press gangs for another decade.80 The experience of crews on naval boats that were damaged, destroyed, or in need of maintenance was that they were held, often under close guard, and reassigned to other vessels. Certainly this was Nicol’s experience earlier in Britain’s naval wars.81 If William Cooper had been in the navy at the time of Trafalgar, it is not clear how he could have managed to escape naval service and acquire command of a vessel in the merchant marine three years later, or when he would have earned the credentials for the position by serving as second and then first mate. The origins of the claims about William Cooper’s naval career that were published in California in the 1930s are a puzzle, but it seems unlikely that they are accurate. Rather, the evidence suggests that Cooper may have managed to escape naval service entirely. This would not have been easy to do. Service as a first mate, though, would have provided him immunity from the press after he turned eighteen, and wartime shortages might have induced a master to appoint him to such a position despite his youth, given his many years at sea and his abilities.82 Samuel Kelly, for instance, noted that as a captain during the years of the French Revolutionary War he had had to hire a young mate with whom he was not entirely satisfied as “mates and seamen were very scarce.”83 In the eleven years between the time Cooper left the life of a herder to venture out of Dundee as a cabin boy and when he became a sea captain in 1808, his world had grown from encompassing the landscape and ways of life of southern Angus to include a vast set of locales and peoples. He had travelled to London and in all likelihood to Riga and St Petersburg and perhaps lesser Baltic ports, and had become familiar with these places, their trades, and different

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customs. He likely sailed to more distant destinations too. Certainly he had acquired a new set of skills associated with sailing, with inhabiting new realms, including that on board ship, and with handling varied cargoes. As well, he must have learned a great deal from the diverse and well-travelled people he met on sea and in port. But whatever his plans and hopes for the future, Britain’s wars would circumscribe his choices. Given the realities of naval conscription and his nautical skills, life ashore was not an option he could realistically consider until the war with France was over, and that would not happen for many years.

2

A Mariner’s Life Although Britain’s wars constrained William Cooper’s choices, they also provided opportunities. Of particular relevance to his life was the economic stimulus that war gave to the production of timber in British North America for shipment to Britain. So too was the British navy’s recruitment of thousands of sailors, as this helped to boost wages in the merchant marine. It also created opportunities for upward mobility in the shipping industry, as merchants grappled with labour shortages. There were no formal examinations for eligibility for officer status within the British merchant marine in the early nineteenth century, with the exception of service on the vessels of the East India Company. Instead, mates were appointed by captains, on the basis of a captain’s own knowledge of the candidate and the references of other captains.1 John Cremer, for instance, who first went to sea when he was around eight and worked his way up the ranks, acquired the position of second mate on a ship bound from London to Leghorn because of what his previous captain told other masters while socializing and comparing notes at the coffee house at the Royal Exchange in London2 (see illustration 2.1). Appointment to the status of captain was dependent on testimonials regarding previous experience, and, ultimately, on the decision of the merchant or merchants who owned the vessel. Given that captains not only assumed control of the ship itself but served too as the shipowner’s agent for business transactions, relatives and associates of vessel owners enjoyed important advantages in acquiring captaincies.3

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Illustration 2.1 Royal Exchange, London, 1798. Guildhall Library, Record 9273, by Thomas Malton.

Cooper’s success in obtaining work as a ship’s master speaks both to his abilities and no doubt the opportunities occasioned by the economic changes of the wartime years. Once Cooper made the transition from the status of a mate to that of a captain sometime in 1808, he moved out of the realm of those whose births, deaths, and movements might pass entirely unnoted into the class whose doings appear in the historical record, at least so long as he maintained employment as a captain. Government officials, companies, merchants, and newspapers acquired the names of ships’ captains and recorded them for a variety of purposes. Lloyd’s, the great London-based marine insurance company, listed both ships’ and captains’ names in their registers of vessels in order to help distinguish between ships with the same names. They did so too, as much as possible, in their comprehensive record of the movement of ships, published bi-weekly as Lloyd’s List. The names of captains were also recorded by government officials charged with documenting the movement of vessels in and out of port and with collecting duties and fees. Captains’ names were often included as well in newspaper advertisements that listed ships’ goods for sale or that solicited freights.

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Unfortunately, details of William Cooper’s career as a captain remain imprecise because of the loss of many of the original state documents and the limited scope of Lloyd’s records, and because of the difficulty of definitively distinguishing among various Captain Coopers.4 During the first three years that William Cooper began working as a captain, Lloyd’s List recorded the movement of more than two dozen different vessels under the command of a captain named “Cooper.” Lloyd’s List does not provide the first names of captains. Other records do, however, or at least provide initials. By merging the data from these records with that from Lloyd’s List, it is possible to develop a much smaller list of vessels that might have been captained by William Cooper of Lochee. The list can be further refined by taking into account the scale of the ships noted in Lloyd’s List and the nature of the trade. Given William Cooper’s age and class background, some of the vessels listed by Lloyd’s as having a Captain Cooper as master could not have been under the command of William Cooper of Lochee. He could not, for instance, have been one of the Captain Coopers at the helm of the great vessels owned by the East India Company.5 According to John Cooper’s account, William Cooper worked as a mariner continuously for twenty-three years, and his voyages were “chiefly to ports in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Seas.”6 The geographical range of William Cooper’s voyages as a captain in the years after 1808 was almost certainly narrower than that which he might have experienced earlier as a seaman, and that his son John included in his list of his father’s travels. Captains tended to be employed on specific trade routes for which they possessed the detailed experience necessary to navigate the passage, handle the cargoes of the trade, and manage the customs of the ports on the route. The knowledge required to travel to Smyrna in Anatolia and trade there was not the same as that necessary for trading at Archangel on the White Sea; and loading timber successfully in the Gulf of St Lawrence required different knowledge than loading sugar in Barbados. For ordinary seamen, however, this knowledge of the geography of the route and the details of the trade was for the most part irrelevant. What mattered was whether they could perform the basic labour of sailing.

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If we eliminate vessels captained by Coopers with names other than William, and eliminate as well seven vessels captained by Coopers of unknown first names travelling on trade routes not mentioned in John Cooper’s description of his father’s sailing career, we still have six of the twenty-six vessels noted in Lloyd’s List with a Captain Cooper at the helm in the years 1808–10. All of the vessels sailed from ports in the south of England, three from London and the Thames estuary, two from Falmouth, and one from Plymouth. None of these vessels is listed as having a captain named Cooper for more than a single voyage, and all might have been sailed by the same Captain Cooper, given the timing of the voyages. Two made trips between ports in the British Isles: the Three Brothers travelled between Chepstow on the southern border of Wales and Chatham, and the Brothers, which may be the same vessel, between Falmouth and Cork. Two sailed between London and Atlantic Iberian ports: the Martha to Oporto and the Shepherdess to Cadiz. The remaining two vessels sailed to British North American ports: the Powdernam from London to Labrador and the Charles from Plymouth to Quebec.7 Further research may yet reveal relevant voyages that were not recorded in Lloyd’s List, or may show that some of these Captain Coopers were not named William, or that they were, but were not the William Cooper of Lochee; but this group of vessels contains those most likely to have been captained by William Cooper. The following year the record becomes clearer. The 14 May 1811 issue of Lloyd’s List reported the departure of the James and Ann from Portsmouth, bound for Quebec. Admiralty records and colonial port records provide further information on its movements, identity, and circumstances. The James and Ann was registered in nearby Southampton, sixty-five miles southwest of London, and the Captain Cooper in command was named William.8 It was a modest sized vessel of 106 tons carrying a crew of seven.9 Its scale is consistent with what William Cooper might reasonably have been expected to command at this time in his career, given that he did not have the advantage of an apprenticeship and was neither the son of a merchant family nor married into one. A subsequent report in Lloyd’s List, from late June, indicated that the James and Ann stopped in Portugal, presumably to discharge British cargo and pick up Iberian goods, likely including wines, before proceeding

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to Quebec.10 Later that fall the James and Ann arrived in Prince Edward Island from Lisbon.11 There it picked up a cargo of squared pine timber, its main cargo, as well as a small quantity of spars and lathwood – short lengths of small wood, purchased by the cord still in the round and typically stowed in spaces in the hold too small to accommodate squared timber. In mid-October, the James and Ann sailed for Milfordhaven on the westernmost tip of southern Wales, along with the Industry, which had also just loaded a cargo of Island timber.12 This may have been William Cooper’s first visit to Prince Edward Island, though probably not his first visit to the Gulf of St Lawrence. One wonders what impression Cooper would have formed of Prince Edward Island when he first saw it, and to what extent he encountered people he had known from the British Isles. Certainly he would have found the Island lightly populated. John Stewart, who knew it well as a resident and sought to praise the merits of the colony in his book-length description of it published in 1806, acknowledged that Charlotte Town alone had “the appearance of a town.”13 At the time Stewart wrote, the colony had around seven thousand inhabitants.14 The population had grown by several thousand more by 1811, but the numbers remained scant, given the scale of the Island and its resources. The 1.4 million-acre Island was, as Stewart noted, “in general level, having but few hills, and none of them very high.” The coast included many inlets and bays, some suitable as harbours for large vessels and some not. According to Stewart, “Agriculture and raising cattle [were] the general pursuits of the inhabitants of this Island,” although the cod fishery had diverted some from agriculture in an earlier period.15 In the years after Stewart wrote, an emergent timber trade with Britain became the new driving force in the Island’s economy. It was the timber trade that augmented the population and that had brought Captain Cooper to the Island to load a cargo of squared pine for Wales. According to Stewart, white pine was the largest tree to be found on the Island, rising to great height and growing “three, four, and five feet” in diameter. Stewart had seen one turned into the mast for a sixty-four-gun ship “without any additions,” but he thought such mast trees were too scattered to be of interest to the British navy, and the pine on the Island in general too limited in

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distribution to be commercially valuable.16 The beech woods that were more common and covered more than half the Island were, he thought, chiefly of value as firewood, and the Island’s birch and maple, although suitable for fine furniture, of limited marketability.17 In some places, beech forests included extensive tracts of trees ranging from three to six feet in diameter.18 Timber, however, was not even a category on the forms for registering the Island’s exports in 1806.19 This was all changing even as John Stewart’s book went to press. When Napoleon closed some of the European ports that had once supplied Britain with timber in 1806, and the following year Russia, Prussia, and Denmark followed suit, the result was soaring British timber prices. These increases in price proved sufficient to sustain the costs of bringing timber from distant British North America and gave rise to communities of merchants with an interest in making profits from doing so. Parts of British North America, Prince Edward Island included, experienced a boom not unlike a gold rush, as entrepreneurs and workers sought to wrest a quick return from the colony’s forests. In its first four decades as a British colony, Prince Edward Island’s limited trade connections were maintained by small vessels plying the waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Indeed, it was not unusual for years to pass with no direct maritime contact between British ports and the Island. But 1803 was an exception, and was seen as such, as half a dozen vessels arrived in Prince Edward Island directly from the British Isles. For the most part this unusual flurry of activity was the result of people in Britain chartering ships to bring emigrants to the colony. The timber trade changed this earlier pattern of limited direct contact with Britain. In 1808 more than forty large vessels arrived to load Island timber for British destinations. The following year nearly twice that number came. The rush was on.20 As one Island resident phrased it, “every boy that can hold an ax” was taking to the woods to make timber.21 Cooper, arriving in 1811 in the midst of this sudden transformation of the Island’s economy, would have noted the bustle of activity as he oversaw the loading of pine timber. Stowing timber typically took from four to six weeks, as rafts of heavy, squared wood were poled and rowed out to the vessel and hauled into the hold through bulkheads in the stern.22 Most timber ships loaded at harbours other

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than Charlottetown, in scattered coves and bays. It was not unusual for vessels to stop at a number of places to assemble a full load. Cooper would have had an opportunity to cast a critical eye over the colony’s agricultural possibilities during the weeks of collecting and loading timber. As well as needing to assemble his cargo, he would have needed to deal with local merchants in order to acquire provisions for the return voyage and meet with local officials to ensure that the James and Ann’s paperwork was in order. While the James and Ann and many other large vessels from Britain were loading timber in the fall of 1811, other smaller, locally owned boats were loading produce and livestock from Island farms. The challenge of getting wood securely aboard the timber ships was matched by that of getting cattle used to living in the wild to board the small vessels destined for St John’s in Newfoundland, Britain’s most easterly North American colony. Boats of roughly fifty tons often loaded two dozen or more oxen and as many if not more sheep for the journey. Prince Edward Island’s beef trade, which had been at the forefront of the colony’s economy before the rise of the British timber trade, might well have reminded Cooper of the Dundee cattle trade he had known as a young man. It is unlikely that he would have been impressed with the quality of the Island’s livestock. For the most part, its grazing industry was sustained by rough grass lands, woodland forage, and salt marsh hay, not the turnips and pastures seeded with clover that had become central to animal husbandry in Angus. Some Island graziers operated on a relatively large scale, with herds of a hundred animals.23 If Cooper had asked Island agriculturalists, including recent immigrants from Dundee who had arrived aboard timber ships two years earlier, or the Perthshire emigrants who founded New Perth on Lot 52 in 1809, they would have told him that the crops of his childhood could flourish on the Island, given sufficient labour and attention.24 The possibility that Britain’s war with France could become a war with the United States as well must have been a concern for Cooper in the fall of 1811, as it would affect the safety of shipping in the Atlantic. Had the James and Ann loaded timber along the east coast of the Island, he might have learned directly of the arrival of a group of Irish immigrants whom the British navy had removed by force from an emigrant ship bound for the United States. In the summer

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of 1811, a British war ship stopped the Belisarius off George’s Bank, while it was on its way from Dublin to New York. As well as pressing seventeen of the men on board into naval service, it also forcibly removed forty-three of the passengers from the ship because of supposed deficiencies in the ship’s passenger list. The passengers who were not inducted into the navy were taken to Halifax. There a British naval officer, Captain James Townshend, oversaw their transfer by naval vessel to his family’s estate on the “cold island of St. John’s [Prince Edward Island]” an estate that according to the Shamrock of New York would otherwise “remain uncultivated.” Townshend put his crew to work preparing shelters for his new tenants and clearing a bit of land nearby. In a fictional account of these events, Captain Marryatt, who sailed with Townshend, characterized Townshend’s actions as acts of kindness and benevolence. New York papers, however, saw them as examples of a broader pattern of British arrogance and cruelty.25 In time Cooper would come to live on Captain Townshend’s Island estate and work for him. But these developments, which would make Captain Townshend an important figure in Cooper’s life, lay in the future. At the time, the navy’s interception of the emigrant vessel was one of a series of incidents occurring in the North Atlantic that would contribute to the outbreak of war between Britain and the United States in 1812. Earlier actions of Captain Townshend had also added to tensions between Britain and the United States. In 1807, in an incident that almost brought the United States and Britain to war, the British navy stopped the United States frigate the Chesapeake in the Atlantic, boarded it, and removed a number of men, including Jenkin Radford, a sailor who was a deserter from the British vessel the Halifax. It was Townshend who had reported Radford’s desertion from the British navy while the Halifax was docked at a port in Virginia, and it was Townshend who preferred charges of desertion against Radford after he was captured, leading to Radford’s subsequent execution on board the Halifax.26 In the spring of 1812, following the return of the James and Ann to the British Isles, Cooper captained the ship on voyages from Waterford to Lisbon and then to London. Cooper’s presence there put him in a city that was the base of much of the mercantile activity occurring on Prince Edward Island in the early nineteenth

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century.27 London’s involvement in economic developments on Prince Edward Island dated back to the first years after British acquisition of the Island from the French during the Seven Years War. Even before imperial surveyor Samuel Holland had mapped Britain’s new domain, and policy-makers had decided the Island’s future, London merchants had begun to set up fishing operations along its coast. Fortunately for the London merchants, their claims were respected when, in 1767, the imperial government distributed the Island’s lands in large township grants to approximately one hundred British men28 (see map 2.1). Londoners were well represented among those who acquired Island townships. Some received grants directly from the Crown; others purchased townships from grantees; and yet others came to possess Island townships as an accident of trade and speculation. The latter, for instance, was the case with Laurence Sulivan of the East India Company who acquired four Island townships – roughly eighty thousand acres – as a result of a complex business speculation that had gone badly for one of his associates.29 Some Londoners acquired Island properties because they wished to pursue developmental plans in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The creation of the settlement of New London on the north coast of the Island in the 1770s, for instance, was the result of London merchants seeking to establish a Quaker settlement in the region.30 One of the agents for that venture, John Cambridge, subsequently worked with other Londoners to purchase land in eastern Prince Edward Island and begin an export trade in lumber and produce to the West Indies and Newfoundland.31 In western Prince Edward Island, John Hill of Rotherwithe (part of greater London’s southern docklands) followed a business strategy similar to that of John Cambridge, which included pioneering the Island’s shipbuilding industry.32 In the first decades of the nineteenth century, men who were, or had been, Londoners were at the forefront of many of the most significant initiatives to exploit the Island’s fisheries and forests and develop its potential for farming and shipbuilding. The flurry of speculative development occasioned by the shift of Britain’s timber trade from the Baltic to British North America drew yet more London merchants into Island affairs while also deepening the engagement of merchants who had previously been established in the colony. Moving from west to east across the geography of greater

Map 2.1 Map of Prince Edward Island (St John’s Island), drawn from Samuel Holland’s Survey. Huntington Library, Rare Books, 105:754.

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London, these merchants included the Welsfords of Bloomsbury; James and Ambrose Gosling, Edmund Waters, and Alexander Birnie of the City of London; Thomas Oldfield, John Beatson, William Hollett, and John Hill of Rotherhithe; and David Robertson of Stepney33 (see map 2.2). In the first heady years of the Island’s timber trade with Britain, the most active of these merchants were the Goslings. From their counting house on Mark Lane adjacent to London’s Corn Exchange, they financed cutting operations in Prince Edward Island’s forests and dispatched vessel after vessel to the colony to acquire wood.34 In the early nineteenth century, London was central to Prince Edward Island’s economic development as well as to its political life. William Cooper’s return voyage to London from Lisbon in May 1812 is the last record of his serving as captain of the James and Ann. The ship’s owners subsequently assigned the vessel to the command of Captain Purvis who sailed it between the British Isles and Iberia in late 1812 and early 1813.35 London may well have been Cooper’s home port by this time in his life. In 1817, when he married into a London family, he described himself as a resident of the city. He likely first visited London soon after he went to sea, as it was a frequent destination for many of the cargoes exported from Dundee. His shift in residence to London was in keeping with a common pattern in the lives of British seamen. Sailors tended to move from port to port in search of work, and London, the hub for the bulk of Britain’s trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and indeed the hub of much of the trade of the world, was a powerful magnet for mariners.36 During his years as a sailor, Cooper would have become familiar with the lower reaches of the Thames below London Bridge and the Tower of London (see map 2.2 and illustration 2.2). Ships from near and far worked their way up the Thames from the sea and anchored below the bridge to discharge their cargoes of timber, pitch, tar, coal, sugar, rum, tobacco, iron, and a myriad of other things. In the height of the shipping season as many as 1,300 or 1,400 vessels at a time were loading and unloading their wares.37 The largest stayed in deeper waters well downriver from London Bridge, while vessels of under 250 tons took advantage of the opportunities for unloading in the Upper Pool just below the bridge. Thousands of watermen

Map 2.2 London, 1824–1826, showing places of importance for William Cooper. Guildhall Library, map by C. & J. Greenwood.

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Illustration 2.2 Thames below London Bridge, 1799. Guildhall Library, Record 22576, engraving by C. Rosenberg.

manned the lighters and barges that off-loaded cargoes to the scores of piers and quays of Shadwell, Wapping, and further upriver on the north bank, as well as to those of Rotherhithe on the south bank.38 The areas behind and between the wharves and warehouses were as cosmopolitan as any in Britain, and perhaps in the world, with boarding houses and taverns for the tens of thousands of sailors who brought to London the products of Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, and the Americas. Here too lived many of the shipwrights, riggers, longshoremen, “scuffle-hunters,” “rat-catchers,” “mud-larks,” and others who derived a living from London’s maritime trades.39 By the end of the eighteenth century the enormous scale of London’s trade had made the discharge of cargoes from the Thames increasingly problematic, both in terms of the physical movement of goods and their security from theft.40 In response, London merchants initiated major construction projects in the early 1800s to excavate and build the London Dock and the West India Docks at Wapping and the Isle of Dogs. These massive corporate undertakings transformed the waterfront that Cooper knew from his early years as a mariner, creating hundreds of acres of walled anchorages and guarded warehouses. The new docks also highlighted the increas-

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Illustration 2.3 West India Docks, London, 1817. Guildhall Library, Record 9273, engraving by J.C. Varrall.

ing power of capital coupled with new technology to fundamentally transform the physical environment41 (see illustration 2.3). As a captain Cooper would have come to know yet other districts of London beyond the docklands. The Royal Exchange, where captains often met to transact business, lay at the core of the City of London, a square mile of urbanity that had taken shape within the boundaries established by Roman and subsequent medieval walls, on the north bank of the Thames immediately upriver from the Tower of London. The Royal Exchange was on Cornhill, across from the Bank of England and not far from the stone Guildhall building, which had served as London’s seat of government since the fifteenth century.42 During the years that Cooper frequented London, the Royal Exchange housed Lloyd’s Insurance, with its registers and lists of shipping.43 It was also a venue for acquiring freights and passengers.44 The region around the exchange was the commercial core of London and included the business premises of some of the merchants involved in Prince Edward Island’s timber trade, such as James and Ambrose Gosling, Edmund Waters, and Alexander Birnie. It is not clear where in London William Cooper resided between voyages. In the 1830s and 1840s, when he had occasion to return to London, he tended to use the East London residence of his wife’s aunt,

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Sarah Walker, as his mailing address, and seems to have taken lodging nearby. Aunt Walker lived at Saville Row in Mile End Old Town, to the north of the dockland communities of Wapping, Ratcliff, and Shadwell. Mile End Old Town was a borderland community that continued to have open fields and market gardens well into the nineteenth century, along with a mix of professional and working-class housing, industrial enterprises, and various asylums and hospitals.45 In earlier years, Cooper likely spent some of his time in the Bishopsgate region just to the north of the Royal Exchange. Sarah Glover, the woman he would marry, lived here, in an area that encompassed residences for middle-class families and poor ones as well as commercial and industrial establishments.46 Bishopsgate included land on both sides of the old northerly entrance into the city of London.47 Travellers entering London at Bishopsgate could continue south into the City of London along Bishopsgate Street and into the commercial core of London. From there, they might cross to the south bank of the Thames on London Bridge (see map 2.2). Travellers headed north from Bishopsgate soon arrived at the adjoining parish of Shoreditch and a major intersection dominated by St Leonard’s Church. In the sixteenth century the region near St Leonard’s had provided a haven for theatre when it was banned in the city itself. 48 It was here, just outside of the old Roman boundaries of London and roughly a mile north of the Royal Exchange, where William Cooper and Sarah Glover would marry in 1817. In the early nineteenth century the church marked the boundary between different London parishes.49 In the mid-eighteenth century the mariner Jack Cremer described jaunts in which he would take a wherry to a landing downriver from London Bridge at “Wappin’ old Stayers and goe the way from White Chappell Mount to Shoardidge Church all through fields and Brickfields.”50 By the early nineteenth century, however, the church where William and Sarah married was in a region of increasingly dense housing.51 Situated roughly a mile north of the Thames, it stood on the western edge of Bethnal Green, a parish that, according to a contemporary observer, was “once a very pleasant spot.”52 By the early nineteenth century, low-cost housing erected to meet the needs of London’s growing working-class population had begun to change Bethnal Green’s character, as it had even earlier in the Spitalfields region a quarter of a mile to the south.

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Illustration 2.4 St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 1810, place of marriage for William Cooper and Sarah Glover. Guildhall Library, drawn by Schnebblie, engraved by Hay.

An illustration of St Leonard’s from 1810 shows a charity school next door to the church, and a tavern, inn, and stagecoach stop immediately across from it53 (see illustration 2.4). The record of ships’ movements recorded in Lloyd’s List for the four years after Cooper returned to London on board the James and Ann suggests that he had difficulty finding regular employment as a captain. In these years Lloyd’s List records the movement of at least twenty-six vessels with a captain named Cooper, with a possible first name of William, but eliminating what appear to have been foreign ships does not trim the list sufficiently to suggest which if any of these remaining ships were captained by William Cooper of Lochee. What the evidence in Lloyd’s List and the annual Shipowners and Underwriters volumes of Lloyd’s Register does suggest, however, is that William Cooper’s employment as a ship captain did not have the regularity enjoyed by many other captains. The William Cooper who was captain of the Dundee, for example, worked in the Greenland and Davis Strait whale fishery for Gale and Company and followed a regular pattern of employment. After he became captain of the Dundee sometime around 1809, this Captain Cooper remained its master until 1820, when he then assumed command of a whaling ship belonging to another firm.54 Not only was

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his employment continuous but it also followed a predictable cycle wherein he would begin outfitting his ship for a single annual trip sometime around Christmas.55 By March the ship would be ready to depart for the whaling grounds, and, depending on its success, and ice and weather conditions, it would be back for the year by August, give or take a month.56 During the same general period, Captain George Cooper enjoyed a similar degree of regularity and predictability in employment with the West Indies trade, serving first as captain of the British Queen and then as captain of the Volusia. The movement of his ships too followed a regular pattern, in his case with the sailing season beginning with his departure from London in November and ending with his return in July.57 Captain Edward Cooper, who commanded the Lord Castlereagh and the Cumbrian on the long East India Company voyages to India and sometimes to the Malay Peninsula and China, followed a less predictable timetable and itinerary, but his employment was stable.58 No doubt it was also well rewarded. In the hierarchy of captaincies, commanding the massive East India vessels – which ran to 1,200 tons or more and might have one hundred crewmen – was the pinnacle of merchant marine postings. This was a job worthy of sons of the landed elite, and worth spending as much as £5,000 to acquire, though employment in the West India trades and the whale fishery was relatively desirable as well.59 Even on the trade routes employing smaller vessels and providing easier access for upward mobility to the position of captain, it was possible to obtain greater stability in employment than William Cooper seems to have enjoyed. Captain John Cooper, for instance, was regularly employed on trade routes linking southern Britain with Ireland and the Low Countries from 1813 to 1818, as captain of the 108-ton Flora.60 Robert Cooper found similar stability in employment as captain of the 107-ton Hero between 1812 and 1817, as it plied routes linking Britain with the Canary Islands and European ports.61 So too did Captain Coupar of the Sicily, as it sailed trade routes between Britain and the Mediterranean over a yet longer period.62 John Cooper was part owner of his vessel, which would help to explain the stability of his employment;63 this may have been the case with masters of the Hero and the Sicily as well. Certainly,

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having the capital to invest in a vessel was a means to employment stability as well as to gaining appointment as a master.64 If William Cooper found employment on a variety of vessels as the record suggests, it does not necessarily follow that all of these shifts represented fundamental changes in employment, as merchants and companies owning several vessels sometimes reassigned captaincies within their fleets. Samuel Kelly, who like Cooper had worked his way from cabin boy to captain, has described how, while he was taking on cargo in Bristol as captain of the Mayflower in the late eighteenth century, the owners instructed him to take a coach to Liverpool where he was to assume command of another of their ships.65 In his account of the long-distance maritime trade in the early nineteenth century, Richard Henry Dana describes merchants’ orders that required captains to swap commands when they met off the coast of California.66 It was not unusual, however, for captains (and crews) to experience periods of unemployment between voyages.67 Indeed, even those with regular employment could expect to spend part of the year ashore, living on the money acquired during the sailing season. Captain Kelly complained bitterly of how the cost of living ashore between voyages ate up the wages he made as a master.68 In general, captains became specialists in particular routes and trades, and spent their time ashore in port cities that were the hubs of these trades. As Peter Earle has noted, however, there were times when “there were many masters desperate for a ship who would sail anywhere.”69 Under these circumstances, captains in search of work might shift home ports and trades. As well, they might accept the position of an officer on another captain’s boat. Sometime after the spring of 1812, William Cooper appears to have followed the latter course and become an officer on the Glory, captained by Thomas Sands.70 The owner of the vessel was John Woodcock, a London merchant residing on Mile End Road just east of the Aldgate entrance to the City of London.71 Prince Edward Island was among the vessel’s ports of call, and in the late fall of 1815, the Glory arrived in the colony to pick up a load of timber destined for Liverpool.72 At 399 tons the Glory was roughly four times the size of the James and Ann and an exceptionally large vessel for the Island trade of this time. In 1815, the average scale of the boats carrying the colony’s timber to Britain was roughly two hundred tons.73 The

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Glory had a crew of eighteen, carried two cannon, and was capable of handling more than six hundred tons of timber.74 It seems that for the next year or so William Cooper and Captain Sands continued to sail together, or at least to stay in close touch, as Captain Sands was aware of Cooper’s marriage in London in 1817 and his decision subsequently to emigrate to Prince Edward Island. More than thirty years later Captain Sands would write to Cooper on Prince Edward Island to inquire about “what family” he had, and to ask after his health and that of his wife.75 Oddly enough, Cooper was in Britain at the time Captain Sands’s letter arrived on the Island and had just sailed a vessel of his own through the Pentland Firth, which separated mainland Scotland from the Orkneys where Thomas Sands lived.76 Cooper would learn of Sands’s enquiry while he was still in Britain, from his oldest son, John Woodcock Cooper, who was managing the family’s affairs on the Island and who appears to have been named after the owner of the Glory. Sarah Glover and William Cooper were married on 9 April 1817. St Leonard’s Church was a busy marriage venue in the spring of 1817, hosting on average one ceremony a day.77 The official witnesses to Sarah and William’s marriage were Sarah’s father, John Glover, and Mary Ann Eason Elmes. Eason is a surname that is commonly associated with Angus, Scotland, where William Cooper had been born.78 Sarah and William both described themselves as residents of London, and at least one of Sarah Glover’s parents was probably London born, as Sarah’s Aunt Walker described herself as a native of Middlesex. 79 Sarah was twenty years old, William thirtyone.80 John Glover was forty-five and his wife, Christiana, was ten years younger.81 William and Sarah’s marriage occurred in a context of growing popular unrest in Britain, occasioned in part by a postwar decline in Britain’s economy. One can well imagine that the newly married couple might have had concerns about what the future held for them. At the end of the war a third of a million men were discharged from employment in the military.82 In London the docklands thronged with tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers desperately looking for work. In the months prior to William and Sarah’s marriage, reports from the silk weaving districts of Spitalfields just south of St Leonard’s suggested that 45,000 weavers and spinners were unemployed and in

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need of food.83 Mass meetings at Spa Fields, a mile or so to the west of St Leonard’s, had articulated public anger with postwar developments, and men such as Henry “Orator” Hunt and William Cobbett attempted to harness this dissatisfaction for the cause of political reform. Others such as Arthur Thistlewood and James Watson saw an opportunity for revolution. In early December, a splinter group from one of the Spa Field demonstrations, under the direction of Thistlewood and Watson and their associates, marched into the core of London, raiding gun shops on the way, with the plan of seizing the Bank of England and the Tower of London. They were easily dispersed by a force raised by London’s mayor. A discharged sailor who had helped to rob a gun shop was hanged the month before the Coopers’ wedding.84 Early in 1817, Parliament responded to growing rural and urban unrest by introducing a series of repressive measures, which included the suspension of habeas corpus and a ban on the rights of citizens to meet and organize political opposition.85 Mariners often changed occupations and residence after they were married.86 It is not hard to imagine many reasons why William and Sarah might have wanted to find a new situation for themselves. William Cooper did not, however, immediately alter his work life. Within weeks of his marriage, he was sailing west to Prince Edward Island, likely knowing that he would be a father before the year was out. By late spring, he was on the Island, perhaps giving serious attention to establishing a home for himself and Sarah there. Certainly, he had other business to attend to as well. As of the spring of 1817, he had become captain of the brig Britannia, which was built on the Island the previous fall and belonged to Duncan and Donald MacKay of Charlottetown. It is not clear exactly when Cooper became captain of this 113-ton vessel. At the time the brig was launched, the MacKays assigned its command to Captain Henderson, who sailed it to Britain, likely in expectation of selling the boat in a British port.87 Cooper may have taken command of the vessel in Britain when it failed to sell, assuming that had been the MacKays’ plan, or he may have travelled to Prince Edward Island as a passenger and assumed command of the Britannia there. In June, Cooper sailed the Britannia from Prince Edward Island to St John’s, Newfoundland, with a cargo of deals – sawn wood two or three inches thick – as well as shingles and oar sticks88 (see

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Illustration 2.5 View of harbour at St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1823. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, PAD 2012, by M. Le Geyt.

illustration 2.5). Most of the Island’s trade with Newfoundland at this time was in agricultural products and was carried in vessels half the size of the MacKays’ vessel, but the journey of the Britannia with its cargo of deals was part of a regular, albeit modest, pattern of trade as well. St John’s had undergone a transformation during the last years of the Napoleonic Wars, growing from a town of around five thousand in 1809 to more than double that by the end of the wars, and increasingly shifting from serving as a fishing station to being a commercial port.89 This urban growth created a demand for Island timber, as virtually all of the buildings of St John’s were constructed of wood.90 Cooper sailed the Britannia back to Prince Edward Island, likely with a light cargo of manufactured goods from Britain and tropical products such as rum, molasses, and tobacco. In August he sailed the Britannia, loaded yet again with deals, to Bay Chaleur in nearby New Brunswick. The ultimate destination for the cargo was Great Britain; in Bay Chaleur Cooper loaded more deals or timber before proceeding across the Atlantic.91 He was back in Prince Edward Island waters with the Britannia again in December, this time to load squared Island timber. On the 18th he sailed for

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Liverpool with a crew of six and 130 tons of pine, arriving in Britain twenty-nine days later.92 His first child, John, had been born in London ten weeks earlier.93 In early June 1818 the Britannia, with Cooper as captain, returned to Charlottetown with a cargo of manufactured goods from Liverpool.94 The Britannia cleared for Plymouth, no doubt with a cargo of timber, three weeks later.95 It was back in Island waters again in October. An advertisement in the Prince Edward Island Gazette invited residents to come inspect the wares it had brought for sale at the Windmillstore in Charlottetown. 96 These included a wide assortment of household goods such as drapery, blankets, flannels, and other fabrics, Staffordshire earthenware, pots and pans, bellows, and even umbrellas. As well, there was tar, pitch, cordage, nails, and several tons of iron. Unmentioned in the news of the Britannia and its cargo were the passengers who stayed behind. When the Britannia sailed back to Britain later that fall, it did so with a new captain.97 The Cooper family, composed at this time of William, Sarah, and John, had come to make their home on Prince Edward Island.98

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Sailor’s Hope Although William Cooper had visited Prince Edward Island many times, the colony was new to Sarah. Her first impressions of it would have been of Charlottetown, where the Britannia docked late in October 1818. No doubt she was pleased to have arrived safely on her husband’s ship with their young son. Fall can be lovely in northeastern North America, and the crisp, clean air of Charlottetown must have been a refreshing change from that of London.1 British visitors to the Island in these years thought Charlottetown an attractive place. It was the colonial capital and had around fifteen hundred residents.2 Walter Johnstone, who first saw Charlottetown in 1821, remarked favourably on the “large square in the middle of the town, where the Court-house, the High Church, and Market House stand.” He was impressed with how the streets had been “regularly laid out” in a grid pattern. Although he was disappointed with the absence of brick buildings, he reported that the better wooden houses were “well done up and painted” and looked “very elegant, though neither warm nor durable.”3 Others praised the view, with “the blue mountains of Nova Scotia appearing in the distance [and] the sea through the entrance of the harbour, the basin, and part of the Elliot, York, and Hillsborough Rivers, forming a fine branching sheet of water.”4 The Coopers, however, chose not to remain in Charlottetown. Instead they settled on a rural property on the east coast near Bay Fortune, in Kings County, moving there soon after their arrival. Sarah may have first seen the region where they would live by

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travelling east from Charlottetown by land, as there was a good road, at least by Island standards, leading along the Hillsborough River to St Peters on the Gulf of St Lawrence (see map 3.1). From there an adequate road led across northern Kings County to Bay Fortune. Along the first part of the St Peters Road, as it left Charlottetown, Sarah would have seen the rural estates of some of Charlottetown’s elite as well as the fine farms on the outskirts of town. Further on lay Wrights Mills, with its facilities for threshing and grinding grain, and its brewery and distillery. Here and there clearings would have afforded a view of the expanse of the Hillsborough River and the marshlands along its banks.5 Well before she arrived at Bay Fortune, though, she likely would have seen the less attractive sight of burnt woods. In the early nineteenth century, virtually every settlement on the Island was surrounded by acres, indeed, as Walter Johnstone noted, in some cases “many square miles,” of “standing trees, all dead, leafless, scorched, and going fast to ruin.”6 Fires pushed by wind often escaped from the confines of fields being cleared for agriculture, and once into the woods near settlements, they spread easily through deadwood left by the timber industry and blown down on the edges of openings created by logging and agriculture. Bay Fortune would have been an attractive sight at the end of the inland road from St Peters to the east coast. According to Johnstone, it was “a beautiful old settlement, with a good deal of clear land on it, and a number of schooners belonging to it that trade to Newfoundland, Halifax, etc.”7 In November 1817, C.A. Binns, a native of Yorkshire who was coming to join relatives on the Island, described the coast on either side of Bay Fortune as having a “rich appearance” with “beautiful woods and groves, with here and there a few acres of cultivated land, much resembling the grounds and plantations, which generally surround an English mansion.”8 Binns’s vantage point was from sea, perhaps well off shore. At the time of Cooper’s arrival, Bay Fortune was the most significant settlement on the east end of the Island.9 The property on which the Coopers would settle was about two miles to the southwest of Bay Fortune. It fronted on the gut of Howe Bay and had no significant bank separating the farm from the water of the bay. Instead, the land sloped gradually down to the shore. A map from 1811 shows several farms

Map 3.1 Prince Edward Island, ca. 1819, showing locale of William Cooper’s farm. Huntington Library, Rare Books, 105:756.

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Map 3.2 Lot 56, 1811, showing head of Howe Bay and hay lots on marshes along the upper reaches of Fortune River. Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Record Office, Map 0524.

along the headland of the bay, but none where Cooper would build. The map does, however, show a pathway linking his farm with Grand River to the south, with inland marshlands, which have been subdivided into small tracts, and with the road from Bay Fortune to St Peters and on to Charlottetown (see map 3.2). Here, facing out on Howe Bay and the Gulf of St Lawrence beyond, the Coopers would build the farm of their dreams. They named it “Sailor’s Hope,” and in time it would include a fine house overlooking Howe Bay, surrounded by fenced fields and orchards, with a good barn and outbuildings nearby.10 In the early nineteenth century the land at the head of Howe Bay, and indeed for miles around, belonged to James Townshend, the naval officer who had brought the emigrants taken from the Belisarius to his Island estate. In 1767 when the British government subdivided Prince Edward Island, and distributed land to prominent men associated with the British victory over the French in the Seven Years War, Townshend’s father, George Townshend, received the grant of Lot 56, which included frontage on Howe Bay, as a reward for his military service.11 The Crown surveyor, Samuel Holland, who had divided the Island into twenty-thousand acre lots, or townships, prior to its distribution, described Lot 56 as having “very fertile

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Soil.” Settled during the French regime, in the mid-eighteenth century the Bay Fortune region had had a population of around fifty.12 At the time of Holland’s survey, it still had seven Acadian houses and 150 acres of cleared land.13 Indeed, the region continued to have a small French population that had persisted despite the British deportation of most of the Island’s Acadians in 1758.14 Holland thought the township favourably situated, given its easy overland access to St Peters and Charlottetown, and its convenience “for Fishing and Cultivation.”15 It also had an extensive tract of inland marsh and coastal saltwater marshes, both suitable for haymaking16 (see map 3.3). George Townshend’s management of the estate, however, had alienated Acadians living in the area; some had moved up the coast to Rollo Bay and others left for Cheticamp and Margaree on Cape Breton Island.17 Townshend’s land agent at the beginning of the nineteenth century was also the Island’s governor, Edmund Fanning, and he was not effective either in making the estate yield a return or in attracting settlers. He did, however, submit a false government report showing that Townshend had met the settlement terms of his grant, thinking this would help protect Townshend from having the Crown retake, or escheat, his land for failure to meet the terms on which it had been granted. 18 The Coopers were probably drawn to the Bay Fortune region for a number of reasons. Although Cooper’s sons, as they matured, would criticize their father for locating his farm on poor, wet land that was difficult to bring into production, he knew something of farming and, it would seem, sought property with a good land base suitable for the improved agriculture that he had become familiar with in Scotland.19 The soils of Sailor’s Hope were of the best quality available on the Island and appropriate for a wide variety of crops as well as for pasture and hay.20 It seems likely too that the Coopers knew people who had settled in the Bay Fortune region. Soon after their arrival, William and Sarah acted as administrators for the estate of Thomas Barraclough, a local mariner who died in the fall of 1819.21 It is not clear whether Cooper intended to continue to make his living in part from the sea, but if he did, the eastern ports of Prince Edward Island were good places from which to do so. The harbour at Three Rivers, which lay ten miles southwest of Howe Bay, was

Map 3.3 Lot 56, ca. 1860, showing the locale of William Cooper’s lands at Howe Bay. Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Record Office, Map 4151.

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one of the best on the Island. Binns described it as having “a beautiful and pleasing appearance,” and he was intrigued as well by the Mi’kmaq he saw there using a bark canoe “so lightly constructed that they could carry it on their back and shoulders, when on land.” Binns’s descriptions are of his first impressions of eastern Prince Edward Island upon arrival from Britain; they may provide some sense as well of Sarah Cooper’s on her arrival two years later. Binns was amused, upon being taken at dinner time to the house of a member of parliament who lived in Three Rivers, to discover that the “honourable member was seated without a coat, and his lady without a gown, surrounded with a numerous offspring all clad with a kind of blue home spun cloth, so coarse that the humblest mechanic in England would be ashamed to wear it.” He had assumed he would find “affluence and grandeur.” No doubt Sarah Cooper had such surprises as well. Binns adapted on this occasion, settling down to enjoy the “homely fare of pork, herrings and potatoes.”22 In the early nineteenth century, coastal Kings County was a cosmopolitan place with a great deal of coming and going, where people of diverse circumstances and backgrounds met one another in passing and as neighbours. It also was a place of striking differences in material circumstances. When Binns visited Cornelius and Englesbe Seon in Three Rivers, they were able to provide him with “clean and respectable linen, and a pair of Hessian boots” so that he might be suitably attired when he arrived in Charlottetown.23 The Seons were members of a Bermuda merchant family that had established a merchant house at Three Rivers a few years earlier.24 Binns also met a farmer with a “small hut almost buried in the wood” who, on his quarter-acre of cleared land, was “turning up potatoes with his fingers” as he lacked “a fork or any other tool” for the task. All he could offer Binns was “a little water.” There were, he told Binns, “many smaller farms than his.”25 The Island’s shipping registers record the construction of numerous small vessels in and about Bay Fortune in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.26 At the time of the Coopers’ arrival, local farmers and merchants carried on a busy trade, shipping cattle, sheep, potatoes, barley, oats, turnips, oysters, barrel staves, and assorted other goods from the Bay Fortune region to ports in neighbouring colonies. The fifty-one-ton schooner, the Nancy, owned by Erasmus

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Davidson and John Dingwall, was a typical craft for the trade. It had a single deck and was forty-seven feet long and fifteen-and-a-half feet wide.27 With it, Davidson, who served as master, and Dingwall could carry a couple of dozen cattle along with two or three dozen sheep to Newfoundland. Alternatively they might load the schooner with hundreds of bushels of potatoes and grain (usually oats) for either the Newfoundland market or for Halifax. The voyage to St John’s could take from a week to a month, depending on the vessel, seamanship, and the weather.28 The voyage to Halifax was shorter.29 The owners and captains of the vessels sailing out of northeastern Kings County, in addition to Davidson and Dingwall, included men with names such as Longué, Gallant, Chaisson (“Shashong”), Daigle (“Deagle”), White, Falla, and Bourke – evidence of the varied ethnic backgrounds of the population and the continuities of life during the French regime and after the British conquest.30 The cultural diversity of the Bay Fortune region reflected broader Island realities. As a descriptive account from the period noted: “When traveling through the settlements, we discover the inhabitants … to consist of Englishmen from almost every county in the kingdom; Scotchmen, who it is true predominate, from the Highlands, Hebrides, and the southern counties; Irishmen from different parts of the Emerald Isle; Acadian French, American loyalists, and a few Dutch, Germans, and Swedes.”31 While some communities, such as Charlottetown and Bay Fortune, were characterized by a cosmopolitan mix of language, religion, and culture, others were more uniform in their ethnic character. Thus, there were nodes of settlement where Scotch Gaelic was the language of daily life and where the housing, agricultural techniques, and cultural practices were those of the Highlands, and others where Acadian French was the language of exchange and the “dress and habits” of the residents were those of Acadia before the British conquest.32 As well, there were groups of indigenous Mi’kmaq, living for the most part on the fringes of European settlement (see illustration 3.1). When Lord Selkirk was on the Island in 1803, he noted abandoned Mi’kmaq dwellings along the southeast coast and visited at Pinette Point to the east of Charlottetown with Mi’kmaq who made a living supplying the Charlottetown market with fish and game.33 Other Mi’kmaq earned income carrying mails across the ice to the mainland in winter.34

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Illustration 3.1 Mi’kmaq family walking near Charlottetown, from J.S. McGill farm, ca. 1836. Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Record Office, Acc. 2916/2, George Thresher painting.

The spread of Old World diseases such as smallpox and the changing ecology of the Island occasioned by European immigration had reduced their numbers significantly and made them refugees in their own land by the time the Coopers arrived.35 One of the men who owned and captained vessels operating out of the thriving Bay Fortune community was Edward Abell.36 As well as being active in acquiring small vessels and shipping Island commodities to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Abell served as Lord Townshend’s land agent, a position he had held since 1811.37 Thus, when Cooper decided he wished to acquire land at the head of Howe Bay – waterfront land that was becoming increasingly scarce by this time – it was to Edward Abell that he would have turned.38 No doubt Abell was pleased to respond to the inquiries of a sea captain who wished to settle on the township and had the resources to pay rent. At the time of the Coopers’ arrival on Prince Edward Island, Abell appears to have been in financial difficulty and was embroiled in

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a series of legal disputes with Bay Fortune residents. His disputes primarily concerned monies owing to him as a merchant, but he was having difficulties as well with government officials on the Island, who accused him of smuggling goods into the colony from the French island of St Pierre and Miquelon during his trading voyages to Newfoundland. Abell had been charged as well with perjury and contempt of court.39 In August 1819, less than a year after the Coopers’ arrival, Abell’s problems worsened, indeed fatally so. Island lore has it that his downfall was the result of the avarice of his wife, Susanna. Supposedly, she coveted a fine horse owned by Patrick Pearce, a neighbour living two farms to the east of the Abells. Pearce held his farm under lease from Lord Townshend. When Pearce refused Susanna’s offers to buy the horse, she had her husband use his power as Lord Townshend’s land agent to demand immediate payment of rents due to Lord Townshend. Conflict arose when Pearce was unable to acquire the appropriate currency to meet Abell’s demands, offering Island currency or Spanish coins rather than British sterling. Pearce’s failure gave Abell the legal power to order the seizure of Pearce’s horse to recover the debt.40 A contemporary Island newspaper account of the incident suggests that Abell was behaving in a high-handed, provocative, and unreasonable manner, both in taking Pearce’s horse and insisting on payment in currency of a type other than what Pearce had available. Abell was present on Pearce’s farm when the bailiff seized the horse, and he rejected Pearce’s entreaties and attempts to settle the debt for rent. Pearce, who was about thirty years old, and not a big man, ultimately responded by getting a musket with a fixed bayonet from his house and stabbing Abell with it at least twice.41 The bailiff seized Pearce, but he subsequently escaped from the bailiff’s control and, indeed, escaped from the Island altogether. Abell died from the bayonet wounds a few days later.42 Abell’s murder was an unusual event on the Island. Certainly tensions between tenants and landlords, or their agents, were common enough. In the decades since the British had distributed the lands of the colony in large lots to prominent British men, Island tenants had from time to time resisted rent payments, both individually and collectively. As well, rural residents had sought to use the power of the Island’s elected house of assembly, established in 1773, to force an

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end to landlords’ control of the colony’s land base. For the most part, however, tenant resistance to landlordism had been non-violent, and certainly had not included the murder of land agents. Abell’s death reflected the particular circumstances of his business dealings and personality and those of Pearce as well. Pearce’s successful escape and the tone of newspaper coverage of the murder suggest that Abell had been operating outside of the norms of behaviour expected in Bay Fortune and on the Island more generally. Although Cooper was not among the local residents who conducted the official inquest into Abell’s death, the murder surely must have occasioned much discussion in the Cooper household. At some point these conversations probably turned to practical matters. Sarah was expecting their second child later in the fall of 1819, and the couple were still sorting out how to make a success of their new life in Bay Fortune. Lord Townshend would be in need of a land agent to replace Edward Abell, and the bookkeeping and financial skills required of a land agent were similar to those required of ships’ captains. The personal skills needed for dealing with crews at sea, with dock workers, and with customs agents and merchants in port might serve a captain turned land agent well in dealing with tenants, merchants, and government officials. The steady income of a land agency offered an attractive means for Cooper to make the shift from maritime work to life on the land. Shortly after the birth of William Cooper Junior in November, William Senior took passage on a vessel destined for Britain.43 In London he met with Lord Townshend and his lawyer, Julius Hutchinson of Lincoln’s Inn.44 It is possible that Cooper and Lord Townshend had met before, as they had both sailed in and about the Gulf of St Lawrence in previous years and both had been on the Island in 1811.45 Whatever the case, they soon came to an agreement that Cooper would serve as Townshend’s Prince Edward Island agent. It was Cooper’s understanding that Townshend was anxious to have the township settled and wished its tenantry to be treated well.46 For his services Cooper was to receive £30 per year, use of a property on the estate known as the Red House Farm, which was roughly five hundred acres in size, and whatever marsh hay he might need for his cattle. Given that there were other land agents on the Island earning £100 per year for managing estates of a similar size, Cooper’s salary was

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modest, albeit that control of Red House Farm and free access to the abundant marsh hay on the township were significant assets.47 Lord Townshend was also to cover travel expenses Cooper might incur as estate agent.48 The terms of the power of attorney, made out in London in February, authorized Cooper to resume control of the lands Edward Abell had occupied and to distrain on Abell’s livestock and possessions to recover arrears of rents he owed to Lord Townshend. It also gave Cooper the power to take steps to improve the Townshend estate, provided that the improvements did not cause Townshend “any expense for these purposes.” This restriction was not unusual in powers of attorney granted by absentee landlords who did not want expenses to exceed revenues.49 The power of attorney authorized Cooper to lease front lands for terms of eighty-four years or less, and back lands more than five miles from the shore for terms of two hundred years or less, at the best rents possible. Cooper’s correspondence concerning management of the estate was to be with Lord Townshend’s lawyer, Julius Hutchinson. Cooper returned to the Island in early spring once the ice was out and registered his power of attorney in the Land Records Office shortly after his arrival.50 Cooper’s new position as a land agent ensured that he would come to know the challenges of farm-making and acquiring a living in the colony not only through his own experiences but through what he would learn as the manager of Lord Townshend’s estate. Publications by one of Cooper’s friends, John MacGregor, provide insight into rural life on the Island during the years that William and Sarah began their life in the colony. MacGregor, who became William Cooper Jr’s godfather, was a decade younger than William Cooper Sr but had the experience of having lived on the Island since 1806.51 Writing in the late 1820s, he described the strategies that Islanders employed for transforming forest into agricultural land. First, the standing trees were felled – preferably all in the same direction – by axe work. In Cooper’s case the trees to be felled were likely hardwoods such as maple, beech, birch, and oak. Then the branches were trimmed off and the trunks, if not suitable for other uses, were cut into lengths of a dozen feet. At this length they could be rolled and piled for burning in the appropriate season, usually late spring. There was much dirty work involved in piling and burning the wood

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until all that was left was blackened land covered with stumps standing several feet high. One might then plant such land in grain by seeding it down and covering the seed using a hoe or a crude harrow pulled between the stumps by an ox. Alternatively, the land could be planted entirely by hand in potatoes. The fertility of freshly burnt land would sustain two or sometimes three grain or potato crops before yields fell. The land would then have to remain in grass until the stumps had rotted sufficiently to be removed, making it possible to plough and manure the land and return it to crop production.52 As Cooper cleared land and brought it into production, Sarah produced children to help with the work. Their third son, James, was born in 1822, their first daughter, Malvina, in 1825, and their fourth son, Adolphus, in 1827.53 Given that their older son, John was only two years old when farming began at Sailor’s Hope, the task of clearing the farm fell on Cooper and on whatever adult labour he could recruit. Year by year, Cooper, like his neighbours, would have worked to convert more woodland to field. In time, attending to the land that was cleared must have absorbed much of the labour available to him, as he believed in the intensive, improved agricultural practices that he knew from Scotland. It is not clear when he first began to implement these at Sailor’s Hope, but by mid-century he was insistent that the land on Sailor’s Hope be planted in a rotation of green crops such as turnips or potatoes followed by grain crops and then a period of use for hay and pasture. The seaweed that washed ashore along the front of the farm was to be gathered and mixed with animal dung for composting before being used to manure the land. Pasture and hay land was to be created by seeding down the last of the grain rotations with an equal mixture of clover and timothy. And all the portions of the farm – pastures, grain land, hay marsh, and orchards – were to be individually fenced and managed.54 In short, Sailor’s Hope would come to be farmed in ways that were consistent with the advice of the agricultural improvers of the time and consistent with the new agricultural practices that had come to dominate farming in Angus during Cooper’s youth.55 No doubt Cooper, like other immigrants from the British Isles, found the climate a challenge. Writing home in the summer of 1818, Thomas Wilson, a fellow Scotsman from Fife, noted that “produs of

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land sells verey well hear and they reas good crops of pattey wheat.” The “onley draw back is the long winter for the frost come on about the midel of desember and continnews till about the first of may and they onley begin to soo thair coren about the latter end of may and from the time that the grain is soen to the time of shearing is onley 10 or 12 weeks so that summer is verey short.”56 Having learned something of the Island climate, Wilson, who was a mason, planned to move south to a warmer place as soon as he had the means to do so. Writing in the fall of 1818, yet another Scottish settler noted the same reality: “We don’t began to plough till the first of May.” Weather on the Island, she reported, included five months of winter with “Nothing but Frost and Snow.”57 Cooper too, like other emigrants, would have found the mosquitoes trying. According to a contemporary emigrant guide, they were to be only a temporary problem: “Mosquitoes are a worrying insect to the new settler, until he clears away some of the woods, and opens his land to the welcome breeze.”58 But while the numbers of mosquitoes might diminish with land clearing, they certainly did not go away. Unlike biting insects, some of the animals that inhabited the Island were eliminated entirely following the arrival of European settlers. Walruses, once a common sight on Island beaches and along the coast, had been extirpated by the time Cooper settled at Sailor’s Hope.59 Bears, also once quite numerous, were on the decline due to human hunting and bounties; the last Island bear was killed in the early twentieth century.60 Cooper’s responsibilities as a land agent must have taken significant time from his farming. Land agents and proprietors alike were concerned about the changing political context for large-scale landownership. In the years since the Island had become a British colony, land policy had been a central and contentious political issue. The township grants that Lord Townshend’s father and others received after the Seven Years War were conditional grants, requiring that proprietors settle their lands and pay quit rents to the Crown. None of the landlords holding Island grants met the initial settlement terms, which required compliance within the first decade of receipt of the grant, and many had been delinquent in paying their quit rents as well. Delinquency in meeting quit rent requirements made proprietors, and their tenants, vulnerable to the seizure of property

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for the payment of debts owing. The general failure of proprietors to fulfill the settlement terms of their grants raised questions about the legal basis of all rural property on the Island, as the penalty for not meeting the conditions was that the grants were to be null and void. From the perspective of many Island residents, the failure of Island landlords to fulfill the settlement requirements was potentially a welcome development, as it afforded an opportunity to restructure the land regime. Were the Crown to act as it should and escheat the township grants, local government officials might then regrant lands in small parcels to actual settlers.61 Popular demands for land reform and escheat were a significant aspect of Island politics in the years after the American Revolution and as well in the early nineteenth century. The chief administrative officer on the Island at the time Cooper moved to the colony was Lieutenant-Governor Charles Douglass Smith. Smith had been dispatched to the Island in 1813 to deal with political unrest that had grown in the previous years, informed in part by demands for land reform. With the outbreak of war with the United States, British authorities had been anxious to suppress popular agitation and unrest on the Island. Although Smith initially succeeded in quieting the political ferment that had occasioned his appointment, his own policies soon helped to rekindle tensions in the colony. Wishing to enhance the resources available to the governor, Smith took steps, beginning in 1816, to escheat several townships and to enforce the collection of quit rents. His escheat proceedings, which resulted in Crown resumption of two townships, alarmed proprietors while rekindling popular hopes of land reform. Smith’s initiation of legal proceedings to enforce quit rent payment created a stir among tenants and small freeholders as well as landlords, as all settlers on lands where quit rents were owing were at risk of having their farm assets seized for the payment of outstanding debts. The immediate unrest that these policies provoked had begun to subside by the fall of 1818 when the Coopers arrived on the Island, as Smith’s actions and the subsequent protests had induced the Colonial Office to rein Smith in and to formulate new land policies for the colony. These new policies altered the rates of quit rents owing and gave proprietors until 1826 to meet new settlement requirements on their lots.62 No doubt James Townshend’s instructions to Cooper to ensure the

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speedy peopling of his estate were informed in part by the imperial government’s recent reaffirmation of this conditional aspect of township grants. An 1820 map suggests that there were only about thirty settlers on the entire twenty-thousand-acre expanse of Lot 56.63 By the terms of the original grant, Townshend’s ancestors had been required forty years earlier to ensure that there were one hundred settlers on the township.64 Troubles concerning land policy flared again shortly after Cooper became Townshend’s land agent. In the winter of 1822–23, Smith attempted to enforce quit rent collection by legal proceedings that many Islanders thought unfair. A number of the leading men of the Island responded by petitioning the high sheriff, a position recently assumed by John MacGregor, to convene public meetings to protest Smith’s actions. Cooper was among the men who signed this petition and who supported MacGregor when he convened the meetings despite the vehement objections of the lieutenant-governor. MacGregor also helped draft the petition that emerged from these meetings, protesting Smith’s quit rent proceedings and calling on the imperial government to recall the lieutenant-governor. MacGregor’s disobedience cost him his job as sheriff, but the public outcry against Smith’s actions ultimately cost Smith his job as well.65 Cooper participated in this political drama as Townshend’s land agent, and in so doing acquired some of his first lessons in Island politics. He spent a month in Charlottetown during the agitation to remove Smith from office, attending the various meetings where leading members of Island society pressed the case. Cooper’s presence in Charlottetown resulted in his being called upon to serve on the grand jury that sat that winter, providing him with yet another opportunity to become familiar with the personalities and issues informing Island politics.66 The events of the early 1820s seemed to suggest that Island residents had it in their power to shape colonial policy if they acted collectively to bring their concerns to the attention of imperial officials in London. As well, they suggested that there were political rewards for those willing to provide the leadership for doing so. Cooper’s friend, John MacGregor, who was one of the heroes of the resistance to lieutenant-governor, was elected to the assembly when elections were held after Smith’s removal. The man elected as the new speaker of the assembly, John Stewart, author

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of an 1806 book describing the Island, had been a central leader in the opposition to Smith and had personally carried Island charges against the lieutenant-governor back to Britain.67 Although the political aspects of the position of land agent drew Cooper into new terrain, many of his responsibilities must have reminded him of the duties of a captain managing people, goods, and paperwork in the ever-changing environment of maritime commerce. Tenants on the Townshend estate later remarked on Cooper’s medical skills, offered for free and no doubt the product of reading and self-education. They also noted his abilities as a peacemaker when there were disputes, and his charity to those in need. Effective problem-solving was central to the job of captain and land agent alike. The scale of the problems he faced no doubt grew over time, as Cooper effectively attracted new settlers to the township and assigned them holdings. Over the course of the 1820s, he helped establish three dozen new households on the estate and wrote leases for nearly three thousand acres of land.68 Many of the settlers taking up land on Lot 56 at this time appear to have been coming from Cape Breton and Newfoundland.69 Cooper soon discovered that one of the greatest challenges to effective rent collection was in fact logistical. Specie was scarce on the Island and tenants lacking ready means of acquiring it were unlikely to be able to pay their rents. Cooper’s response, like that of some other agents and resident proprietors as well, was to accept rent payment in produce, livestock, timber, and labour. 70 Yet another problem that Cooper confronted was the absence of a local gristmill. Although there had once been a gristmill at Bay Fortune, at the time that Cooper became agent the residents of the township either had to grind their grain by hand or haul it overland to St Peters, twenty-five miles away. Alternatively, they might take it by sea to the mill at Murray Harbour, thirty miles to the south.71 The obvious solution was to build a mill on the estate. Although Cooper’s power of attorney authorized him to take steps to improve the township, provided they did not put Lord Townshend to “any expense for these purposes,” he opted to write Lord Townshend’s solicitor explaining the need for a mill and his intention to build one, before he undertook this significant project.72 Hearing no objection from Mr Hutchinson or Lord Townshend, Cooper had millstones

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delivered from Nova Scotia in 1824 and erected a gristmill on Blackett’s Creek on the southern, Grand River portion of the township, roughly four miles from Sailor’s Hope.73 Cooper also became involved in shipbuilding. From his perspective, it offered a promising means by which the resources of the estate and the labour of its inhabitants might be converted into specie.74 Residents of the Bay Fortune region had long been involved in vessel construction. In the years before Cooper settled in the area, shipbuilding had overwhelming entailed construction of vessels of less than one hundred tons for local use. These modest vessels, rigged as schooners for the most part, provided the means for transporting farm produce, wood, and oysters to markets in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The vessels were also trade goods themselves, for sale primarily in Newfoundland, which was the most important market for the products of eastern Prince Edward Island. The British timber trade that first brought Cooper to the Island had a profound and lasting effect on many older patterns of the colony’s economy, shipbuilding included. In the initial phases of the timber boom that began in earnest in 1808, scores of large vessels began to arrive in Island ports direct from ports in the British Isles. For the most part these were British-built and British-owned ships, some of which had previously plied the Baltic timber routes, others of which had been employed in Britain’s enormous coastal coal trade.75 Although in the early timber trade the Island primarily supplied squared wood for export, this soon began to change as the demand for transatlantic shipping grew and as Island entrepreneurs acquired capital from the sale of timber that they might invest in other enterprises. Over the course of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the Island’s earlier tradition of small vessel construction was supplemented by a growing industry focused on building larger vessels suitable for the transatlantic trades, and for sale in British rather than local markets. Like the earlier small-vessel construction industry, this new industry was widely dispersed. In some locales it was primarily the product of local entrepreneurship, while in others the building of larger vessels was directly funded by British merchants who extended their operations to include the development of shipyards in Prince Edward Island. In yet other areas, the new industry was grounded in a mixture of local and external investments and control.76

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Cooper’s decision to make shipbuilding a facet of managing Lord Townshend’s estate was made after these broader developments were well underway, both on the Island as a whole and locally. In the period when Cooper was settling in at Sailor’s Hope, Andrew, Hugh, and Angus MacDonald were beginning to build large vessels in the Three Rivers region.77 Relatives of Captain John MacDonald, a prominent proprietor in Queens County to the west of Kings County, the MacDonalds were local merchants with modest landholdings, and their enterprise was a logical extension of their involvement in the booming timber economy of the previous decade.78 Further south at Murray Harbour, and as well six miles to the north at Souris, the family of resident landlord John Cambridge, who had been pioneers in building large-scale vessels on the Island, oversaw the construction of a number of substantial vessels destined for British markets.79 Closer to home, various builders in and about Bay Fortune continued to turn out small schooners for the coasting trade; they also began to build bigger schooners and brigs.80 There are many reasons why shipbuilding would have been an attractive prospect for Cooper. It was, of course, an industry about which he knew a great deal, both as a sailor and as a captain charged with overseeing vessel maintenance and repairs. As well, come the 1820s, there was ample evidence that building ships on the Island for the British market was a profitable endeavour. Significantly, too, shipbuilding could potentially be effectively integrated into estate management, as many of the costs of constructing vessels could be met by using estate timber and the labour of tenants who might set days of work in the woods and at the shipyard against rents owing. A number of resident Island landlords, including the nearby Cambridges, and Charles and Edward Worrell who owned a massive estate at St Peters, had already demonstrated the viability of making shipbuilding a part of the economies of their estates well prior to Cooper’s initiatives.81 Both of these families, however, brought significant assets to their enterprises. The Cambridges, who maintained business premises in Bristol as well as on the Island, had assembled an Island estate of slightly more than 100,000 acres, and, come the mid-1820s, were capable of launching eight large ships in a year.82 The Worrell family had been involved in the sugar economy of Barbados since the mid-1600s. Charles and Edward’s father,

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Jonathan, who had begun to purchase land on Prince Edward Island in the early 1800s, owned a number of plantations in Barbados as well as property in England. The estate that Edward, and particularly Charles, developed on Prince Edward Island came to include more than 100,000 acres. Both continued to hold property in Barbados as well after their father’s death.83 As with his decision to build a gristmill on Lot 56, Cooper notified Townshend’s attorney before beginning to construct a vessel.84 In 1825, Cooper arranged with William Burke, a local shipbuilder, to construct a seventy-two-ton schooner at Howe Bay, within sight of Cooper’s home. This was a modest beginning, given that the typical vessel built for the British market at this time was probably twice that size, and many of the Cambridges’ vessels were four or five times larger.85 It would seem that Cooper drew on tenants for much of the wood and labour he needed and obtained metal goods, rope, canvas, and caulking from the MacDonalds at Three Rivers.86 The Hackmatack was launched in August the following year, and was soon on its way to Britain with a cargo of squared timber.87 Cooper sailed the vessel to Plymouth himself with a crew of three, likely arriving at Plymouth’s commercial Sutton Pool in late September or October 1826 (see illustration 3.2). Cooper’s decision to build a vessel for sale in the Plymouth market fit with a growing pattern of trade between the Island and Plymouth. During the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain’s trade with North America grew and its trade with the Baltic declined, Britain’s western ports, Plymouth included, benefited from the increased Atlantic traffic. Initially, to meet the growing demand for vessels, Plymouth’s merchants relied on local builders and purchases from the Admiralty of foreign boats captured as naval prizes.88 In the postwar years, however, Plymouth merchants increasingly became involved in acquiring colonial-built ships and some, including the Peake and Pope families, thought it appropriate to extend their operations to Prince Edward Island in order to facilitate the construction and acquisition of Island vessels. James Peake, who would become the Island’s leading shipbuilder and Cooper’s trusted business acquaintance, established a residence in the colony in 1823.89 Joseph Pope, who would become a bitter political opponent of Cooper, moved to the Island at roughly the same time as Cooper did in order to assist his

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Illustration 3.2 Plymouth Harbour and Customs House, ca. 1820s, as Cooper would have seen them on arrival with the Hackmatack. Plymouth Local History Library.

brothers in developing an Island extension of their father’s timber and shipbuilding business.90 Plymouth registry books show ten vessels transferred from Island registry to the Plymouth vessel registry in the period between 1810 and 1819, and nearly double that the following decade. The trade would continue to grow in the years to come.91 The timing of Cooper’s participation in this early trade in vessels with Plymouth could hardly have been worse. As he was loading the Hackmatack in Prince Edward Island and beginning his journey to Britain, newspapers in Plymouth were printing issues with headlines such as “Manufacturing Distress” and featuring stories about the extent of the recent downturn in Britain’s economy.92 The year Cooper had contracted with William Burke to build the Hackmatack had marked a high point in returns to shipping and the price of vessels in the British market. It was also a high point in the cost of labour and supplies on Prince Edward Island. The following year, when the Hackmatack was completed, marked the beginning of a major downturn in the demand for shipping.93 As a result, in the

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fall of 1826, Cooper was caught out on the wrong side of a cyclical economy as he arrived in Britain to sell his first ship.94 Having bought dear, he was now forced to sell cheap. Cooper was soon facing difficulties with his employer as well. After selling the Hackmatack for a loss in Bristol (yet another of the western ports benefiting from increased Atlantic trade), Cooper travelled to London and met with Lord Townshend’s lawyer, Julius Hutchinson, and Lord Townshend himself to settle accounts.95 Although Cooper was able to provide a £300 remittance from the sale of the Hackmatack, he found himself on the defensive with Hutchinson and Townshend concerning his shipbuilding and millbuilding initiatives and the costs he had incurred in these and in the management of the estate more generally. His situation was not helped by the presence of William Waller, a lawyer who had lived on the Island and recently returned to London. Waller was critical of Cooper’s management of Townshend’s estate, suggesting that the mill had been poorly built and was of little value and that the estate should be providing greater returns to Townshend. Waller’s critique was typical of those levelled by potential land agents against men currently holding agencies.96 There was no shortage of possibilities for misunderstandings and conflicts of interest to arise between landlords and their agents and no shortage of people willing to exploit these for their own benefit. The management of an Island estate on behalf of a distant landlord was not an easy task, nor was it without temptations. Given the difficulty of regular rent collection and of converting rental returns into a form that could be remitted to Britain, the settling of accounts between Island agents and British landlords rarely occurred on a regular basis. One of the reasons men competed for Island land agencies was the economic power they obtained from estate income while it remained in their hands. Even agents with the best of intentions would have found it hard to keep their personal assets and business dealings separate from those of the estates they managed, given the economic realities of Island life in the early nineteenth century. As well, communication between agents on the Island and estate owners in Britain could be difficult, not just because of the distances involved and the fact that the colony was isolated by winter’s ice for many months of the year, but because of fundamental differences

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in the way life was organized in Britain and Prince Edward Island. In the case of Cooper’s relationship with Lord Townshend, William Waller’s interventions no doubt helped undermine the trust necessary to sustain a healthy relationship, as did the financial problems occasioned by the timing of Cooper’s venture into shipbuilding. Cooper’s vision of estate management and the responsibilities of landlords (and their agents) to their tenantry, however, likely put him on a collision course with Townshend in any case. Cooper believed that landlords were involved in a reciprocal relationship with their tenantry, and that in return for receiving rents, landlords were responsible for sustaining and developing the infrastructure necessary for tenants to make a living, and in general for seeing to their tenants’ well-being. Cooper’s ideas fit with how some of the estates in Angus were being managed in his youth. The Earl of Strathmore, owner of Glamis Castle, for instance, invested more than £20,000 in the 1770s on building roads and bridges, hedging and draining lands, and otherwise improving his estate.97 Some Island landlords perceived their roles in similar ways: in order to make their estates profitable enterprises, they needed to provide economic leadership and spend money on improvements rather than simply collect rents. The Melville and Westmorland families, for example, believed that they had the responsibility for erecting a mill on their estate on Lot 29 and in the early nineteenth century sent money from Britain to their agent to meet these costs.98 The Walsh family advanced hundreds of pounds to their Island agent to develop Lot 11 in the early 1800s.99 There is no suggestion in Lord Townshend’s power of attorney to Cooper of any intention to invest capital in his estate, and Townshend appears to have become increasingly interested in maximizing his immediate rental returns. The meeting with Townshend and Hutchinson in London following the sale of the Hackmatack marked the beginning of a major shift in Cooper’s life. Townshend indicated that the liabilities that Cooper had assumed in constructing the mill and schooner, in part by setting tenants’ labour and wood against their rents, were Cooper’s to honour. The Hackmatack had been sold, but the mill was Cooper’s, as were all the debts. As well, Townshend made it clear that in the future he expected rents to be paid “regularly in money or Government bills.”100 Following his return to Prince Edward Island

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in the spring of 1827, Cooper convened a meeting of the tenantry of the township to pass on this news and to recommend that they petition Townshend directly themselves concerning the difficulty in complying with terms that required paying rent in cash.101 This the tenants did to no effect, other than perhaps to persuade Townshend that Cooper could not be relied upon to maximize remittances, or worse, that Cooper had the potential to be a rabble-rouser. In 1829, Cooper lost the Townshend land agency and was replaced in this role by T.H. Haviland, a lawyer resident in Charlottetown who had emigrated to the Island a few years before Cooper.102 Shortly before this happened, Cooper secured his mill investments by leasing the land on which the mill buildings stood to John Blackett, a local resident whom he trusted.103 Over the course of his first decade of residence on Prince Edward Island, Cooper had learned a great deal about life in the colony. His experiences clearing land at the head of Howe Bay and turning forest into farm taught him much about the cost and difficulties of farmmaking in a frontier setting. The challenges of constructing a mill in a land where winter’s cold and the floods of spring conspired against dams, sluices, and foundations surely did too. As he collected rents and participated in the political and social events of Lot 56 and the Island more generally, he came to understand the hopes and dreams of the rural population and how these fit into the broader history of the colony. He also came to understand the fears and anxieties that informed rural life. In his own case, although he and Sarah had succeeded in creating a farm at Sailor’s Hope, and he had developed a mill, he had also suffered from an economic downturn over which he had no control, and he had lost his position as land agent for Lot 56. As well, 1829 brought personal tragedy. In July, young James Cooper accidentally set his clothes alight. William and Sarah’s third son died of his burns two days later.104

4

Struggles for Justice The new decade that began in January 1830 marked an important transition for William Cooper. During the 1820s his work as a land agent had been central to his identity and to the economic strategy that sustained his household. The £30 sterling per year he had earned as salary, coupled with the rental value of Red House Farm and free access to marsh hay, would not alone have provided him with a comfortable living, but the loss was certainly significant, particularly in a context where steady sources of income were rare. Lord Townshend’s decision to dismiss Cooper engendered another loss too, both for Cooper and for the residents of Lot 56. For a decade Cooper had assumed a leadership role in the affairs of the region, overseeing the economic development of the estate and providing advice on a variety of issues including medical problems, matters of personal dispute, and the challenges of meeting the landlord’s demands for rent. Now that he was no longer a land agent, he along with his neighbours would have to decide whether he would retire from that leadership role entirely or continue it in some other capacity. Thus, as the 1820s gave way to the 1830s, Cooper found himself at a turning point; he would need to chart a new way forward. The economic context for Cooper’s choices in 1830 was quite different from what it had been when he first settled on the Island. In 1818 the Island had a population of sixteen thousand, the product in part of a decade of significant economic growth grounded in a vibrant timber trade and an emergent shipbuilding industry.1 By 1830 the population had reached roughly thirty thousand.2 But the

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timber and shipbuilding industries that had helped generate this continued growth were in trouble. The downturn in markets for ships that had begun in the mid-1820s and cost Cooper dearly when he sought to sell the Hackmatack in 1826 persisted and deepened. In 1830 the export returns from Prince Edward Island’s crucial timber and shipbuilding industries were roughly half what they had been in 1824.3 Cooper was not alone in feeling the economic pinch of these changes. For the Island’s tenantry, who constituted the majority of the population, the decline in the opportunity to earn wages in the woods and in the shipyards made the burden of paying rents for the lands they farmed yet more difficult. The political context had changed significantly too. When Cooper first arrived on the Island, Charles Douglass Smith was the chief administrator, a position he had held since shortly after the outbreak of the American war with the British in 1812. During Smith’s years as lieutenant-governor, there had been little opportunity for the popularly elected house of assembly to provide sustained leadership in Island affairs, as Smith distrusted the men who dominated Island politics and opted to keep the house prorogued for long periods. With the arrival of a new lieutenant-governor in 1824, this changed, and the house of assembly began to meet on a regular basis and to assume a central role in Island life.4 These changes on the Island reflected broader shifts, as social movements, pressing for greater popular participation in politics and for other political and social reforms, made headway in Britain and the Atlantic world more generally. At the time of Cooper’s marriage in 1817, London papers were reporting on the demands for political and economic reform that men such as William Cobbett, Henry Hunt, and Major John Cartwright were helping to organize in the post-Napoleonic War period, and on the pressure they and others were bringing to bear on the government by mobilizing popular forces through clubs, meetings, mass demonstrations, and marches.5 Although the state repressed the popular challenges of this particular moment in British history, the demands for reforms did not go away, nor did the popular learning concerning how to organize extra-parliamentary protest. A decade later in 1829, renewed pressure for political and social change helped to usher in Catholic Emancipation. Demands for further electoral reform to broaden democratic participation remained

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to be addressed, as did demands for an end to slavery. The significance of the resurgence of reform activism in Britain for politics on Prince Edward Island remained to be seen when the 1820s gave way to the 1830s. Elections to the house of assembly made necessary by the death of George IV in June 1830, however, offered the occasion to discern some of the consequences: Island Catholics, who comprised roughly one-third of the population, would be able to vote for the first time. In nearby New Brunswick, Catholics had been able to vote since 1810.6 When a general election was called in the fall of 1830 – the first since 1824 – Cooper decided to run for one of the four assembly seats assigned at large to Kings County. As he later indicated, his choice was shaped in part by the urgings of friends and neighbours, as well as by the loss of his position as Lord Townshend’s land agent.7 But he seems to have been drawn to the electoral contest as well by his belief that he could help bring about progressive change on the Island. In a time when candidates’ platforms were often framed in the vague language of personal independence and a promise to protect the “liberties” of electors, Cooper appealed for voter support on the basis of two policy proposals, both concerning land. He argued for the elimination of duties on imports and for a fiscal policy that would instead derive public revenue from land taxes. This, he believed, was the fairest, most efficient, and transparent way to raise money to meet the costs of government. He also argued for state action to eliminate proprietorial control of the colony’s lands. In his opinion the central political question facing the colony’s population in the 1830s was the concentration of landownership on the Island, and, as he phrased it, “though a great deal has been said, there is nothing done in it yet.”8 It was time, he believed, to confront the land question by pressing imperial authorities to escheat the Island’s large proprietorial grants. Cooper saw the challenges of securing an appropriate revenue for the state and the demand for land reform as linked issues. With land reform, rural residents would, he trusted, “be both able and willing to give the Government a suitable Revenue” to meet the Island’s needs.9 And why should Kings County electors believe Cooper’s land reform proposals possible? In part, he suggested, because of the changing political context of the times. His message to his potential

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supporters was: “The British Nation has granted equal rights to the Roman Catholics – has set the African Slave free – and will set you, my Friends, free from vassalage and bondage.” Provided the residents of Kings County were willing to press for their rights with “perseverance,” “Justice” was on their side.10 Contemporary observers on the Island were aware of the significant political and social shifts occurring in Britain at the beginning of the new decade. The extent and nature of the impact of Catholic participation in electoral politics was a matter of hope for some and concern for others. Would Catholics cast their votes as a block? Would they seek to punish Island politicians who had resisted Catholic Emancipation in the past? And what did the growing movement for political reform in Britain and elsewhere portend for developments on Prince Edward Island?11 Cooper’s entry into the electoral arena at this juncture, with his advocacy of sweeping land reform, captured the attention of hundreds of Kings County voters who provided him with support. It also sounded alarms among some of the Island’s elite. In the ensuing campaign, Cooper claimed that “gentry,” some of whom were not Kings County electors, were active in swaying votes against him, in part by offers of rum, in part by appealing to religious affiliations, and in part by using their economic power.12 Because elections were public events where electors mounted the hustings and declared their votes out loud to the returning officers as well as to all assembled, merchants with accounts owing, landlords and land agents with rents due, and potential employers with the power of the purse all had the ability to shape voters’ declarations. Cooper subsequently noted too that his campaign suffered from his being a late entrant into the contest for one of the Kings County seats. As a result, he had not had time to garner support in the south of the county, where he was less known than in the northeast. In adjacent Queens County where land reform appears to have been a campaign issue as well, electoral irregularities were such that a second election was required to determine the contest. In Kings County, Cooper called a halt to the final day of voting when he realized he was trailing the four leading candidates by a margin too great to overcome.13 Cooper’s public pronouncements during the 1830 election campaign provide useful insights into the political and ethical ideas he

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had come to hold by this point in his life. He opposed slavery and he opposed the religious discrimination that had long denied Catholics the political rights of citizenship in Britain and its colonies. When some on the Island suggested that Daniel O’Connell deserved the credit for the successful struggle for Catholic Emancipation, Cooper agreed that O’Connell had been “indefatigable” in the campaign to end religious discrimination but noted that “liberal Protestants” too had been central to the struggle, supporting the cause “in and out of Parliament.” As well as being an historical claim about the heterogeneity of the alliances that had successfully fought for reform in Britain, Cooper’s corrective reflected his position on the appropriate relationship between religion and politics. He believed that those of “every persuasion” should be free “to follow their own spiritual guides, without making their creed a test in temporal affairs.”14 As for his own religious views, he found it necessary to respond to accusations that he was irreligious as well as anti-Catholic. While acknowledging that he had “sometimes tried to ridicule superstition and hypocrisy,” he asserted that he had never “evinced any disregard of the great fundamental principles of Christianity, in my transactions with my fellow men.” The phrasing of his defence, with its focus on “fundamental principles,” is revealing. He went on to assert: “My religion teaches me to visit the sick and administer consolation to the dying. Under its influence I have made peace in families – taken in the outcast and restored them to society.”15 Other evidence suggests that Cooper did indeed assume such a role in eastern Kings County, and that he was willing to incur risks in doing so. In the spring of 1830, Elizabeth Sheaffey appeared before the Island’s chief justice to swear an affidavit charging Cooper with inveigling her sixteen-year-old daughter, Francis, from her care and with employing Francis as a servant in Cooper’s house and, it would seem, at his mill. As well, Sheaffey charged Cooper and one of his neighbours with doing the same with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Mary. Sheaffey appealed to the court to rescue Francis and Mary, as, in the words of the clerk who recorded her affidavit, she was “mindful and tender of the spiritual as well as temporal interests” of her children, and she had “been informed” that Cooper was “wholly regardless of, and indifferent to the truths of revealed religion.” The affidavit of Francis, which had been sworn before a

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local justice of the peace six months earlier, told a different story. She claimed she had fled the residence of her mother and stepfather because her mother was “in the habit of Entertaining and giving Encouragement to young men of profligate characters, and keeping a disorderly House,” and it was not safe for her or her sister there. As well, according to Francis, her mother had ordered her out of the house. Francis had initially become a servant at a nearby household, but when her mother came and threatened her there, she and Mary had fled to Cooper’s residence for protection.16 This would appear to have been a wise move, as Cooper provided sanctuary and no doubt assisted Francis in making her situation known to a local justice of the peace. Perhaps a memory of his own experiences as a child adrift in the world shaped his response, but a concern for the plight of the powerless and vulnerable in general is a constant theme in his adult life. In the political arena, his interest in checking unbridled power and securing the rights of the weak blended seamlessly into arguments concerning the nature of justice. His electoral platform of 1830 was grounded in the proposition that “laws should be passed to protect the poor but industrious settlers” who were threatened by the “exactions of the great landed proprietors.” Land, Cooper argued, and well knew, was “essential to their very existence; yet … a few individuals … monopolize nearly the whole of it.” His vision of the role of the state emphasized its responsibilities for ensuring that people were protected from exploitation and provided with an opportunity to make a living for themselves: “If ever laws were wanted for the protection of the people, surely justice calls for them here.”17 Cooper used nautical analogies to explain his beliefs on the duties citizens owed to one another as well as to explain his ideas on political leadership. In a critique of electors who bartered their vote for a glass of grog or favour from the powerful in the election of 1830, he reminded electors that “all our rights and privileges are embarked in one bottom.” Voters had a duty to themselves and to one another to ensure that they did not place “an unfit or unskillful steersman at the helm of their affairs.”18 Although Cooper offered to serve as a political leader, he also acknowledged that, as “a man who has spent the best part of his life ploughing the seas,” he might not have the necessary skills and training to take on the political task of effecting land

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reform.19 This was not just electoral cant: Cooper was well aware of the limits of his formal education and the challenges this posed for acting effectively in arenas where others had the advantages of extensive schooling and, often, legal training as well. In the wake of the 1830 election, it must have become increasingly clear to Cooper, and to his supporters, that although land reform had been an issue on the hustings, it remained without an effective voice in the house of assembly. Unexpectedly, he soon had the opportunity to run again for a Kings County seat, as John Macdonald, one of the four newly elected representatives, died not long after the election.20 The resulting Kings County by-election, which occurred in the summer of 1831, began peacefully enough with polling at the county seat in Georgetown, to the southwest of Bay Fortune. There, after two days of voting, Cooper’s supporters prevailed by a wide margin. The final outcome, though, would be determined at nearby St Peters, to the west of Bay Fortune, when polling moved there. St Peters lay at the core of the Worrell estate, with its tens of thousands of acres, shipyards, stores, and mills. At this time the estate was actively managed by Charles Worrell, who was a lawyer and a member of the combined legislative and executive councils, an appointed body which was both an upper legislative house and an advisory committee for the lieutenant-governor. The region about St Peters and extending east along the north shore of the Island had a substantial Catholic population which had previously been mobilized to oppose Cooper on religious grounds. Those wishing to defeat Cooper and the land reform program he advocated had hoped that in St Peters they could reverse the ten-to-one lead he had acquired in polling at Georgetown. This was not to be. When it became clear on the final day of voting that Cooper would prevail, rioters forced the poll to close prematurely. Cooper, the electoral officers, and even the sheriff, had to flee the violence. As a result, the final outcome of the election remained to be determined by the house of assembly.21 The legislature spent ten days investigating the violence and the polling before granting Cooper the victory by a close division that left the speaker of the house to cast the deciding vote.22 By the time Cooper assumed a seat in the assembly early in 1832, he was no longer simply a local leader. His electoral campaigns had focused on issues of Island-wide significance, and the conflicts and controversies

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that had arisen from the campaigns had brought his name and his ideas to the attention of people across the colony, in part because they had received coverage in the colony’s newspaper. The extent of the violence in the Kings County by-election had been newsworthy too, as it was unusual, even by the boisterous standards of the day. Cooper’s electoral campaigns and his ultimate success in the byelection of 1831 marked a turning point in the struggle for land reform on Prince Edward Island. Within days of his assuming a seat in the legislature, the assembly voted to establish a committee to consider whether there were townships on the Island that were liable to escheat. This was not an endorsement of Cooper’s campaign platform, nor a gesture of support for his leadership within the assembly. Rather, it was in part a pre-emptive initiative. The speaker of the house, George Dalrymple, who introduced the resolution establishing the committee, pointedly noted that he had no interest in “visionary scheme[s] … which might have no other aim than that of producing public excitement.” Yet another of the assemblymen, Daniel Brenan, while supporting the resolution, warned of the schemes of “designing men who choose to impose on the credulity of the country people, and who had neither ability nor character to recommend them.” These men used the promise of escheat to gain “the affections of the innocent and credulous” to be “as it were ‘wafted on Eagles’ Wings.’”23 Although Cooper had successfully become a member of the house of assembly, and had done so with the support of hundreds of Kings County voters, the assembly chambers themselves were not going to offer smooth sailing for the sea captain turned politician. Years later Cooper provided the public with a better sense of the tensions that informed the exchanges he had with men claiming to be supporters of moderate land reform. After he was elected to the assembly on a land reform platform and had taken his seat, he was, he said, “invited to a private meeting, which had for its object a partial Escheat.” He was informed that “there were several townships without any land agent to represent them, and squatters were taking the land without any authority, and consequently setting a very bad example to the tenantry and others who bought their lands.” The gentlemen at the meeting had a solution for this problem. There were, they noted, “many of the most respectable people well entitled

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to a grant of land, but the government had scarcely any crown lands at their disposal.” By enacting an escheat bill that would provide the means for quick government seizure of these lands, they believed they could address both of these issues with a single initiative. They told Cooper that if he “would give up [his] own views” and “be guided by them, and go for a partial Escheat,” he too “would come in for a share of the land.”24 Despite the jibes in the house at his ideas and campaign platform, and the tensions and disagreements with leading Island politicians outside of the house, Cooper became a member of the committee charged with considering the legal state of the township grants. In time, the committee, with the support of the majority of the house, produced an address to the lieutentant-governor recommending that he establish a court of escheat; it also drafted rudimentary legislation for doing so. Undoubtedly Cooper’s advocacy of land reform and his presence in the house had helped to produce this result, but there was little or no support in the house for the comprehensive land reform program that he advocated. Some members of the assembly hoped that the establishment of a court of escheat might serve to quiet unrest by upholding township titles; others hoped that its establishment would lead to the escheat of some of the least-settled lots on the Island. Making these lots available to new owners would, they argued, serve the public interest by helping to promote the colony’s growth. Certainly, too, the twelve assembly members from county constituencies – as opposed to the six members from the three county towns, known as royalties – were sensitive to the hopes and expectations of rural voters with an interest in land reform.25 Toward the end of the session Cooper rose in the house to second the motion calling for an address to the lieutenant-governor on the escheat issue, and to articulate the position on land reform that he had sketched out earlier in his two campaigns for election. He begged the assembly’s indulgence for reading from a prepared speech, in violation of parliamentary norms, by acknowledging he could not “trust [his] memory wholly with [his] arguments.”26 In part this was because he had taken the time to research the land question in journals of the house of assembly stretching back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and he wanted to read this evidence into the record, but as well he did not trust that he had the

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skills necessary to effectively make his arguments without notes. This acknowledged weakness would prove an asset, for it meant that he had a written text he could provide to the local newspaper; by contrast, the coverage other speakers received, if any, was limited to brief summaries of their positions. Cooper’s speech made no concessions to those who sought to stake out a moderate position on land reform. In his closing line, he noted that he had “heard a prattle about soaring on eagle’s wings; if it means a person that sympathises with the wrongs and distress of the poor tenantry, I am the man!” He then proceeded to read into the record excerpts from assembly journals from the first years of the century to show that the legislative struggle for escheat was neither new nor unreasonable. Indeed, the records appeared to show imperial support for escheat in the early nineteenth century. Cooper’s speech made the case for a sweeping land reform that would eliminate all concentrations of land ownership on the Island, and offered reasons why it was appropriate, indeed essential, for the state to take the lead in regulating the distribution of land. His ideas concerning the meaning of “justice,” a word he used again and again in the speech, and his assertion that the relationship between the Crown and British subjects was fundamentally reciprocal, were at the heart of his arguments. British subjects owed allegiance to the Crown, but, he argued, the king too had obligations, grounded in the coronation oath, to protect his subjects and ensure a just order. If the concentration of land on Prince Edward Island was an injustice, and Cooper argued that it was on many levels, the Crown was duty bound to act to restore justice. Some lines of Cooper’s argumentation were weak, and some of the phrasing awkward, but the speech contained powerful messages about justice and the rights of labouring people, and many passages spoke eloquently to these issues. Island tenants, he asserted, had “wasted their youth in clearing lands for others … planted their labour where the forest grew, … made a garden in the wilderness, and built a cabin where the bear has had his den,” and the state, in justice, must secure to them the products of their labour. If not checked by Crown intervention, land monopolies might otherwise “crush the liberties of mankind.”27 It is unlikely that Cooper’s speech swayed his fellow assemblymen, but they were not his primary audience. Well before he delivered his

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first major address to the house, other legislators had made it clear that there was little or no support for his land reform ideas in the thirteenth general assembly. Despite this, the house’s actions in passing an escheat bill and petitioning the lieutenant-governor persuaded many in the countryside that there was greater unanimity and support for land reform than really existed, and thus helped to generate hope for change. In time, imperial officials rejected the assembly’s attempts to establish a court of escheat, and the majority of the house moved on to other issues – pleased, no doubt, to have imperial authorities and the lobbying of landlords to blame for blocking their initiative. Cooper defined the assembly’s failure to defend the bill as “apathy.” The few words of protest the house did manage the following year sounded, he maintained, as if they had been “dragged through our teeth against our inclination.”28 For Cooper, however, these defeats did not mark the end of the campaign for land reform. Years later, his oldest son would remark that his father’s ability to succeed as a farmer on the Island, despite enormous difficulties, had been the result of his being “a man of strong will” capable of “patient hopeful labor.”29 This was probably true of his success as a mariner as well, and certainly would prove to be true in the case of his commitment to land reform. Cooper’s political opponents questioned his motives in taking up the cause and did their best to tarnish his reputation, but his speeches and letters leave little doubt that he genuinely believed that rural residents were the victims of an injustice that could and should be redressed. He was not alone in this belief, nor was he alone in his willingness to assume personal responsibility in attempting to end the injustice. Although he served as the land reform candidate on the Kings County hustings, and assumed responsibility for articulating the need for sweeping land reform in the house of assembly, he did so with the backing of other forceful and determined people. Behind him stood William, Joseph, James, John, and Alexander Dingwell of Bay Fortune, who helped to rebut criticism during Cooper’s first electoral campaign. As well, there were James Douglas, who with Alexander Dingwell began legal proceedings against Lot 43’s landlord in 1829, and W.H. Williams, who would use his pen for the cause in Island papers, besides scores of other local residents.30

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To some extent the land reform movement that Cooper would lead, and that would come to be known as the Escheat movement, had its origins in the strength of the community that had developed around Bay Fortune and the willingness and ability of its residents to stand up to powerful people resident in Charlottetown and elsewhere. As contemporary observers noted, the rural communities that had taken form around the Island over the years of European settlement varied in terms of their ethnic composition, architecture, and patterns of speech. They also varied in their power structures. In some communities, one or two men or families dominated local affairs. Such was the case, for instance, with the MacDonalds at Georgetown, the Cambridges at Murray Harbour, the Worrells at St Peters, and the Popes at Bedeque. Fortune Bay was not without its hierarchies of power as well, but power was not concentrated in the hands of a single merchant or landlord family. There were many men who, like William Cooper, had carved out a modest competence by working as farmers, millers, shipbuilders, mariners, and merchants, or a mixture of some or all of these pursuits, and none who stood head and shoulders above the rest. Nor, for the most part, was it a community primarily dependent on transatlantic connections with Britain. Much of the trade of Bay Fortune was with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Consequently, the capital costs of direct entry into the trade were low – those of building a modest boat – and locals did not need British connections in order to succeed. The particularities of the economies that had developed in northeastern Kings County shaped Bay Fortune’s social structure; as well, they shaped the position the people of the region would assume in broader political developments within the colony.31 The opposition to Cooper’s campaign to advance the cause of land reform in the house of assembly appeared overwhelming. And in many ways it was. But Cooper was not quite as isolated as the debates in the house of assembly suggested. His position on land reform was echoed almost immediately by the voices of others in Bay Fortune and, soon after, by meetings convened by local-level leaders in many other Island communities. The catalyst for this was newspaper publication of Cooper’s land reform speech to the house of assembly. The address was front-page news in the Island’s Royal Gazette on the last day of reports of the proceedings of the house. It appeared

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under the title “Mr. Cooper’s Speech on the Escheat Question.”32 His fellow assemblymen may not have been impressed with Cooper’s position or with his need to read his speeches, but within days his supporters in Bay Fortune had organized a public meeting to support the assembly’s call for a court of escheat and to petition the lieutenant-governor to support it as well.33 Publication of news of the Bay Fortune meeting was followed by news of similar meetings in other rural communities in all three counties.34 The main message of these meetings was one of support for the assembly’s escheat initiatives. Cooper may have failed to change minds within the house of assembly, but his presence in the legislature had helped to move the assembly to act on the escheat issue, and this, coupled with publication of his speech, generated hope of imminent escheats in the countryside and contributed to a growing belief that landlords’ titles were invalid. These shifts in rural thinking had important consequences. Public knowledge of the house’s escheat initiatives and the debate surrounding them helped to foster growing tenant resistance to the payment of rents. Discussion at the public meeting held at Bay Fortune to support the assembly’s escheat initiatives moved seamlessly from claims that township lands should be escheated to claims that landlords’ deeds were void as things stood to claims that landlords’ grants had been escheated decades earlier. While there were differences concerning the details of the history of the land question, there was agreement that landlords’ property claims were based on fraud and that honourable people should not support the continuance of this injustice by paying rents.35 Not all of the rural meetings held to sustain the assembly’s escheat initiatives articulated this view, nor did all lend public support for rent resistance, but the proceedings in the house as well as the discussions at the community-level meetings helped to undermine the ability of proprietors and their agents to collect rents and encouraged physical resistance to those attempting to enforce landlords’ claims. Yet another of the consequences of the house’s initiatives and the ensuing supportive rural responses, which included optimistic misreadings of what had actually occurred, was growing, Island-wide support for Cooper’s position on land reform, or at least something closer to his position than to that held by many of the other assemblymen representing rural constituencies.36 In the first years of the

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1830s, Cooper moved from being a local leader in the Bay Fortune region to having Island-wide status as an advocate of radical land reform. On one level it must have been gratifying, both to him and to his Bay Fortune supporters. But these successes came with new problems and challenges as well. Having moved to the forefront of what proved to be a growing popular movement for fundamental change, Cooper and his allies had to develop strategies for maintaining the groundswell of support they had generated and for channelling popular enthusiasm in constructive directions. The obstacles to success became increasingly clear in the wake of the initial escheat legislation and the assembly’s appeal to the lieutenant-governor. All colonial legislation was vetted by imperial authorities who had the power to withhold approval for the legislation. Colonial administrators held their posts as a result of imperial appointments and were expected to act in accordance with imperial instructions. The imperial cabinet minister for the colonies, the colonial secretary, who was charged with overseeing the imperial relationship with Prince Edward Island, responded to the assembly’s escheat initiatives of 1832 with a dispatch from London rejecting the bill and urging the assembly to turn their attentions elsewhere.37 Cooper and others correctly surmised that Island landlords and agents resident both in the colony and in Britain had effectively lobbied the Colonial Office. Those seeking sweeping land reform would need to devise strategies to deal with the imperial centre’s power over colonial affairs and the influence of landlords and their agents on the exercise of this power. One of the possible responses to imperial-level problems lay with using the power of the colonial legislature to frame issues in persuasive ways when it brought Island concerns to the attention of imperial authorities. The chances of success were greatest when the appointed legislative council and the popularly elected house of assembly were in agreement and worked in tandem to educate and pressure imperially appointed governors and their superiors in London. In the case of the thirteenth general assembly, which had taken office following the 1830 election, the support for radical land reform was limited, and thus the possibility of the assembly effectively lobbying colonial officials was circumscribed as well. When Cooper proposed that the assembly send a delegate to London to

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explain the land question to authorities there, he was unable to gain majority support for the idea.38 In the early 1830s the composition and political will of the assembly itself was yet another of the obstacles to achieving land reform, although this was not immediately apparent to rural voters. As rent resistance spread in the wake of the assembly’s escheat initiatives, landlords and their agents responded by using the powers the Island’s legal regime gave them. Tenants might refuse to pay their rents, but landlords and their agents could use the power of distraint to seize tenants’ property, such as cattle or crops, to recover rents owing, or could regain possession of the land by evicting tenants who were behind with rent payments. Tenants and their neighbours could hide movable property prior to distraints, provided they had ample warning, and they could physically resist sheriffs and bailiffs coming to their farms or communities to enforce landlords’ claims. Doing so, however, put tenants in direct conflict with law and the power of the state and in consequence was risky. Tenants might also challenge their landlords’ claims in court. Here tenants and their supporters found it difficult to make headway. British common law created obstacles that were hard to overcome, and the absence of a court of escheat denied Islanders a forum where judges would consider whether landlords’ titles were void because of their failure to fulfill the conditions of their grants. Many of the Island’s lawyers were land agents, some were proprietors, and most derived income from the workings of landlordism. As well, the Island’s chief justice, Edward Jarvis, was anything but sympathetic with the land reform cause. By the mid-1830s, if not sooner, it had become clear that although rent strikes could serve to bring the land question to the attention of state authorities, the legal, economic, and political consequences of rent resistance would pose difficult challenges for tenants and their leaders.39 So what was the best way forward? Or was there a way forward? Perhaps the hope of radical land reform was a chimera, an idea from the past that had failed before and was doomed to fail again. Perhaps Cooper’s contribution to Island history would be that of a man who raised popular hopes of a future free from landlords, inspired tenants to break the law by not paying rents, and then left them with the costs of it all, no further ahead and probably worse off than they

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had been. Certainly this is what Cooper’s opponents suggested. He was leading his followers down a dead-end path where there was no way forward to free land and no hope of progressive change. And furthermore, some argued, Cooper’s real agenda was not about land reform and helping the Island’s tenantry; what he really sought was to line his own pockets with the returns of public office.40 The latter suggestion must have struck Cooper as odd, given the modest salaries assemblymen earned, the other opportunities available to him as a master mariner, and the impact that political engagement had on his ability to spend time with Sarah and his children and to improve Sailor’s Hope. The charge that he was leading his followers on a hopeless crusade, though, was likely more worrisome, as there was evidence suggesting that land reform would be defeated. In the mid-1830s, however, Cooper remained convinced that land reform was possible. In part this was because rural residents pressing for fundamental changes on the Island seemed to have the wind at their back. In Britain those seeking to curb the power of landed elites and broaden political participation had finally managed, by pressure in and out of Parliament, to force through the Reform Bill of 1832. Although quite limited in its broadening of the franchise, it nonetheless marked a watershed in the distribution of political power. The emancipation of slaves within the British empire followed within a year.41 On the continent the July Revolution in France had ended the reign of Charles X , bringing the restored Bourbon monarchy to a close. In the United States a more democratic political order was growing under Andrew Jackson’s presidency. And in other parts of British North America reformers, like Cooper, were pressing for fundamental changes and mobilizing colonial populations to achieve these ends. One of these reform leaders was yet another emigrant from Dundee, William Lyon Mackenzie; having left the British Isles in 1820, by the early 1830s Mackenzie was a leading figure in the struggle for political and economic change in Upper Canada.42 A lesson one could take from other reform struggles of the times was that persistent, coordinated, popular pressure, like a great river in flood, could sweep away resistance and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Cooper’s ideas concerning the best way forward focused on building the popular forces capable of bringing pressure to bear on defenders of the status quo. Again and again in

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the 1830s he and his supporters in eastern Kings County responded to the challenges of resistance to their land reform ideas, whether they emanated from Charlottetown or London, by organizing mass public meetings to debate the issues and pass resolutions for submission to Island papers and the appropriate authorities. They did the same when they perceived opportunities occasioned by a new governor or a new session of the house of assembly. Other rural communities then emulated these initiatives. Over time this approach, which began as loosely coordinated land reform meetings in various rural locales, became routinized as Cooper and other leaders increasingly added elements of planning and organization to grassroots agitation. The pattern of rural land reform mobilization in the 1830s took shape in the wake of passage of the escheat legislation during the 1832 session of the colonial parliament. In April a public meeting in Bay Fortune passed resolutions supporting land reform and published news of the meeting and the resolutions in the Royal Gazette. Over the next four months, land reform advocates in seven other locales spread across all three of the colony’s counties followed suit, one after another, with public meetings of their own and the submission of land reform resolutions to the Royal Gazette. In the years that followed, serial local level meetings of this sort became commonplace, as residents gathered to lend their support to positive legislative initiatives or to protest unpopular developments by articulating and publicizing a common position. Such meetings also provided a forum for planning and coordinating rent resistance.43 One of the consequences of rural mobilization and an increasing level of coordination among land reform leaders in different communities was that advocates developed a growing ability to shape the behaviour of the house of assembly. Legislation of the early 1830s provided for general elections at four-year intervals, and the scheduled election of 1834 furnished an occasion for seeing the extent of support for Cooper’s ideas. In Kings County, land reformers coordinated their efforts and were able to elect four county representatives who purported to be committed to the land reform cause. Elsewhere there does not appear to have been a similar level of mobilization and coordination; nonetheless, the 1834 election shifted the assembly significantly toward Cooper’s position on the need for escheat action. The cause now had momentum and almost enough support

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to make the house an effective voice for Cooper’s ideas. Crucially, he gained two Kings County allies who were equally committed to the cause. John Le Lacheur (the “Frenchman”) was an immigrant from Guernsey who had come to the Island as a boy with his family in the early nineteenth century. Le Lacheur brought fluency in French, it would seem, a sophisticated facility with words, and a following in southeastern Prince Edward Island. The other new ally was John Macintosh, a fellow miller from northern Kings County, an Islandborn Catholic who was fluent in Scottish Gaelic. Together, the three had the ability to effectively speak to and for a wide variety of constituencies in Kings County and elsewhere.44 Growing support for Cooper’s land reform position in and out of the assembly, coupled with continued rent resistance, helped to generate a countervailing reaction, both in Britain and on the Island. In Britain, some of the colony’s landlords and those associated with them created the Prince Edward Island Association to coordinate the defence of proprietorial property.45 The association retained George Young – of Halifax, but then living in London – to assist with developing a response to the land reform challenge and with lobbying imperial authorities.46 On the Island, political debate in the assembly became more polarized and bitter. The question of where the majority actually stood on the issue came to a head in 1836 when the assembly considered yet another address to imperial authorities concerning the escheat issue. In a close division, with a majority of one, the assembly approved text that in effect accepted the Crown’s power, using the royal prerogative, to change the terms of the colony’s original grants. From the perspective of Cooper and his allies, this was a betrayal of the trust that rural residents had given their representatives and a concession that had the potential of destroying the legal tool – escheat actions – that was central to their hope of effecting fundamental land reform.47 The actions of the majority of the house of assembly heightened tensions in the colony as those seeking radical land reform sought ways to respond to what they perceived as a stab in the back. Anger articulated at public meetings in a number of rural communities ultimately took the form of an Island-wide organization to press for dissolution of the house of assembly and to develop a petition to imperial authorities that would convey popular demands for

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land reform. As well, leaders of the emergent organization began to lay plans for effective electoral organization should the house be dissolved, and for alternative modes of collective action should it not. Among the alternatives discussed at rural meetings and at a Charlottetown meeting of rural delegates was the possibility of sending a people’s deputation to England to bring grievances directly to the attention of imperial authorities.48 These must have been exciting times for Cooper, as the rural response to the position the house of assembly had taken against radical land reform was broad and powerful. As of 1836, popular objection to the status quo was in full flood, and Cooper and his allies stood at the forefront of the growing force of a rural population pressing for change. January 1836 found Cooper and Le Lacheur addressing a mass meeting at Rollo Bay, just up the coast from Bay Fortune, using a modified sleigh as their speaker’s platform. Cooper used verses from “The Pleasures of Hope” by the Romantic Scottish poet Thomas Campbell to cast the struggle for land reform on the Island as part of broader global struggles for freedom that Campbell celebrated. If land reformers persisted in their efforts, “Truth” would “pervade the unfathomed darkness” on the Island as well, and slavery would make way for freedom.49 In March and April Cooper and Le Lacheur were struggling to make their voices prevail in the house of assembly. In May Cooper was meeting with supporters in Bay Fortune to plan an Island-wide alternative to the existing house of assembly. In June at the Commercial Inn in Charlottetown he attended a meeting of rural land reform delegates that marked the beginnings of a new Island-wide land-reform organization.50 As the Island’s governor noted in correspondence with Nova Scotia’s lieutenant-governor early the following year, “a democratic spirit” was sweeping through Britain’s North American colonies.51 An escheat pamphlet published that summer included Cooper’s eloquent appraisal of the broader context for the struggle and the risks that rural Islanders faced. They were, Cooper argued, living in a time of change; an older paternal system in which leaders had once “considered [land] to be for the use of the people, to give them employment and subsistence, to raise and maintain a hardy race for the support and defense of the country” was giving way to an “improved system.” Under this new regime, “land is not for the use

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of the people, but for the proprietor – and as the lands will yield more if cultivated by a few useful hands, without women or children, the supernumeraries are turned off to the manufacturing towns and the colonies, and villages are turned into sheep pastures and pleasure grounds.” This future, he argued, was what lay ahead for Islanders: “as soon as the lands are cleared, the present inhabitants will be turned off to make room for large farms, which will either sell or let at a greater advantage.”52 It was a pattern with which Cooper and much of his audience would have been painfully familiar. Late summer brought a new lieutenant-governor, John Harvey, to the Island, and Cooper and his supporters were able to present him with petitions from Kings and Queens County calling for a dissolution of the current house of assembly. The signatures on the petitions represented more than half the adult males of these two most populous counties.53 But fall brought bad news to land reformers, as the new lieutenant-governor made it clear that he would not dissolve the assembly, and a dispatch from the colonial secretary in London, published in the local papers, made clear the Colonial Office’s continuing opposition to escheat.54 November found Cooper again attending local-level meetings in the Bay Fortune region to chart a way forward. December brought a mass meeting at Hay River in northern Kings County. There rural residents from the surrounding districts and delegates from across the colony assembled to carry on the plans that land reformers had formulated earlier in the year at the Commercial Inn. Cooper, Le Lacheur, and Macintosh chaired the meeting. Its task was to draft the petition that land reformers intended to send to London by delegation, after it had been vetted and signed elsewhere on the Island. Resolutions accompanying the petition called for rent resistance and laid out justifications for this tactic. Cooper, Le Lacheur, and Macintosh argued that to pay rents to landlords who were actively subverting the justice of the British order by misleading imperial authorities was “to foster oppression and reward crime;” they appealed to rural residents to withhold rents and resist those who would seize the “fruits of their labour.”55 Lieutenant-Governor Harvey responded to the developments at Hay River by threatening to dismiss the editor of the Royal Gazette, who had printed the resolutions, from his position as King’s Printer.56 Harvey also had the colonial secretary write to Cooper, Le Lacheur,

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and Macintosh and demand an explanation for their role in supporting “an illegal combination” to resist “the Law of the land.”57 In his confidential correspondence with the colonial secretary in London and others, Harvey noted the parallels between rent resistance in Prince Edward Island and peasant resistance to the collection of tithes in Ireland, where he had recently served as an inspector general of police.58 Harvey subsequently submitted his correspondence and the responses of the three members to the house of assembly. Harvey had considered prosecuting the three for acts that he thought “highly unconstitutional if not actually treasonable,” but decided against this as he thought no local jury would convict them.59 Nor was he willing to ask the assembly to expel them, as he feared the electorate would ensure that they were “immediately returned.”60 Instead, with Harvey’s behind the scenes guidance, the assembly disciplined the three men by demanding an apology from them. When they refused, as they were expected to, they were put in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms for contempt for the duration of the 1837 session and all of that of 1838 as well.61 This cost the three their freedom of movement, their ability to participate in the proceedings of the assembly, and their salaries. In Cooper’s case, Harvey also dismissed him from serving as commissioner of roads for six of the townships in northern Kings County, a position he had held since 1829.62 The broader context for Harvey’s response to the Hay River meeting included the recent Tolpuddle Martyrs case in Britain in which six men were convicted and transported for organizing agricultural labourers in Dorset. The successful prosecution of the Tolpuddle Martyrs had focused on the legality of using oaths as an organizational procedure, but the larger reality was that the boundaries of legality in organizing political and social protest in the 1830s remained unclear. Thus, those who acted as leaders of popular protest faced significant risks.63 Cooper and his two closest allies were disoriented by the vehemence of the lieutenant-governor’s response to the proceedings at Hay River, and the willingness of some of the assemblymen who had once supported radical land reform to turn on them. Cooper, who took the blame for their actions, acknowledged that he “might be found wanting in the scale where prudence, matured by education and experience, would have placed their influence” but argued

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that his actions were guided by “a spirit of philanthropy.”64 From the perspective of the three Kings County representatives, they had not done anything new. Similar resolutions had been passed at public meetings and published in local papers before.65 And as for the talk of illegal combinations and treason, their view of the boundary between legitimate extra-parliamentary action and illegality differed from that of the lieutenant-governor. In Cooper’s opinion, “a degree of public excitement” was necessary to get government officials to do the right thing.66 Rural support for the three soon helped them regain their balance, as community after community held meetings to ratify the proceedings at Hay River and to keep alive the plan of petitioning imperial authorities in London. Rural meetings also passed motions condemning the coercive actions the house of assembly had instituted against the three leaders.67 By early 1837, Cooper, Le Lacheur, and Macintosh were, in the eyes of many rural residents, not just able leaders but martyrs for the cause.68 The new land reform organization that Cooper and his allies helped create in the summer of 1836 not only survived LieutenantGovernor Harvey’s attacks but grew in strength in 1837 as a new lieutenant-governor arrived to replace Harvey. While continuing to organize meetings across the Island, the organization developed policies for a resolution of the land question, including the details of how escheat proceedings might be structured; it mapped out strategies for responding to legal proceedings, and established means to ensure that rural residents might effectively speak with one voice in any future elections. It also took steps to educate the new lieutenantgovernor, Charles FitzRoy, concerning the land question, both by petition and by Escheat supporters meeting with him when he toured the countryside following his arrival in the colony in the summer of 1837.69 FitzRoy found a rural populace insistent on the need for land reform and willing to use force, if necessary, to resist land agents, bailiffs, and sheriffs when they attempted to collect rents, distrain, or evict. He also heard persuasive arguments concerning the injustices of the prevailing land system and the need to effect changes that would protect tenants’ interests. FitzRoy was soon filling his dispatches to London with a discussion of the issues of land and justice that Cooper had helped to push to the forefront of political debate.70 In doing so, FitzRoy unknowingly used language that had originated

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with Cooper and his allies as they sought ways to effectively frame the land issue in political terms. Although the new lieutenant-governor initially provided support for land reform by writing to his superiors to explain the real problems that rural residents faced and the reasons for their insistence on the need for land reform, FitzRoy had little respect for Cooper or his allies and followers. Cooper, he said, was “a person of no education” (which was true enough if he meant formal education), while land reformers were “an extremely ignorant race of men.”71 FitzRoy’s uneasy relationship with Cooper worsened when FitzRoy learned of a letter Cooper had written to the various branches of the Island-wide land reform organization that had come into being in 1836. In it Cooper described the terms of a settlement of the land question that supposedly originated with conversations FitzRoy had had with land reformers while he was visiting Kings County.72 FitzRoy had responded to the tenant unrest he discovered on the Island by attempting to play the role of mediator between landlord interests and tenant interests, and there is no reason to doubt that FitzRoy did indeed discuss compromise positions that would see landlords make concessions in return for an end to the agitation. FitzRoy, however, denied the details of the letter and was furious to learn of its existence.73 Cooper wrote the letter in part to offer encouragement to those engaged in the struggle for land reform. Difficult as their way had been, Island land reformers were, he contended, making progress and by their collective action were gaining the power to achieve their goals. Creating the Island-wide organization enabled tenants and their leaders to use their growing power to frame policy and bargain effectively when appropriate. By 1837 the organization’s central committee was meeting on a monthly basis. As well as seeking to provide hope, Cooper’s letter was a summons for rural Islanders to come to a mass meeting to be held in central Kings County in the late fall of 1837.74 And come they did. The land reform meeting held outside of Sentiner’s Tavern in Georgetown proved to be the largest mass gathering held in the colony to that date. Contingents arrived in marching columns with flags and pipers to the sound of gun salutes on their arrival. Organizers had hoped fifteen hundred or even two thousand might attend. Attendance exceeded their most optimistic

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expectations. One participant estimated a crowd of two thousand gathered directly in front of the tavern, with hundreds more gathered about “fires in the woods, in the houses and fields, on the roof of the forge, & c.” Cooper, Le Lacheur, and Macintosh chaired the meeting, which passed resolutions that reiterated earlier positions: the current house of assembly did not represent the rural population and should be dissolved; the populace was committed to gaining sweeping land reform; and landlords’ rental demands were unjust and illegal. But the main message of the rally at Sentiner’s lay in its scale and its organization. Land reformers could, if they wished, mobilize large marching contingents of supporters. The lieutenant-governor of the Island had at his disposal a handful of regular troops of questionable reliability, and the possibility of rallying a modest number of Island gentry, but no possibility of acquiring more troops once ice closed the harbours. The balance of physical power lay with those demanding land reform, as was increasingly apparent when it came to the enforcement of landlords’ claims. Across much of the Island, rent collection had become impossible.75 As the winter of 1837–38 isolated the Island, FitzRoy wrote to request significant military reinforcements for the small garrison in Charlottetown.76 To the west in the Canadas, popular mobilizations similar to those occurring in Prince Edward Island had by this time led to armed clashes between those seeking fundamental reforms and the forces at the disposal of the state. In Lower Canada in late 1837, scores died in battles and skirmishes between British military forces and popular forces, and British soldiers revenged their losses by destroying villages that had served as a focal point for rebellion. In Upper Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie had tried and failed to seize Toronto by force and had retreated to the United States, where rebels from both colonies regrouped to consider their next steps.77 Cooper and the other Island land reform leaders did not follow the lead of those challenging the status quo by force in the Canadas, nor did the Island’s lieutenant-governor emulate state authorities elsewhere in provoking a violent clash between official and reform forces. Instead, as the fires of revolt died down in the Canadas, and investigations, trials, hangings, and deportations followed, things remained relatively quiet in Prince Edward Island. An assembly at odds with much of the rural population remained in place, a land

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system that lacked popular legitimacy persisted, and Cooper and his allies continued to speak for thousands of Islanders who wished to see fundamental changes. In the wake of rebellion in the Canadas, however, imperial authorities dispatched Lord Durham to serve as the new governor-general and to undertake a thorough review of the causes of unrest and grievance in British North America as a whole and recommend necessary reforms. Believing the time was ripe for bringing rural grievances to the attention of imperial authorities, the extra-parliamentary land reform organization that had taken shape two years earlier sent two of its leaders to explain the Island situation to the imperial government. In its correspondence the organization called itself the “Committee in Prince Edward Island, nominated by the people to manage the proceedings to obtain an Escheat of the forfeited Lands, and a settlement free from proprietary thrall for the people who have improved and supported the colony.”78 John Le Lacheur went to Quebec to meet with Lord Durham’s fact-finding commission, and in late April Cooper sailed to Britain to meet with officials in London. Before leaving, he asked Lieutenant-Governor FitzRoy for a letter of introduction to carry to the Colonial Office. As well as providing what Cooper asked, FitzRoy also wrote a confidential letter to the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, alerting him of Cooper’s impending arrival. In it FitzRoy described Cooper as an “illiterate” who was “possessed of much low cunning.” Although Cooper would claim to represent the majority of Islanders, FitzRoy advised the colonial secretary, this was totally untrue. Cooper’s only support came from “the most ignorant of the Tenantry,” and even this was collapsing.79 In short, FitzRoy worked behind Cooper’s back to discredit him and to destroy whatever hope Cooper might have had for gaining a hearing for rural grievances at the Colonial Office. Cooper arrived in London in late June. He took lodgings in the East End and used as a mailing address that of his wife’s aunt, Sarah Walker, who lived two miles east of the City of London, near where the newly constructed Regent’s Canal crossed Mile End Road. Soon after his arrival, Cooper met with the Nova Scotia politician Joseph Howe, unofficial leader of a reform majority in the assembly in Halifax, who was staying at Picadilly in the more affluent West End of London.80 Howe was in town on publishing business and to see

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the sights of Britain and Europe, but as well to see the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, concerning political problems in Nova Scotia.81 The Colonial Office, where Cooper travelled to seek an appointment with the colonial secretary, lay to the west of the City of London and represented unfamiliar terrain for Cooper. In his initial request for an appointment, Cooper apologized in advance for any errors in protocol he might be making, acknowledging he was “unacquainted with the rules to be observed at the Colonial Office.”82 The most important challenges Cooper faced lay in opinions formed in advance of his arrival by the colonial secretary and others at the Colonial Office. There was the perception that FitzRoy had helped to foster that Cooper was a crank representing an insignificant portion of the colonial population. As well, the Prince Edward Island Association, based in Bloomsbury within walking distance of the Colonial Office, had presented Glenelg with a set of proposals for land reform that it claimed would effectively address tenant concerns. The association’s proposals, which were billed as major concessions to the tenantry, set uniform terms for the purchase of wilderness lands, for rents, and for the duration of leases. By the time Cooper finally managed to have his first meeting at the Colonial Office in early July, FitzRoy had written from the Island to support the Prince Edward Island’s Association proposals and to say that they offered a constructive way forward. The mass of documents that Cooper brought with him to London to explain Island land grievances, the petition carrying nearly three thousand signatures he brought in support of land reform, and his insistence that the Prince Edward Island Association’s proposals were hollow and would be utterly unacceptable to Island tenants made little difference, given how the Colonial Office had come to conceptualize Cooper and his mission before it even began.83 Yet Cooper felt that he had been able to have a useful conversation with Lord Glenelg, whom Howe described after his own meeting with him as an “affable, intelligent, grey-haired and broad headed looking Scotchman.”84 Cooper’s conversation with Glenelg did not, however, produce the hoped-for results. The response to Cooper’s appeals was yet another “no” to using escheats to effect land reform, a “no” to his argument that landlord/tenant relations had become a public issue requiring state intervention of some sort,

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and a “no” to his request that the Colonial Office block legislation for redistricting that the assembly had just passed in an attempt to protect the seats of the majority in the election scheduled for later in 1838. As well, imperial officials indicated that they would wait to see the tenant response to the Prince Edward Island Association’s proposals before deciding what to do about the rural dissatisfaction.85 The Colonial Office did, however, write to the lieutenant-governor to request more information on the petition Cooper brought from Island Mi’kmaq concerning their land grievances.86 While in London, Cooper saw Joseph Hume and perhaps other members of Parliament and appears to have begun a conversation concerning the possibility of bringing the land issue to the attention of the House of Commons. Hume, a fellow Scot, a relentless voice for the interests of Britain’s labouring population, and a supporter and correspondent of William Lyon Mackenzie and other reform leaders in the Canadas, was an obvious choice for an ally.87 Over the next several years, Hume did what he could to assist Cooper and the cause of Island land reform.88 Cooper also visited with family. Sarah Walker, who was twenty-five years his senior, seems to have been an important confidant and supporter during the weeks he spent in London.89 As he was preparing to leave in early September, she noted her “admiration” for his “great talents and abilities” as well as the “great anxiety” he had suffered as a result of the struggle.90 Judging from a Chartist song she later sent him, as well as her correspondence with him, her politics ran close to Cooper’s own.91 Revealingly, her letter spoke of the “probability of the disappointment you are likely to experience in this business.” Come the fall of 1838, did Cooper share Sarah Walker’s assessment and think it unlikely that the struggle for land reform would meet success? Had the bloody suppression of the rebellions in the Canadas, the discouraging reception he received at the Colonial Office, and the conversations he had had with Hume and Howe and others led him to believe that there was little ground for hope? The answer would seem to have been “yes.” Although it was not immediately apparent in his public statements, the struggle had worn Cooper down, and he was beginning to think about life beyond the political struggle for land reform and, indeed, life beyond Prince Edward Isand.

5

“Making Property” The beginning of the 1830s had marked a turning point in William Cooper’s life, as the struggle for land reform on the Island came to absorb his attention and energies. By the middle of the decade his efforts and those of his allies succeeded in placing the issue of land distribution at the centre of Island politics. As well, despite the vociferous resistance of opponents both on and off the Island, he and other land reform leaders created a powerful and well-organized social movement capable of advancing the issue in the political arena and in the countryside. The struggle for land reform brought Cooper Island-wide acclaim among much of the rural population, as well as notoriety among landlords and their allies. At the time of the rebellions in the Canadas and Cooper’s subsequent trip to Britain, it remained unclear what the efforts to effect a land reform would produce for the Island’s tenants and small freeholders. While the potential gains remained unclear, the costs for Cooper were apparent enough. In addition to the demands on his time to attend endless meetings and strategy sessions and to write innumerable letters to the Island papers, he had to deal with attacks on his political positions, his intelligence and lack of formal education, and his integrity. In 1837 and again in 1838, the majority of the assembly voted to confine him to the custody of the sergeant-of-arms and strip him of his salary. As well, Lieutenant-Governor Harvey dismissed him from minor government posts he once held in the Bay Fortune district. He also had to respond to legal action begun by Lord Townshend’s agents that, he believed, was politically motivated.1 His

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decision to provide leadership in the struggle for land reform was taking a toll. Over these years of political engagement, the Cooper family continued to grow. Oscar was born in 1832, and George Dalrymple the following year. George appears to have been named for the speaker of the Island house of assembly who cast the deciding vote that secured Cooper’s assembly seat in 1832. Twins David and Rowena were born in 1835, and Caroline in 1838.2 Cooper’s two oldest sons, John, born in London, and William Jr, the first child to be born at Sailor’s Hope, turned twenty-one and nineteen the year Cooper sailed to London to petition imperial authorities. They were approaching an age when Cooper would need to help them establish households of their own. In the years after his return from London, his focus began to shift from the struggle for land reform to the challenge of providing for his family. His choices dovetailed with growing evidence that the opportunities for achieving land reform were diminishing. As he made plans to leave London in the late summer of 1838, Cooper assumed yet more family responsibilities, making arrangements to bring Sarah’s parents, John and Christiana Glover, as well as Sarah’s sister Margaret and her three children back with him to Bay Fortune to live at Sailor’s Hope. He booked a cabin for himself and three generations of Glovers on the Lang, which left London at the end of the first week of September. Christiana and Margaret were sick throughout the passage, but John Glover and the children fared well. Cooper and his father-in-law were able to attend to the women and keep the berths and children clean. By 22 October they had all arrived safely at Sailor’s Hope. Writing to Sarah Walker in late November, Cooper reported that the Glovers had “a room in my house to call their own.” As well, he observed that “although the manner of living is different from that of London, it appears to agree with them, for they all look much better than when they left London.” John Glover was impressed with the sky over Prince Edward Island, which he thought the brightest he had ever seen. In a postscript dated 13 December, Cooper noted that the first snows had already begun, and the ice on Little River had become sufficiently thick to carry a man. Although winter was approaching, he reported that the family could look out the window of the house at Sailor’s Hope and “see our cattle and sheep grazing in the fields.”3

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Back in London, Sarah’s sister, Christiana, who lived with Sarah Walker and helped to look after her, could likely easily imagine the scene, as she had previously travelled to Sailor’s Hope for a visit.4 The letter was intended to assure Aunt Walker that her relatives were healthy and well in Prince Edward Island, but Cooper’s mention of winter, which was of course much colder than either he or the Glovers had been familiar with in Britain, touched on an area of genuine concern. Most settlers on Prince Edward Island originated in the British Isles, and many found it difficult to accommodate themselves to the shorter seasons for planting, growing, and harvesting crops and the interminable winters during which livestock had to be housed and fed. Beyond the challenge of adaptation lay questions about what to regard as normal on Prince Edward Island. Repeated crop failures in the 1830s left many farmers wondering what agriculture was viable. In 1836, for instance, July frosts killed much of the potato crop around New London, and hard frosts in early September destroyed crops across the Island.5 Perhaps the Island’s climate was such that farmers could never hope to make a comfortable living from agriculture, and perhaps persisting in trying to do so was a recipe for poverty. These were topics for conversations among farmers and also across generations, as parents and children considered their future and wondered about the news of the opening of new agricultural frontiers in the interior of North America and elsewhere. In the letter Cooper wrote to Aunt Walker upon his return to Prince Edward Island, he was able to relate good news that he knew would please her, given that she had taken “a particular interest in my political affairs.” In the general election of 1838, which had just been held, he had won his seat “without any opposition,” and so too had “a large majority of members” who would “support the measures which I have advocated almost singly until now.”6 When the new assembly convened in 1839, Cooper faced the challenge of translating control of the popularly elected house of assembly into policy changes to benefit rural residents. Given that the upper chamber of the legislature was appointed, as was the lieutenant-governor and executive council, and that colonial legislation was vetted by imperial authorities in London, the task was not going to be easy. Prior to 1839, the Island’s executive and legislative councils had been a single body. Lord Durham’s inquiry into the causes

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of unrest in British North America led to constitutional changes that included the separation of executive and legislative councils, where they still existed.7 At the request of imperial authorities, LieutenantGovernor FitzRoy established two separate councils before the first meeting of the new assembly in 1839. The choices FitzRoy made in appointing men to these councils ensured that the land reform majority in the assembly would face a legislative council opposed to their views. Four of the twelve men he ultimately appointed to the legislative council were past members of the assembly who been pushed aside by land reformers. Lord Townshend’s land agent, Thomas Heath Haviland, was president of council.8 The fifteenth general assembly, which began meeting early in 1839, elected William Cooper to be speaker of the house.9 It must have been a gratifying affirmation of his achievements, given that Cooper had begun life in poverty and had never had the advantage of attending school. As well, the house rejected the land reform proposal that the Prince Edward Island Association put forward the previous year and that Cooper had said would be unacceptable.10 When Cooper had travelled to London in 1838, imperial authorities, given FitzRoy’s counsel, had reason to doubt that Cooper represented the majority of Island residents. As well, officials at the Colonial Office had indicated that they needed to wait and see tenant response to the association’s proposals before considering any new land reform initiatives. The assembly’s election of Cooper as speaker of the house and rejection of the association’s proposal affirmed the truth of what Cooper had said when he was in London. The assembly’s decisions set the stage for further consideration of the Island’s land question. So what did the Island’s tenantry and small freeholders need to bring an end to the land disputes? The assembly’s tactical answer to these questions was a pair of bills, one focusing on the settlement terms of the Island’s original grants and the other on what these grants had specified concerning fishery reserves. The bill focusing on the settlement requirements of the grants set the terms for an investigation into proprietors’ performance in establishing settlers on the Island’s townships, and a resulting forfeiture of grants if proprietors had failed to meet the terms of the requirements. The bill also laid out the grounds under which proprietors might receive financial compensation for loss of their estates. As well,

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it established the procedures for tenants to acquire fee simple title to confiscated lands and set the costs for doing so.11 The bill focusing on the fishery reserves offered another challenge to proprietorial claims based on the terms of the original township grants. In the 1760s when the Board of Trade and Plantations established its plans for land policy on Prince Edward Island, it intended to reserve lands around the coast for the use of those who might wish to develop the Island’s potential as a base for a Gulf of St Lawrence fishery. The Crown owned the foreshore, the land below the high tide mark at low tide, but in its grants it reserved another five hundred feet inland from the high water mark along the coasts for the fishery. This was done with most, but not all, township grants. But what exactly did “coast” mean? Were the shores of the many bays included in the definition of “coast”? And how far inland did “coast” extend up the Island’s rivers? Beyond the question of the scope of the reserves, the bill also addressed the issue of proprietors’ rights to collect rents on land within the reserves. In some grants the language used to establish the reserves retained the fishery reserve land itself as Crown property; in others the language seemed to grant the land subject to an easement for the benefit of the public. In both cases, proprietors granting leases to tenants had ignored the Crown’s fishery reserve property rights altogether, and the assembly was in a position to provide leadership in responding to this situation. The assembly’s bill did so by providing a broad definition of the meaning of “coast” and by barring proprietors from collecting rents from lands within the fishery reserves. As well, it allowed tenants to deduct any rental payments they had already made for lands within the reserves from arrears or future rents. The fishery reserves legislation was a crucial initiative that had the potential to force a negotiated settlement of the land question.12 The legislative council obstructed both of the assembly’s bills, and in so doing created a political deadlock on the Island.13 The assembly’s response was to dispatch Cooper to London once again, following the end of the session of 1839.14 This time he travelled as speaker of the house, indisputably the spokesperson for the majority of Island voters. As well, there was no longer any question whether the reforms that landlords had proposed for settling the land question would be acceptable to the Island’s tenantry. They were not.

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Lieutenant-Governor FitzRoy had misled the Colonial Office on both these issues the previous year; there was now solid evidence that Cooper rather than FitzRoy had been providing the Colonial Office with an accurate account of the situation on the Island. Once again, however, FitzRoy wrote to his superiors in advance of Cooper’s visit to undermine his credibility. Yes, Cooper and his allies had won the election but, FitzRoy argued, they had done so because of the “extreme ignorance” of most rural Islanders. This ignorance had allowed Cooper and his allies to deceive rural voters into thinking that fundamental land reform was possible. At the time of Cooper’s first visit, FitzRoy argued, the colonial secretary had not done enough to kill the hope for land reform on the Island. FitzRoy now appealed to the Colonial Office for a yet firmer “no” to Cooper’s proposals, as this would harm Cooper’s reputation and provide his political opponents with proof that his proposals had always been unrealistic, and that Cooper was unfit for political leadership. Indeed, it would demonstrate that Cooper had “deceived” Island voters into believing in a “visionary” delusion. FitzRoy acknowledged, however, that imperial authorities needed as well to develop a plan for meeting the very real concerns underlying rural protest.15 Cooper arrived in London in July. Once again he used Sarah Walker’s Mile End residence as his mailing address, assuming lodging for himself nearby in the East End.16 And once again he brought a thick file of documents to support the case for land reform as well as to highlight the constitutional problem that was developing on the Island.17 He applied to the secretary of state, Lord Normanby, for an interview soon after his arrival. The Melbourne government was in turmoil at the time, and Cooper had difficulty getting beyond preliminary interviews concerning the land question, although when he met with Normanby on 14 July, Normanby had assured him of a response before his intended return to Prince Edward Island in early September.18 Weeks later a cabinet shuffle produced a new secretary of state, this time Lord John Russell, and Cooper had to begin the process anew.19 Ultimately Russell opted not to see Cooper and instead to communicate the imperial position on the Island’s land question directly to the lieutenant-governor, for publication in the Island’s Royal Gazette.20 Well before Cooper knew that this would be the outcome of his visit, the British Parliament was prorogued

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and the possibility of bringing the Island’s grievances into that forum while he was in London had ceased to be an option.21 While waiting to hear from the Colonial Office, Cooper consulted again with Joseph Hume, and with political leaders from Nova Scotia who were in London to meet with officials at the Colonial Office concerning that colony. As a possible solution to the problems facing Island land reformers, the Nova Scotians appear to have suggested reannexation to Nova Scotia, which had a functional court of escheat. Cooper later met in Halifax with several members of the Nova Scotia house of assembly who indicated their willingness to assist with such an initiative.22 It was not clear to Cooper, or to those he spoke with in London, that raising Island grievances in Parliament that summer would necessarily be the route to success, nor did he think it appropriate to appeal to Parliament regarding Island grievances while he was still awaiting the colonial secretary’s response to his mission. As well, an appeal to Parliament would require more effective planning to have any hope of succeeding. Hume provided suggestions on how Cooper and his allies might use their majority position in the house of assembly to conduct an inquiry that would provide evidence that could be placed before Parliament at a later date.23 In his conversations and subsequent correspondence with Hume, which had begun the previous year, Cooper explored the options available to land reformers on the Island. This correspondence thus provides insight into Cooper’s understanding of the possibilities for a settlement.24 Although he and his allies in and out of the assembly were known as “Escheators” or the “Escheat Party,” the labels are somewhat misleading. Certainly, he and his allies wanted the Crown to initiate escheat proceedings and to recover township lands where the proprietors had violated the conditions of the grants. In this they were following in the path of earlier political initiatives that had, they thought, been defeated by subterfuge.25 But escheat proceedings were not the goal of the movement; rather, they were a means to an end, a way of using the power of the state to curb landlords’ power and effect land reform. By the second half of the 1830s, rural protest on the Island had persuaded two lieutenant-governors as well as officials at the Colonial Office that they had to resolve some fundamental problems with landlord/tenant relations. The idea of a negotiated compromise that would deal with tenant arrears, lessen

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rents, and provide tenants with the option of buying their farms at a fair price was increasingly gaining credibility at Government House in Charlottetown as well as at the Colonial Office. But how could the state obtain landlords’ universal participation in a settlement without interfering in landlords’ property rights? Cooper and his followers believed that the Crown had the necessary tool in the settlement provisions of the grants and the threat, or actuality, of escheat proceedings. Over the course of the 1830s, land reformers also came to realize that the fishery reserves clauses of the original grants, which Island proprietors had ignored in renting lands, afforded opportunities potentially as fruitful as the original settlement terms, if not more so. Legal authorities advising the Colonial Office and proprietors concurred in thinking that the land reformers were on strong ground on this issue.26 The assembly’s two bills reflected the land reformers’ position that the Crown continued to have property rights, grounded in the terms of the colony’s original grants, which the state could use to effect a settlement of the land question and thereby protect the interests of the majority of the population on the Island. The letter that Cooper wrote in 1837 to land reform groups throughout the Island described conversations that land reformers had had with FitzRoy about the possibility of landlord concessions; these letters indicate what from Cooper’s perspective would be a reasonable settlement at this time. Although he and others were pressing for a general escheat of the townships, the letter suggested that he would have considered a compromise whereby landlords gave up arrears, reduced rental charges by 50 per cent, and agreed to provide long leases.27 Five years later, in response to a query from Hume regarding whether “any thing less than an Escheat would satisfy the people,” he replied that “any thing in reason would satisfy the people but they are afraid to make any proposals lest such proposals were taken as a confirmation of the grants.” If the colonial secretary could “be induced to believe the truth he would have no difficulty in settling [the land question in] the colony. The Proprietors have derived a great portion of the rent from the Lands reserved for the Fisheries: the government could insist on this being refunded or in lieu thereof insist on the proprietors releasing their Tenantry from the arrears of rent and reducing the rent to what the Tenant could pay.” Cooper then proceeded to specify terms under which tenants might be willing to

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make peace with their landlords: rents of six pence per acre in Island currency accepted in produce at a fixed price payable within ten or fifteen miles of a tenant’s home, leases of 999 years, and the option of buying the fee simple of their farms at twenty years’ purchase, at a rental rate of six pence per acre. Tenants living within fifteen miles of Charlottetown might be asked to pay a bit more.28 In the increasingly bleak political context following Cooper’s second mission to London, he and his neighbours explored the possibility of buying out Lord Townshend’s claim to Lot 56. In the fall of 1841 they learned from a newspaper advertisement that Townshend intended to sell his estate. When they applied to his Island agent, Thomas Heath Haviland, to learn the price and terms, Haviland would not tell them. Believing that Haviland had recently refused an offer from Townshend to sell the Lot to him for £1,700, Cooper drew the situation to the attention of Sarah Cooper’s London relatives to see if they were interested in assisting him to make the purchase. He noted that the tenantry and others would likely pay £1,000 sterling for the small freeholds they occupied or wished to occupy. Cooper’s initiative came to naught, and he and the others soon found themselves to be Haviland’s tenants. In the late 1860s when the government ended landlordism by buying out Island landlords, Haviland’s descendants sought £10,000 for the estate but settled for £8,000.29 Cooper was well aware of the challenges Island residents faced in getting imperial authorities to redress their grievances, and by the late 1830s he had few illusions concerning the difficulties that remained to be overcome. Writing to Joseph Hume in the fall of 1839, he suggested that Hume had too sanguine a view of Islanders’ ability to shape colonial policy: “Prince Edward Island in comparison with other colonies is of small importance and for it to take any greater part in proposing amendments in the constitution would make it appear like the frog in the fable. And as it is easier to impose on a child than a grown person so we have suffered in proportion to our littleness.”30 While the focus of this particular exchange concerned Hume’s ideas on the need for structural political change in colonial governance, Cooper’s point was equally applicable to the campaign for land reform. Following his return to Prince Edward Island in 1839, Cooper found himself facing criticism from within his own party for failing

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to press more effectively for land reform while he was in London. As well, some among his allies suggested that perhaps it was time to give up on the hope of land reform and turn their attention to developing state initiatives that would promote economic growth. Both critiques were aimed at Cooper’s leadership and were products of his inability to deliver land reform gains, despite an Island-wide mobilization of the rural population and despite having a three-to-one majority in the assembly. Cooper managed to weather these challenges, but success in keeping his party together in the house did not translate into gains on the critical land question.31 Cooper and other leaders of the Island’s tenantry and small freeholders were willing to bargain and compromise. This had been the case for years. But they found themselves unable to have the necessary conversations with the imperial authorities who had the power to broker a resolution of the land question. Twice Cooper had gone to London in the hope of representing rural Islanders’ interests in such a conversation, and both times he was frustrated in his objectives. Although the relationship of trust he established with Joseph Hume allowed Cooper to show his hand and talk about what a settlement might entail, he was never in a position to do so with senior officials at the Colonial Office. The colony’s lieutenant-governor and the prominent Islanders who advised the lieutenant-governor played the most important role in blocking the possibility of such conversations. The Island’s executive council was, Cooper told Hume, “as much opposed to relieve the Tenantry as slave holders were formerly to emancipation.”32 At issue was not just the economic consequences that might follow from changes to a land system that offered rich rewards to those who worked the system, but changes in the distribution of political and social power on the Island. If Cooper and his allies succeeded in delivering tangible land reform benefits, it would be a vindication of their leadership and of the grassroots politics that had informed the land reform movement. Victories would solidify the shift in political power that had occurred with the 1838 general election. In mid-April 1842 during its last session before a scheduled election, the fifteenth assembly considered and passed a major report prepared by a Committee on the State of the Colony. It chronicled the history of the struggle for land reform on the Island and the attempts

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that the assembly, with Cooper as speaker, had made to achieve a settlement of the land question over the previous four years. The report’s eighteen resolutions noted inconsistent “vacillating Dispatches” from imperial authorities in response to demands for land reform across the previous half-century. These included authorization for establishing a court of escheat earlier in the century, followed by denials later, as well as changing justifications for denial. The assembly’s report protested the injustice of denying Islanders a court of escheat that might test landlords’ property claims – a policy the majority of the assembly defined as the suspension of British law – while at the same time maintaining the courts that allowed landlords to collect rents. It also noted that imperial ministers had blocked legislation for purchasing the estates of proprietors passed by the fifteenth assembly to resolve the land question. As well, the report noted that since 1839 the appointed legislative council had repeatedly rejected the elected assembly’s attempt to legislate solutions to the land question and had as well blocked an assembly bill for retaining a British agent to lobby imperial officials for land reform and help the assembly present its case to Parliament if necessary.33 Crucially, the report charted a way forward, despite the many setbacks. In keeping with Hume’s advice to Cooper, the Committee on the State of the Colony had collected evidence and developed a detailed exposition of material realities in the colony and the need for land reform. The report included an estimate, based in part on recent census figures, of the value of fixed and movable property on the Island, including a breakdown for property held directly by landlords, an estimate of landlord contributions to the formation of Island capital, an analysis of exchange rates and the balance of trade, an estimate of colonial expenditures, and an analysis of population trends. It also included an analysis of landlords’ investments and returns. The purpose of the fact-finding and economic analysis was to provide a basis for determining a fair price for the “fee simple value of wilderness land” on the Island. Cooper and his supporters in the assembly intended to submit the report and a statement of grievances to Parliament with the request that Parliament appoint a land commission, drawing from experts in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to appraise Island land and arrange a fair settlement between tenants and landlords. The report also noted that in order

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to achieve such a settlement, the Crown had to maintain its right to escheat proprietorial holdings.34 Joseph Pope, who was a land agent and had become the leader of Cooper’s conservative opposition in the house as well as in the executive council, sought to block passage of the report by amendment. His argument was grounded in part on the claim that Island residents needed to accept the refusal of imperial officials to permit escheat proceedings. Alexander Rae, one of Cooper’s supporters, moved an amendment to Pope’s amendment that effectively captured the frustration of land reformers on the Island come the early 1840s: That the House of Assembly of Prince Edward Island, not having any right to expect that the same measure of Escheat which has been asked by and granted to the Province of Nova Scotia ought to be asked by or granted to them, inasmuch as a small Colony ought to put up with a smaller measure of justice than a larger Colony, and the Representatives of the people ought to neglect their interest, in order to promote the exactions of the Proprietary claimants, do from henceforth recommend that the people shall submit to the continuance of whatever imposition and tyranny the Proprietary Claimants and their Agents may inflict.35 When he addressed the assembly in its closing session. Henry Vere Huntley, who had replaced FitzRoy as lieutenant-governor in the fall of 1841, added his voice to those seeking to defeat Cooper’s party. Huntley took aim at the eighteen resolutions that embodied land reformers’ plans for continuing to press their agenda and accused Cooper’s party of passing measures that were “injurious to this colony.” With an eye to the general election that was a few months away, Huntley indicated that he was “confident that the Population of this Island will not disregard their true interests for the visionary propositions and disquietude contained in the question of Escheat.”36 As Cooper noted in a letter to Hume, the address focused on “the question of Escheat (which is only a contingency) and [sought] to tell the majority that the wishes of the people are visionary.” The intent of Huntley’s speech, as Cooper saw it, was to “assist the proprietors

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to coerce the Tenantry who are in arrears for rent to return to the proprietors’ nomination at the next election.”37 Given the forces arrayed against land reformers and the lack of tangible results during the years they controlled the house of assembly, it is not surprising that they lost their majority in the 1842 election.38 Cooper retained his seat but would play a minor role in the sixteenth assembly, as there seemed little hope for realizing the project that had been at the centre of his political concerns.39 During the previous year, a general election in Britain had seen the defeat of the Whigs and the formation of Robert Peel’s new Tory government. Joseph Hume was among those who lost his seat in Parliament, though he subsequently won election in a different riding. The imperial context that had once held hope for reformers appeared to be a thing of the past.40 Well before these events, Cooper had begun to consider the possibility of leaving the Island. Within the Cooper household the possibility of emigration was an important topic of discussion beginning in the late 1830s, if not sooner. When Cooper wrote to Sarah Walker in the fall of 1838 after his first land reform mission to London, he indicated that he was thinking of building “a vessel to leave this cold climate” and buying “land in some other country.”41 The overwhelming victory for land reformers in the 1838 election may have surprised him. Within weeks of writing the letter, he was wielding a gavel as the new house speaker. That summer he was back in Britain to lobby colonial authorities and be rebuffed yet again. The family considered various proposals for where and when they might go and exactly how to orchestrate a move. Developing a consensus on these issues would not be easy. In February 1840, John wrote to his father, who was in Charlottetown as the assembly was in session, to say that he and William Jr had “been considering the probability of building a vessel ourselves for New South Wales.” The two brothers had contacted a local shipbuilder, John Morrow, concerning the possible costs for his undertaking the job for the Cooper family and had as well explored the alternative of buying a vessel of recent construction. Either option interested the brothers, and they thought it possible to be ready to sail for New South Wales in the fall of 1841. John offered this proposal as an alternative to plans his father was contemplating, which entailed

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Illustration 5.1 Coopers’ Mills, Grand River. PEI , ca. 1900. Private Papers of Edward Cooper, Aztec, New Mexico.

the family setting up their own shipyard and building their own ship. The letter suggests that Cooper and his two oldest sons agreed that the family should construct a ship suitable for leaving Prince Edward Island, but differed concerning the scale of the ship and who should construct it. The letter does not suggest, however, that they differed on where they might settle next, at least not at this time.42 John wrote his letter from the mills the Coopers owned and operated at Grand River (see illustration 5.1). He was now twentytwo and William Jr was twenty. The next oldest boy, Adolphus, was thirteen. Oscar would turn eight in 1840, George seven, and David five. The oldest daughter, Malvina, would turn fifteen that year, Rowena five, and Caroline two. The patterns of age among the children, coupled with expectations about appropriate gender roles, and the death of James (who would have been eighteen had he not died of burns in 1829), meant that John and William Jr shouldered responsibilities that made them regard themselves as occupying a different position from that of their siblings. By the early 1840s they were assuming the role of adults, working in partnership with their father and acting as brotherly allies to develop shared plans and interests. Judging from the family’s letters, John Glover, who was in his mid-sixties when he moved to Prince Edward Island, focused his attentions on the family’s garden and the delights of raising cabbages, onions, fennel, and flowers, among other things.43 From time to time he had family members in Britain bring seeds back with them to the Island.44 His wife, Christiana, requested British books and newspapers.45

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While William Sr was in Charlottetown or elsewhere on business, as he was for months at a time in the late 1830s and 1840s, John and William Jr oversaw the mills at Grand River as well as the farm operations at Sailor’s Hope and Grand River. Cooper, though, left instructions for the management of the family’s properties, and provided advice by letter. Thus, John’s February correspondence had also included a query concerning whether his father would “be willing to send the Produce to St Johns if we cannot get a Vessel for Halifax” and whether he approved of their retaining a millwright and labourer to start working on the mill early in the spring.46 Cooper’s response to his oldest sons’ plans for emigration was to point out the limitations of their proposal. First he noted that their plan was weak on specifics such as the price for buying or building a vessel and on how exactly they proposed to pay for it. As well, he suggested that they underestimated the size of the ship that such a trip would require: “From what I know of the Sea you would all be dissatisfied in the Course of a Long Voyage if you had not a comfortable safe vessel.” What the family needed was a vessel that was “roomy and not less than 150 tons,” indeed, preferably significantly larger. It would need to be “well built and sheathed and well provided with stores.” He assured his sons that “the greatest desire I have on Earth is to see you all in a country where you may obtain the necessaries of Life with Less Labour than here.” That said, he reminded them that they were still young and if they lived “to old age” they would “have time to settle and enjoy a better country many years and ought to have patience which need not prevent your perseverance.” He suggested that they continue to research the possibilities available for the family, bearing in mind the risk that the vessel John Morrow had recently built and launched might have worms in the bottom. He also drew their attention to a recent fall in the prices of ships in the British market. If the family’s affairs continued to turn out well, however, and if John and William Jr could figure out a way to purchase a new vessel of at least 150 tons, and provision it, Cooper indicated that he was willing to consider a plan whereby the family would leave in the fall of 1841.47 As for the details of running the farm and mill, Cooper suggested that John delay hiring a millwright “until the summer when I can be at home.” He agreed with John’s suggestion that the family ship

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their farm produce to Newfoundland rather than Halifax, as “provisions are scarce in England and France [and] that will keep up the price in European markets and will be likely to affect the price in Newfoundland.”48 He advised John as well to try to make up their accounts “and see whether we will be likely to recover any of our debts to help build or purchase a vessel.” He signed the letter “from an indulgent Father.”49 There was no need to add as well that it was from a father with a great deal of hard-won practical knowledge and wisdom, and that he was seeking to pass some of this on to his sons. A few weeks later, Cooper responded to a letter from John asking for his blessing on marriage plans. John’s intended wife was a local woman whose family had recently been kind to him while he had been off work with an injury. Cooper counselled against the marriage, unless the family were about to leave the colony; otherwise, “the connection would lower our rank.” He also suggested to John, who was twenty-two at the time, that “when children are dutiful and parents reasonable and indulgent there is more durable happiness than in the gratification of any passion that would separate Family tyes.” One of the messages of the letter was that John needed to recognize the limitations of a youthful perspective and be less impetuous. Cooper advised John to give “close attention to your work” as this would “restore” him, and as well advised John and the rest of the family: “Exert yourselves to collect property and use it with Economy.”50 John and William Jr’s restlessness and interest in exploring options far away from Prince Edward Island was not unusual. On Prince Edward Island and elsewhere in the region, young people, and sometimes their parents as well, were increasingly considering the possibilities of emigrating to more attractive locales. A few years earlier, residents of the Belfast district of Queens County had begun to explore the possibility of emigration to Texas.51 Other Islanders chose to move to New Orleans about this time.52 The migration of hundreds of Highland Scots from Cape Breton to New Zealand in the 1850s was shaped in part by more modest migrations from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Antipodes earlier in the century. Rev. Norman McLeod, the charismatic leader of many of the Cape Breton migrants, was inspired to move to Australia by reports from one of his sons, Donald, who had settled in the Adelaide region in the 1840s and

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become a newspaper editor there. The papers and descriptions that Donald sent back to his father in Cape Breton in the late 1840s, and which his father shared with neighbours, sparked an interest in emigration.53 Thus, in time McLeod responded to his parishioners’ growing dissatisfaction with Cape Breton by leading his flock from Cape Breton to Australia and then on to the North Island of New Zealand, where they founded the highland settlement of Waipu.54 The Cooper brothers may have become enthusiastic about New South Wales because of the content of similar personal letters that made their way to Prince Edward Island, or because of newspaper reports or emigrant manuals.55 Certainly, New South Wales offered opportunities for agriculturalists with the means to get there and with capital; but it was not yet a major destination for British emigration. Marjory Harper has characterized 1838 as the beginning of a “significant flicker of interest in Australia.”56 Around 7,500 immigrants arrived in New South Wales that year; more than 80 per cent of this immigration was assisted with government subsidies.57 Significant immigration, however, only came after the discovery of gold in Australia in 1851. In the event, Cooper and his sons did not buy, commission, or construct a boat in 1840, nor did they emigrate. Their boat-building plans, however, came to fruition later with the construction of a twohundred-ton vessel that the Coopers hoped to sell in the British market in the fall of 1843. A few days before its launch in late September, Cooper wrote to Sarah Walker in London to say that he would be bringing the vessel to an as yet undetermined port in Britain in the late fall, and that the family had commissioned another vessel as well, which was under construction. His letter made it clear that the emigration plans he and his sons had discussed several years earlier were still in place. He indicated that he intended to sell the brig and its cargo in Britain and hoped that the returns would “enable me to fit out the other vessel on the stocks to take the Family to a country with a more favourable Climate.”58 This other vessel, the Flora Beaton, would be launched as a 201-ton brigantine in late August 1844.59 It is not clear whether his silence on the family’s exact destination was because the family had not yet decided where they were going or because he was reticent to acknowledge the extent of the voyage they planned, lest it upset their London relatives. Nor is it

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clear how and why John and William Jr’s plans for emigrating in the fall of 1841 had become a plan for emigrating in 1844. Events in the Island’s house of assembly may have played a role in determining the timing of the family’s exodus from Prince Edward Island. In February 1840, as Cooper was responding to his sons’ hopes for an early departure, he was also defending his conduct in presenting the case for land reform to the Colonial Office in 1839, and trying to find a way forward in a political context that seemed to offer little ground for hope. Come late summer, however, things had changed for the better. Cooper had weathered the criticism, and Island papers were reporting that Joseph Hume had effectively raised tenant concerns in Parliament. As a result, the colonial secretary, Lord John Russell, acknowledged that proprietors had failed to fulfill the terms of their grants and that imperial authorities needed to address tenant grievances.60 Indeed, months earlier, Cooper believed it likely that “the Land Question will be settled by Law this year.”61 By the fall of 1843, however, the political context was decidedly bleak. The first session of the sixteenth assembly was behind Cooper. He was no longer speaker of the house and he knew that the majority that had elected as the new speaker Joseph Pope, one of the most vehement of his political opponents in the house, was unlikely to press for radical land reform. With conservatives back in power in Britain as well, the possibilities for effectively addressing the Island’s land question were much diminished.62 Cooper’s decision to resume sailing was shaped in part by the closing down of the political opportunities he had been pursuing, and his discouragement with the struggle for land reform. It was shaped as well by a living bequest that Sarah Walker made to his family. While Cooper was in London in 1838, his wife’s aunt provided him with moral support for his efforts to press the Colonial Office on the need for land reform. Over the course of his stay in London, she was able to learn more about how her relatives in Prince Edward Island were faring. As Cooper was preparing to return to the Island, Aunt Walker decided to give the Coopers £300 that would otherwise have come to them at her death. She also decided to provide her sister and brother-in-law, Christiana and John Glover, with an income sufficient to facilitate their retirement to Prince Edward Island. The gifts were a significant addition to the Coopers’ resources, and they helped to open

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up new opportunities for the family. In making the gift to William and Sarah Cooper, Sarah Walker highlighted the “hard labour and bodily suffering” William had “gone through in bringing up and providing for so large a family,” and her wish, under the circumstances, to help him.63 At the time, William and Sarah Cooper had nine children. This would prove to be the final size of their family. The Coopers’ tenth and last child died shortly after birth in the fall of 1840. Cooper wrote to John at the mills at Grand River to inform him of his youngest brother’s death and to ask that John see to the construction of a coffin that was twenty-three by nine by five and one-half inches.64 Yet another of the factors inducing Cooper to return to maritime enterprises in the 1840s was his oldest sons’ wishes for their own future. In the 1830s, as they matured, Cooper had thought that he might help to establish them by providing them with the resources to become farmers when they came of age. With this end in view, he began purchasing land on nearby Lot 55, one of the two townships on the Island that had been escheated earlier in the century to be redistributed by the Crown in small parcels.65 He intended to provide John and William Jr each with a hundred-acre freehold and as well to assist them with the other things they would need in order to get underway as farmers. The four hundred acres that he ultimately managed to purchase on Lot 55 would suffice to help Adolphus and Oscar establish themselves as farmers too, when they came of age. Cooper’s plans, however, encountered opposition from John and William Jr, who were not attracted by the prospect of making their living by farming on Prince Edward Island. They noted that it had been a struggle for their father to raise a family from his farm and mill properties combined. From their perspective, agriculture on the Island did not offer them a good means for acquiring a comfortable living. Instead, they suggested that their father provide them with a sum of money sufficient to enable them to “commence merchandise.”66 Cooper doubted that his sons yet possessed the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in business and so was reluctant to give them capital that might be squandered. At some point they had suggested to him that they could make a living as merchants if he would help them acquire a boat. In response, he noted that when he had included them on a voyage, “both of you were sea sick and useless at sea.”67 Later, they had asked for “a sume of Money to build a saw

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Mill in Newfoundland in a place you never saw where labour and provisions were high” and at such a distance that he could “neither give advice nor render assistance.”68 Ultimately, he suggested to his sons that they join him as business partners and that the three of them establish a shipyard and build a vessel. By these means, his sons “might learn to be shipwrights and gain insight in merchandise” in the process. This proposal appears to have been under discussion in the winter of 1839–40 when John wrote to his father about the possibility of he and William Jr purchasing a vessel to take to New South Wales. William Jr was not yet of age but would turn twenty-one later that year. Cooper proposed partnership arrangements in which the three of them would jointly manage the farm at Sailor’s Hope, the farm and mill at Grand River, the acreages he had purchased on Lot 55, which were currently serving as woodlots, and a capital account worth £700 currency and monies owing. His sons were each to have a fifth of the profits from managing these assets, after paying 6 per cent per annum interest on the use of roughly half of the capital. The deployment of Cooper’s labour and that of the rest of the family was included as part of the arrangement. Cooper was to “conduct the business in [his] own name and in all dealings of importance [he] would not act without consent of one of them.”69 In time, John and William Jr agreed to this proposal, with the exception of the plan to develop their own shipyard. According to Cooper, John and “especially William [Jr], were of opinion that John Morrow would build us a vessel cheaper than we could build for ourselves.” Cooper’s recollection of events was that “to satisfy them” he “contracted with Morrow to build a Brigg and before that was finished to build the Flora Beaton.” It was the brig that he told Sarah Walker he intended to sail to Britain in the fall of 1843 and the Flora Beaton that he was referring to when he told her that the family had another boat on the stocks that they intended to take to a “country with a more favourable climate.” The business of constructing ships and assembling loads of timber for the British market, in which Cooper and his two oldest sons became partners, required major outlays of capital, and, while offering opportunities for significant profits, also exposed them to many risks, as Cooper well knew. Typically, outlays for ship construction began in

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the winter, with advances to a shipbuilder to pay for getting the necessary timber to the shipyard, laying down the ship’s keel, and beginning its frame. Further expenditures were required for each stage of the construction and for meeting the costs of rigging and gear. Before the process could begin, the details of the construction and financing arrangements were spelled out in a contract between the builder and his customer, with dates of delivery, arrangements concerning who would supply the materials needed for construction, and performance bonds in the event of either party failing to meet their obligations.70 Once the vessel was launched, owners then had to pay for insurance, crews’ wages, and provisions. If the owners wished to take direct charge of felling and squaring timber, or of hauling wood to be sawn into deals, the costs of acquiring cargoes of wood began at the beginning of the winter before the shipping season. Alternatively, owners of a vessel destined for the British market might buy the timber and deals from others when they had a ship ready to sail, or take someone else’s cargo and simply earn a freight return. Whatever the choice, assembling cargoes of timber and deals and constructing vessels for sale in the British market required extensive investments before any returns could be realized. In the case of the vessels and cargoes the Coopers were sending to Britain, their investments were around £1,000 per ship. The Coopers worked with James Peake of Charlottetown to meet their credit needs, arrange for insurance, and acquire marine supplies. Peake had moved from Plymouth to Charlottetown in the 1820s to establish a branch of the family’s shipbuilding and shipping business on the Island. By the 1840s, Peake, who was eleven years younger than William Cooper, was the Island’s leading shipbuilder and a pillar of the merchant community.71 He well understood that the shipbuilding and timber industries could be perilous as well as profitable. While cautious entrepreneurs could guard against some of the risks by taking care in the construction of their vessels and in the procurement of cargoes, and by insuring their investments, there were no safeguards against unexpected downturns in the markets for ships and wood products. Given the long lag time between investments on Prince Edward Island and selling the end products in the British market, it was easy to get caught on the wrong side of a declining market, as Cooper knew from his experience with the Hackmatack in the 1820s.

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Initially the Coopers did well with their involvement in the shipbuilding and timber industries, despite many challenges. Although they had once planned to use the Flora Beaton to emigrate to a warmer climate, they chose instead to load it with a cargo of timber and deals and sail it to Britain for sale.72 The Flora Beaton had, it would seem, been damaged in some way after it was first launched, and John Morrow rebuilt it for the Coopers as an eighty-nine-foot brigantine of just over two hundred tons.73 When Cooper contacted Peake to acquire insurance for the vessel prior to its launch in August 1844, Peake suggested that Cooper consider sailing without insurance, thus saving that expense, given that he would be sailing the Flora Beaton to Britain himself. Peake’s assessment of Cooper’s skills as a mariner certainly was a compliment, as Peake too was a master mariner, but Cooper demurred: “I feel uneasy to run the whole risque. I cannot stand the fatigue which I could at 30 years of age and I cannot be always present.”74 The decision to take out insurance on the Flora Beaton and its cargo was one Cooper would not regret. One day out of Bay Fortune another vessel ran into the Flora Beaton and tore off parts of the bowsprit gear and the head rails. Three weeks later, Cooper encountered a gale that took away the fore topmast. He and the crew managed to jury-rig another topmast, only to lose it in yet another gale as they attempted to round the north of Scotland through the Pentland Firth. Cooper posted a signal of distress and managed to summon a steamer to tow them to Sunderland. The gale proved too strong, however, and the steamer had to leave the Flora Beaton at a nearer port.75 Despite the many problems, Cooper was able to sell the vessel and its cargo in Britain in the winter of 1844–5. The £1,200 sterling he received meant that the Coopers had turned a profit on their investments.76 The profitability of selling ships, timber, and deals in the British market seems to have caused the Coopers to modify their plans for an early departure from Prince Edward Island. But John and William Jr certainly had not abandoned the dream of moving elsewhere. Writing to his sons from London in early 1845 following his difficult journey with the Flora Beaton, Cooper responded to their request that he acquire information on “emigration and settlement.” 77 Judging from his response, it would seem that John and William Jr continued to be interested in moving to Australia.

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While agreeing to do what he could to obtain the specific information his sons sought, Cooper offered general advice on how to assess possible destinations and the specific possibilities they might consider. He warned them to be aware that “different persons will take different viewes of the same object and many persons write descriptions of new countries to serve their own interest.” That said, he noted that there were “certain rules for the government of tractable persons that when duly followed would prevent them being led astray.” The choice of language and emphasis in the original letter suggests his increasing doubts concerning whether his older sons were “tractable persons.” They should, he suggested, be attentive to “Climate, Government, the people amongst whome you intend to dwell, and the soil.” He then offered his thoughts on the various possibilities before them. “The southern parts of New Holland” (Western Australia) had, he noted, “a fine climate, but the land is low and level for its extent and consequently is Subject to be flooded at one season and parched up at another.” Although there were many parts of New Holland that “were free from those objections,” he noted that “it is Governed by a Council of greate Land holders and even when it obtains a Legislature the suffrages will be confined to a few persons and no land can be offered under one pound sterling per acre.” For those reasons, “That country is not fit for you unless you have made up your mind for you and your descendants to be the Servants of the aristocracy.” His remarks on governance and social structure applied as well, he said, to “Van Dieman’s Land and New Zealand.”78 Turning to other possible destinations for emigration and settlement, Cooper noted Brazil as a possibility. It was, he said, “a hot country and the people roman catholics.” Nonetheless, “Protestant Mechanics, Manufacturers and Merchants might meet encouragement and would be protected by the police and their employers.” Still, “no protestant holding Land in the country would be free from insult.” Moving on to the western coast of the Americas, he noted that the “Oregon Territory has the same climate as Europe, has Mountains and Valleys,” and “the water will never fail.” As well, he noted that “ a free grant of land will be given for several years to come” and that the territory would be settled by Protestants. Settlers in all of these places would, Cooper argued, be dependent on the export of produce for “many years” in order to

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“obtain manufactured goods, and their markets can only be India and Europe.” Each country would have its own specialties: “The Australian Colonies can export wool, wheat and Beef. Brazile Timber, tobacco sugar, cotton, wool and drugs.” Oregon, which came out best in his analysis, “will produce and rear in the Highest perfection all the Cattle, Grain and fruits of Europe, and will export Timber, grain, Beef, Porke, Butter to India without crossing the Hot Latitudes.” In England, at the time, though, he noted that “Oregon is sour grapes,” as the territory was about to be lost to the United States.79 The letter reveals the global scope of the opportunities that the Cooper family saw for themselves. It also reveals both their continuing interest in emigration and the extent to which their ultimate destination was still undecided. Turning to issues closer to hand, Cooper noted a number of matters of immediate importance to the family’s business concerns. These included a growing conflict with members of the Morrow family, who were currently building yet another vessel, the Sea Walker, for them. The conflict had come to focus on John Morrow’s performance securities. Cooper did not believe that Morrow possessed the capital to compensate them if he failed to fulfill the vessel construction contract. He instructed his sons to employ Edward Palmer, one of his political opponents, as the family’s attorney in the dispute, as Palmer would “do justice to his client although they differ in politics.” Moving on to other matters, Cooper also noted that a new law governing the employment of seamen had just been passed in Britain. The new statute would make it necessary for him to bring seamen out from Britain to crew the Sea Walker on its maiden voyage to Britain, as it would prevent him from hiring sailors who had deserted from other British vessels. As well, he provided further advice to his sons concerning two cargoes of timber he had asked them to assemble for the forthcoming shipping season. One of the cargoes would be for a vessel he would charter and the other for the Sea Walker when it was ready to sail. He anticipated that either William Jr or Adolphus would make the voyage with him to Britain on the Sea Walker, “most likely Adolphus, if he will prepare himself fit to keep an acct.” Cooper had been in touch with James Peake, who was then in Plymouth, and anticipated he would be returning to the Island on one of Peake’s vessels in the spring.80

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Although the family had commissioned Morrow to construct the Sea Walker for them, Cooper continued to believe that they would be better served if they undertook the construction of vessels themselves rather than relying on others. Thus, according to Cooper’s memory of events, he wrote to his sons after the sale of the Flora Beaton to say that if “they were desirous of carrying on business with me they might get out a fraim of a ship to build ourselves, and if they could get out a cargo of large hardwood at a port where a ship could load it would leave us a profit.”81 Cooper’s interest in assuming direct control of vessel construction was not new, but it appears to have grown with the increasing problems the family was having with reliance on others. Cooper was the captain who actually brought their vessels to market and heard what buyers and surveyors had to say about the materials and workmanship. Thus, he was in a good position to judge what they were getting from local builders. His detailed comments on the quality of the construction of the Sea Walker, which underwent a survey by Lloyd’s in Britain prior to sale, probably reflected his thoughts on their earlier vessels as well. The deck carlings – beams running under the deck which helped support the mast – were “too light,” the deck “very much torn with the spikes’ heads,” the “spikes have been carelessly driven” and had “split off pieces of the Beams and Carlins,” the decking “unfit to take a dry cargo.” Some of the “Timbers are found to be unsound,” the “keel is plugged and the keelson has one scarf over another, and the planking of the ceiling and hanging of the rudder is not workman like.” As a result, “the brig is only a third rate vessel fit to carry Lumber or Coals.” He noted that “Thirty Pounds in Timber and finishing would have made her a first class vessel” and that the small savings Morrow had achieved in not maintaining standards had cost the Coopers £200 or more.82 Unbeknownst to Cooper, at the time he wrote to his sons to suggest that any future boatbuilding needed to be directly under the family’s control, his partnership arrangement with his sons was coming unstuck. When he returned to Prince Edward Island early in 1845, he discovered that his sons had commissioned the McLeod family to construct a vessel at Grand River. Cooper was displeased, both because this was contrary to his instructions and because he did not trust the McLeods, given dealings John had had with them in the past. As well, according to Cooper, “on my arrival in the Island

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Bills [of exchange] came pouring in (some written in pencil) drawn upon me by John for worthless timber at Harbours only fit for small craft.” From Cooper’s perspective, “as my sons did not follow my instructions, my agreement with them was at an end,” at least until the Sea Walker could be sold and they could establish where the business the three had been conducting stood. This was easier said than done, however, as a contract had already been signed with Murdoch McLeod for the construction of the largest vessel the family had yet built. When launched in July 1846, the Malvina would measure 249 tons. It would seem that the brothers had also made an arrangement with John Morrow to build yet another vessel the following year. 83 By the mid-1840s, Cooper and his sons were in a difficult position. Their engagement in shipbuilding and the timber trade had worked well for them and they had managed, working together, to accumulate more capital with each ship they sold. But there was always another ship under construction and debts and interest owing on the next vessel. Such was, in many ways, the nature of the industry, given the scale of capital required to enter it and the lag time between the starting point for investing in a ship and the earliest opportunities for realizing a return. Given the modest scale on which the Coopers were able to operate, they were inevitably in debt much of the time, as the costs of building a new vessel, purchasing a cargo, paying insurance, and hiring a crew all had to be met, one way or another, before a profit could be realized from the venture. Being in debt bothered Cooper much more than it did his sons. Writing to John from London in the fall of 1846, he complained of a letter from John requesting that he bring yet more goods to the Island from Britain on his return. After listing the many debts they had yet to pay, and the interest costs that these bore, Cooper reminded John that, beyond these problems, “we cannot consider ourselves the masters of any Property while we are in debt.”84 On another occasion, when the Coopers had a vessel making a late-season journey to Britain for sale, their London agent noted of Cooper that “it will be a great relief to his mind to have that property realized.”85 No doubt this was the case with every one of the vessels Cooper built with his sons. This discomfort with debt was exacerbated by a sensitivity to the risks the Coopers faced. They had done well with their first boats, but this was no guarantee that they would continue to be so fortunate. As

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of the fall of 1845, Cooper was advising his sons to pull back from the continuing speculations that were preventing the family from emigrating.86 From his perspective, his sons were far too willing to take chances and to gamble, and insufficiently attentive to the need to act with prudence, care, and caution. Writing to John and William Jr from London in the fall of 1845, he advised them that the “shipping market will soon be glutted” and that their Island-based business could not “compete with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada,” as “their Timber is far Superior to ours.” As well, he believed the quality of shipbuilding elsewhere was better: “The Large Ship yards of those places are so near to Each Other they try to excell one another in workmanship. But our vessels are built in the Bush where a man takes a Job it is to Slight the work and deceive you and when you have no other vessel near to Compare the work by they will persuade and you may think you have a good vessel untill you come to England amongst others and then you are ashamed to own it.”87 Cooper found himself in a quandary in dealing with the fundamental differences dividing him from his sons. He might tell them that he considered their business agreement to be at an end following the sale of the Flora Beaton, and he might believe that the commitments to build the Malvina and the additional boat that Morrow would construct, the Plenty, should be “at the risque of my sons,” but there was no way to actually effect a division of interests. Thus, despite the strains and fundamental disagreements, the three would have to keep working together until the Sea Walker, Malvina, and Plenty were sold. The Sea Walker ran aground on the bar at Grand River after being loaded with timber prior to departure for Britain in 1845. Cooper had previously warned John about the risks of gathering timber at harbours unsuitable for large vessels, and the Sea Walker’s fate seemed to prove his point. Despite sloppy workmanship in its construction, and leaks that it developed after being on the bar at Grand River, he succeeded in selling the Sea Walker in Britain during the winter of 1845–46. The Malvina was launched in July 1846. Cooper served as captain of this vessel yet again, taking it to London with a cargo of timber and deals. William Jr, who sailed with his father, characterized the forty-four day voyage as difficult. They had to “keep two hands constantly at the pumps,” and a gale off the Grand

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Illustration 5.2 View of Grand Surrey Docks Canal, with timber raft, 1826. Southwark Local Studies Library, painting by G.B. Yates.

Banks broke the bowsprit, swept away their deck load, and “nearly took the foremast.” After repairing the bowsprit as best they could in heavy seas, they reached Cork and from there made their way to the Surrey Canal in London, which was becoming a focal point for London’s timber and deal trade (see illustration 5.2 and map 2.2). There the Coopers arranged the unloading and rafting of the cargo and made arrangements to have the Malvina repaired.88 Despite Cooper’s uneasiness about late season Atlantic crossings, they sailed the Malvina back to Prince Edward Island after its repairs, and picked up yet another load of timber.89 The Malvina was not loaded again and ready to sail until the day after Christmas.90 By this time, Cooper was unwell. William Jr made the voyage with Mr Stanton standing in as captain. The Malvina’s second voyage was both quick and difficult. Although the vessel made it to Cowes on the Isle of Wight in twentysix days, a storm severely damaged the vessel and left one crew member with a broken leg. Given the severity of the gale, William Jr reported from Cowes that he was “truly grateful we are all alive and safe.”91 Other vessels, he reported, had lost crew members during the storm. It took more than a week for the Malvina to make it the rest of the way to London and required assistance from a steam tug for the last part of the journey, because of the poor state of the

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vessel.92 The Malvina’s late sailing had been in part a consequence of circumstances beyond the Coopers’ control. They had contracted to take a cargo of timber from the Island to Britain, but the merchant involved failed to have the timber ready for loading on time. As a result, the Coopers and Captain Stanton had to file claims against the shipper; these remained to be resolved in London, after the arrival of the Malvina. It would seem that Cooper put management of the Malvina in the hands of their London agent, John Pitcairn. The Malvina continued to sail with Captain Stanton in command, picking up passengers in Ireland in the spring of 1847 destined for the United States and returning across the Atlantic with a cargo of grain.93 The British shipping registry indicates that the Malvina ultimately was sold in the United States and registered in Baltimore in July 1850.94 While William Jr was battling storms on the North Atlantic and dealing with the many problems that had developed in consequence of the Malvina’s voyage to London in the winter of 1846–47, Cooper was recovering from his illness on Prince Edward Island. According to John, Cooper spent some of the winter “altering the threshing machine, which could not work unless he had something to do with it. It assisted to vile his temper, although I believe it was the means of bringing him health.” John acknowledged that his father “certainly did improve the machine after a deal of time and trouble about it.” Threshing machines were not entirely new technology in the 1840s. Small, hand-powered machines had been in use in North America since the early 1800s, but horse-powered threshers such as that which Cooper was seeking to fix, capable of threshing several bushels of grain per hour, were still relatively new, far from being generally in use, and like much of the agricultural technology of the time, still in need of fine-tuning and modification.95 It is not surprising, however, that Cooper believed himself capable of mastering the operation of his threshing machine and improving its performance. As he worked through the winter, Cooper was also attempting to sort out the much more complex systems governing the workings of celestial bodies. As John noted in a letter to William Jr written in February, as well as fixing the threshing machine and “getting the barn prepared to make the rigging” for the Plenty, their father had “commenced his ‘Theory of the Solar System,’ and expects to finish it before commencing the rigging” in mid-March.96 Cooper’s treatise,

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when completed, was titled “Inquiry into the Cause of the Motions of the Bodies of the Solar System.” The opening paragraph of Cooper’s enquiry acknowledged that it was likely that the work would “interfere with opinions which have been received and adopted.” Indeed it did. Rejecting Newton’s concept of universal gravitation, Cooper offered an explanation for the workings of the solar system that was not linked to the “power of attraction.” His theory was grounded in part in his belief that “if attraction is the prevailing power in our solar system” and if it had “existed from eternity,” regardless of how “distant in space one body may be from another or however distant in time from their creation of first formation, all bodies and all matter must have been attracted into one body before this time.”97 Cooper’s alternative model for planetary motion focused on the power of the light emitted by the sun to give “heat light and life to the bodies in this system” as witnessed by the sun’s ability to generate the movement of wind and water on earth, and to “start vegetation (from the smallest blade of grass to the tallest trees).” Cooper’s conceptualization is difficult to follow in parts of his essay, but there is no missing the enquiring mind that informs the work. His treatise sought to bring a unified understanding to his own observations of tides, and how they functioned in different locales, and the Northern Lights, as well as the motions of the earth, moon, and planets, the differing orbits of comets, the presence of areas of the sky with many stars and other areas with few, and the behaviour of the sun. Cooper arranged to have his old friend, John MacGregor, who had moved to Britain and become a member of the British Parliament, submit the paper to the Royal Society in London the following year.98 Cooper also sent the essay to an Island paper for publication.99 The Royal Society did not publish the essay in its journal, nor did it include the essay in the society’s listing of papers received in these years.100 Cooper was fascinated by astronomy, mathematics, and earth sciences and believed that the route to understanding the workings of the universe lay with careful observation and reasoning. It is not hard to imagine how he might have come to these interests and beliefs, given his years at sea and the learning he had acquired to become a ship’s captain. No doubt he was aware that some commercial captains, such as the whaling captain William Scoresby, had

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successfully combined their observations and reflections at sea with scientific study and writing. Scoresby, though, had the advantage of having attended lectures at the University of Edinburgh between voyages and had in the early 1800s established a relationship with the distinguished naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who was president of the Royal Society for more than four decades.101 While Cooper was a prodigious reader, and likely took advantage of the opportunities for self-education available to him in London between voyages, there is no evidence that he was able to acquire formal training in math and sciences. He did arrange, however, for Adolphus to study navigation in London while the two of them were there and probably also encouraged William Jr to take advantage of the collections of antiquities at the British Museum, as William Jr did while the two were in London in the winter of 1848–49.102 There is no evidence, however, that Cooper applied for a reader’s ticket to use the British Museum’s Library. There, among others, he might have bumped into Karl Marx, who thought the library an ideal “vantage point for a student of Bourgeois society,” Francis Place, and Joseph Hume.103 On the Island, Cooper had participated in the meetings of the Charlottetown Mechanics’ Institute after its founding in 1839, and in 1841 delivered a well-received lecture on the role of prevailing winds in producing ocean currents.104 In the winter of 1846–47, as he struggled to improve his threshing machine and make sense of the workings of the solar system, William Cooper was also pondering the future of his family. This, like the threshing machine, made him cross because, as John reported to William Jr, he did not like “the prospect of our separation next summer and because I do not agree with his opinion of going to California (which is the principal topic when I am in his company).” Father and son quarrelled about “the proper mode of making property.”105 John’s letter highlights Cooper’s continuing debates with his sons concerning what lay ahead for the family. Would John and William Jr strike off on their own once the last ship under construction, the Plenty, had been launched and sold? Or, instead, would the family remain together and develop a common emigration plan? And where might John and William Jr, or the family as a whole, go? With the inclusion of California as a possible destination, the options were widening yet further. As well, there were Cooper’s fundamental

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disagreements with his oldest sons on the best way of making a living and, in John’s words, on “making property.” Meanwhile, the family’s life proceeded apace. John reported to William Jr that “the stock is doing well,” though “the feed for the horses will be short” and “provisions of all kinds are expected to be scarce next summer.” Adolphus was “making good work with the mill, tho water is very scarce.” George was attending to the new kiln the family had installed at the mill, and it was doing “its’ work to perfection.” John Glover was planning his garden for the coming season, while Sarah Cooper divided her time between Sailor’s Hope and the mill at Grand River. John reported that his mother was “as busy sewing as any of the London needle women.”106 With children old enough to oversee the family’s various enterprises, and female servants to assist with the work at Sailor’s Hope and the mills, Sarah Cooper seems to have had time to enjoy her family and to focus her attention on indoor tasks.107 That winter Malvina became the first of the children to marry. Her new husband was James Morrow, son of John Morrow, the shipbuilder who had reconstructed the Flora Beaton, built the Sea Walker, and was working on the Plenty, which was due to be launched that summer.108 The Plenty produced a plentitude of problems. As with the Malvina, it was damaged before it even managed to clear Prince Edward Island, this time on the flats of Howe Bay. Cooper served as captain, bringing the vessel and its cargo of wood into the West Indies Docks at London in October 1847. There he found that the “sale of all property” was “dull and uncertain” and that “the failures here and scarcity of money” had “reduced the prices of lumber and timber” to such an extent that he was not sure whether they would “be able to sell the Plenty at all.”109 Writing from the Royal Exchange, where he had gone to make arrangements to put the Plenty and its cargo up for auction, he instructed William Jr, who remained aboard the Plenty, to scrub it well to ready it for sale. Their efforts were to no avail. The vessel failed to draw the minimum price they had set, which was £1,450. Nor were they able to sell the Plenty’s cargo, as, according to William Senior, “railroads and house-building” were at a standstill.110 Cooper and their London agent, John Pitcairn, decided that their best option was to lay the Plenty up for the winter, and to try to sell it again the following spring. William

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Jr thought them both wrong in this, and believed that he and his father should have sought freights for the winter season.111 Certainly such a course might have brightened his prospects. As it was, he found himself spending much of the winter living on the Plenty at the West Indies Docks, with neither a fire to keep him warm nor company.112 When William Jr did have the company of his father, they quarrelled. Their arrival in London at the onset of the great depression of 1848, with a boat and cargo that proved to be unsaleable, and debts to pay, had heightened Cooper’s dissatisfaction with the behaviour of his oldest sons. From his perspective, he and the rest of the family that relied on him were in this undesirable position because John and William Jr had made decisions they had had no right to make in ordering construction of the Malvina and the Plenty, and had in effect “taken the management of my property from me.” He was troubled by what he saw as a mixture of naiveté, bad judgment, and dishonesty in his oldest sons’ behaviour, not just in the decision to build the two boats when they did not themselves have the capital to do so but as well in subsequent actions they took which gave up securities Cooper had obtained against the Morrow family during the building of the Plenty.113 For their part, no doubt, John and William Jr wished to maintain good relations with the Morrows who were friends and neighbours and, following Malvina’s marriage, relatives as well. At the core of the difficulties, Cooper and his sons differed fundamentally on “making property.” From Cooper’s perspective, his sons were bedazzled by “extravagant notions of gambling speculations,” particularly William Jr, whose “ruling passion” he maintained was “a greed for money.”114 As a father, he had sought to foster the skills and behaviour that would allow his sons to have productive lives, but instead he despaired that they were drawn to the quick returns of speculations. This troubled him not just because it risked hard-won assets but because he thought, as he phrased it in a letter to William Jr, that pursuit of speculations would “unsettle your minds from habits of industry to which it is not an easy matter to return.”115 As father and son waited out the winter in London, their difficult relations were, it seems, exacerbated by William Jr’s temper. John, who had spent the previous winter with his father, advised his younger brother to do as he had done and “take it coolly.”116 Perhaps the advice came too late, perhaps William Jr lacked the patience to

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remain cool, or perhaps the stresses of being in London in the midst of the crisis of 1848 were too much for both. Their relations went from bad to worse as the winter wore on. In March Cooper wrote to William Jr in the aftermath of a verbal dispute. His letter began: In the intercourse of mankind every man who desires to be respected finds it to be his duty to choose language suitable to the person with whom he is in conversation to express his opinions or obtain his desires without giving offense. But when a man uses language of a contrary nature different from his current conversation it is presumed that he intends to offend or insult the person to whom it is addressed and is prepared for the consequences – to assault – be chastised – or avoided. A master may point out the faults of his servants but it would be an insult for the servant to point out the faults of his master. But it is the duty of parents to instruct and correct the faults of their children. When children are of age the Law takes upon itself to correct and to punish them for publick offences but I have not heard at what age a son may insult his Father for giving his son a lesson on prudence and economy especially when the Father and the Family have been injured by the sons imprudence.117 As well as criticizing William Jr’s conduct in a recent exchange, the letter laid out the financial losses Cooper believed that John and William Jr had caused with their decisions to commission the Malvina and Plenty without his permission. The Coopers, he wrote, might have gotten off the shipbuilding treadmill with a profit following the sale of the Sea Walker. Since then we have never had a vessel in proper season we have never had a vessel fit for market – we have been paying from 15 to 20 pr cent in credit and we have had no benefit from our capital as the proceeds of the one vessel went to pay the debts contracted upon another vessel and even that other vessel we could not call our own after we had twice bought and paid for her we could not choose our market we must

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leave her in the hands of our creditors or create a distrust in our interactions. The profits of the Farm, the Mill, the interest on the money the labour of the family and my services are lost by the course you have taken. Cooper closed the letter by noting that he had annexed it, with its accounting of the financial situation that existed among the three, to his will.118 On the Island the rest of the Cooper family were enjoying a more pleasant winter. Both the grist mill and the sawmill were working well, though a lack of snow at the beginning of the winter had impeded hauling logs to the mill and boded poorly for sufficient water to run the mill. Although the timber and shipbuilding industry on the Island were depressed, John thought the Plenty could be profitably employed in the Nova Scotia coal trade between Pictou and Boston. The family’s farms were doing well; they had plenty of hay and their produce had sold well, albeit that their bull had not returned from the woods in the fall and the potato crop had failed again. Sarah Cooper spent the winter with John and her mother at the Mills, as did Rowena and her first cousin, her aunt Margaret’s daughter Sarah. John reported that Sarah “will make a smart industrious young woman for some one yet. She and Rowena (who also lives with me) has the Little River Gentlemen to see them on Sunday afternoons, and no doubt begins to feel a preference for their society to that of their own sex. They curl and dress their hair every day now without being told and I believe look into the glass too.” In a letter to William Jr, John’s main complaint that winter concerned two of their younger brothers. Had their father had occasion to see the letter, he might have found John’s plight ironic and amusing, if he had been in a mood to be amused: “Oscar is very thoughtless and neglectful and Adolphus is very little better and will barely be directed or advised ... I cannot get on as I would wish with them.”119 In London, the arrival of spring brought no changes in the markets for vessels or for deals and timber. Cooper advertised the Plenty for sale for as long as he thought he could. Come April, he accepted that he and William Jr would need to try to make money from the vessel by finding freight for it. John had thought the Plenty should not be sold for less than £1,500, Cooper had been willing to sell for £1,450

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when the boat was first put on auction in late 1847. At that time, the highest bid had been £1,300. By the following spring, Cooper could not get even that for the Plenty, nor had he been able to sell the cargo of timber and deals.120 He and William Jr seem, however, to have managed to move beyond their sharp conflicts of mid-winter. Cooper’s mood was buoyed by the political changes that winter, which had seen a revolution in France in February that toppled the king, Louis-Philippe, and led to the proclamation of a republic. The winter also brought a revival of Chartism. Mass meetings were held in centres across Britain to celebrate the triumph of revolution in France and the beginning, as many saw it, of a new age.121 The celebratory meeting held in London in early March was probably the largest indoor meeting that had been held in the city to that date.122 Soon much of Europe was in revolt against the old order, and Cooper was swept up in the enthusiasm of the moment. According to William Jr, “the wonderful changes that have been effected in Europe lately has made a new being of him. It is holy unction to his soul.” Writing to John, he shared his amusement with his father’s excited response to the revolutionary developments that were occurring: “prophesy is heaped on prophesy until the whole human world is reduced to change or chaos. In fact he takes more pains to point out the coming confusion and disorganization of mankind than he took a little time ago to reduce the working of the Solar System to order and regularity.”123 While in London, Cooper arranged to visit with John MacGregor, a reunion that seems to have passed pleasantly, despite MacGregor’s having played a role in helping the Prince Edward Island Association oppose Cooper’s land reform initiatives in the 1830s.124 One of Cooper’s reasons for seeing MacGregor was to arrange for him to present “Inquiry into the Cause of the Motions of the Bodies of the Solar System” to the Royal Society. When he was able to leave the Plenty, William Jr enjoyed the company of the Pitcairn family. The Coopers’ agent in London, John Pitcairn Sr, was Scottish born and roughly the same age as William Sr. His wife, Emma, was thirteen years younger. The Pitcairn sons, John Jr, Alexander, and Robert, had all been born in and about London. The oldest, John Jr, was nine years younger than William Jr, but had begun to assume responsibilities in the family’s insurance

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Illustration 5.3 Shields Harbour, Mid 19th Century. National Maritime Museum, Greenwhich, PAD 1257, etching by John Wilson Carmichael.

and ship brokerage business. William Jr found the Pitcairn household a pleasant haven and came to enjoy the company of young John.125 In early April 1848, the Coopers decided to turn the Plenty into an emigrant ship and take a charter to deliver more than one hundred passengers to New York City. This required putting the vessel in dry dock for upgrades, adding a lower deck and berths for the steerage passengers, acquiring water casks and cooking hearths, and obtaining the necessary provisions. They sailed for New York with their passengers in mid-April, hoping to find a freight in New York to pay their way back to Prince Edward Island. They arrived in New York safely in late May, and from there made their way back to the Island by June.126 Although Cooper had managed to find a freight to pay their way back to North America, the decision to engage in the emigrant trade, which was new for him and for his agent, John Pitcairn, exposed the Coopers to a new set of problems that would occupy them for months to come. At the time of the decision to take emigrants across the Atlantic, Pitcairn advised against dealing with the emigration agents Stiebels and Company who chartered the Plenty. But Cooper no doubt felt he had few options.127 He would have many difficulties with the Stiebels, ranging from the company’s failure to provide all the necessary supplies for the trip and last-minute additions to the number of passengers the Plenty would carry to a failure to have an agent in New

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York accept receipt of the water barrels the company had provided for the voyage. The result was costs and bills that both sides disputed. The freight the Coopers then acquired in Prince Edward Island to complete a cargo of the family’s own timber and deals prior to the Plenty’s return to Britain created yet more difficulties. When the Coopers came to load this cargo, timber that belonged to a merchant named Wightman, they discovered that it was “weather decayed, ring shaken, and sunk in the mud … half of the sleepers were old and the cullings of former shipments, [and] the deals were many of them badly cut and unsound.”128 The wood’s condition was in part likely the product of the economic downturn that had begun the previous year and of the absence of demand for timber, sleepers, and deals. This was stock that had been waiting for a market. Thinking Shields on the northeast coast of England near Newcastle the best place for the Plenty’s cargo, given the poor quality of some of it, the two Williams sailed there (see illustration 5.3). They arrived in North Britain in late August 1848, hoping to discharge and sell their cargo and to sell the Plenty as well. By mid-September they had become caught in the middle of disputes concerning the wood they had brought as freight, disputes that had implications for their receiving payment for their services. By early October, they were still in nearby Newcastle, as yet unable to sell the Plenty or resolve the difficulties that had arisen with the delivery of the wood. As well, by this time the dispute with Stiebels had become a legal problem. Pitcairn had to retain a lawyer for the Coopers in London, and the dispute threatened their ability to realize a return from the sale of the Plenty should they find a buyer. In the fall of 1848, Steibels initiated legal action to recover £105 sterling the company claimed was the value of the ship fittings Cooper had been unable to return. Pitcairn wrote Cooper to say that he was “well advised” that Stiebels could “recover nothing from you.” Nonetheless, Cooper would be saddled with “both trouble and expense to defend the action” Steibels had brought against him.129 As summer turned to fall, it appeared that Cooper and William Jr were facing yet another discouraging stay in Britain. Their fortunes took a turn for the better, though, with success in selling the Plenty in late October.130 Following the sale, Cooper moved to London to deal with the Stiebels problem. William Jr remained in Newcastle, preparing for the possibility of a legal dispute concerning the cargo they had

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brought from Prince Edward Island and doing what he could to dispose of what remained of it in Newcastle/Shields. Remarkably, father and son managed to effect compromises to resolve both the dispute with Stiebels and the dispute concerning the Wightman cargo at more or less the same time in early November.131 Although they still had railway sleepers that remained unsold in Newcastle, a reliable agent there was willing to put them up for sale whenever there once again was a market for them. Thus, William Jr was free to leave Newcastle and free as well to begin planning what he would do next. While there were accounts yet to settle in Britain, and monies to collect from the sale of the Plenty and its cargo, the end was in sight. The Coopers had finally gotten out from under the burdens created by John and William Jr’s contracts for the construction of the Malvina and the Plenty. The question of “what next” was now before all three of them. No doubt Cooper had been wrestling with this issue for quite some time. In early November, immediately after the conclusion of the Stiebels dispute, he wrote to William Jr in Newcastle to tell him of the resolution and to make a proposal: “If you have a mind that we build another vessel and the Family to leave the Country, you should write to your brother without further delay so that he may get out the fraim and I will furnish Instructions and the plan and if they are strictly followed I will be responsible that it will be for your benefit.”132 Yet again Cooper was reaching out to his sons with a proposal that he hoped would meet their needs as well as those of the rest of the family. At the beginning of the 1840s when he first proposed that he and his two oldest sons go into business together, John and William Jr were still in their early twenties, and neither had much experience managing the myriad tasks, and risks, associated with shipping and shipbuilding. By the end of the decade, John had become a capable manager of the family’s mills and farming operations, and William Jr had become an experienced sailor who knew how to effectively manage some of the family’s shipping interests at home as well as in British ports. Much had changed in the lives of the younger children as well. Malvina was married; Adolphus had learned to sail and had acquired formal training in navigation in London; and Oscar, George, and David were learning the skills necessary for managing the family’s farms and mills. The Cooper family, considered as a whole, was now in a strong position to carve out a new life in a distant land.

6

California Bound The sale of the Plenty in the fall of 1848, combined with the resolution of various disputes associated with it and with the cargoes the Plenty had carried, set the stage for William Cooper and his family to realize their much-delayed plan of emigration, if they wished. Cooper’s proposal to William Jr in November 1848 and, ultimately, to John and the rest of the family as well, was grounded in three propositions. First, Cooper, who turned sixty-two in January 1848, proposed that he continue to provide leadership for the family as a whole, and that its other members, including John and William Jr, follow his instructions. Second, he proposed the family pull up roots and leave Prince Edward Island. And third, he made it clear that he thought that their appropriate destination was northern California or Oregon. John Cooper was now thirty-one, William Jr, twenty-nine, Malvina twenty-three and a young mother, Adolphus twenty-one, Oscar sixteen, George fifteen, David and Rowena thirteen, and Caroline ten. Given the ages of his oldest children, Cooper’s plan would be contingent on their responses, in particular the responses of John and William Jr, and for Malvina, the response of her husband, John Morrow. Sarah Cooper’s role in the decision making is not clear but appears not to have been central, given that Cooper made his proposals by letter from London.1 The plans that Cooper had begun to develop in the late fall of 1848 did not fit well with those of William Jr. Throughout the period that he and his father had been working together to sail the Malvina and the Plenty back and forth across the Atlantic in the hope of

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selling them and their cargoes for a profit, William Jr had been looking forward to the end of his business dealings with his father and to a final reckoning that would leave him and John with sufficient cash so that they might strike out on their own. Two years earlier, as he was preparing to sail back to Britain with the Malvina on the day after Christmas, William Jr had written to his brother to emphasize the necessity of “bringing our present business to a profitable conclusion,” primarily “so that we may know what we are working for; for my own part I cannot consent to go on in the uncertain way that we have been doing any longer than is necessary.”2 In December 1848, with the Plenty finally sold, what William Jr wanted from his father was the settlement that had not been possible when the Malvina remained in their hands and the Plenty was still on the stocks. On his way to London from Newcastle in the fall of 1848, following settlement of the cargo dispute there, William Jr stopped in Suffolk to visit friends. His impending meeting with his father in London troubled him, however, and undermined his enjoyment of the visit. He had not, he reported to John, “been at ease in my mind.” Once in London, he reported that he “tried to get a settlement” with his father, “but that is farthest from his intention to grant.” According to William Jr, all his father would give was a vague promise to “do something for me,” though “what that is to be I do not know.” In December, as he was preparing to leave London, following his unsatisfactory conversation with his father, he advised John by post to “preserve all the letters and papers and make out a statement of what we was worth at different times, as my Father has extravagant Ideas of what we was worth at the sale of the Sea Walker” – which was to say prior to Cooper having had to help bail John and William out of the mess occasioned by their commissioning the construction of the Malvina and the Plenty.3 All the while that Cooper was assisting his sons to complete and dispose of the Malvina and the Plenty, they had continued to explore options they might pursue on their own. In the fall of 1847, on the eve of the great economic collapse that winter, John was pricing boats offered for sale by two local merchants, Joseph Dingwell and Daniel Flynn, and was considering closing a deal for the transfer of one of these boats to himself and William Jr.4 Exactly where John would get the assets for purchasing a boat was not clear. While in Britain in the

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fall of 1847, William Jr provided his brother with news of the prosperous trade of New South Wales, obviously a matter of continuing interest to the two of them.5 In the winter of 1848–49, despite the economic depression and despite the ordeals he and his father had just gone through with the Malvina and Plenty, William Jr remained convinced that he and John could, “even at the low price that vessels are now,” turn a profit by building ships on Prince Edward Island for the British market. Thus, he made inquiries while in London concerning what credit terms he and John might get from a Wapping-based company that sold anchors, chains, sails, and cordage for shipbuilders. His inquiry concerned the terms for obtaining materials for the construction of a two-hundred-ton vessel, with work to begin in the fall of 1849.6 At this time as well, he also wrote to his godfather, John MacGregor, to solicit his assistance in finding employment. Having “closed the little business that I have been connected with in P E Island and finding by experience that even a common livelihood is not to be made by it,” he was “desirous of obtaining employment in any capacity where a practical knowledge of agriculture or a moderate understanding of Mills Shipping or business generally” might be of use, “either at home or abroad.”7 MacGregor did not respond immediately, nor had he responded when, in mid-December 1848, William Jr left London for North America. He opted to earn his passage homeward as part of the crew of the Uxine, bound for New Orleans.8 Before leaving London, he had a new suit of clothes made for himself, and he wrote to John to say that he intended to make his way back to the Island from New Orleans come spring. He began his voyage not yet knowing what he, or he and John, would do next, nor exactly how he was going to respond to his father’s ideas about what the future could and should hold.9 On Prince Edward Island in the fall of 1848, John Cooper continued to oversee the mills at Grand River and the family’s affairs more generally. Harvest season, for the third year running, had seen the destruction of the Island’s potato crop. William Jr had reported from Britain on the beginning of the catastrophic failure of the potato crop in Ireland and Scotland in 1846.10 Fields that had once been green with healthy potato plants could in a matter of days become nothing but blackened stalks; crops that had appeared

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healthy in the field often proved rotten when harvested, and if seemingly sound when dug, frequently rotted into a putrid mush after being stored.11 In Cork, where the Coopers had sought secure harbour with the Malvina, 1846 had marked the second year that the fungus Phytophthora infestans had struck the potato crop. Potatoes were fundamental to the diet of the rural poor of Ireland, who typically ate from ten to twelve pounds per day for three-quarters of the year.12 In 1845, potato blight had reduced the crop in Cork by about one-third; the following year the impact of the blight was catastrophic, with crop returns only about a fifth of what they had been two years earlier.13 And so it had continued on both sides of the Atlantic, again in 1847 and then in 1848. The Malvina, under the command of Captain Stanton, had found freights as a result of the crisis, moving emigrants to New York in 1847, and returning with grain.14 As the potato crops failed year after year, mortality levels rose. In Ireland, repeated crop failures, combined with government ineptitude in handling the famine and outbreaks of disease that followed, led to the deaths of around a million people.15 In Scotland as well, 1845 had marked the beginning of what, come the following year, would be a series of devastating failures of the potato crop. Two-thirds of the farming districts in the Highlands reported total failure of the potato crop in 1846.16 In the Gulf of St Lawrence region, the outbreak of Phytophthora infestans in the early 1840s and then repeatedly in the second half of the decade caused famine and death too, but not to the extent that it did in the British Isles.17 For the Coopers, the loss of the potato crop meant a loss of income and further loss of confidence in the suitability of Prince Edward Island for agriculture. John reported that even when farmers had managed to harvest potatoes in the fall of 1848, they were rotting in cellars and on the way to market. Crews on vessels bound for St John’s found that “in some instances whole cargoes have to be thrown overboard.”18 John wrote in the fall of 1848 to say that the wheat crop also was lost, to rust.19 Despite these problems, the Coopers’ farming operations had not been a total disaster. In part this was because they were wellestablished farmers, raising a variety of crops and livestock and using several different types of ecosystems to sustain their operations. In September, John reported that they had gotten in “a good crop of

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marsh hay and middling of upland.”20 When he travelled to St John’s later that fall to sell farm produce and pick up provisions, he was able to ship seven hundred bushels of grain on one boat and take “a few Barrels of Beef and some sheep” on another.21 He also shipped some of the family’s cattle as well as potatoes that he thought the rot had spared. Most of the potatoes, however, began to go bad before he was able to get them to market, and the grain sold poorly. He figured that the family lost nearly £100 on the St John’s produce trade in 1848.22 Adding to the gloom, one of the vessels from Grand River involved in the Newfoundland trade returned to the Island with passengers sick with smallpox. Although at first John thought it might prove a mild strain of the disease, by late January he was reporting a series of local smallpox deaths that had occurred in the previous week.23 The fall of 1848 was a difficult time for John, as he watched the wheat crop fail and came to realize that once again rot was destroying the potato crop, and then coped with the deaths of friends and neighbours in the smallpox outbreak. As to what was happening with the Plenty and its cargo, for much of the fall he did not know. In the beginning of November, all he knew from Britain was that his father and brother had arrived safely. As he waited for news, the bills began to mount, and the family’s creditors began to press for payment.24 It must have been an enormous relief for John when, in mid-November, he learned that the Plenty had been sold.25 Then correspondence began to arrive from his father and brother concerning the possibility of the family emigrating to California. As John considered these letters, news of the discovery of gold in California was beginning to fill Island papers. Gold had been found at Sutter’s Mill near the fork of the Sacramento and American Rivers in late January 1848, a few days before the United States formally acquired roughly half of Mexico, California included, following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. News of the discovery of gold reached Yerba Buena, which would become known as San Francisco, by early March; it was amplified by publication in the Californian and the California Star.26 By the fall of 1848, Island papers were carrying stories of gold in California, including reports describing the impact the discovery of gold was having on Yerba Buena.27 Mid-December brought news that samples of gold from California were on display at the White House in Washington, DC .28

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On New Year’s Day the Examiner acknowledged that the evidence displayed in Washington indicated that “there must be a vast and inexhaustible deposit of gold in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada”; as well, it reported that three steamers, seven ships, and a barque had cleared New York for California in the last few months and that “half-a-dozen others had sailed from Boston, Baltimore and Salem.”29 In early January, John wrote to his father in London to tell him that “owing to the late accounts from San Francisco and the wish of the Family here to go there, I have made up my mind to leave the country under any plans and conditions that you and William would agree to and I thought the sooner you were informed of this circumstance the better in case you should still desire to build a vessel ourselves.”30 Two weeks later, John received the letter William Jr had written before leaving London in mid-December.31 In it, he had described the difficulties he had experienced in getting a commitment from their father regarding a settlement, as well as the efforts he had undertaken to explore options for the future. These had included the possibility that he and John stay on the Island and go into shipbuilding on their own. He closed his letter with the injunction: “Look out for no one and take care that if my father gets home before me that he does not whittle you.”32 John responded to his brother’s letter in late January, writing to him in New Orleans to let him know that he had already written to their father in support of the California plan, but had done so thinking that William Jr was still with his father in London – “at home,” as John tellingly phrased it. John now found himself needing to sell his brother on the merits of the plan. “If he will give us a reasonable share in a vessel I think we should join him and go to San Francisco. The Gold mines will occupy the attentions of the people so much that any party turning their attention to landed property might do well and we are well prepared to build a good vessel now and go.” John urged William Jr to “give your opinions upon the subject as my Father may make proposals in his answer to my letter.” He also noted the news of an outbreak of cholera in New Orleans, and acknowledged that “it gives us some uneasiness.” The family hoped that William Jr had escaped the disease.33 As John wrote from Grand River at the end of January, William Jr was still at sea. Indeed he did not arrive in New Orleans until the end

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of the second week of February, two and a half weeks later. Sailing with him on the Uxine, as ship’s carpenter, was, to his surprise, a fellow Islander from Queens County. The food aboard the vessel, which William Jr described in his journal as “the worst provisions I ever set tooth on,” got him thinking about options for “a profitable business to set agoing in countrys where meat is cheap to preserve it.” But the pleasures of the Caribbean as the Uxine neared Guadeloupe and Antigua made up for the food: “the weather, the sea, the sky, so mild … who is there with a mind that could not enjoy them.” Being at sea gave him a chance to relax, as well as giving him time for, as he phrased it, “speculating how I shall proceed” on arrival in New Orleans. When he got closer to port, he began thinking as well of “home and which of the many courses I shall pursue that lays before me.”34 As the Uxine made its way up the Mississippi, William Jr noted the “comfortable houses and well cultivated fields … on both sides of the river.” He also observed that “in proportion to the extent of the farm or the wealth of its owner, so were the huts of the Slaves Small or great in number.” Slave society was new to him, and it drew his attention. Later after the Uxine docked in New Orleans and he had gone ashore, he recounted meeting “a slave sent for a piece of wood” who, he reported, “was possessed of natural good sense and appeared much dissatisfied with his lot. He pointed out a swampy spot occupied now by large stumps where his former master shotdown two negroes for running away. The place at that time was standing wood. The slave now belongs to the son of the murderer.” Shortly after the Uxine arrived in port, William was surprised to discover that a law officer had come aboard and was hauling off a member of the crew who had been accused of being “a runaway slave.” William observed that the crewman had curly hair, but “skin not darker than some of the white people aboard.”35 William made note as well of other aspects of New Orleans. These included the city’s geographic circumstances, with the “land both of the town and country around” being “several feet below the water of the river, which is banked out.” He found the inhabitants to be “a mixture of all nations, but mostly of French decent,” with a more recent “influx of Irish labourers.” He noted in his journal that the city was “much larger and important than I expected to find it” and

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Illustration 6.1 New Orleans, ca. 1851. Library of Congress, 93500720, lithograph by John Bachmann.

had around five hundred ships in port, “most of them heavy.” He was impressed by the sight of the many flat boats bringing “flour, corn, meat, cattle, fruit” and other rural products down the Mississippi to exchange for “cotton, sugar, molasses and foreign goods.” He was impressed too with the great steam-driven paddlewheelers that plied the Mississippi, with their superstructures running “2 or 3 stories high above the deck.” They were, he thought, “floating castles on the water”36 (see illustration 6.1). As well as taking in the sights and sounds of New Orleans, William Jr attempted to find work in the construction trades. He was unsuccessful in this and soon began to “feel very homesick and dissatisfied with America.” In time, however, he ran into other islanders who were in New Orleans and began to socialize with them. He encountered Joseph McDonald, “a rigger from P E Island and his brother John,” several Islanders from Little Pond, and even a woman who had once worked as a servant girl for the Coopers. Her family had settled in New Orleans several years earlier. On 22 February, he received the letter John had written to him in late January explaining that he had agreed to their father’s plan that the whole family emigrate to California. The following day William Jr received a letter from his father, written from London early in January.37 Cooper’s letter to his son in New Orleans was intended to bring his son up to date on the family’s plans for moving to California and how he might contribute to them. William Sr noted that William Jr

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would “find on enquiry that N California and Oregon are superior to what you expected,” thus referencing the ongoing family conversation about exactly where in the world was best for them to settle. For several years, Cooper had favoured moving to California or Oregon, as evidenced by John’s report of disagreements with his father on whether California was a suitable destination for the family when they discussed the matter during the winter of 1846–47, when both were on the Island. John and William Jr had always been more interested in other destinations, particularly Australia, judging from their overture to their father in the winter of 1839–40, and the attention William Jr gave to news of the British trade with New South Wales in the winter of 1847–48. Cooper’s January letter informed William Jr that he had “written to the family to Build a ship of 350 tons such as I proposed to you to sail from here in Nov 1850 or a smaller vessel to sail from the Island in Nov next or even to buy a vessel on the stocks if they find one suitable.” He advised his son either to “go and joine them without delay or otherwise to go to the Gold Country at once where you may enrich yourself in a few Months and acquire Information as to the best place for the Settlement of the family with water and power for mills and Land fit for agriculture in a healthy situation.” Should William Jr choose to return to the Island and do so through either Boston or New York, his father’s letter advised him on where to call at either place for further instructions concerning supplies the family might need him to bring to the Island from those ports. If he opted instead to go directly to California, “your way will be by sea to where they cross the Isthmus of Panama and when you cross to the Pacific side the conveyance by Sea to Monterey or port San Francisco is pretty regular.”38 In mid-March, William Jr let John know he had booked passage for Boston and would be available to bring supplies back to the Island from there. On the Island, John had begun to effect one of the three possibilities his father had suggested concerning how the family might move to California. Rather than purchase a boat that was already under construction, or undertake construction of a 350-ton vessel that might sail from Britain in the fall of 1850, John had taken steps that would lead to the rapid construction of a smaller vessel on which they might yet leave the Island that year. As the Coopers

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intended to build this boat themselves, John leased a boatyard on nearby John Taylor’s Point, a barn suitable for serving as a workshop, and a house where the work crews might eat and live. As well, in early February, he purchased some of the timber they would need and contracted to have yet more cut. He also wrote to his brotherin-law, James Morrow, who was working as a shipwright in New England, inviting him to return and join the project.39 John’s decision to support his father’s plans was crucial to their realization and was grounded in part in a letter Cooper sent him from London in late December. The years in which Cooper had continued to work in partnership with his two oldest sons to dispose of the Malvina and the Plenty, despite his feeling that his sons had violated the terms of the original partnership, had been difficult for all three. After the Plenty finally sold in the fall of 1848 and it became clear that Cooper would be able to conclude the family’s outstanding business affairs in Britain and on the Island, he turned his attention not just to what the family as a whole might do next but as well to how best to repair the strained relations that had developed between himself and his two oldest sons. Writing to John in late December, after William Jr had left for New Orleans, he addressed the difficult period the family had just passed through and suggested how they might move beyond it. Although this letter does not appear to have survived, John’s response speaks to its content and to his father’s ability to provide effective leadership at this juncture: “I have read your letter of 28 December over several times. It contains the greatest wisdom with the best of rules and intentions. The only thing is to carry them into effect. And I certainly think the best method of doing which would be not to find so much fault. I am willing to do what you wish if I only know how and I believe the same of the rest of the Family. To sum up all – do not allude to the past or what is lost. Look to what we have and the future and I will do the best I can to assist you and advise the family to do the same.”40 Under John’s supervision, construction of the vessel that was to take the Coopers to California was well underway before William Jr returned from New Orleans via Boston in April and before Cooper returned from London via Liverpool in May.41 Cooper sent plans for the design of the vessel from London. John then passed these on to local men to make the models that would guide construction

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of the vessel. In late February he was able to report to his father that “John Dingwell and Mr Howlett will have the moulds done this week.”42 Cooper had been contemplating ship design during the previous winter, inspired in part by news that the British Admiralty was seeking advice on how to construct naval vessels that would be more stable. He had developed a detailed, mathematically informed response for the Naval Office, grounded in his many years of experience at sea and his observation of ship movement. If the Admiralty wished to have more stable vessels, Cooper suggested that it design ships with bilge keels set on either side of the centre keel, and he noted the appropriate contour and placement of such keels. As well, he drew the Admiralty’s attention to parallels in nature: “Fish are provided with Fins to propel and give them motion, but they have other fins to direct and steady them in the different motions of their native element.”43 Ship hulls too, he contended, might benefit from the equivalent of the fins fish used for stability. He brought these insights to his plans for the vessel that the family would build for their trip to California. As well, like other boat builders constructing vessels around the perimeter of the North Atlantic at this time, he designed his vessel and made his choices of rigging and gear with an eye to minimizing the labour required to operate the boat.44 Even as construction of the Coopers’ vessel was getting underway, significant questions remained to be resolved. One concerned the destination for the family’s emigration. Although at the time John first agreed to start gathering materials for a vessel there seems to have been a consensus on the suitability of California, by April he was writing to William Jr in Boston to ask that he “learn all that you can with respect to Texas as the family would prefer going there to California.”45 It is not clear what was inducing this change. No doubt early reports of violence and lawlessness in the goldfields and surrounding towns were having an effect.46 As well, reports were beginning to arrive concerning the scarcity of provisions in the mining districts and of difficult living conditions and the spread of disease.47 In April the Island’s Royal Gazette ran a hoax advertisement posted by “John Boxem,” calling the “Attention of persons about to embark for California to his stock of ready-made coffins, shrouds, &c., &c.” with a “liberal allowance to families taking a quantity.”48 The Coopers were making their decision about where they might go

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next not just on the basis of reports from California but in a context in which many other options were becoming increasingly viable. In the decade or so between when they first began thinking about leaving Prince Edward Island and the end of 1849, the United States alone had by various means acquired more than 100 million acres that were becoming available for settlement.49 On the Island the Coopers were not the only farm family thinking that it was time to pull up stakes and move to a place with a more benign climate, more abundant resources, and greater opportunities for acquiring land free of the burden of landlords. The disastrous harvests of the late 1840s and the continuing challenges of climatic conditions added another push factor to the pull of opportunities elsewhere. In April, John reported to William Jr: “A great many people are preparing to leave the Island for the States. Some whole families have sold out every thing, and are getting ready. William Howlett, the Stringman, and Robbins are amongst the latter number. Wisconsin is their destination. Good bargains of improved farms with stock can be had at this time here.”50 In nearby Cape Breton too, many rural families who, like the Coopers, possessed property, had decided it was time to escape the problems posed by the repeated crop failures and to emigrate to the United States.51 At some point over the spring and summer, probably after Cooper returned to the Island in May, the family discussed the possibility of effecting the move to California in two stages. In the first, Cooper and several of his sons would sail to San Francisco with a load of coal that they might sell for a profit and then scout out the possibilities in California, or Oregon, one assumes, while they were there. This advance party would secure property for the family if they liked what they saw, and then send for the others, or sail back to pick them up. According to John, when he recorded his memories of the family’s history nearly half a century later, this is what everyone but his father wished. For the most part the family’s internal correspondence during the year leading up to their emigration does not provide evidence to sustain this contention, and indeed, it provides some to the contrary, but the family’s thinking concerning the possibilities before them clearly was quite fluid during this period. The possibility that not all of them would wish to sail to California in 1849–50 certainly was one that Cooper had entertained in the emigration proposal he made

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to John the previous winter.52 In the event, some Island members of the Cooper/Glover family did remain behind. It is not hard to imagine Cooper’s objection to a plan that would either entail two round-trip journeys by sea to California, or involve the women and younger members of the family travelling west by means other than the family’s own boat. Sailing to California from Prince Edward Island was a long and dangerous trip. A single round trip would take a year and a half. Two round trips, which was a possibility with the plan that John in retrospect said that all but his father favoured, would take three years to execute, perhaps more. The alternative of having the Coopers who first went to California stay there and then send for the others would entail enormous costs. Passage per person from Prince Edward Island to California, for instance, would likely have run between $250 and $1,000, depending on the vessel and the quality of accommodation.53 Cooper would not have considered it appropriate for Sarah and his daughters to travel the route in steerage – and for good reason – nor would he have thought the short route across the Isthmus of Panama an appropriate journey for them to take, given that in 1849 travellers had to cross the wet isthmus by canoe, mule, and/or on foot and then wait for transportation northwards at Panama City. Many travellers found that they had to spend several weeks in Panama, and few found it a pleasant or healthy place to be.54 It seems quite unlikely that Sarah and her daughters would have thought travelling to California in these ways attractive, though women certainly did use this route, including a few from among the upper classes, such as Jessie Frémont, wife of John C. Frémont and daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton.55 Was the idea of an advance party of Cooper and some of his sons sailing to California mooted in the summer of 1849, as John subsequently suggested? Likely it was. Certainly it is not inconsistent with Cooper’s own suggestion to William Jr that he go to San Francisco from New Orleans and make enquiries on behalf of the rest of the family, which would then follow. Did Cooper alone see problems with the two-stage plan John subsequently claimed the rest of the family favoured, and did Cooper’s ideas alone prevail over the thinking of everyone else, John and William Jr included? This seems unlikely. Given the fate that awaited the Coopers in California,

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however, it is understandable that John, looking back on the choices that led to tragedy for the family there, might remember this part of the past as he did. Another uncertainty in the Coopers’ plans in the early spring of 1849 concerned exactly what Cooper would offer his two sons by way of a settlement for their interest in the business they had conducted with him over the previous years. William Jr had failed to get his father to agree to a final calculation when he met him in London in December 1848, and the issue loomed again as William Jr and William Sr made their separate ways back to the Island in the spring. William Jr continued to press his older brother, as he had in December 1848, to be forceful in insisting on a clear settlement. In April, John wrote to William Jr in Boston to assure him: “Of cours I will never consent to go with him unless he will allow me something reasonable as my own before we leave.”56 In May it would seem that William Jr still had not received a satisfactory settlement offer from his father. As a result, he suggested that Cooper let John Macintosh, Cooper’s friend and political ally, serve as an arbitrator between them.57 Earlier in the year, John had sought the advice of a trusted neighbour concerning his dealings with his father and whether he was being treated fairly. In that case, the neighbour had affirmed the wisdom and reasonableness of what Cooper was offering his sons.58 At the time, this response seems to have put John’s mind at ease, but the issue flared up again as William Jr rejoined the planning process. It is not clear how Cooper resolved the financial settlement issue with his sons in the spring and summer of 1849, but the three of them managed to come to an arrangement that allowed the family to move forward with its plans. Judging from subsequent events, it would appear that they agreed to postpone a full division of property until after the family had relocated. As well, it would appear that John persuaded his father of the appropriateness of his new choice for a bride, Margaret Davidson; the marriage, however, did not take place until the eve of the Coopers’ departure.59 On the Island as spring turned to summer, local papers provided news of the fabulous amounts of gold coming out of California. In June the Royal Gazette reported the arrival of a single steamer in New Orleans carrying a million dollars worth of gold, with roughly

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half of it belonging to fifty returning miners who were on board.60 July brought reports that the Philadelphia Mint had received nearly two million dollars worth of California gold.61 It also brought the announcement of a public meeting in Charlottetown to see if there was sufficient Island interest in California to sustain an expedition to the gold fields there.62 The proceedings of the meeting indicated that there was indeed significant interest; announcement of the formation of the California Association followed in August.63 The association was to be capitalized at £4,000 with shares of £100. This capital would be used to procure a vessel and provision it for two years, which was “the space of time proposed to be absent.” Each share allowed its owner to travel to California on board the association’s vessel, or to designate someone to do so in his stead. The profits the association made in California were to be divided equally at the end of the venture. Everyone engaged in the enterprise was required to “pledge himself not to drink any Intoxicating Liquors, nor play Cards, Dice, or any other species of Gambling, during his absence from the Island.” As well, association members were pledged to “respect the Sabbath” and to do no work on that day other than “what may be absolutely necessary for the safety of the Ship and his own life.”64 By late September, the Coopers’ plans were sufficiently advanced to permit them to advertise passage to California aboard their boat, for those wishing “superior” accommodation65 (see illustration 6.2). They anticipated that their vessel, a brig called the Success, would sail in mid-November. Two men purchased cabin accommodation and three arranged for space in steerage.66 The vessel was not launched, however, until mid-November, and was not ready for departure until early December. At launch, the Success was renamed the Packet. It was eighty-two feet long, nearly twenty feet in breadth, and measured 188 tons.67 It was the first boat the Coopers had built themselves. As well as having copper sheathing for the hull and copper fastenings, it incorporated design features to give the vessel stability, make it easy to sail, and allow it to absorb the stress of being on the ground at low tide, if necessary. Most notably it had a pair of Cooper’s bilge-keels.68 According to John, “no expense was spared” to make the Packet “a strong and safe sea-craft.” Although the bilgekeels made it slow in the water, it proved an exceptionally stable boat, as intended.69

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Illustration 6.2 Advertisement for passage on Success (later renamed the Packet). Royal Gazette, 2 October 1849.

The time between the launch of the Packet and its departure in early December was taken up in part with loading the vessel. The emigration plan the Coopers had finally settled on, which had been under consideration in various forms for more than a decade, involved the family as a whole moving to the west coast of North America and building livelihoods for themselves there that would be grounded in the same sort of work they had done on Prince Edward Island. They intended to make their living in California by farming, running mills, and carrying freights with the Packet. In anticipation of this, they loaded the vessel with the agricultural tools they thought they would need, seed, various pieces of machinery, building materials for erecting houses, and household goods. They also stocked the Packet with two years’ worth of provisions, including vegetables. Chickens, sheep, a hog, and a cow were brought on board to provide fresh food while they were at sea and as well to help them get underway with farming when they arrived on the west coast. The family’s plan, at the time of their departure, was, according to John’s memory of it, to “go up one of California’s rivers, where land could be taken up; live aboard the vessel until a home could be established, then for a part of the family to sail to earn something with the vessel.” The plan included the possibility that California – or Oregon – might not be to their liking, in which case, according to John, they would “return in the vessel to their homes and property on the Island, which were not sold.”70 Prince Edward Island’s unpredictable weather hurried the loading and departure of the Packet, as by late November it appeared winter

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freeze-up might arrive early. Three years prior, it had been possible to load the Malvina for departure after Christmas, and in some years timber ships destined for Britain were able to remain in Island harbours until early January before leaving with their loads.71 Indeed, vessels taking provisions to St John’s sometimes were able to leave as late as mid-February.72 But in 1849, when the Coopers might have made good use of a few more days, this was not to be. Instead, they found it necessary to take to sea before everything was arranged on board as they wished. Their problems were compounded by unusually severe weather. The issue of the Charlottetown paper which announced the departure of the Packet on 5 December also noted that a “heavy northwest snow storm” had brought gale-force winds that caused extensive damage to Island shipping: “Brig Velocity, at Full’s, ready for sea, carried away her windlass; a stone droger filled and sunk at McNab’s; at Noble’s, a schooner parted her fasts, and drove up in the dock with damage; at Wier’s, one or two Schooners were damaged; two vessels, at the Market wharf, were almost cut down to the water’s edge; a schooner bound in from P.E. Island got on shore at Haythorne’s Point, McNab’s Island, and has become a total wreck.” No doubt there was extensive damage of vessels elsewhere on the Island beyond Charlottetown. Reports from Halifax, suggested that the gale, which blew down the telegraph staff at the Citadel, had been the heaviest experienced in Halifax Harbour for a decade.73 The members of Cooper’s extended family who remained behind must have been worried for those on board the Packet, given the violence of the storm. Sarah’s parents, John and Christiana Glover, now seventy-seven and sixty-seven, did not sail with the family. Nor did Sarah’s sister Margaret and her husband. Not only did the Packet head out into rough seas and gale-force winds but it did so at a time of year when the North Atlantic might be expected to be rough, even under the best of circumstances. For the first two weeks the Packet ploughed through heavy seas that left most of those on board too sick to be of any use in managing the boat and its cargo. Fortunately, Cooper had designed the vessel so that it was not demanding to sail. As well, he had recruited several men with some experience at sea who assumed the duties of crew members in return for their passage to California. William Jr, who served as first mate, was a seasoned

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sailor, as was Adolphus, who had sailed to Britain with his father in the Sea Walker and studied navigation in London. Adolphus acted as second mate. William Riggs, John Mitchel, and Alexander McKie, who held the positions of cook, boatswain, and shipwright, respectively, had all worked at sea before. John, who was familiar with the trade routes linking Prince Edward Island with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, served as steward and accountant. Cooper’s other sons, ranging in age from seventeen to fourteen, served as ship’s “boys.” This was their first ocean trip and their first experience of serving as crew on board a vessel.74 Also on board, and no doubt finding the rough seas difficult, were Sarah Cooper, aged fifty-two, and her daughters Malvina, Rowena, and Caroline, along with Malvina’s young son, William, and husband, James Morrow, and John’s new wife, Margaret Davidson, and her sister Mary. Rowena’s close friend and first cousin, Sarah Glover, who with Rowena had been attracting much attention among the young men of Grand River, was on board as well. John was correct in predicting that Sarah Glover would make a good match some day, but it would happen in California, not Prince Edward Island. By the time the seas began to settle, some two weeks out from Prince Edward Island, the family’s cow had been badly injured and was doing poorly. The cow’s injuries, which proved fatal, were a product of the violence of the stormy weather, coupled with the family’s running out of time to pad her stall before they left and with being too seasick to adequately tend to her once underway. Getting out of the storms of the North Atlantic and into the Trade Winds two weeks later was, however, a big relief. 75 Although the Coopers were unfortunate in the storm they encountered on leaving Prince Edward Island, their experience of a rough early passage was not unusual for vessels leaving the ports of northeastern North America headed for California’s gold fields in the fall and winter of 1849–50. William Hatch sailed for San Francisco from Maine aboard the Damariscove, a schooner that left harbour at Damariscotta on 18 December carrying roughly the same complement of crew and passengers as the Packet. Hatch reported gales and heavy seas for most of the first two weeks at sea, with weather so foul that the cook and much of the crew were seasick as well as the passengers. The captain himself had to attend to the

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cooking, and some of the passengers with experience at sea had to stand in for incapacitated crew members. In early January, Hatch was still commenting on the roughness of their passage in his diary, and in mid-January he noted that some still had not recovered from being seasick.76 The California Association’s vessel, the Fanny, which had left Prince Edward Island on 12 November and should have made Cape Horn many weeks before the Packet, made slow progress for the first part of its journey south. The Fanny’s captain intended to stop at Rio de Janeiro on the way down the east coast of South America and at Valparaiso, Chile, on the way back up the west coast.77 Unfavourable winds, however, prompted him to seek provisions and water at Bahia in northern Brazil instead on the last day of January. Island papers noted that at the rate the Fanny was travelling, it would take twelve months for the vessel to make San Francisco.78 Unlike the Fanny and many of the other ships headed from northeast North America to California, the Packet was destined for California non-stop. Cooper had seen to it that the vessel had ample water and provisions for the entire trip. Despite the rush to depart and the loss of the cow, the crew and passengers aboard the Packet were well served by the provisions on board. They were able to have fresh meat twice a week, and there were no shortages of vegetables or fresh water. The conditions were comfortable, but the Packet’s voyage to San Francisco would not be fast. Unlike the clipper ships, all sail and sleek hull, capable of making the passage from New York to San Francisco in around a hundred days, the Packet was designed for stability and safety, not speed. According to John, the Packet “scarcely ever shipped any seas” – a remarkable claim, given that it traversed the North Atlantic in exceptionally bad winter weather and had to pass through notoriously rough waters in rounding Cape Horn. Describing the voyage of the Packet from the vantage point of decades later, John remembered “a safe and comfortable trip with good health prevailing and nothing occurring to mar the good feeling between all on board.”79 This was a far cry from the experience of most people who sailed to San Francisco from the east coast of North America. The report of an Islander who, like William Jr, had been in New Orleans in March 1849 but who had chosen to sail

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to San Francisco from there, around the Horn, was not unusual in its description of hardships. He reported experiencing “the greatest misery and suffering, from cold, want of good sound food, & c. We were on allowance of water, one bottle to each passenger to last four days.”80 The experience of the Islanders aboard the Fanny was not a happy one either. They complained of eating bad biscuit and horse meat masquerading as beef. It would seem too that the members of the California Association aboard the Fanny squabbled much of the way to California. The passage was, one noted, a “lengthy and disagreeable” one.81 On arrival, the group, which had planned to stay together in California and to return together, broke up.82 As one member noted at the time of the dissolution, “Even the people you would have thought would have looked after the welfare of the younger members of the company have been utterly regardless of what should become of them and looked only to themselves.”83 The Coopers and others aboard the Packet enjoyed the good days in southern latitudes as they headed for Cape Horn, and later after they had rounded it. As did passengers and crew of other vessels travelling these waters, they speared dolphin, bonito, and other fish and captured albatross and sea turtles. They enjoyed seeing other vessels during their passage and “speaking” with some of them, and entertained themselves by “taking rides in a rowboat.”84 No doubt, like John Craven, who travelled around the Horn in the summer of 1849 on his way from New York to San Francisco, the Coopers enjoyed seeing the new constellations of southern skies. Craven wrote to his wife, who had remained behind, of seeing “for the first time the southern cross, a beautiful cluster of stars on the southern horizon.”85 The albatross that the Coopers captured was part of the rich array of bird life that other vessels travelling through the region noted. James Keeler, who sailed around the Horn from Connecticut to San Francisco, described “thousands of birds flying to & fro of all sizes,” including the “Albatross, Black Stinker, Black Haglet, Julia Ann bird, Whale Bird [and] the Speckled Haglet.”86 Unlike Charles Darwin, who sailed around Tierra del Fuego in the winter of 1832–33, they did not see clouds of butterflies well out to sea off the coast of Patagonia.87 Nor, fortunately, did they encounter anything comparable to the two-hundred-foot wave that nearly destroyed the Beagle.88

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The waters and weather off Cape Horn are among the most unpredictable and potentially difficult to sail of any in the world, given the extreme southern latitude and the power of wind and waves that can sweep unimpeded from west to east across the Southern Ocean. Unlike in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, there are no land barriers making the Southern Ocean less than global. As a result, the threats to sailors are particularly severe. Passage around Cape Horn is always risky, requiring a good ship, good seamanship, good timing, persistence, and good luck. In the mid-nineteenth century it was not unusual for vessels to spend weeks, sometimes months, trying to make their way around the Horn. The Martha, which attempted passage around the Horn three months before the Coopers arrived there on the Packet, spent twenty-seven days in trying. In the end the vessel had to turn back in defeat, as it was so heavily damaged by wind and the pounding of heavy seas that it had begun to leak badly. An observer noted there was “not a rope about her rigging that has not been parted.” Given the damage it suffered in attempting the passage, the Martha was condemned, and broken up for scrap.89 A.W. Geming, who travelled from New York to San Francisco around the Horn in 1849, wrote to one of his friends afterward: Tis not the danger which makes it disagreeable but the cold & wet & storm, sleet, hail & rain, and … driving furious winds which are generally dead ahead no matter which way the vessel is going, together with the lurching of the ship, sliding of baggage and waves dashing over the bulwarks drenching you from head to foot, picking you up from the deck & landing you in one of the scuppers … We had all of these and more than these in real earnest for 35 days … the winds were so fierce that one man who lost his hat near a companion way had all the hair blown off his head & has not fully recovered yet; the fog was so thick one could scrape it off the masts with a knife; and the darkness so black that lights only made it darker.90 The Fanny, which approached Cape Horn at roughly the same time as the Packet, despite having left the Island three weeks earlier,

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experienced good weather as it approached from the east on 6 March. The air was, one passenger reported, “delightfully fine, such as we experience on the Island in August” and the “sea was very smooth.” Passengers and crew had a clear view of Cape Horn as they passed four miles to the south of it, and all “who had a taste for the sublime” were “busily engaged in taking sketches of the Horn.” The following day, though, the wind began with a “fresh breeze” from the NNW that suddenly shifted to SW “and commenced to blow fearfully.” The wind then grew so strong that the Fanny’s crew were forced to take in the sails. Although the Fanny made it to sixty miles west of Cape Horn, it was driven back within sight of the Horn again three days after first passing it. Franklin Buck, who had sailed from Maine to San Francisco at roughly the same time the previous year, reported passing Cape Horn and sailing in heavy weather for a week, only to find “ourselves Sixty miles to the East of it.”91 In all, the Fanny spent nearly four weeks off the Horn struggling against heavy seas and gales, which “were often accompanied by fearful squalls” and “showers of sleet and hail, which added to our misery.” At times heavy seas crashed over the decks. One man was swept overboard with a heavy wave but managed to regain the vessel before it righted itself. Ultimately the Fanny made it to harbour in Valparaiso, Chile, on 17 April, where it remained for a week. This was a planned stop, but it allowed for repairs and rest for the exhausted crew and passengers and another opportunity for the Fanny to take on more provisions and water. 92 The Packet likely experienced similar weather in rounding the Horn. According to John Cooper’s account of the voyage, written half a century later, the Packet made Cape Horn twelve weeks after leaving Prince Edward Island. That would put the vessel off the Horn around the fourth or fifth of March, more or less the same time the Fanny was there. John’s sketch from the deck of the Packet (see illustration 6.3) suggests that at some point the passengers on the Packet too were able to see the Horn across calm seas and with good visibility. As well, John’s ability to make the sketch from the deck suggests fair weather. As with the Fanny, though, the Packet then ran into storms and headwinds that delayed the Coopers off the Horn for weeks. By 24 March, roughly three weeks after they approached the Horn, they had made it roughly four hundred miles northwest of

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Illustration 6.3 Cape Horn as seen from the deck of the Packet. Private Papers, Edward Cooper, Aztec, New Mexico, drawing by John W. Cooper.

the southernmost tip of South America, certainly not out of difficult and dangerous waters but finally well past the Horn.93 Shortly after the Packet began its long voyage northwards, Captain Cooper and Sarah became grandparents yet again, as Malvina gave birth to a baby boy. Not long after this, according to John’s account of the voyage, his father made an error of judgment in choosing to keep the Packet’s route too close to the coast of South America. The result of this was that the Packet encountered “calms and head winds.”94 Whether this was in fact, bad judgment or just bad luck, the Packet made relatively slow time on this northward leg of its journey. The Fanny, which had rounded the Horn at roughly the same time and then spent a week in Valparaiso, made San Francisco in the last days of June.95 The Packet sailed into San Francisco Harbour three weeks later on 20 July 1850, after a journey of 230 days.96 The clipper ship the Sea Witch, from New York, entered the harbour the following day, having made the journey in 97 days.97 The Thain, which arrived in late August, sailing out of St John, New Brunswick, took 240 days to make the trip.98 One can imagine the relief and excitement on board the Packet as it finally arrived at its destination. Dr James Morrison, who sailed into San Francisco harbour a few weeks before the Coopers, described the view they too must have had. Dr Morrison reported that as his vessel passed in front of San Francisco on its way to an anchorage near Rincon Point,

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we had a view of the principal part of the town, first the presidio consisting of small wooden houses and tents, next the telegraph hill, the summit of which is crowned by the telegraph house and a windmill. Next comes Clarks point where wharves have been constructed along-side which lie steamers that run to Sacramento, then we passed what appeared to be the centre of the city. Here all is life and activity. Wharves are being extended far out into the bay, the genius of the land is usurping the dominions of old Neptune, buildings on piles appear above the surface of the water. Two wharves … have been extended out several hundred feet, several other wharves are commenced. The city itself independently of its shipping, which appears disproportioned to the size of the place, presents much the appearance of a New England country town. The buildings, with few exceptions, are of wood, and one had two stories in height.99 Morrison makes no mention in his account of the devastating fire that had consumed much of the core of downtown San Francisco a month earlier, the third major fire since December 1849. Likely this was because no sign of the destructive fire remained visible from the bay. As with the previous fires, as one observer noted, “In the space of a few weeks the burned districts were covered over with other buildings, many of which were erected of far more substantial materials than before.”100 Indeed, as another observer noted after one of the many devastating San Francisco fires, “while the stifling smoke was still pouring upwards, from the smouldering ruins and fallen timbers, workmen were engaged in erecting ‘places of business’ for those who had been so unceremoniously turned out of their Mercantile palaces, and commodious warehouses.”101 The many buildings destroyed by a big fire in May had been almost entirely replaced by early June.102 Such rapid rebuilding was the case with the fire that followed later in June as well. From the harbour San Francisco may have looked like a New England town arising from a landscape of sand hills and chaparral, but it was very different in character: like the mythical phoenix, San Francisco had the capacity to rise from its ashes almost overnight.

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Illustration 6.4 San Francisco waterfront with “forest of masts,” seen from the roof of the Jenny Lind Theatre, autumn 1850. California Historical Society, Negs. 23992 and 26277.

The many vessels that Dr Morrison noted at anchor in 1850, and which he thought disproportionate in number to the size of San Francisco, were yet another clue to the unusual nature of the city. Observers differed in their estimates of the number of vessels at anchor off San Francisco that summer. Some thought there were between five hundred and six hundred, others perhaps a thousand.103 There was agreement, however, that the extent of the shipping anchored in front of the city was extraordinary (see illustration 6.4). One commentator complained that after having heard of the beauty of San Francisco Bay, he was disappointed on arrival as he “couldn’t see the Bay at all, for the ships, jammed together like a vast forest of dead pines.”104 The ongoing transformation of San Francisco’s waterfront that Dr Morrison noted, with wharves extending well out into the sea, buildings arising on piles over the bay, and the shallow waters along the shore being recaptured from “the dominions of old Neptune,” flagged another of the extraordinary characteristics of San Francisco: the extent of the physical transformations underway in 1850. Only three years earlier, San Francisco, then named Yerba Buena (good herb) because of the wild mint that grew on its sand hills, had been a quiet backwater with perhaps a dozen houses105 (see illustration 6.5).

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In the spring of 1849, there were around one hundred houses.106 By the time the Coopers arrived, San Francisco had become a bustling, cosmopolitan city. In 1850 alone at least 36,000 people arrived there by sea on board more than 650 sea-going vessels.107 Yet more people who travelled to California’s goldfields by overland routes subsequently descended on San Francisco.108 In a place where two or three years earlier there had been a handful of people and the arrival of any vessel was a significant event, come 1850 there was a city of tens of thousands of people, most of whom were only temporarily resident109 (see illustration 6.6). One witness to this growth noted: Of all the marvelous phases of the history of the Present, the growth of San Francisco is the one which will most tax the belief of the Future. Its parallel was never known, and shall never be beheld again. I speak only of what I saw with my own eyes. When I landed there [in the fall of 1849], a little more than four months before, I found a scattering town of tents and canvas houses, with a show of frame buildings on one or two streets, and a population of about six thousand. Now … I saw around me an actual metropolis, displaying street after street of well-built edifices, filled with an active and enterprising people and exhibiting every mark of permanent commercial prosperity. Then the town was limited to the curve of the Bay fronting the anchorage and bottoms

Illustration 6.5 San Francisco before the gold rush, autumn 1848. Library of Congress, 3104268, sketch by C.A.M. Taber.

Illustration 6.6 San Francisco during the gold rush, ca. 1851. Library of Congress, g4364s pm000341, drawn by H. Bainbridge and G. Casilear.

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of the hills. Now it stretched to the utmost heights, followed the shore around point after point, and sending back a long arm through a gap in the hills, took hold of the Golden Gate and was building its warehouses on the open strait and almost fronting the blue horizon of the Pacific.110 Observers struggled to find words to capture the city’s essence and its ceaseless bustle. Many underlined its cosmopolitan character. Noting the trade along the front of the bay, Pringle Shaw observed that “the amount of business performed on these planked piles in the course of one day, is beyond belief. Crowds of all races, all languages, and all colors, jostle each other, all on their own interest bound, and heedless of their passing neighbors …. On moves the motley human tide, Kanakas and Cossacks, Britons and Brazilians, Indians, Irishmen, Icelanders, Germans, and gentlemen of color, literally every nation under heaven.”111 Another described San Francisco as “a sort of world’s show of humanity”: There were Chinamen in all their splendour of sky-blue or purple figured silk jackets, and tight yellow satin continuations, black satin shoes with thick white soles, and white gaiters; a fan in hand, and a beautifully plaited glossy pigtail hanging down to the heels from under a scarlet skullcap, with a gold knob on the top of it. These were the swell Chinamen; the lower orders of Celestials were generally dressed in immensely wide calico jackets and bags, for they really could not be called trousers, and on their heads they wore an enormous wickerwork extinguisher, which would have made a very good family clothes basket. The Mexicans were very numerous, and wore their national costume – the bright-coloured serape thrown gracefully over the left shoulder, with rows of silver buttons down the outside of their trousers, which were generally left open to show the loose white drawers underneath, and the silver-handled bowie-knife in the stamped leather leggings. Englishmen seemed to adhere to the shooting-coat style of dress, and the down-east Yankees to their eternal black dress-coat; while New Yorkers, Southerners and Frenchmen came out

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in the latest Paris fashions. Those who did not stick to their former style of dress, indulged in all the extravagant license of California costume, which was of every variety that caprice could suggest. No man could make his appearance sufficiently bizarre to attract any attention. The prevailing fashion among the rag-tag and bobtail was a red or blueflannel shirt, wide-awake hats of every conceivable shape and colour, and trousers stuffed into a big pair of boots. Pistols and knives were usually worn in the belt at the back, and to be without either was the exception to the rule.112 John W. Audubon, son of John James, sounded a common theme in highlighting the immorality of the town: The place is full of gamblers, hundreds of them, and men of the lowest types, more blasphemous, and with less regard for God and his commands than all I have ever seen on the Mississippi, [in] New Orleans or Texas, which give us the same class to some extent, it is true; but instead of a few dozen or a hundred, gaming at a time, here are thousands, and one house alone pays one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum for rent of the “Monte” tables. Sunday makes no difference … except for a little more drunkenness, and a little extra effort on the part of the hotel keepers to take in more money. Samuel Preble, writing from San Francisco in the summer of 1850 to his wife in Maine, reported San Francisco to be “more degraded than I expected to find it, it is all Rum & Gambling shops from beginning to end, as neer as I can calculate there is twenty thousand that does nothing but spend there time in gambling. They are coming and going from the mines all the time dig and get money & then come down and gambling it away … there is said to be 5000 gambling tables in this place.”113 L.M. Shaeffer who was in San Francisco in 1850 observed “around the tables are “gamblers surrounded by all kinds of adventurers. –The Mexican, American, Native Californian, English, Dutch, French, Irish, &c. &c., clad in varied habiliments, from the glossy broadcloth to the well-worn linsey, every one

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watching with painful interest the progress of the game.” Some parts of the town, he said, were populated by “men whose very breath was so surcharged with liquor, that I should have hesitated to place a candle near them.”114 Yet even critical observers were sometimes impressed by the architecture, music, and interior decorating of the big gambling houses. William Kelly noted that not only did the big gaming houses “invariably occupy the most prominent sites” and have a “conspicuous exterior” but they were easily located by “the crash of music [that] issues from their capricious portals and balconies that is certain to arrest the ear. Some of them have really fine bands, as they spare no expense in securing the best musicians; and I am fully persuaded the charm of sweet sounds entices many abhorers of the vice to enter who would never otherwise have overstepped their thresholds.” 115 Some of the bands included female musicians.116 Frank Marryat was impressed by the music of the saloons too, as well as their lavish interiors: “On entering one of these saloons the eye is dazzled almost by the brilliancy of chandeliers and mirrors. The roof, rich with giltwork, is supported by pillars of glass; and walls are hung with French paintings of great merit, but of which female nudity forms alone the subject.”117 San Francisco at mid-century was overwhelmingly a male city. Roughly 34,000 of the 36,000 people who arrived there by sea in 1850 were male.118 The gender balance of immigrants arriving on the overland routes at this time was even more lopsided. According to figures published in the Daily Alta California, roughly 99 per cent of the 1,200 immigrants using the Fort Laramie route in 1850, as of that date, were men.119 According to one contemporary historian of San Francisco, the few females who came to the city included “many … of base character and loose practices.”120 Frank Marryat noted that “Women are rarities here” and for that reason having “a pretty woman to attend the bar” was the most effective way to ensure customers, even more important than good music and bright lights.121 He also noted the ways that the gender imbalance of San Francisco shaped the city’s culture. “The stranger in San Francisco at this time is at once impressed with the feverish state of excitement that pervades the whole population; there is no attention paid to dress, and every one is hurried and incoherent in manner. Clubs,

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reading-rooms, and the society of women are unknown; and from the harassing duties of the day’s business, there is nothing to turn to for recreation but the drinking-saloons and gambling-houses, and here nightly all the population meet.”122 L.M. Schaeffer thought that the “general state of the society was loose” because “there were no refined women to throw a moral influence around the heterogeneous mass of human beings that were congregated from every part of the world.”123 In the summer of 1850, James Pryce found that it was cheaper to buy a new shirt than to hire a “washerwoman” to launder it.124 Some observers noted, however, that by the summer of 1850 respectable women were beginning to arrive in greater numbers.125 Some descriptions of the gender imbalance in San Francisco and the characterizations of the women who came to California at midcentury are the product of an emergent gold rush mythology and, as JoAnn Levy has noted, the impulse that makes any story worth telling “a story worth exaggerating”; even so, the Packet with its seven women passengers was unusual.126 The contrast between William Cooper’s vision of a properly organized world and what prevailed in San Francisco in 1850 could hardly have been greater. In the 1840s he had struggled to get his sons to understand the right way of “making property” and urged them to eschew “gambling speculations.” He had criticized William Jr severely for letting “a greed for money” be his “ruling passion.” He had sought to teach his children the benefits of being industrious and frugal and avoiding debt. Come July 1850, Cooper found himself aboard a vessel in the harbour of a city that epitomized the opposite of all that. David Gardner, who had come to San Francisco from New York, declared that “the Almighty Dollar is the only thing cared for here.”127 J.D. Borthwick observed, “The every-day trot of ordinary human existence was not fast enough pace for Californians in their impetuous pursuit of wealth. The longest period of time ever thought of was the month …. In the space of a month the whole city might be swept off by a fire, and a totally new one might be flourishing in its place.” In San Francisco, there was, he thought, “more speculative schemes conceived and executed, more money made and lost … more buying and selling, more sudden changes of fortune, more eating and drinking, more smoking, swearing, gambling, and tobacco-chewing, more crime and profligacy … than could be shown

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in an equal space of time by any community of the same size on the face of the earth.”128 In short, San Francisco epitomized much of what Cooper abhorred. The mass of vessels at anchor in the harbour when the Coopers arrived were, in large part, evidence of the enormous waste of resources occasioned by the discovery of gold in California. As James Tyson discovered on his arrival in San Francisco from Baltimore, the “forest of masts” in the harbour was the result of “every vessel which had arrived” being “deserted by its crew, and left to idly swing at its cable length.”129 Theodore John noted as well that “a large portion of that fleet at anchor in the cove and bay, of which any port in the world might be proud, is rotting irrevocably.”130 While Tyson’s claim that every vessel had been abandoned by its crew was an exaggeration, it was nonetheless the case that tens of thousands of tons of shipping worth hundreds of thousands of dollars had simply been abandoned in the harbour to rot, as the men who had brought the ships there ran off to the goldfields of California’s interior in the hope of making their fortune. David Gardner reported that the master of the vessel he arrived on in the spring of 1849 had put “all our crew … in irons” to prevent their desertion, and Alfred De Witt reported watching a captain “sculling his own Boat ashore, his Mates and crew having deserted.131 The Coopers had not come to San Francisco with the intention of staying in the city, nor were their California plans directly linked to the gold rush. They had been considering emigrating to California well before gold was discovered there. What they needed in San Francisco was information on where they might proceed to begin farming, and the necessary governmental clearances to do so. Their first contacts with the city would be with the customs officers and quarantine officers who met the Packet as it came into harbour, and the ferrymen who would soon have swarmed about offering passage ashore. The latter might have given them some sense of what lay ahead in the city itself. William Kelly reported that San Francisco’s “aquatic extortioners” had an “insolence and rapacity [that] throws entirely into the shade the accomplishments of the jolly watermen of the Tower Stairs or Old Wapping.”132 Dr Morrison found that, on arrival in San Francisco, his ship was “soon surrounded by small boats to convey passengers to shore” for a fee forty times higher than

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it had cost for similar service in Acapulco.133 The exorbitant cost of services in San Francisco left most newcomers dumbfounded, no doubt the Coopers included. In the fall of 1849, while the Coopers had been getting the Packet ready for sea, political leaders in California were taking steps that would change the context for the Coopers’ arrival. In September a convention of delegates resolved to petition the United States Congress for statehood and drafted a constitution. Subsequently an election established a legislature that governed pending a response from Washington, DC . Thus, the Coopers’ emigration to California occurred in the context of the territory’s shift from military governorship to statehood. While they were sailing around the Horn, California’s new legislature was voting on roughly 150 statutes. Among the new laws enacted by the time the Coopers arrived in San Francisco were statutes discriminating against immigrants to California who were not citizens of the United States.134 Of the greatest immediate importance to the Coopers, the United States Congress passed legislation extending United States revenue laws to California. The first US customs collector for the Port of San Francisco, James Collier, arrived in San Francisco as the Packet was being launched in Prince Edward Island. His four-storey customs house was being constructed as they travelled and was there to greet them on arrival.135 The Coopers’ lives might have turned out quite differently had Collier and his customs establishment not preceded them to San Francisco. James Collier’s agents were among those who came aboard the Packet as it entered the harbour. A Frenchman who encountered Collier earlier in the year described him as “a heavy-set busy-body, who by nature, or possibly from motives of personal interest, stands in with assistants and agents who unite to squander money, and discourage the importation of foreign merchandise.” 136 Prior to Collier’s appointment, officers of the US Navy had overseen the movement of vessels along the California coast. They had accepted the presence of foreign ships and recognized that they played a useful role in supplying California’s growing population.137 Collier reversed the Navy’s policies and sought to impose strict controls on the movement of goods by foreign vessels.138 It was the Coopers’ misfortune to sail into harbour at a time while Collier was

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vigorously pursuing his new policies. A week after they arrived, the San Francisco Herald ran a front-page article, under the headline “Harbour Impositions,” which claimed that masters of vessels had begun “to regard the port of San Francisco in the same light as capture by a pirate. What with the impositions of the Collector, harbour dues, quarantine and health regulations, and the hundred other expedients resorted to for the purpose of preying on the commerce of this port, it has now acquired as bad a reputation as its worst enemy can desire.”139 For the Coopers, their biggest problem lay with Collier’s insistence that the Packet be treated as a foreign vessel. This meant that they would have to keep a customs agent on board, at a cost of six dollars per day, until all the Packet’s cargo had been unloaded and cleared through customs.140 The per diem cost precluded using the vessel as a floating home and storehouse for their goods for an extended period as intended. As well, Collier’s policies effectively blocked them from using the Packet to make a livelihood, as they could neither convert it to American registry, nor use it for trade in the coastal waters of California. Plans that might have worked well less than a year earlier were now impossible. Cooper wrote to Collier shortly after the Packet’s arrival to try to get him to exempt the Coopers from his new policies. He opened by noting that he left Prince Edward Island because he differed with the government there in “his political opinion” and had arrived in California “with all his Family to settle them on Land under the American Government.” He explained: Our occupation has been to clear and cultivate land, to build and work a Grist and Saw-Mill, and some to build and navigate Vessels. And to enable us to commence the like occupations here we have a new Brigintine, the Packet, Provisions, and various articles of Tools and Lumber, which we had on hand and in use, fit to put up Houses for ourselves. But those articles were not intended as Merchandise, and would be difficult to class for duties being all odds and ends, the lumber, Tools and Iron which we could convert to our own use would be of value to us, but would be of little value if we have to sell them to pay duties and expences.

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If we could take our vessel up some of the Rivers convenient to where we could settle and land our property as American property, we would soon becom useful members of Society. But if we must land it here to pay duties and expenses it will be lost to us and the family exposed to the temptations of vice. Our property if considered as American property would be the common Stock of California and would not be sold to carry an equivalent in value to a foreign country, nor would it be bringing foreign labour in competition with American labour as we intend to become Americans. That this may meet your favourable consideration is the earnest prayer of the Petitioner and for any indulgence and counsel which you may afford Petitioner will be grateful for.141 The Coopers were in a difficult spot. In essence, they were trapped. In time complaints against Collier became so great that he was dismissed from office, but that did not happen until February 1851.142 During the summer and fall of 1850 the Coopers were at the mercy of Collier’s strict interpretations of customs regulations, and Collier refused to budge. After Collier took control of customs, even boats built in California while it was under United States military rule were treated as foreign vessels.143 As a result the Coopers were left with two unpalatable options. They could sail out of harbour in search of a port beyond the United States, or they could disembark, unload the contents of the Packet, and sell their boat. There could hardly have been a worse market for selling the Packet, given that San Francisco harbour was crammed with vessels that had been abandoned by their crews and given that Collier would not allow the Packet to be registered as an American vessel for use in California’s coasting trade. John Cooper’s account of the crisis occasioned by the circumstances the family encountered upon arrival in San Francisco suggests their wide-ranging discussions concerning what they might do next. These debates were informed by news that “even the youngest boys, 15 and 18 years of age, could earn from 4 to 6 dollars per day on shore, and young girls could get $75.00 per month for

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housework.” According to John, the “largest portion of the family didn’t wish to return to the Island at once, nor to go to sea again,” in part because of the lure of such wages. As well, according to John, having discovered that “all the good lands of the country seemed to be covered with Spanish Grants and held very high prices, they made up their minds to remain in San Francisco.” Thus, “it was soon decided to discharge the cargo, sell the vessel, divide up the property … and leave it to the future to decide whether the family should all meet again on the Island, or in California.”144 John’s matter-of-fact statement describes what must, in fact, have been a heart-wrenching moment for many of the members of the family. Two weeks after the Coopers had arrived in San Francisco, Cooper as the registered owner of the Packet drafted an agreement with his sons to effect the sale of the boat and its contents and to facilitate the breakup of the family and its assets that John described half a century later. The agreement indicated that Cooper intended to return to Prince Edward Island and that he would require $1,000 from the sale of the vessel and its cargo in order to do so and pay outstanding debts there. The agreement gave William Jr and Adolphus authority to unload and sell the Packet’s cargo, or parts of it, when they thought it best to do so. It also gave them authority to buy a lot of land in San Francisco and to construct a house suitable for William Sr and “any part of my family that cannot provide for themselves until such time as the said sum of one thousand dollars” could be provided for his return. The agreement secured $1,000 of the proceeds for Sarah Cooper as well.145 Two weeks later, and thus a month after they had arrived in California, Cooper put the Packet up for sale.146 The advertisement indicated that it was “coppered and copper fastened” and had “superior accommodation for passengers.” As well, the advertisement noted that the Packet, unlike many of the vessels anchored in the harbour, could “be sent to sea at once with small expense.”147 Given that Cooper stopped running the advertisement four days later, it would seem that he found a buyer quickly. The purchaser was a New Zealand company that paid $7,000 for the vessel – according to John, roughly one-third of what it had cost to build it.148 The Packet’s good condition may have saved the Coopers from worse losses; in August 1850, Benjamin Crowell wrote to a friend to inform

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him that he might have to sell the older vessel he had sailed to San Francisco for less than $1,000.149 With the Packet and much of its cargo sold, it was possible for the various members of the family to move on with their lives. According to Cooper, he sought to organize his and Sarah’s return to the Island along with “some of our younger children.” He was blocked in this project, however, because “the trustees [William Jr and Adolphus] made objection to their mother returning.”150 The two sons’ opposition may have been grounded in part on Sarah being “delicate” and prone to sickness.151 Certainly travel back to Prince Edward Island, overland, or by sea and land using the Panama route, or around the Horn as a passenger on someone else’s vessel, was likely to be much more arduous than the passage out. The objection may have been grounded in a desire to have Sarah stay close to her grandchildren, whose parents appear not to have wished to return to the Island. In addition to Malvina’s second child, born shortly after the Packet rounded the Horn, John’s wife, Margaret, gave birth while the Packet was anchored in San Francisco harbour. The birth of John’s first child shortly after the Packet arrived in California may explain why Adolphus rather than John was serving with William Jr as trustee for the family’s assets. Or perhaps the objection to Sarah’s return was grounded in a desire to keep in one place the members of the family most accustomed to being together. While Cooper in particular and several of the boys as well had lived away from the farm and indeed the Island for extended periods, a core portion of the family, including Sarah and John, had organized the family’s life at Sailor’s Hope and the mills at Grand River. Whether the younger children would stay in California or return to Prince Edward Island was, no doubt, predicated on what their mother would do. Following the sale of the Packet, Adolphus and William Jr purchased land in San Francisco for the family members who would remain there. Nine hundred dollars bought three lots which, combined, amounted to roughly an eighth of an acre. The land they acquired in this first purchase fronted on Clementina Street, below the major corridor formed by Market Street and thus just south of the main commercial centre of San Francisco (see map 6.1). Before the year was out they purchased two more parcels in the same region. The lots were not far from the waterfront at the eastern

Map 6.1 Official Map of San Francisco, 1849, showing locale of Cooper family lots. Library of Congress, g4364s ct000187, drawn by Alex. Zakrzewski.

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Rincon Point end of the harbourfront.152 Here, using materials they had brought with them from Prince Edward Island on the Packet, the brothers began erecting new homes for themselves and their family. While they were doing so, William Cooper Sr began the long journey back to Prince Edward Island alone. At the time he still thought and hoped that some of his family might join him there. This was not to be. Indeed, he would never see his wife nor any of his children again.

7

The Return William Cooper’s decision to leave San Francisco as soon as possible, with all the family who wanted to leave with him, was understandable in the circumstances that prevailed in San Francisco in 1850. That some of his family would see opportunity in those same circumstances was not surprising. Tens of thousands of people from all over the world risked a great deal to travel to California and participate in the possibilities that the Cooper family had before them. Although the gold rush was not the inspiration for the Coopers’ journey to California, and San Francisco not their intended destination, the argument for attempting to make the best of being there was a compelling one, at least for many of the family. That choice proved to be a tragic error. The building lots that William Jr and Adolphus purchased for the family in San Francisco were a few blocks southeast of Happy Valley, a region of San Francisco that had drawn many immigrants. For the most part, the new arrivals were residing in tents when the Coopers arrived, though this was changing with the construction of increasing numbers of wooden buildings.1 Part of the attraction for those who pitched tents at Happy Valley, which lay just inland from the existing waterfront, was access to spring water; fresh water was scarce in the dry season, and many settlers in San Francisco found it necessary to buy water by the pail.2 Another attraction was the nearby Union Iron Works. Founded in 1849, the plant initially flourished by manufacturing mining equipment, and it provided good employment for those who wished to work for wages. Other foundries and

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iron works sprang up nearby as well. The sand hills that had once made Happy Valley a “valley” were soon levelled. No doubt much of the soil that was removed ended up as fill which helped to create new town lots out of the shallow water of the harbour. (The area of new land created by fill is visible on map 6.1, extending from Front Street back several blocks to the old shoreline.) In the process Happy Valley evolved into an important working-class district in early San Francisco. When the Coopers settled on lots to the southeast of Happy Valley, there were probably a thousand tents located in the Happy Valley region. To the southeast of the Coopers’ land, roughly the same distance away as Happy Valley, lay the Rincon Hill district. It was more lightly populated, and was becoming home to some of San Francisco’s leading entrepreneurs. An 1852 map indicating the locale of the buildings that had been erected in San Francisco by this time shows the buildings the Coopers erected as part of a modest cluster of permanent structures in a region that as yet had few permanent buildings.3 It must have been a challenge for the Coopers to adapt to the very different context they found in San Francisco. As well as the social and cultural changes involved in the shift from rural Prince Edward Island to the predominately male, urban, boom-town world of San Francisco, the climate and geography were new too. Although settlers from eastern North America sometimes remarked favourably on the vista from San Francisco, particularly in June when the hills around the bay were still green, in the dry season almost all found the windblown sand of the city trying if not intolerable. J. Osgood thought the city possessed a climate that was “the most disagreeable that Nature in her most fitful mood ever formed for man to respire under.” During August, he noted, the weather was fine until noon when the winds began to blow in off the sea. Then the sandy soil of the town site, which had been disturbed by urban growth, was “hurled about in clouds in the most unmerciful manner, much to the injury of one’s eyes & very much in opposition to their comfort; such a thing as cleanliness is unheard of for half an hours exposure in the streets turns ones shirt collar a complete brown … the sand perforates every pore; in every movement one feels its grating; it gets into boots, into hats, into pockets, into ones hair, into his mouth, & into every place where there is a crevice to lodge it.”4 Frank Pearl,

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who lived on board a vessel in the harbour in the summer of 1849, reported that he only went on shore to do business in the mornings, as in the afternoons “the continual smother of sand which fills the air on shore” was intolerable.5 With the rainy season, dust gave way to mud, and the unplanked streets of San Francisco became “a quagmire”; in the afternoons cold winds swept in from the sea, adding to the discomfort.6 The concentration of a new emigrant population in San Francisco, drawn from all over the world and carrying microbes from all corners of the globe, combined with poor housing, poor water services, and poor sanitation to become a recipe for outbreaks of contagious diseases. No reliable figures exist for the extent of the cholera outbreak that swept San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Jose beginning in the fall of 1850, and the mortality that followed from it, nor are there reliable figures distinguishing between death due to cholera and death from diseases with similar symptoms. One informed estimate is that 5 per cent of the population of San Francisco, 10 per cent of San Jose, and 15 per cent of those living in Sacramento ultimately died of cholera in 1850.7 The outbreak may have begun in October, with the arrival of a steamer from Panama carrying passengers. Although fourteen passengers had died of the disease en route, the remaining passengers were not quarantined.8 Some local papers maintained, however, that the cholera had arrived the week before.9 Whatever the case, it soon spread widely. On 7 November, the Daily Alta California reported: “We now have in our midst a disorder of no common order, penetrating everywhere and laying low alike the rich and the poor. The cholera, virulent as the plague is sweeping through the land and with its fetid breath breaking up our family ties and welling our lonely cemeteries. None know whence it cometh or where it goeth; it strikes down alike the weak and the strong – it respects no condition or position. The strongest among us knows not at what moment he may become one of its victims.” William Darrah, who had arrived in San Francisco in May 1850, wrote back to relatives in New England in mid-November to report the recent deaths of friends. Although he had intended to spend the winter in San Francisco, he decided he needed to flee town “as the Cholera rages so bad.”10 Others denied both the extent of the disease and its ability to strike across the social spectrum. The

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De Witts, wealthy immigrants from New York, thought it a disease that preyed only on those “who indulged very freely” and suffered from “imprudence.”11 According to John Cooper, the entire Cooper family became desperately sick that fall, perhaps because they were all drinking the same contaminated water.12 Appeals for medical assistance would have cost them dearly. Fees for a day visit were $30 or more, or ten ounces of gold; night visits were yet more expensive.13 Sarah Cooper was, it would seem, the first to die, on 18 November. She was fiftythree.14 Oscar, who was eighteen, died nine days later.15 They were buried in the Yerba Buena Cemetery (now the site of San Francisco’s main public library)16 (see map 6.1). By the time cholera had run its course that fall, John’s wife, Margaret, and their young child were dead, and also Malvina.17 Early the following spring, Malvina’s husband, James, and their second son, James Jr, who had been born as the family was rounding Cape Horn, died as well, leaving young William Cooper Morrow an orphan.18 Coffins and funerals, like medical care, were expensive, which may explain why the records of the local undertaker only list the services he provided for the burials of four of the seven Cooper family members. In November an undertaker retained by the city submitted a bill of $4,250 to municipal authorities for providing simple coffins to the destitute poor at a cost of twenty-five dollars per coffin.19 The Coopers were not among the city’s poor by any stretch, but the cholera epidemic would have been a financial blow to them as well as a devastating emotional one. When did William Cooper Sr learn the horrible news? The last leg of his journey home was aboard a schooner from Boston that arrived in Prince Edward Island in late May 1851, roughly nine months after he left California.20 Perhaps he only learned of the news on arrival in Prince Edward Island. It seems more likely, however, that he would have heard of the death of his wife, son, daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and two grandchildren from Islanders in Boston, or from correspondence he received there. In the past, when he and others in the family were travelling, they had arranged to receive mail at points along the way such as consulates or the premises of prominent merchants. Cooper may have made arrangements with family members or others to stay in touch by such means in the winter of 1849–50

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as well, assuming he left San Francisco with a clear plan of his route homewards. The details of Cooper’s departure from San Francisco were shrouded in mystery, at least from the perspective of the expatriate Islanders in California who provided Island papers with news. Early in 1851 the Islander published a report that William Cooper was “missing, and it was believed by some he had been murdered, for the sake of his money, and by others that he was on his way to the Island.”21 In late January the Royal Gazette reported the return of James Connell, the first of the California Association who had gone to San Francisco on the Fanny. Connell, who had made money plying his trade as a plasterer and not by working in the mines, said he would not again “undergo the privations, perils and the same anxiety of mind for all of California.” He also reported that William Cooper had left before him and was returning to Prince Edward Island with $1,000.22 Neither Connell nor the Islander’s informants in San Francisco indicated what route Cooper had taken on his return journey. Most travellers between eastern North America and San Francisco chose among three routes. The fastest and easiest route back for Cooper would have been to travel from San Francisco to Panama by steamship, which could take three weeks. From Panama, it was possible by 1850 to cross the isthmus in a two-day journey and to make boat connections homeward from the Gulf coast.23 By sail, the trip to Panama took seven weeks, sometimes more.24 Most people returning to the east coast of North America from California chose the isthmus route.25 Although miners headed from Panama to San Francisco in the summer of 1850 paid from $150 to $300 for their passage northwards, San Francisco papers were advertising fares of from $50 to $75 dollars for trips from San Francisco back to Panama.26 Crossing the isthmus added another $50 dollars in costs.27 It also added a variety of physical challenges and hazards, as passage involved travel by mule from the Pacific Coast to the headwaters of the Chagres River, and from there travel by boat to the “miasmal village” of Chagres on the Gulf Coast.28 Had Cooper used the Panama route, he would have made the passage across the isthmus in the rainy season. Robert Beck, who returned east via this route in 1850, described Chagres as “the most detestable little town I ever

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saw.” The climate of the isthmus, he reported, was “intensely hot and enervating and, Oh ye Gods, how it does rain. I have seen more rain fall here in 24 hours than I ever saw in 6 months in Penna.”29 Those travelling in drier weather were more likely to remark favourably on the tropical scenery and the pleasures of abundant tropical fruit.30 From Chagres on the Gulf side of the isthmus to New York would likely have added another $200 in costs for steamship passage, less if by sail.31 By steamship, travel to New York could take less than two weeks.32 The total cost for Cooper of using the Panama route to return to Boston and from there to the Island would probably have been around $300.33 These significant costs for a return passage trapped many adventurers in California. In time, passage would become cheaper and easier, but the costs in 1850 were such that Cooper might have hesitated to use the route across the isthmus. Many of the gold rush migrants who travelled to California from the east coast by the Cape Horn route had had little or no previous experience at sea and found the trip to be appalling in its dangers and discomforts. Thus they resisted having to repeat it on their return. Given Cooper’s years of experience at sea, he is unlikely to have viewed return by sea with horror. It is possible that he might have been able, had he wanted, to obtain a berth as an officer on a vessel sailing to the east coast, thereby saving the expense of paying for his passage. Certainly it was a sellers’ market for sailors and officers looking for work in San Francisco for much of 1849 and 1850. Saving money would have been attractive to Cooper. Committing himself to being under the authority of an unknown captain on a long voyage, however, would not. In London, or other British ports, he would have been able to acquire reliable information concerning a captain’s character. In San Francisco, although he knew some people, he was operating in a context where there was a great deal that he did not know and could not easily learn. The third alternative for Cooper’s return to Prince Edward Island, and seemingly least likely, given that he was sixty-four years old, was to travel overland. According to J.H. McDonald’s account of the Cooper family, published in California in the Maple Leaf in the 1930s, this is the route Cooper chose. McDonald’s narrative indicates that he took “the Overland Trail back to Prince Edward Island,” intending “to dispose of his land and other property and

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return to join his family in California.”34 McDonald’s account of other aspects of the Cooper family’s history is not error free, but for the most part it matches the historical record. The timing of Cooper’s departure from San Francisco, which seems to have been in early September, would have permitted an overland return; his interest in beginning his return soon after the family arrived in San Francisco would be consistent with the need to depart before winter precluded overland travel for that year. The most likely route for Cooper’s return, if he travelled overland, would have been the California Trail, which extended from Sacramento east up the Humboldt River and on to Great Salt Lake. From there the trail traversed the Rockies to the headwaters of the Platte, following the Platte to the settled lower reaches of the Missouri River. The accounts of those who travelled overland highlight the horrors of the desert regions of the last part of the route. According to Madison Moorman, who travelled the trail in 1850, “the amount of human suffering” in the final stretch was “indescribable.”35 In mid-July 1849, Soloman Gorgas reported that in a single day toward the end of the trail he “passed some thirty or forty dead & dying horses & Mules – many wagons abandoned & clothing & all that is useful & almost indespensible to poor wretched man Cast by the wayside in distress & in order to avoid famine and starvation.”36 Captain David DeWolf, travelling the same route two months later in the season, reported seeing one hundred deserted wagons and five hundred dead oxen along a twentymile stretch of the trail.37 The following year George Lawson saw “between two & three thousand head of horses cattle & mules dead within forty miles.”38 Understandably, those arriving in the gold fields after taking the overland route usually returned home by sea via the isthmus. The overland journey from west to east, though, would have been easier than travelling in the other direction. Emigrants trekking westwards faced the most gruelling part of the journey after they had already crossed the prairie and were tired and running low on supplies and their horses, mules and oxen, like them, were often worn out and close to death. Those travelling in the other direction passed through the arid region in the rain shadow to the east of the Sierra Nevadas at the beginning of their journey, and thus could cross the

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desert with well-fed and well-rested livestock and abundant supplies of food, forage, and water.39 Although the overwhelming bulk of the traffic on the overland route flowed from east to west, travellers’ accounts report parties moving in the other direction as well.40 Had Cooper been able to join a party travelling light, he might have made it to Missouri in two or three months, or less.41 McDonald’s claim that Cooper used the overland trail for his return gains some credence too from comments Cooper made later in the Island house of assembly. In 1857, during a discussion of the role Prince Edward Island’s agricultural society had played in importing British horses to the colony, Cooper defended the merits of a rugged breed of horse that had once been common on the Island, and that continued to be bred in Canada. These horses, he noted, had proven their worth in the “wearisome journeys from some of the more eastern States of America to California,” something he knew from having “been in company” with those making the trek.42 It was unlikely Cooper would have been in such company during the time he spent on San Francisco’s waterfront. Had he travelled overland on his way back east, however, he might well have spent time in camps along the way where he would have visited with emigrants headed west and had a chance to examine their horses and gear. Upon his return to Prince Edward Island in the spring of 1851, Cooper resumed residence at Sailor’s Hope. No doubt he found some consolation from his grief with Sarah’s parents, John and Christiana Glover, and her sister Margaret and her family, as well as among his friends in the community. While he was coming to terms with his losses and with the new situation he found on the Island, his remaining family in California were adapting to changed circumstances as well. For some, this included posing for daguerreotypes (see illustration 7.1 and 7.2). As William Jr described it, the family had arrived in California intending “to make a fortune in the shortest possible time.” This was not his father’s view of the object of their travels, but it probably accurately reflected William’s thoughts and perhaps those of some of his siblings and some of the others who travelled to San Francisco with the Coopers. Things soon changed, however. According to William Jr, “after enduring the tide of Death and Misfortunes that set against us for the first eight months of our sojourn here, we were glad to avail our selves of any chance that

Illustration 7.1 Women from the Packet in San Francisco, c. 1850, perhaps Rowena and Caroline Cooper. Source: Private Papers of Edward Cooper.

Illustration 7.2 William Cooper Jr (?), 1850. Private Papers, Edward Cooper, Aztec, New Mexico, photograph taken at C.E. Watkins Art Gallery, Montgomery Street, San Francisco.

Map 7.1 Northern California, 1855, showing locale of Cooper family farms. Library of Congress, g4361p rr001690, R.S. Williamson et al.

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Map 7.2 Yager Creek and Lower Eel River, 1865, showing the locale of the Cooper family sawmills and grist mills. Ferndale Museum, A. J. Doolittle, Official Township Map of Humboldt County, 1865.

offered security for our lives.” Early in 1851, John, George, David, and Rowena went inland to the mines, in the hope of making good money, if not a fortune. Malvina’s orphaned son remained in San Francisco, under the care, it would seem, of his uncle, William Morrow, and John’s sister-in-law, Mary Davidson, and Sarah Glover, the Coopers’ first cousin.43 William Jr began to look for a safe place where the family might settle in northern California, which he had heard was “the most healthy part.”44 By April, William Jr had found a new home for the Coopers in the Eel River Valley, and he and Adolphus had sold some of the family property in San Francisco45 (see map 7.1 and 7.2). Adolphus and Caroline, who appear to have remained in San Francisco while William Jr searched for a place, soon joined him there, bringing provisions, farming tools, and seed with them.46 Writing to a friend in

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Illustration 7.3 Van Duzen and Eel River Valley from Hydesville, California. Photograph by author, May 2009.

Bay Fortune, William Jr described their lands, which lay at the juncture of the Van Duzen branch of the Eel River and Yager Creek, as “not only healthy but beautiful to live in.” The region was, he said, “delightful, the soil fertile in the extreme and game abundant we can kill an Elk or Deere when we please our fields are covered with Geese and Ducks and our streams in season are filled with the finest Salmon our lands are ready for the plough and surrounded with every description of timber we can desire in fact we appear to have every natural advantage a country could afford.”47 The natural abundance of the region, with its redwood forests, hilltop “prairies” of open grassland, and abundant fish, fowl, and game, astounded other newcomers as well. The famous mountain man Seth Kinman described seeing in nearby Bear River “as many as 40 grizzlies from one point of view, whilst of deer elk, they were almost innumerable.” Because the elk were unfamiliar with guns, they would, Kinman reported, “stand and stare at the hunters in astonishment, whilst they were shot down with impunity.”48 George Gibb likely saw the Coopers’ first dwelling and fields when he crossed Goose Prairie in 1851 as part of an official government expedition to arrange Indian treaties. He noted farms where the potatoes were still just coming out of the ground in September, but whose owners had “no fear of their not reaching maturity.” After spending

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a number of days examining the area, Gibbs decided that the lands on the lower Van Duzen where the Coopers had settled were perhaps the best in the region. He also noted that the aboriginal peoples living there did “not appear to be warlike or disposed to aggression.”49 In August 1851, William Jr travelled inland to the mining district on the upper reaches of the Trinity River and then journeyed further east to the Sacramento Valley before heading south to Sacramento and, ultimately, San Francisco. John, George, and Rowena left the inland mines where they had been working at that time and joined William Jr in San Francisco so that the four of them might travel by boat up the coast to Eel River together. By early fall, all of William Cooper’s surviving children, with the exception of David, had regrouped in the Eel River Valley. They were soon writing to David, who was only sixteen, urging him to sell his claims and join them at Eel River as well. This he did. There on the fertile lands of northern California the family hoped that they had at last found a place where they might make a new life for themselves. Already, however, there were signs of trouble. Reports from the Humboldt region even before they moved there had noted conflicts between settlers and aboriginal peoples and casualties on both sides.50 When Adolphus arrived in the region with Caroline, bringing supplies and gear, he had to temporarily leave her to keep watch over their possessions near their new home. When Indians emerged unexpectedly and sought to examine the gear, Caroline, then thirteen, drew her brother’s pistols and held them at bay.51 That summer Adolphus and William Jr attended a meeting of local settlers who had caught a young Indian robbing a cabin. Their intervention appears to have been central in preventing his being hanged. Early the following year, two of their neighbours were killed by Indians. By this time, although the Coopers owned several farm properties, they were living together and, brothers and sisters alike, sleeping with revolvers under their pillows and rifles at the ready.52 Back in Prince Edward Island, William Cooper Sr was being drawn into colonial politics yet again. Within weeks of his return, Allan Fraser, a land reform leader of the 1830s, spoke to him concerning the political changes that were occurring on the Island and the role Cooper might play in these new developments.53 Fraser, who was one of the Prince County representatives in the assembly,

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Illustration 7.4 Charlottetown from Government House, ca. 1850. PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation Collection, Prince Edward Island, Public Archives and Record Office, Acc. 2320/58-5, painting by Fannie Bayfied, owned by Mrs Gordon DeBlois, photographed by M. Mallett.

reported on the imperial decision to grant responsible government to Prince Edward Island, putting it on a constitutional basis similar to that of Britain’s other colonies in North America. In theory this change required the executive to act only on the advice of the party that commanded a majority in the house of assembly. Imperial authorities had been reluctant to grant responsible government on the Island, in part because of fears that greater democratic power might lead to radical land reform.54 The act facilitating the transfer of new power and responsibilities to the Island legislature passed four weeks before Cooper’s return in the spring of 1851.55 Fraser thought that the advent of responsible government provided new opportunities for achieving land reform, but he was concerned that the leaders of the assembly would not seize those opportunities. Perhaps, though, some of the Island politicians involved in drafting the legislation that established responsible government had been attentive to land reform issues. In drawing from Nova Scotia’s responsible government legislation to craft the language for the Prince Edward Island bill, someone made a minor change in the wording of the Prince Edward Island legislation. Among other things, this legislation shifted the responsibility for paying the salaries of government officers – the civil

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establishment – from the imperial government to the Island. To facilitate this change, and to ensure that the colony had the necessary resources for its new responsibilities, the Nova Scotia legislation transferred any returns from Crown lands from the imperial to the colonial treasury. In the Island bill, the equivalent section transferred not only the revenues but the lands themselves. Imperial authorities spotted the detail after the legislation had been sent to London, and the assembly was instructed to pass a bill amending the language of the act in the following session.56 Had the original wording slipped through unnoticed, the Island government would have been in a stronger position to institute escheat proceedings to recover lands that belonged to the Crown in right of the colony. Whether that was the intent is not clear, and Fraser, it would seem, doubted the commitment of the leaders of the majority in the assembly to land reform. There was good reason for his concern. In the years after the Escheat Party lost its majority in the general election of 1842, the three members of the assembly who had been the most prominent in pressing for radical land reform had increasingly disengaged from their leadership roles. Le Lacheur lost his seat in the 1842 election, and Cooper pulled back from full engagement with the business of the assembly in the months and years after 1842 and did not run for office in the next general election.57 Although Macintosh and Le Lacheur successfully contested the election of 1846, their profiles were much diminished.58 Le Lacheur alone remained part of the assembly that was elected in 1850. By the spring of 1851, however, his seat had been declared vacant.59 He, like Cooper, had decided to leave Prince Edward Island; he chose Iowa.60 As the profiles of Cooper, Macintosh, and Le Lacheur diminished, leadership in the assembly was assumed either by Tories, who were able to form a majority after the general election of 1842, or by relatively conservative leaders of what would become known as the Reform or Liberal Party. Alexander Rae, for one, had gained political prominence as a supporter of the Escheat activism of the 1830s but had advocated more conservative positions than Cooper, Macintosh, and Le Lacheur.61 George Coles, who had first entered the assembly in 1842 as a supporter of the Conservative majority, was by the late 1840s and early 1850s the leading figure among the Reformers.

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Having taken up the cause of responsible government, he became the Island’s first premier in the spring of 1851.62 Rae’s and Coles’ political histories alone might have been sufficient to make Allan Fraser wonder whether the Liberal party would be sufficiently proactive in seizing the political opportunities for land reform provided by responsible government. There were other causes for concern too. After passage of the legislation creating responsible government a week before Cooper returned to the Island, the colony’s new lieutenant-governor, Alexander Bannerman, published a dispatch that his superior, the colonial secretary Lord Grey, had written in mid-February. On the Island it became known as the “Bloody Dispatch.” In it, Grey, who was sceptical about the wisdom of granting responsible government to Prince Edward Island, made it clear that from his perspective the new constitutional arrangements did not give the Island legislature the power to “infringe on the rights of property” in order to address the land question. The dispatch indicated that the imperial government would continue to block an escheat of proprietorial holdings as well as refuse to finance any buyout of landlords’ claims. The Island’s lieutenant-governor was “to impress upon the Legislature, the necessity of abstaining from introduction” of any legislation that might be perceived as unjust to owners of landed property. Grey also enjoined the Island’s lieutenant-governor to uphold land law at all costs, even if it required military force to do so. The colonial secretary authorized the lieutenant-governor to request additional troops from adjacent colonies for this purpose, if necessary.63 Lord Grey’s dispatch reflected policies that had been formulated in the Colonial Office in the winter of 1850–51, as the request for responsible government for Prince Edward Island became irresistible. The land question and responsible government were intimately connected in the thinking of imperial authorities as they were on the Island. The great fear in the Colonial Office was that Island politicians would use the power of responsible government to address the land question in ways that would be unpalatable to imperial authorities. Thus, a central message of the Bloody Dispatch was that the Island’s lieutenant-governor needed to ensure that all such initiatives were stymied at source. When Alexander Bannerman was appointed to replace Donald Campbell, who had died in office in

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October 1850, he was thoroughly briefed on the need to ensure coordinated management of responsible government and the land question.64 On the Island, Bannerman worked closely and effectively, it would seem, with Coles to ensure a smooth transition. Grey’s dispatch was published immediately following passage of legislation enacting responsible government, raising the question of when Coles knew the contents of the dispatch and whether he had promised Bannerman to abide by its terms.65 The inauguration of responsible government on the Island, combined with concerns about what Coles and his associates had done and would do, provided the context for Cooper’s decision in the summer of 1851 to re-engage with Island politics. He did so in conjunction with Martin McInnis and his old legislative ally, John Macintosh. The three sent a petition to the Island’s lieutenant-governor responding to the Bloody Dispatch on behalf of the “Inhabitants” of Kings County. Picking up on positive elements of Grey’s dispatch, they praised the colonial secretary for recognizing that “some satisfactory arrangement of [the land question] should now take place.” They also praised imperial authorities for granting Islanders “a larger share of control over our public affairs than we have hitherto enjoyed.” As well, they tendered their view on how to frame the land question: approaching the Land settlement question, it is necessary to premise, that labor is the foundation of property and the support of all Governments; and while labor supports government, it looks to government for protection, especially against the designs of insidious men who assume a specious authority to possess themselves of the fruits of other men’s labor. When government and labor uphold each other, property is accumulated and becomes the bond of civilized society: and the fruit of such mutual support and protection is the political and social well-being of the community. But the failure of either party to perform their allotted part deranges the whole system, as every infraction of the compact between government and labor, has a withering influence on the industry of the country and a demoralizing effect on its population.66

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Their petition warned that Island tenants faced the threat of eviction, as there were profits to be had in the early 1850s from selling tenant improvements to new immigrants. The petitioners noted that on the Island “the law to investigate the Proprietors Titles is suspended,” as the imperial government continued to refuse Islanders a court of escheat comparable to those in other British colonies. So long as this was the case, they argued, “the Laws for the ejectment of occupants from their own improvements ought to be suspended in like manner, until an equitable arrangement between the proprietors and the tenantry be effected.”67 Bannerman published his response in the first September issue of the Royal Gazette. He was unstinting in his condemnation of the proposals of Cooper, McInnis, and Macintosh and of them as well. The government’s duty to protect labour, he argued, included guarding against the “machinations” of those who seek “to mislead their less educated and informed fellow men, by holding out promises and hopes to them, which they well know cannot be realized, in order to obtain political ascendancy amongst them, thereby creating discontent, and by continuing agitation, diverting the attention of the Legislature from many useful objects and from remedying the real grievances which would better the condition of the laborious population, and consequently benefit the community.”68 Bannerman attacked the assertion of Cooper and his allies that the terms of the original conditional grants remained relevant in the mid-nineteenth century, noting the many times that colonial authorities had refused to countenance escheat proceedings. He drew particular attention to Cooper’s fruitless missions to London carrying escheat appeals. “I can assure you,” Bannerman wrote, “that these grants never will be forfeited, and if they were to be escheated to the crown tomorrow, not one of you would derive the smallest benefit from the escheat.” The “whole tenor” of the Kings County petition, he said, “aims at the consfiscation of property,” and the three drafters should know that if the tenants opted to “stand in open defiance” of existing laws, “they must abide the consequences.”69 The exchange highlighted issues that would be at the forefront of Island politics for the next quarter-century. From Cooper’s perspective, and that of the many who agreed with him, Islanders had a right to have a court of escheat like those in other British North American

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colonies, and they had a right to a forum in which they might test the validity of landlords’ titles. Surely if responsible government actually represented a meaningful change, it was now possible to establish a court of escheat. As well, according to the language in the original conditional grants, if the settlement terms were not met, the whole of the grant “shall become forfeited … and be void and of none effect.” From Cooper’s perspective, this language meant what it seemed to say: that the original grants had become void. This was different from saying that the Crown had the power to make the grants void. Cooper also believed that the power of the Crown to escheat grants remained the best tool available for ensuring a constitutional resolution of the Island’s land question. Others, Bannerman included, saw things differently. Also flagged in the exchange with the lieutenant-governor was how Island authorities would respond to popular resistance to landlords’ use of the Island’s legal system to collect rents and evict those in arrears. Lord Grey’s dispatch and Bannerman’s reply to Cooper and his allies indicated that the imperial government and its Island representative would confront tenant resistance with military force. Whether authorities would actually do so, and whether the use of military force would prove to be a viable option, would only be known in the course of events. Most immediately, the exchange between Cooper and his allies and Bannerman raised the question of who was going to provide leadership for assemblymen on the left of the Island’s political spectrum, and what policies the Liberal Party would pursue with responsible government. John Cooper characterized his father as a persistent man and “a man of strong will.”70 He did so in reference to his father’s ultimate success in farm-making at Sailor’s Hope, but the same characteristics informed William Cooper’s engagement with political issues. In the case of the Island’s land question, Cooper believed that he had a good grasp of Island history; he believed, with many others, that Island residents were the victims of a great injustice that yet could be remedied. That being the case, he was not willing to remain silent in the new context of responsible government, although he had become increasingly silent across much of the 1840s. The argument that the injustices of the Island’s land system were the product of the distant past and that it was too late to do anything about them – an

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argument that were raised in the 1830s and early 1840s, and raised again in the 1850s – was not persuasive. For Cooper, the passage of time did not turn wrong into right, nor, more precisely, illegitimate property claims into inviolate property claims. When he and his sons had sought to chart a new way forward in the late 1840s after their disagreements, he had been urged by John to look to the future and not to dwell on the wrongs of the past. To some extent this is what some of William Cooper’s political allies within the Escheat party, including Alexander Rae, had urged in the late 1830s and early 1840s, when the demand for radical land reform was repeatedly rebuffed by the Colonial Office. Letting go of an issue involving wrongs, however, was not easy for Cooper, particularly when he and other tenants had to cope with the ongoing consequences of a land system that they thought fundamentally unjust and illegal. In the winter of 1850–51, just prior to Cooper’s return to the Island, tenants from northeastern Queens County held a public meeting with the aim of forming an Island-wide tenant league to deal with their “calamitous” economic plight. Like rural residents elsewhere in the region, as well as those in Ireland, Scotland, and Europe who had become heavily dependent on the potato harvest, Islanders suffered devastating crop failures in the late 1840s and beyond, particularly of potatoes but of other crops as well.71 Many tenants found themselves facing subsistence crises coupled with crippling debts, as rural residents turned to merchants for credit to acquire the food and seed they needed to survive crop failure. Many also fell behind, or yet further behind, in rent payments. Acting in parallel with their counterparts in Ireland, they responded to the dual problems of crop failures and an onerous land system by taking steps to form a tenant league. The organization demanded rent reductions and worked to orchestrate an Island-wide rent strike, and to ensure that tenants did not bid on farms or farm goods auctioned through legal process at the behest of tenants’ creditors. Resolutions passed at the first meeting of the Island Tenant League called upon the assembly to halt plans that the government was developing to purchase proprietors’ estates and instead to allow tenants, working through the Tenant League, to pressure proprietors to sell to the tenants directly, farm by farm, at a rate of no more than five or six shillings per acre.72 The initiatives of the leaders of the league – subsequently called the

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Tenant Right League – in Prince Edward Island were tracked by their counterparts in Ireland, who found Island developments of interest and, at times, inspirational.73 While Cooper, Macintosh, and others were seeking to chart a new political strategy in the spring and summer of 1851, a few months after the Island’s first Tenant League meeting, other Island victims of the land system were approaching their problems more directly. In late July, Island papers reported an attempt to assassinate Donald MacDonald of Glenaladale, one of the colony’s most unpopular landlords. Some person, or persons, ambushed MacDonald as he was leaving his Queens County farm to travel to Charlottetown. Two shots were fired. One bullet passed through MacDonald’s arm and wounded him slightly in the chest, the other missed his head but punctured his hat.74 Lieutenant-Governor Bannerman posted a £100 reward for information that would lead to the capture and conviction of the assailant, or assailants. The lieutenant-governor’s confidential correspondence to the colonial secretary nonetheless suggested that tenants had legitimate grievances against MacDonald. Bannerman reported that MacDonald, who was a member of the legislative council and a magistrate as well as a landlord, failed to provide any security of tenure to many of his tenants, most of whom were Irish. These tenants “at will,” Bannerman noted, were “often ejected at the caprice of the Proprietor & set adrift on the world houseless & penniless.” In his role as a magistrate, MacDonald, who always carried a loaded pistol, was known to have dared his tenants to try to kill him.75 Shortly after the assassination attempt, his house burnt down, reputedly because of arson.76 Tenant resistance was growing elsewhere as well in the summer of 1851. Robert Bruce Stewart reported that tenant activism was making it impossible to evict tenants from the Stewart family’s lands to the east of the Glenaladale estate.77 In the wake of Cooper’s public response to the Bloody Dispatch, his opponents, and there were many, challenged his motivations for yet again raising the escheat issue. As well, they questioned his judgment. According to the Conservative Islander, he and Macintosh were “two wretched superannuated office-hunters, disqualified from the want of education, to discharge their duties properly. The distresses of the tenantry have ever been the warmest feather

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in Cooper’s nest; and he seems to have deserted California in hot haste, for the more facile golden prospect, which the corruption of Res[ponsible] G[overnment] has opened to his gaze in this Island.”78 Haszard’s Gazette too accused Cooper of using the “poor tenantry” for his own “emolument” and suggested that he was an “old man” cultivating the worst characteristics of his personality in his declining years. “Dogmatic and imperious in the earlier part of life, you have settled down into that stolid obstinancy upon which proof and argument are alike thrown away, and unable to perceive or appreciate your own want of knowledge, you so persist in repeated displays of ignorance, that pity and compassion are merged in contempt.”79 According to the writer, but for Cooper’s “ridiculous obstinacy” in the 1830s, the assembly might have led the way in at least effecting a partial escheat.80 The Islander belittled Cooper’s judgment too by reminding readers that he had had the foolish audacity to publish his Theory of the Solar System in Island papers and to challenge Newtonian physics. If Cooper had “made an ass of himself in a case where a very slight knowledge of mechanics should have protected him from folly, of what value is his opinion in a speculation concerning the abstract rights of property”?81 Cooper endured these public attacks on his character and credentials in the midst of his grievous personal losses. His father-in-law, John Glover, died early in 1852, aged eighty-two.82 Then in February of the following year, news came from California of the deaths of Adolphus and David Cooper.83 During the summer of 1852 the Coopers had joined with other families in the Eel River region to cut a roadway linking their district with the Trinity River. The five Cooper brothers made up a third of the party that cut this route, which would allow them to sell their farm produce at the Trinity Mines. The route also opened up the possibility of acquiring livestock in the Sacramento Valley. The Coopers had been able to meet some of their homesteading needs by having William Morrow ship supplies to them by sea from San Francisco. In December 1851, for instance, John requested that Morrow send them barley and onion seed, rifle powder and percussion caps, and various items of clothing, including half a dozen pairs of “flannel drawers, any color but red.”84 The cost of shipping livestock north from San Francisco, however, was prohibitive.85 Although

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the Coopers acquired Spanish cattle locally after they arrived in Eel River, they found them “so wild they are unfit for milking.” 86 In 1852, after the brothers led in cutting a trail to Trinity Mines, William Jr used it bring cattle overland from Sacramento. He travelled first by boat to San Francisco and from there to Sacramento, before returning overland. One of the people William Jr might have encountered on his travels was Henry Vere Huntley, who had shifted careers from acting as Prince Edward Island’s colonial governor to serving as the agent for a corporate gold mining venture in California. Huntley was in San Francisco and Sacramento in 1852 and reported meeting “young gentlemen … whom I formerly knew in an English colony, where their fathers held high positions,” who had come to dig gold. Huntley reported that they had found that “they were unequal to the labour,” as they were “men who have been bred to handle pens” rather than “pick and shovel.”87 This part of Huntley’s account certainly does not apply to William Jr and the upbringing Cooper provided for his sons. William Jr’s route homeward from Sacramento took him north to Shasta and then on to the Trinity watershed, as far as the community of Hay Fork on the Trinity River, about a hundred miles short of the family farms. William was forced to stop at Hay Fork, as he had been badly hurt earlier when one of the cattle fell on him, and from there sent word of his plight to his brothers. In late October, Adolphus and David saddled up to go to his assistance. They never made it to Hay Fork.88 According to John, he had urged Adolphus and David to wait until they might travel to Hay Fork with a party of others. John’s main concern, it would seem, was growing violence between settlers and aboriginal peoples in the region. John feared that his brothers, although well armed, might be attacked. From John’s perspective, the Indians were victims of “unprincipled white men who would abuse them and even ravish their women far advanced in pregnancy, and with knives and pistols beat off the bucks” when they attempted to defend the women. “The wrong doings of the Indians were,” John maintained, “often too severely punished, while that done by whites went entirely unpunished.” These injustices lay at the core of Indian violence toward settlers. According to John, the Cooper

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brothers behaved differently: they “treated the Indians justly and were friendly towards them.” In consequence, they had established good relations with some of the local Indians. One of the reasons, it would seem, that Adolphus had felt confident with only David accompanying him was that Adolphus had previously spent time in the mountains in the company of Indians.89 John’s account of the behaviour and attitude of the Cooper brothers when they first arrived in Eel River is consistent with what others said of the Coopers and consistent with the position that William Cooper Sr assumed in regard to the aboriginal peoples of Prince Edward Island. On his first mission to the Colonial Office in 1838, the petitions Cooper presented to Lord Glenelg concerning land reform had included a Mi’kmaq appeal.90 Unfortunately for the Cooper family, the extent of white violence in northern California and the extent of settler and miner incursions into aboriginal lands created a context where many desperate and angry aboriginal people began to view all whites as enemies. In November 1852 a party of emigrants travelling westwards over the trail arrived at the Coopers’ farms with a hat they had found en route. It proved to be David’s. They reported that they had not seen David or Adolphus along the way. John and the others feared the worst, and George and six other armed men set out to investigate. Eventually they found David’s body with wounds suggesting that he had been axed to death in his sleep. They also encountered two Indians wearing David’s and Adolphus’s clothes. The party shot both men.91 Seth Kinman found Adolphus’s remains two years later while travelling down the Yager with a party of immigrants.92 In the spring of 1853, William Jr and George moved the cattle that had survived the winter down the trail to the Coopers’ farms. As well as the emotional devastation of the deaths of the previous year, the Coopers had suffered financially from losing some of the cattle William had purchased along with the horses, gear, and money David and Adolphus had with them. These financial losses probably totalled $2,000 or more. In the summer of 1853, William Jr sought to recoup the family’s financial losses by purchasing yet more livestock in the Sacramento Valley. Again, he reached Hay Fork too sick to travel further, in part because of complications from the earlier injury. Despite medical assistance from the same doctor who had

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cared for him the previous year, he died of inflammatory rheumatism a few days later. He was the fifth of the Cooper children to die in the three years after the family arrived in California.93 It would be months before news of the latest fatality reached his father on the Island. While Cooper’s sons and daughters were seeking to develop farms in northern California and suffering tragedy after tragedy, Cooper was reducing his operations on the Island. In the winter of 1852–53 he sold the mills at Grand River to Walter Taylor, husband of his wife’s sister, Margaret Glover. On the farm at Sailor’s Hope, however, he oversaw the construction of a new granary.94 In 1853, at roughly the same time that William Jr set out on his final, ill-fated attempt to bring cattle from Sacramento to Eel River, Cooper announced his decision to run for a seat in the house of assembly. The general election of 1853 was the first since the advent of responsible government; it would determine the level of support for George Coles and the Liberal Party. Cooper’s electoral platform made clear his agreement with many of the initiatives Coles had undertaken in the assembly. He praised a public education bill that Coles had introduced as it ensured that “the children of the poor” could “gain a higher rank in society” and “qualify themselves for any office in the State.” Importantly as well, the bill provided that the cost of education would be covered by a new land tax that was to apply equally to all township lands, regardless of whether they were occupied and cultivated or were wilderness lands.95 Thus, the Act for the Encouragement of Education was as well an act to encourage proprietors to stop holding wilderness lands for speculative gains. Cooper also praised the Liberals’ elective franchise bill that, if confirmed in London, would extend the vote to men who did not own freehold or leasehold property and thereby confer “a rank and honor on that most useful class of men who labour.”96 Cooper was less enthusiastic about land legislation enacted by the Coles government. By mid-century, no Island government could gain the support of the electorate without at least appearing to be taking steps to resolve the land question. The imperial government had made it clear to Bannerman and Coles that neither an escheat court and investigation of proprietors’ titles nor an appeal to the imperial government for financial assistance to buy out proprietors’

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claims were options: what then might the Island government do? The Liberals’ main initiative was a bill that empowered the government to use Island revenues to purchase lands from those proprietors who were willing to sell. Coles’s land purchase legislation gave the government the right to borrow £30,000 for this purpose and set an upper limit on the price per acre the government could pay for proprietorial estates. Under the legislation, the Island’s commissioner of public lands was to “investigate, or cause to be investigated, the title of such lands.” The legislation also laid out the terms by which the government would then make these lands available to squatters, tenants, and farmers. Those purchasing lands from the government, including current tenants, would need to make a down payment of 20 per cent of the purchase price of their farms and pay off the balance in ten annual instalments, at 5 per cent annual interest.97 In a carefully worded statement, Cooper indicated that, given the obvious merits of the Reformers’ other legislation, he was “led to believe the Bill to purchase the land from proprietors, which is to be sold to the tenants at the same price, are the best terms which the Government think they can obtain for the settlement of the land question.” He said that, if he were elected, he would support Coles’s Reformers “if they continue the same line of policy.”98 His acceptance of Coles’s land reform policies as of 1853 was well short of a strong endorsement, and it was predicated on assumptions that might turn out to be incorrect. While Cooper acknowledged that Coles and his supporters rejected more radical land reform strategies as impossible, his statement did not say that he shared that view. It remained to be seen, too, whether Coles and his supporters would actually use land purchase legislation to investigate proprietors’ titles before making offers of purchase, assuming the legislation received imperial approval and assuming the reformers were able to form a government that would purchase land under the legislation. Neither Cooper nor Macintosh, who also ran for a Kings County seat in the assembly, was elected in 1853. Nor was Coles. The Liberals as a whole suffered a major electoral defeat.99 The Conservative victory, however, was short lived, as once in power Tory leaders became embroiled in disputes with the lieutenant-governor. When the Liberals’ new elective franchise act, which substantially broadened the electorate, finally received imperial approval in

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London, Lieutenant-Governor Bannerman dissolved the assembly.100 Land reform was a central issue in the general election of 1854, and the Liberals were returned with a large majority. Cooper and Macintosh were both elected, but were not appointed to executive positions, and they were soon in open conflict with Coles and his supporters over land reform strategies.101 Cooper’s opposition to Coles’s policies was not new; indeed, it had been growing since his return from California. In its first term in office, the Coles government enacted legislation providing that tenants who were evicted from their holdings would be compensated for the improvements they had made to their leaseholds, be it by clearing land or erecting buildings and fences. The house of assembly had passed a tenants’ compensation bill in 1847, but the legislative council had blocked it, arguing that it would be best for the legislature to wait to see the response of the imperial Parliament to an attempt to pass a tenants’ compensation act for Ireland. With the advent of responsible government, Coles revived this legislative initiative.102 In December 1851, Cooper wrote to Bannerman to oppose Coles’s bill. The problem with it, from Cooper’s perspective, was that it accepted that landlords had “just and lawful title” to their lands. As things stood in 1851, tenants had been denied a court of escheat that might investigate the validity of landlords’ titles. As well, common law rules prevented tenants from contesting their landlords’ titles in the Island’s supreme court. Cooper urged Bannerman to take steps to remove impediments to legal challenges to landlords’ titles.103 In the fall of 1853, Cooper used the Island press to raise another challenge to proprietors’ titles. Landlords, including Cooper’s own, continued to claim rents for coastal lands that were part of the fishery reserves established by the original grants. At issue was ownership of a band of land stretching five hundred feet inland from the high water mark on the Island’s coasts. This land, Cooper argued, as he had earlier in the century, was the Crown’s property, as were any rents from it. In correspondence that Cooper published in the Royal Gazette, he refused his landlord’s claim for rent for the fishery reserve lands of Sailor’s Hope and indicated that he had paid the rent into court. His intention was to force a case between the Crown and his landlord, T.H. Haviland, to test the right of landlords to collect rents from fishery reserve land.104

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The following year, during the interval between the June 1854 elections that returned a Liberal majority and the first meeting of the assembly in September, Cooper wrote to Coles to urge that he reconsider his land policies. Bannerman had been removed from office, and Dominick Daly had arrived in June as the new lieutenantgovernor. In Britain there had been changes in government and cabinet as well. The Duke of Newcastle had become colonial secretary, replacing Lord Grey, author of the Bloody Dispatch, though unbeknownst to Cooper, even as he wrote Grey was on his way back to that office.105 Cooper saw these changes as possibly creating political opportunities for land reform initiatives other than the Liberals’ land purchase legislation. He urged Coles to refrain from using the new act, which had now received imperial approval. Cooper acknowledged that the Liberals had passed the legislation with the best of intentions, but he thought it wrong to “buy land for the Queen, which is forfeited to the Queen.” He urged instead that the government allow tenants to deposit their rents with the Island authorities until the land question was settled, and to protect them from distraints in the meantime.106 Coles disagreed with Cooper’s suggestions and urged him, in a response dated 21 August 1854, not to take any steps that would “excite escheat doctrines in this Island.” Doing so, Coles asserted, would be “highly detrimental to the best interests” of the tenantry and “subversive of the peace and contentment which now generally prevails amongst the inhabitants.” Coles thought that the land purchase act combined with the fishery reserves challenge, which Cooper had pioneered in the 1830s and again revived, would be sufficient to effect sweeping land reform. Bannerman had requested the opinion of the Crown’s law officers on the status and meaning of the fishery reserves clauses of the original grants, and the Island government was awaiting their legal advice. Should proprietors prove unwilling to sell their holdings, Coles assured Cooper that he was “prepared to introduce a Bill into the Legislature, to tax their Rent Rolls.” Coles believed that “this policy of taxation, combining with the tax now imposed on wilderness lands for the purpose of free education, will, I think, induce many proprietors to sell lands to Government at a moderate price.” As a result, tenants would, Coles thought, “in a few years become freeholders at a small cost for their lands.”107

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Even while Cooper and Coles were exchanging views on how to resolve the Island’s land question, Coles used the 1853 land purchase act to do exactly what Cooper and the Tenant League advised against. In the weeks before the assembly met in September, Coles oversaw the purchase of the 82,000-acre Worrell estate, which spanned the St Peters Bay region of Kings County.108 Charles Worrell had lived on the estate earlier in the century and taken an active hand in developing its economic potential, overseeing the construction of four shipyards, five sawmills, and a carding mill on his lands.109 By the early 1850s, however, he had retired to Britain and was anxious to sell his holdings. Unfortunately, from the perspective of ordinary Islanders, the government’s dealings with Worrell for the purchase of his estate allowed members of prominent Island families to pocket tens of thousands of dollars through the manipulation of the negotiations. Ultimately, the government purchased the estate from members of the Pope and DesBrisay families, who bought it from Worrell and resold it to the government at a vastly inflated price. In consequence, an estate that might have been purchased directly from Worrell for between $30,000 to $35,000 cost the government nearly $80,000, money that would have to be paid by residents of the Worrell estate or by Island taxpayers in general.110 These events, which highlighted the possibilities for speculative profiteering in Coles’s approach to land reform, would not be the last instance of Island elites benefiting from the opportunities land purchase legislation provided for their enrichment.111 The Worrell purchase led to an open break between Cooper and the leaders of the Reform party. Cooper believed that at the very least the Coles government should have used its powers under the land purchase act to fully investigate the titles to the Worrell estate before purchasing the property; he later argued that he had been “under the impression” that the government would conduct such an inquiry.112 The fall 1854 session of the assembly was brief, lasting but eleven days. In the interval between the end of the fall session and the opening of the legislature early the following year, Cooper published a pamphlet containing correspondence with Coles on land policy from the previous summer, along with his own editorial commentary and other documents concerning the land question. His introduction and conclusion to the pamphlet framed the Island land question

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as “a conspiracy of the opulent and learned class of men to make slaves of the working, uninformed class, by assuming an ownership over all the lands of this Island; and by having the working class to clear the forest, and bring the wild lands into cultivation, at their own expense, as tenants of the landlords, and the conspirators who usurped the ownership over all the public lands have been supported in their usurpations by Colonial Ministers appointing Governors, nominated by the usurpers, to confirm their acts of oppression.” Given that the British government was in the process of stepping back from colonial governance and would wish “no cause for internal discord,” the moment had come, Cooper suggested, for a settlement of the land question. In his view, the “sums taken from the agricultural people, by grantees and land agents, for the price or rent of wild land, is taking the same amount from the improvement of the country, and applying it to the support of idleness and vice.” That the Crown permitted such a situation exposed the “unhealthy state of the British Constitution” on the Island. Like “a cancer” on the human body, the wrong “must be amputated, or the body will languish and perish.”113 When the assembly resumed business early in 1855, the tensions between Cooper and Coles and his allies became increasingly apparent. When Coles reintroduced tenants’ compensation legislation, in response to imperial rejection of his original bill, Cooper yet again opposed the bill because it provided a “prop to the Landlords’ titles.”114 Petitions asking for assembly action to initiate escheats began to arrive from various locales in Kings and Queens Counties, occasioning a debate in the afternoon of Thursday, 29 March, that continued into the early hours of Friday, more than seven hours later.115 Cooper opened the debate with a long statement and a motion for establishing a “Court of competent Jurisdiction” that could “investigate and decide upon Titles of all Lands liable to forfeiture.”116 His presentation reviewed the history of the land question, including the many instances when Islanders’ attempts to establish escheat proceedings had been defeated not just by the lobbying of proprietors but by local officials and politicians who had only pretended to favour land reform. He cited William Blackstone’s Commentaries and John Locke’s On Government to show that property in wild lands properly belonged to those who first cleared and tilled them.

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He also drew from ancient Hindu law to make his case, citing Sir William Jones’s translation of the Laws of Menu, a text that was also shaping Henry Thoreau’s moral and political positions.117 Noting that as recently as the 1830s the Island’s Crown law officers had affirmed the legality of constituting a court of escheat to investigate the original proprietorial titles, Cooper reminded his audience that Lord Durham’s 1839 report had endorsed the option of using escheats, if necessary, to effect land reform. So what prevented the Island government from doing so now? The answer in the Bloody Dispatch and in the pronouncements of the Coles government was that Islanders needed to give up on the hope of escheat proceedings because colonial secretaries in London had repeatedly written dispatches rejecting the escheat option. Cooper refused to accept the legitimacy of such an argument. In the pamphlet he had published the previous year, he suggested that Coles’s understanding of the land question was limited by his urban residence: he “could not live in Charlottetown and avoid being tainted with the infection around him.”118 In the debate in the assembly, Cooper argued that dispatches did not represent a legal decision, and when “the liberty and property of fifty or sixty thousand people are at stake,” justice required that the issues “be settled by higher authorities than a Minister’s dispatch.” He closed his speech by highlighting the costs the people of Prince Edward Island would pay if they continued with Coles’s approach. If the government purchased the remaining landlords’ estates at the price paid for the Worrell lands, the Island would “incur a debt of £300,000, to be paid by labouring people.” If, alternatively, the government investigated the original titles, “it would in all probability yield from £100,000 to £150,000 for the Colonial Treasury to be employed in public improvements.”119 Coles responded to Cooper’s opening statements with a speech that was nearly double Cooper’s in length. When Coles began by accusing Cooper of reneging on a pledge “not to propose or advocate any measure which did not meet the approval of the liberal party,” Cooper interrupted to deny any such commitment. Coles argued that the Liberal’s land purchase legislation was comparable, though better than, the land purchase bill Cooper and his supporters had introduced in the early 1840s, and he castigated Cooper for

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criticizing a legislative initiative that he had previously embraced and indeed pioneered. Coles’s main argument, though, made again and again, was that it was wrong to demand an escheat when the imperial government had repeatedly rejected that option. The “agitation” of the escheat question, Coles argued, was “not only useless, but mischievous, as leading the people to imagine that they can obtain what will never be ceded.”120 As the night wore on, others entered the debate, which included more than fifty speeches. Many of the assemblymen had been active in the politics of the 1830s, and the debate revisited the terrain on which they had begun their political careers. Some of those who would toe the Liberal Party line in 1855 and oppose Cooper’s motion had first been elected as his supporters two decades earlier. Cooper’s escheat initiative clearly put them on the defensive, and they were pressed to explain why they had changed their tune. Others were pressed as well to deny Liberal involvement in promising free land during the previous election. During the debate, Cooper received support from Alexander Laird, one of the Queens County representatives, and from John Macintosh, who cited Joseph Chitty on prerogatives and quoted a passage from Robert Burns’s Tam o’Shanter in support of his interventions.121 Both agreed with Cooper’s land reform position. Perhaps the most important support Cooper received in the night-long debate, however, came from a political opponent, his lawyer, Edward Palmer, who was a Conservative representative from Charlottetown. In a devastating critique of the Liberal position, Palmer focused on the foundational claim of Coles’s objection to Cooper’s motion: the argument that Cooper was wrong to demand a policy that colonial secretaries had previously, and repeatedly, refused. “I do not think,” Palmer argued, “that there is any weight in the argument, that because it has been hitherto refused we should cease our exertions to obtain it. I shall never pay such servile respect to the dispatch of a Colonial Minister, nor will I submit with blind and uncomplaining submission to the continuance of what I may consider to be a general grievance, merely because a Colonial Minister may choose to write a hurried dispatch disapproving of my views. One man is in office to-day, God knows who may hold office to-morrow. It is no principle to go on.”122

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Palmer indicated he was not adverse in principle to having a court of escheat established on the Island. He assumed, however, that the first escheat case, after being thoroughly argued on the Island, would ultimately be appealed to the House of Lords, no matter what the outcome, “and there receive its quietus.” He opposed Cooper’s resolution not because he thought it wrong or inappropriate to have a full legal inquiry into the status of the original conditional grants, but because he thought “the Introduction of such a Court would produce such agitation and turmoil as we never in the worst of times experienced. I believe irreparable mischiefs would arise.” Palmer’s Conservative colleague, Thomas Haviland, concurred, describing Cooper’s motion as “a perfect Pandora’s box to the Island.”123 Cooper’s leading Liberal opponents shared Palmer and Haviland’s fear of popular unrest. Coles attacked Cooper for advocating policies that would “put the country into a state of turmoil from one end to the other.”124 Edward Whelan, who was editor of the Examiner as well as Coles’s ally, opposed Cooper’s motion because it would be “mischievous in effect upon the minds of the people.”125 As with the discussion of land reform and escheat in the assembly in the early 1830s, the main actors in the drama were not present for the debate in the assembly chambers in March 1855. The rural people of the Island, most of whom were likely in bed long before the political oratory ended, were the audience for the speeches explaining why responsible government would not be followed by establishment of a court of escheat, and it was their restlessness and dissatisfaction, and their potential for taking land reform into their own hands, that shaped the statements and the choices of the assemblymen who voted down Cooper’s escheat motion. While Coles and his followers, as well as the Tory opposition, wanted to avoid popular agitation of the land question, Cooper saw agitation as potentially useful. In his published exchanges with Coles, he noted that while the populace needed to avoid violence that would tempt the government to deploy troops, “agitation by petition” would, “no doubt, forward the settlement of the land question.” “Agitation leads to enquiry and gives information to the people, and every act of the Colonial Government ought to bear investigation by agitation.”126 Lieutenant-Governor Daly was dismayed by Cooper’s advocacy of escheat in the assembly and the support for it in the countryside.

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Writing to the Colonial Office at the close of the session, he noted: “No intelligent person in this community believes in the practicality or justice of this cause, with the exception of Mr. Cooper, and one or two other members of the Assembly.” He noted as well that even though colonial officials had done all they could to “discourage” escheat agitation for “many years,” the dream of an escheat remained alive in the countryside. He was concerned that the “absence of a regular military force” was allowing “agitators” to suggest that “the payment of rents is now voluntary” as the government lacked “the means of enforcing the law.”127 In the years that followed, Cooper continued to press for the use of escheat action to effect land reform. He did so within the house of assembly, at public meetings, and by supporting petition campaigns for escheat. But most of all he made his voice heard by writing letter after letter to Island papers explaining his position on land reform, criticizing Liberal and Tory policies, and responding to the many editorials his arguments provoked. He was not always correct in his reading of events on the Island and in Britain – indeed, he was sometimes wildly off the mark – and his arguments were at times tortured, but there was sufficient merit in his positions, and sufficient evidence that he was gaining a popular following, to force his opponents to respond in print, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Those writing to rebut Cooper found easy targets in some of his claims, as he repeatedly misread British intentions concerning the Island’s land question, often finding hope in political events that did not warrant his optimistic interpretations. Those opposing his ideas also attacked the man himself, calling him an “old fogie,” “the octogenarian of Sailor’s Hope,” a “venerable apostle of Humbug,” and the victim of a “monomania” that was “assuming very curious and laughable shapes in the old man’s brain.”128 “Why is Wm. Cooper, Esq., like Paganinni?” asked one paper. “Because he plays on one string.” “Why is he not like Paganinni? Because he can only play one tune.”129 Edward Whelan’s Examiner acknowledged that Cooper had a “reputation” for “being a shrewd thinker on commonplace subjects,” but when it came to the land question, “the fine old English [sic] gentleman has a thundering bee in his bonnet.”130 Coles’s Liberals denied Cooper an opportunity to resume the escheat debate in the house in 1856, limited debate on the escheat

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question the following year, and did their best to discredit Cooper in the Examiner. Yet his challenge to Liberal land policies did not go away, in part because he was correct about the policies’ weaknesses.131 In the years following the Worrell purchase, landlords did not line up to sell their estates at discount prices. Indeed, the Liberals made only one other government land purchase in the 1850s, acquiring roughly half the lands on Lot 11.132 Nor had the Worrell purchase provided evidence that estates purchased at prices offered by landlords – or middlemen – would be financially self-sustaining. The inflated price paid for the Worrell estate, combined with the costs of managing the property, proved to be a financial embarrassment for the Liberal government. And what of the legislation that Coles had promised would force a speedy resolution of the land question by bringing overwhelming pressure to bear on landlords to sell their holdings? With the exception of the Education Act with its land tax provisions, Coles had been unable to get royal assent for his land legislation. By the late 1850s, the claim Coles had made in his 1854 letter to Cooper that the Liberal’s policies would turn tenants into freeholders “at a small cost” and within “a few years” appeared increasingly deluded.133 His failure to get a £100,000 imperial loan guarantee for further land purchases in the late 1850s, a plan that originally had had the backing of the imperial government, was the final blow to Coles’s land reform agenda. The imperial government withdrew support for the initiative after the bill sustaining the loan had received first reading in the British Parliament. These events left Coles disillusioned and believing that “the British government had broken faith with the Colony.”134 In consequence, Coles and his principal followers shifted position in the late 1850s and began to publicly embrace Cooper’s escheat ideas. Coles’s about-face, however, was not sufficient to save the Liberals from defeat in 1859. Religious identities had become increasingly important in Island politics in the mid-nineteenth century, in part because of the new profile the state had assumed in education following the passage of the Liberals’ Education Act in 1852. The Liberals’ poor performance as land reformers coupled with Conservative exploitation of growing Protestant militancy allowed the Tories to assume power as protectors of the state from

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the machinations of Island Catholics. Cooper survived the electoral defeat of the Liberal majority and continued to articulate his vision of land reform. By the late 1850s and early 1860s, he had the public backing of leading Liberals, as even Coles was declaring his support for the establishment of a court of escheat, as “no other feasible scheme appears to be left for the settlement of the [land] question.”135 By 1860, Coles was arguing that the Island government possessed the power to unilaterally proceed to try proprietors’ titles by jury, and that it should do so.136 Coles’s closest ally, Edward Whelan, had also come to realize the merit of Cooper’s position, or the merits at least of being seen to support it, and had, as of 1857, begun to publicly advocate escheat proceedings.137 The Conservative government that took office in 1859, like the Liberals before them, needed to at least appear to be addressing the Island’s land question. Like the Coles government, the Tories used the Island’s land purchase act to acquire proprietorial lands. In the fall of 1860 the government purchased roughly 62,000 acres remaining in an estate that Lord Selkirk had assembled earlier in the century, paying roughly half the price per acre paid for the Worrell estate.138 As with the Worrell purchase, however, yet again a member of the local elite, William Douse, a leading Conservative and the land agent for the estate, took advantage of the negotiations to step between Selkirk and the Island government and buy some of the estate for himself.139 As well as acquiring additional proprietorial land under the land purchase act, the Conservatives worked with the Colonial Office to implement a new initiative. In May 1859 they introduced a resolution calling upon the imperial government to appoint a single “discreet and impartial person, not connected with the Island” who would be empowered to investigate landlord/tenant relations in the colony with an eye to proposing a solution to existing tensions. The solution would have to include a “large remission of arrears of rents now due” and provisions for tenants to purchase their holdings directly from their landlords on instalment terms. Thus, the Conservative strategy for converting leasehold tenures to freehold would be a government-organized privatization of the process mandated by the Liberals’ earlier land purchase bill. Proprietors would continue to carry the cost of managing their estates and as

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well would oversee the financial arrangements whereby tenants might acquire freeholds by instalment payments. Cooper alone voted against the Conservatives’ land commission initiative.140 In his dispatch to the Colonial Office supporting the idea, LieutenantGovernor Daly noted that it had the merit of having the almost unanimous support of the assembly, with the only dissenting voice being that of the “notorious escheator, Mr. Cooper.”141 The Conservative initiative occurred in the context of ongoing discussions among the leading proprietors and imperial authorities concerning an exit strategy for proprietors, conversations that would have been known, at least in part, to some of the Island’s elite as well.142 Although the land commission proposal appeared to originate with the Island government, it had deeper roots and its structure and mandate were determined, ultimately, by the imperial colonial secretary in consultation with prominent landlords and the officials who oversaw colonial affairs. The end result was the imperial government’s decision to appoint a three-person land commission to be charged with inquiring into the “differences prevailing” on Prince Edward Island “relative to the rights of landowners and tenants, with a view to a settlement of the same on fair and equitable principles.” The three commissioners were J.W. Ritchie, a Halifax lawyer, appointed on the recommendation of the proprietors; Joseph Howe, leader of the struggle for responsible government in Nova Scotia, appointed on the recommendation of the Island government; and John Hamilton Gray, a lawyer from New Brunswick, who was to represent the imperial interest. Donald Montgomery, who served as speaker of the house while the Conservatives were in office, later credited Cooper with the Tories’ decision to appoint Howe. Montgomery reported to the house of assembly, after the commission had come and gone, that Cooper had suggested to Montgomery that “if Mr. Howe was named there would be no opposition to him” and so Montgomery had successfully promoted these views within the government.143 Cooper’s faith in Howe was no doubt rooted in part in the relationship he had established with Howe two decades earlier when both had been in London to see colonial officials about political problems in their respective colonies. Whether that faith was warranted remained to be seen.

8

Persistence in Adversity William Cooper turned seventy-six in the year that the Land Commission Report was presented to the Island assembly, nineteen months after the commission arrived on the Island. He had witnessed many changes across the years of his residence on the Island. The colonial population, which was around seven thousand at the time he first moved to the Island, had grown to around ninety thousand. More than two-thirds of the colony’s lands had been subdivided into farms. The families on these holdings had cleared back the forest, acre by acre. By the early 1860s, roughly a third of the lands that had once been covered with beech, maple, birch, and assorted coniferous trees had become fields for agriculture. Where forests remained, they bore the scars of decades of heavy logging as well as wind and fire. Charlottetown and the surrounding area had become a prosperous commercial and governmental centre with a population as large as that of the entire Island at the time of Cooper’s arrival.1 Although the physical landscape had been profoundly transformed, some aspects of the social landscape had proved enduring. Cooper had been engaged in the struggle for land reform for a third of a century, yet his dream of a colony free from landlord control remained unrealized. The Land Commission Report must have been a bitter disappointment to Cooper. The commission arrived on the Island in late August 1860 and began hearing evidence in September, about the same time that Colonel Gray’s Conservative government was finalizing arrangements for purchase of the Selkirk estate. Cooper was the first

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Illustration 8.1 Portrait of William Cooper. Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Record Office, Acc. 2301/301, painting by Robert Harris.

Islander to testify, after a day of discussions among counsel concerning the nature of the commission and its powers. Cooper argued that there had been a conspiracy at the turn of the century to convince proprietors that their grants were about to be escheated and thus to cause them to sell their holdings for whatever they might fetch. In partial support of his position, he drew attention to an escheat act that the legislature had passed in the early nineteenth century, the fate of which remained a mystery more than half a century later. The Island’s tenantry, Cooper argued, were victims of the trickery of the new class of landlords that acquired their estates at this time. Tenants had assumed that the conditional terms of the grants would be upheld, and they had settled on the Island under the assumption that proprietors’ holdings would soon revert to the Crown. The new

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landlords, however, had effectively blocked those developments in order to protect their ill-gotten gains.2 Two weeks after his first testimony, Cooper helped to bring the plight of the Island’s Acadians to the attention of the commission, describing the history of the Acadian settlers who had continued to occupy lands around Bay Fortune despite the deportation during the Seven Years War. According to testimony of others, presented after Cooper’s intervention, the Acadian settlers of Bay Fortune had responded to the new reality of being under British rule by swearing an oath of allegiance to the Crown. A British naval commander oversaw this formality and, in keeping with the terms of the Treaty of Quebec, promised them security in their property. Cooper and other witnesses told how various landlords, beginning with a local government officer, William Townshend, had managed to abrogate this promise and deprive the Acadians of the Bay Fortune region of their property, despite their long history of occupancy.3 The commissioners spent about a month on the Island, hearing evidence concerning the land question in the royalty towns in the three counties. Early in their proceedings, the commissioners received a dispatch from the Colonial Office instructing them to avoid the escheat issue; yet, from the perspective of the commissioners, “to pass over escheat was as impossible as it would seem to be impolitic.”4 They did not submit their report to the imperial authorities until the following July, and it was not officially released until March 1862.5 As Islanders waited for the report, they were outraged to learn that the commissioners, following the conclusion of the public hearings, had engaged George Wightman to discreetly, and dishonestly, gather information on land prices. Wightman, who was dubbed “the spy” when the story emerged, had travelled about the Island for the commission pretending to be planning various projects such as a railway line or a dock for a steamer. Having convinced locals that he was an entrepreneur with a purse to match his plans, he then asked them how much they would want for the lands he would require for these projects. Not surprisingly, they quoted higher figures than they said they would be willing to pay to buy their lands from their landlords.6 The land commissioners unanimously recommended that the British government revisit its earlier decision to withdraw support for a £100,000 loan guarantee to the Island. In their opinion, the

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best way forward was for the government to purchase proprietorial estates on a voluntary basis, as the Liberals and the Conservatives had been doing. In the commissioners’ opinion, an imperial loan guarantee of £100,000 would enable the government to purchase another 800,000 acres of proprietorial lands, which would leave less than 200,000 acres still in the hands of landlords. “There is no doubt,” they asserted, “that many of the proprietors would be glad to sell.” If they were not, the commissioners recommended that tenants have the right to compel their landlords to sell for a sum equivalent to twenty times the annual rents, either by instalment within ten years or as a lump sum (in which case the tenants had to pay only eighteen times the annual rent). Alternatively, the commission suggested, tenants could offer a lower price, and if the landlord made a counter-offer, valuation of the land could be settled by arbitration with the losing party paying the costs. The commissioners also recommended that the proprietors give up claims to all rent arrears prior to May 1858. As well, they recommended that the Island’s Mi’kmaq be confirmed in the ownership of Lennox Island, in Malpeque Bay, with its chapel and houses. This, they said, represented but “a very small portion of the wide territory their forefathers formerly owned.” How they knew it was not “foremothers” they did not say. As for Acadian land claims, the commissioners acknowledged that Acadians “would seem to have been harshly treated,” but for a variety of reasons did not recommend ameliorative action by the colonial or the imperial government.7 The commissioners’ main recommendations – an imperial loan guarantee, the rights of tenants to buy the land they occupied, and cancellation of rent arrears – were consistent with policies that various Island lieutenant-governors and the politicians who collaborated with them had long advocated. None of these policies challenged the validity of landlords’ titles. The commissioners’ recommendations on the issues of escheat, fishery reserves, and quit rents, if accepted, would further diminish the legal basis for arguments that landlords’ titles were flawed and that they owed money to the Crown. The commissioners determined that “there should be no escheat of the original grants for non-performance of conditions as to settlement,” that there were no outstanding quit rent arrears because a land tax bill passed by the assembly in 1830 had remitted all quit rent arrears prior to that time, and that all land tax legislation since then had

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been in lieu of quit rents. They also concluded that the Crown’s rights over fishery reserves should “be abandoned.” The report that Islanders had anticipated for almost a year and a half, were it to be implemented, would deal a devastating blow to the possibilities for sweeping, radical land reform.8 On the Island the period between the announcement of the plan for a land commission and official release of the Land Commission Report had been marked by growing uncertainty about what the commission might accomplish and growing anxiety about its effect on landlord-tenant relations. The appointment of the commission had prompted some landlords and their agents to pursue rent collection with great rigour, lest the commission’s report impede their ability to collect rents and arrears in the future. Tenants for their part resisted paying rents, hoping for a report that would relieve them of that burden; they also petitioned the Island government for a stay in distraints related to rent collection, pending receipt of the commissioners’ report. In the assembly early in 1861, Edward Thornton, a Liberal member from Kings County, suggested that if steps were not taken to relieve the pressure on the tenantry, “there will be more agitation in the country this year than there ever was with the question of Escheat.” In Thornton’s opinion, country people were “expecting more from the Commission than they ever did from any other scheme for the settlement of the land question.”9 According to Nicholas Conroy, also a member of the assembly, the commission had been “almost the only subject of conversation” in the rural districts of the Island for three or four months, and had “raised great expectations among the tenantry.”10 In February the Monitor reported that John Le Lacheur, Cooper’s close political ally from the 1830s, had returned to the Island and was helping to organize tenant protest meetings in the Murray Harbour region.11 Le Lacheur had served as a member of the Iowa State Legislature in the previous two years, and the Monitor warned rural residents not to be duped by the “oily tongue and seductive smiles of a man who has avowedly foresworn his allegiance to his Queen and Country, and is now, to all intents and purposes the citizen of a foreign and not over friendly state.”12 When rumours of the content of the commissioners’ report began to circulate on the Island in the summer of 1861, Cooper found it difficult to believe that they were true. The news, however, originated

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with Joseph Howe himself, who was on the Island to assess steamship service with the mainland. No doubt Cooper had expected more of Howe. The two men had maintained contact since first meeting in the 1830s, and Cooper appears to have invited Howe to visit him at Sailor’s Hope the year before Cooper left for California.13 During the long wait for the report of the Land Commission, Cooper had continued to believe that the “Commissioners would do justice to all parties, and in such a manner as would leave no doubt about an Act to confirm their decision receiving Royal Assent.”14 Cooper’s defence of the commission, which was made in the assembly, earned the praise of the Conservative leader, Colonel Gray, who said he would “bear testimony to [Cooper’s] consistency during the long period Mr. Cooper held a seat in the Legislature.”15 Conservatives and Liberals alike, many of whom were not far apart in their ideas on the land question, often reviled Cooper for his stubborn insistence on the continuing importance of the terms of the original grants, but by the late 1850s and 1860s some of his political opponents acknowledged, albeit begrudgingly, that he had been steadfast in his positions and that these positions were grounded in principles that he held dear. Once persuaded of the truth of the rumours, Cooper acknowledged that he was “very much disappointed” with the report and with Howe’s view of the land question. Cooper noted, though, that “men, however well disposed, may be in a position that between evils they can only choose the least.”16 Cooper acknowledged that the commission’s proposal to solve the land question by buying out landlords’ holdings might be an acceptable solution, provided that the purchase monies were “equitably apportioned according to the value of the land and the claims of the landholders.” A governmental land purchase scheme would “save a troublesome investigation,” and “if the lands were disposed of to the tenants upon the same principle of equal fairness, it would in my opinion, give general satisfaction.” What was missing in the report, however, was a mechanism for ensuring the speedy resolution of the land question. Indeed, Cooper thought the main effect of the report would be to prolong landlordism on the Island; there could be “no certainty of any settlement without the establishment of a Court of Escheat,” which could assess whether landlords had valid land titles for which they deserved compensation.17

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Following official release of the Land Commission findings, Cooper drew Islanders’ attention to the effect of the report. The imperial government’s position on the status of the commissioners’ work had changed the significance of the report from that of an award in an arbitration to the conclusions and non-binding recommendations of a fact-finding mission. The commissioners had exceeded their mandate and gone beyond issues directly related to landlord/tenant relations, but in doing so they had drawn the imperial government’s attention to its own culpability in creating the land problems on Prince Edward Island. Imperial authorities could be “baffled no longer” concerning how the land question had become so difficult and contentious, and thus would be in a position to act: “they are now enabled to settle the question.” Cooper said that he had “always been of the opinion that our differences should be settled by the Imperial Government.”18 Now that authorities in London had the necessary facts before them, along with the commissioners’ “earnest and manly appeal” to do their “duty” and uphold the “justice and the honour” of the Crown, Cooper had faith, he said, that imperial authorities would act appropriately in “due time.”19 Whether his faith was as firm as his speech suggests, or whether he hoped by his speech to limit the policy choices of the imperial government, he had another message as well. His optimism about how the imperial government might respond to the commissioners’ report was paired with a call to tenants to act collectively to ensure that the report did indeed produce a favourable outcome. Cooper’s advice was consistent with what he had said again and again at crucial junctures in the struggle for land reform. When dispatches from Glenelg and Russell arrived saying “no” to the establishment of a court of escheat, or when Bannerman published Grey’s Bloody Dispatch, he had sought out the glimmers of hope, however faint, and urged Islanders to continue to press for the changes they wanted. At the core of his analysis and praxis, no matter the details of the circumstances, was the belief that the British constitution, properly understood, provided the opportunity for redressing wrongs and securing justice, and that imperial authorities recognized that they had a responsibility to secure and maintain such justice. Did Cooper himself believe this? On an abstract level, the evidence from his many speeches and letters suggests that he did. But he understood as well

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the power of acting on the assumption that justice would and should be done, and of refusing to accept setbacks as permanent defeat. Dissatisfaction, fed by rumours and leaks concerning the content of the commissioners’ report, increased with its official receipt and presentation to the legislature in March 1862. In New London, Joseph Howe was burned in effigy.20 In the assembly, Liberals complained that they had expected the commission to do away with leasehold tenure, yet this had not happened.21 Public meetings were held to condemn the commission’s “award” and to condemn the Conservatives for their complicity in the process and outcome. Others, articulating the interests of some of the proprietors and some of the land agents, complained of the report’s compulsory land purchase clauses. These, they believed, violated the rights of property owners. George Coles’s critical summary of the report was that it confirmed landlords’ titles and made “great concessions to them respecting the fishery reserves” and quit rents. The commissioners had, he believed, exceeded their authority in ruling on these matters. The issue of the possibility of escheat proceedings and landlords’ liability for quit rents and fishery reserves concerned relations between the Crown and landlords, not the relations between tenants and landlords that were properly the focus of the commissioners’ inquiry.22 When, in 1862, the Conservatives introduced legislation to affirm the commissioners’ “award,” Edward Whelan responded with a withering critique of the Conservatives’ claim that the report benefited tenants. Landlords and their agents had, he alleged, acted to secure their arrears prior to the release of the report, thus undermining the recommendations that arrears be remitted. As well, there was “scarcely a landlord on the Island who would not give better terms of purchase than those contained in the Award.” As for the other recommendations of the report, they were a gift to landlords; according to the terms of the report, proprietors’ “titles are confirmed” and “the Quit Rents and the Fishery Reserves are given up to them.” Given its content, Whelan thought it was outrageous to maintain that the report had provided “boons to the tenantry.”23 Cooper voted against the Conservatives’ affirmation of the commissioners’ award, as did Coles and Whelan and three others. 24 Although the Conservative bill passed by a three-to-one margin in the house, the legislature’s affirmation proved to be a wasted effort,

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as the imperial government continued to step back from the Land Commission initiative. In August 1862, the secretary for the colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, officially disavowed the report on the grounds that the commissioners had exceeded their authority in recommending an arbitration process in which others would adjudicate cases where tenants and landlords disagreed on the valuation of property. The imperial government also refused assent to the Island legislation upholding the commission’s award. Thus, by the fall of 1862, the land question, although very much the cause of public dissatisfaction, seemed no closer to resolution than it had when the commissioners began hearing evidence two years earlier.25 Nonetheless, on the eve of an upcoming general election in January 1863, Cooper urged tenants to take advantage of the opportunities provided by imperial receipt of the Land Commission report. If tenants wished to “be released from slavery and restored to the rights of free men,” they needed, he argued, to “lay aside all religious differences and unite to return men who will willingly forward any measure to carry out the recommendation of the Commission.”26 Cooper, however, for the first time in a decade, did not seek an assembly seat in the general election. He was dismayed with the results, as the Conservatives were returned in an election dominated by religious factionalism. The growth of religious tensions was occasioned in part by Liberal initiatives to provide state support for schools, as this set the stage for a struggle over the profile of religion in public education, but sectarian strife was part of broader trends as well.27 Cooper had objected to the introduction of religion into the curriculum of public schools, noting in one of his speeches on the matter that, judging from the memoirs of great men, mothers rather than schoolteachers were most likely to shape children’s religious ideas.28 In 1858, as the assembly received what was coming to be a regular round of petitions advocating Bible reading in Island schools, Cooper argued that “since the passing of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, it has not been possible to give any education, save a purely secular one, in our public Schools.” The petitions calling for the introduction of religion into the curriculum, were he thought, “calculated to do a great deal of mischief in the community, by placing in the most antagonistic position to each other members of different Christian Communions,

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and sowing amongst them the seeds of jealousy, strife, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.”29 Cooper argued that the “education to be imparted in our public schools [should] be such as can be equally extended to all, and equally received by all.” Any teaching, discipline, or course of training, which would lesson or disturb the equality of privileges, would be subversive to the great aim of national education; which is the raising up of youth to become good and useful citizens, fit to discharge the duties of every state and calling of life, and, as a people, united by the bonds of brotherhood. Being brought up and educated together, in school upon a footing of perfect equality as to all privileges, and in pursuance of a system which most carefully excludes everything tending to excite any feelings but such as animate honorable and friendly competition, in the pursuit and attainment of literary and scientific knowledge; affords the surest foundation for the future general harmony and prosperity of such individuals.30 It followed that Cooper objected strongly both to Protestant demands for Bible reading in public schools and to efforts of Catholic clergy to obtain state funding for separate schools. Public money should, he argued, “be only to such institutions as were under the control of the Government, and not to such as were under the management of a religious sect.”31 In a letter to the Examiner following the 1863 election, Cooper noted the pernicious effect of making religion a political issue. Children, he observed, “may be frightened to cling to the most worthless persons by making them believe that some imaginary hobgoblin is in pursuit of them,” and this was “equally applicable” to the recent Island election, where “children of a larger growth … to avoid Catholic ascendancy, have thrown the tenants and their families back into the power of the proprietors when they were at the point of emancipation.” The pattern of events that had unfolded with the Land Commission was, Cooper maintained, consistent with the larger history of the land question. Tenants needed to bear in mind “that it was by secret plotting the proprietors made them tenants,

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and to keep them tenants, they secretly petitioned Colonial Ministers to be allowed to exercise the power they had acquired.” What had happened with the commissioners, Cooper argued, was that they too had been forced to “submit to proprietary dictation.” The proprietors’ manipulation of the proceedings of the Land Commission, followed by claims that the commissioners’ report represented “the unbiased Award of arbitrators,” was, he argued, an extension of “the master plot” that had unfolded on the Island again and again in the past. But the proprietorial party’s “plot to stir up religious strife, and set men against men, the better to keep them in slavery” exceeded in “wickedness” all its past manipulations.32 Cooper urged tenants to meet and to act to protect their rights in the wake of the Conservative election victory of 1863. The election results, he thought, left the tenantry in the position of “allowing themselves to be bought and sold like a flock of sheep, without petition or opposition.” He urged tenants to address the Queen and ask the imperial government to act on the parts of the commissioners’ report that had emphasized the need for action to remedy the policy errors of the past and to uphold the honour of the Crown. “Whether the constituencies who returned the proprietors to govern them are aware of it or not, they have empowered the proprietors to oppose the best intentions of the British Government for the emancipation of the tenantry.” Given that the majority of the newly elected assembly could not be trusted to press imperial authorities to act on the opportunities the report provided, he urged tenants to do so for themselves. His advice was fully in keeping with what he had said repeatedly in the past when elections returned majorities that were unsympathetic to the interests of the Island’s tenantry. When elected representatives did not serve their interests, tenants needed to act directly, and forcefully, for themselves.33 Why Cooper decided not to run in the election of 1863 is not entirely clear. He had indicated that he intended to defend his seat, but when the time came, he did not travel to the polls for nomination. He later explained that an unusual January thaw had broken up the winter roads and made them “unfit for me to travel.” That is not hard to imagine, given his age and the state of the roads in the best of circumstances, but it does not seem a sufficient explanation for a decision that would terminate his career in the house of

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assembly. Although he subsequently indicated that he was surprised that the Liberals lost the 1863 election, he certainly knew that it was likely to be an ugly election contest shaped by religious factionalism. Whatever the reasons, his participation in Island politics was now that of a prominent citizen commenting from outside the legislative chambers on the issues that had concerned him there.34 Land reform continued to be the focus of Cooper’s political commentary, but it was not the only issue that drew his attention, nor had it been so in the past. During the period after his return from California, he had offered his views in the press and in the assembly on many public questions. The Crimean War, which began in 1853 and persisted until 1856, led to appeals on the Island for patriotic citizens to support the British cause. In 1855, Coles proposed that the government of Prince Edward Island match Nova Scotia’s contribution of £2,000 to the Patriotic Fund being raised to sustain the dependants of soldiers who were “fighting our battle” for the protection of “our rights and liberties” against the Russians in Crimea. Edward Whelan concurred in a long speech about the need to maintain “freedom against the encroachments of a despotic and barbaric power” and celebrating the “British valour” which had seen Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade charge the Russian gunners at Bala Clava although enemy batteries “mowed down rider and horse at every stride they took.” Cooper disagreed, noting that “there are others suffering besides the widows and orphans of the soldiers dying with war” and that Islanders who wished to contribute had been able to do so voluntarily.35 Prohibition was a major issue of the mid-1850s as well. On the Island and elsewhere in the region, temperance organizations and their supporters increasingly pressed governments to change popular culture by banning the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages.36 When legislation to prohibit the manufacture or importation of liquor was introduced in the legislature, Cooper opposed it: “On our shores a boat can land at almost any place; and I would ask what would be the expense of guarding our coasts so as to prevent the illegal importation? How could you prevent American fishermen smuggling spirits? They would do so in spite of any means you might adopt. If a law should pass preventing importation, you will only encourage smuggling.” He thought it “perfectly futile … to say that a

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country can prevent the importation of liquors as long as the people are disposed to use them.” He noted China and its opium laws as an example of the problems of passing laws that the “general opinion of the community” did not support. Cooper could have noted too the parallels with trying to impose a ban on either liquor or opium when the citizens of more powerful nations wished to benefit from trade in these goods.37 He said that he had “always been opposed to intemperance” but believed that, should the Island government seek to legislate to “stop the importation of liquors,” they would soon discover “that the cure is worse than the disease.” The appropriate way to address the problem, Cooper thought, was to try to change public attitudes toward alcohol consumption.38 During the late 1850s and early 1860s, Cooper offered his thoughts on a variety of state policies affecting the economic life of the colony. The Island’s system of public works required, he believed, fundamental restructuring. He advocated abolition of statutory labour policies that had been central to road construction and maintenance for much of the colony’s history. He believed that road construction and maintenance should be done with wage labour and under contracts issued for several years. As well, he advocated more effective oversight to minimize waste and ensure that public resources were used efficiently. He saw no reason why state-funded bridge and wharf construction could not be organized in ways that paralleled “the present scientific mode of ship-building.”39 When legislation was introduced in 1860 to convert the Island’s public accounts to the decimal system, with sums calculated in dollars and cents, he objected to the plan. Although similar legislation had already passed in the Canadas, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, he thought it a bad idea to act without first developing coinage that matched the law. It would, he argued, “be no easy matter for the bulk of our people to habituate themselves to the new method” as an abstract system without matching currency.40 On the issue of state support for agriculture, although the goals of fostering good agricultural practices and a vibrant agricultural sector were dear to Cooper, he objected to initiatives that gave resources to elites and did not meet the needs of ordinary farmers. The government of Prince Edward Island, like that of other colonies in the region, provided various agricultural subsidies for organizations

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purporting to foster improved, scientific agriculture.41 This included a subsidy for the Island’s Royal Agricultural Society. In 1857, Cooper opposed giving it £1,000, noting that it was odd that “so many gentlemen saw so many advantages to be derived from the Society,” yet were not willing to “give something out of their own pockets.” Instead they expected it to be “supplied from the public purse.” Although he thought the society’s model farm impressive, he did not believe it was “a benefit to the country at large” but rather was “a benefit to only a few parties.” In part, he believed this because the livestock the society was importing, and the type of agriculture it was pursuing, were inappropriate for the needs of the majority of Island farmers.42 The following year he objected to government support for the Island’s agricultural societies, arguing that “the benefits arising from such Societies are not so general as is supposed.” Their control, he contended, “generally falls into the hands of a few persons,” with the end result that general taxes served the benefit of a favoured few.43 When the issue of maintaining the Island-wide Agricultural Society came before the assembly in 1861, Cooper maintained that the society should be closed down, noting that most of those petitioning the house in support of the society were not even farmers. He would, he said, consider things differently were several hundred farmers from each county to organize themselves as an agricultural society prior to seeking state funding.44 Cooper’s continuing interest in scientific questions was evident in his public interventions. In the summer of 1856 he wrote a long letter to the Islander responding to a news article about a British controversy between schoolmasters and astronomers concerning whether the moon rotated on its axis. His letter explained how Island residents, “possessing a good spy glass,” might make observations over time to answer this question for themselves.45 His scientific interests and orientation were evident too when, in 1861, the assembly engaged in a long discussion of a petition for government money to improve access to a “celebrated spring” on the Island that was said to have curative powers. In presenting the petition, Coles noted the reports that a man from “the Scotch Settlement, whose vision was so imperfect that he could not distinguish between a man and a woman, washed his eyes in the spring, and took away two bottles of the water which effected a complete cure.” In another case,

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an “individual who had severe pains in his limbs, used the water of the spring, and was so far recovered that in a short time he could hop about quite lively.” Some assemblymen offered similar testimonials, while yet others characterized Coles’s claims as one of the worst “quixotic humbugs” ever presented to the house. Cooper’s position was that the claims were not necessarily untrue and that the waters might have medicinal qualities. Noting recent discoveries of the medicinal qualities of “Peruvian bark,” he suggested that there might be vegetable matter in the waters that were causing some of the effects people had described.46 His observation reflected his interest in respecting popular observations, and learning from them, while persisting in the pursuit of rational explanations for natural phenomena. As he was engaging in the political and intellectual life of the colony, Cooper was also monitoring events in California and grappling with the challenges of living so far from his children. He was in touch with his daughters by mail and thus learned from Caroline of her marriage in May 1853 to Leonard Crocker Beckwith, a prominent Eel River farmer and a neighbour of the Coopers. Beckwith, who was born in Connecticut, had worked as a sailor on the New Bedford whaling fleet in his youth. He was twenty-one when he settled near the Coopers. He likely cooperated with them in the construction of the road connecting Eel River to the Trinity River. As well as developing a valuable farm, he ran a pack train from Eel River to the Trinity Mines. By 1860, Caroline and Leonard had four children, and their household was listed as one of the most prosperous in the Eel River Valley. Ultimately, Cooper would have nine Beckwith grandchildren.47 In 1855, after ascertaining that Caroline and her older sister, Rowena, did not intend to return to Prince Edward Island, Cooper had given his daughters the property he had acquired in California as heir to the estates of William Jr and Adolphus.48 Rowena (see illustration 8.2) had married Walter Van Dyke at the Beckwith residence in September 1854.49 Van Dyke was a lawyer who had immigrated to California overland from Ohio in 1849, using the difficult route linking Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.50 A pioneer in the exploration and development of the Humboldt area, he became a central figure in the public life of the region. When he and Rowena

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Illustration 8.2 Rowena Cooper, c. 1855. Bancroft Library, PIC 1977.037-POR .

married, he was district attorney of Humboldt County; at various times he also owned and edited the Humboldt Times, and served as a Whig representative in the California assembly.51 By 1860, Cooper had three grandchildren in the Van Dyke household.52 Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Van Dyke successfully ran for the Senate of California as a Union Democrat and subsequently was elected president of the first convention of a combined Union Republican Party. By 1863 he and Rowena had moved from Arcata in Humboldt County to San Francisco, where he established a law practice.53 Cooper would likely have found much to admire in Rowena’s husband. Following his appointment to the California Supreme Court later in the century, Van Dyke’s motto as a judge was “As long as God gives me breath, the millionaire and the man in rags shall alike receive justice from me, either in private or public life.”54

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Although Cooper’s surviving children planned to remain in California, his oldest grandchild was resident in Prince Edward Island and seemed likely to stay there. Malvina’s son, “Little William,” as the family called him, had travelled to San Francisco on the Packet, survived the death of his parents and younger brother, and subsequently returned to Prince Edward Island, perhaps with a member of the Morrow family.55 Cooper sought to maintain Sailor’s Hope for Little William so that he might have it when he came of age. In 1855 he leased Sailor’s Hope to David Morrow, brother of Malvina’s husband and thus Little William’s uncle. The lease was for thirteen years and included the farm equipment and existing stock – a dozen cows and seven calves and heifers. The lease gave Cooper use of half the house and half the granary. Cooper and Morrow were to share the returns from the farm, with Morrow to get two-thirds of the returns from most of the farming operations but only one-half of the returns from the increase in stock, wool, and the returns from the orchard, as little new investment and labour were required to realize this production. The terms of the lease provided detailed instructions for the appropriate management of the farm. “Marshes [were] to be fenced from cattle at all times, and orchards to be fenced by themselves, and the land under crop to be fenced from the pastures, and the pastures to be fenced from the common woods.” As well, the tenant was to “collect the seaweed as it comes on the shore to increase the dung heap.” Morrow was not to “break up more land than he can manure once in five years” and was to follow a “rotation of crops, that there shall be a green crop with manure betwixt every two crops of grain and the other two years the land to be hay or pasture except where it may be necessary to take one crop of oats to bring the land to be hay or pasture.” When the land was to be used for pasture or hay, it was to be “sown with grass seeds in the proportion of six pints of clover and six pints at least of timothy to the acre.” Deviations from the required rotation were only to occur “with the consent of the owner of the farm.” Morrow was to “plant in the early part of seed time and harvest the crop and secure the hay of the marshes in due season and use all the hay straw and turnips to feed the stock on the farm,” keeping “the stock full, in number, kind, quantity, and in good conditions,” selecting the “best breed of the increase to replace

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the old.” He was also to keep the buildings in repair and “renew the decayed fencing.”56 Cooper’s wish to have Sailor’s Hope managed in a way that would maintain the value of buildings and fences, increase the fertility of the soil, and see further improvement of the stock was not realized. In the fall of 1858, Cooper served notice on Morrow for breach of contract. Morrow had not, Cooper charged, erected fences as required. Cooper had had to put up fencing himself “to save the marshes from cattle.” Morrow had let the farm’s seaweed rot on the beach, rather than using it to manure the fields. Cooper had “collected what seaweed [he] could to make manure and save the land from being runout.” Morrow had not cut the marsh hay in a timely manner. Cooper, in trying to save some of it, had under adverse conditions put it “up when the high tides were on.” Rather than raising a pig with the “waste from the diary and scraps from the house,” Morrow had let his “stock of swine … eat up and destroy the pastures.” After Cooper served notice, he alleged that Morrow burst into his room “in a very boisterous and insulting manner” and, “flourishing the notice” in Cooper’s face, “committed it to the flames.” Cooper took George Wise, “a distant relative,” to live with him and to assume control of the farm. Morrow, who refused to leave, intimidated Wise and caused him to depart. In consequence, by 1861, Cooper found himself having to deal with Morrow by appealing to the Island’s court of chancery. This meant swearing out his statement of fact before T.H. Haviland, who was master in chancery. The judge handling the case was James Peters, son-in-law of Samuel Cunard, the Island’s most extensive landlord. As Cunard’s land agent, Peters had been known for the pistols he carried and the vigour with which he collected rents on the 200,000-acre Cunard estate.57 The length of the lease Cooper had signed with Morrow, which was to expire in 1868, fit with Cooper’s plans for Sailor’s Hope. By the terms of the will that Cooper wrote in August 1860, when his grandson was twelve, Young William was to inherit Sailor’s Hope and the rest of Cooper’s property on the Island, provided that he “drop the surname of Morrow and retain that of Cooper.” As well, he was to “marry with the consent of [Cooper’s] trustees” and “conduct himself as becomes a good member of Society.” Given that his grandson would have means, Cooper thought that “an early

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marriage to a suitable match is the most conducive to happiness.” After Cooper’s death, the trustees were to allow his grandson “the management and profits of the property as soon as they see fit,” but he was “not to sell land or let money at Interest without the consent of the Trustees, until he is twenty-six years old or until he has issue by marriage.” If William Cooper Morrow retained the name Morrow or married against the advice of the trustees, he would still inherit Sailor’s Hope but would have to share the rest of Cooper’s property with Rowena, Caroline, John, and George. If he did not marry or if he became “a drunkard and disorderly person,” he would get but ten pounds and the rest of Cooper’s property would go to Cooper’s sons and daughters, or their children.58 Cooper’s own plans may have been in flux in the summer of 1860 when he wrote what would prove to be his final will. According to a fellow assemblyman, earlier that year he had been giving some thought to moving to California.59 The terms of his will did not preclude that possibility, but there was nothing in it either to suggest that a move was part of his planning. In the interval between his conversation with the assemblyman and his writing his will, Cooper took yet another legal step to clarify outstanding issues concerning his Island assets. In June 1860, he brought a bill of debt in the supreme court against George Coles, and had Coles taken into the custody of the sheriff to acknowledge that he owed Cooper £700. The indebtedness was finally resolved by Cooper’s trustees after Cooper’s death.60 Some of the reports from California in the years following the devastating news of the deaths of Adolphus and David in 1852 and William Jr in 1853 would likely have pleased Cooper. Certainly, Caroline and Rowena were well settled. John and George managed to carry on with the plans the five brothers had had for developing farming and milling operations in the Eel River Valley. By the mid-1850s they had established a major dairy enterprise, the first in the valley, with sixty cows. They also established the first pork operation with three hundred hogs. They were able to sell their butter at Trinity Mines for a dollar a pound; the pork sold well at nearby Eureka.61 They also profited from leasing teams of oxen to men engaged in the timber industry62 (see illustration 8.3). The fertility of the Eel River soils astounded the Coopers. Their own crops

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Illustration 8.3 Logging with oxen in Humboldt County in the late nineteenth century. Humboldt State University, Ericson Collection, 199.02.0236.

included potatoes weighing nearly four pounds and beets of fifteen pounds, and the Humboldt Times reported the harvest of single turnips weighing more than fifty pounds.63 Much of the wood for the hundred-foot-long pair of barns the Coopers built for their milking operations had been split out of a single redwood. (Illustrations 8.4 and 8.5 provide evidence of the scale of available trees.) In addition to their dairy herd and hogs, the Coopers had nearly two hundred cattle and sufficient teams of horses, mules, and oxen to maintain their operations, as well as hired help to assist them.64 The Cooper brothers’ extensive land holdings included rich farmland fronting on the lower Yager Creek as well as on the high prairie overlooking it (see illustration 8.6). They also acquired extensive tracts of woodland above their mill site on Yager Creek, land that was unsuitable for farming but ideal for lumbering as it included extensive redwood groves. In addition to the more than seven hundred acres of land that they acquired by pre-emption and purchase in the Yager Valley, they acquired urban lots in the town of Eureka on Humboldt Bay and rural land elsewhere.65 After the deaths of Adolphus and David, John Cooper and Brothers, as the five had originally called their enterprises, sought to maintain their operations by leasing farmland on Centre Prairie and Goose Lake Prairie on sharecropping terms.66 Following the death of William Jr, John and George experimented with leasing out their dairy operations

Illustration 8.4 Early dwelling on Cooper Farm near Hydesville, California. Photograph by author, May 2009.

Illustration 8.5 Logging in the Redwoods, Humboldt County. Humboldt State University, Ericson Collection, 199.02.0256.

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Illustration 8.6 Mill Farm Meadows, looking up the Yager Valley. Photograph by author, May 2009.

complete with fifty or sixty cows, but like their father they found that their tenants did not perform to their expectations.67 Local histories credit the Cooper family with being central to establishing settler communities in the Lower Eel River Valley.68 Theirs was the first non-aboriginal household in the region that included women. The brothers had provided leadership, labour, and materials in developing a land connection between the Eel River and the Trinity River routes to the interior. They were pioneers in developing the agricultural potential of the valley, and were active in dealing with various problems that arose in their new community. Much of what they did paralleled the leadership their father had provided in Bay Fortune and Grand River. This included developing mills: having spotted and obtained a good hydraulic site soon after they arrived, the Coopers found themselves under pressure to erect mills on their land for the benefit of the community as a whole.69 The extent of timberland the Coopers had acquired reflected their own interest in the enterprise. John and George’s efforts to develop their mill site on the Yager proved costly and difficult. Judging from the location they chose, their original plan had been to tap the waterpower of a small

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tributary of the Yager known as Indian Creek or Coopers Creek.70 Even though their mill, located at the juncture of the Yager and Coopers Creek, focused on the water power of the small seasonal creek and not the Yager, it would appear that a flood seriously damaged their first efforts.71 During 1854–55, they rebuilt the water works for the mill and imported a new flour mill.72 To secure a yearround supply of water, they constructed more than a mile of canals to bring water from higher up the Yager Valley to the site.73 In the fall of 1856, they contracted with Robert Haw to complete work on the mills with the understanding that Haw would ultimately rent them. By the following year Haw and the Coopers were in court with claims and counterclaims concerning incomplete work and unpaid labour.74 The canal that Haw had linked to the mill was unlined and appears to have eroded in flood season soon after it was built. In 1858 the Coopers contracted with E.L. Newell to build a timberlined flume three and a half feet wide and a foot and a half deep to bring water to the mill. Newell was responsible as well for building a new breast-shot waterwheel and repairing the flour mill and sawmill so that they would be in working condition. In exchange John W. Cooper and Brother agreed to give Newell $1,000 and a one-third interest in the 160-acre farm the mills were on, as well as a one-third interest in the mills.75 This arrangement too ultimately failed.76 Despite the many setbacks and problems in the years after they began their mills, the Coopers were making progress with the enterprise. They managed to grind thousands of bushels of wheat that they could sell at the mines, and to saw lumber for the first buildings in the nearby town of Hydesville as well as for the farms of the region.77 Hydesville was a good market for their lumber, as within a year of its establishment in 1858 it became a thriving town with a school, general store, and various businesses and was the main transit point for agricultural products destined for the Trinity Mines. Grain production in the area grew with the importation of the first McCormick reaper in 1856 and subsequent mechanization of harvesting.78 By 1860 the Cooper brothers seemed poised for success. In the fall of 1859, widower John, whose first marriage to Margaret Davidson had lasted little longer than the trip from Prince Edward Island to California, married Lucy DeLasaux. Lucy had emigrated to Humboldt from Canterbury, England, with her brothers and

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sisters in the early 1850s.79 In June 1860, George married her sister Eleanor.80 The Cooper brothers now owned extensive, well-stocked farm properties, as well as their mills, which alone were valued at $20,000. Their enterprises were, it seemed, ideally located to reap the benefits of economic growth in the region.81 There was, however, a major flaw with the brothers’ plans: the tensions between Indians and newcomers that had led to the deaths of Adolphus and David were getting worse, not better. In part this was because the arrival of ever greater numbers of settlers seeking to farm, log, and mine the region reduced the resources available to native peoples.82 As well, the violent behaviour of some of the newcomers toward native peoples, which included rape and murder, and the failure of state authorities to end settler violence, increased risk of Indian attacks. Unfortunately, in his attempt to find a safe haven for his brothers and sisters, William Jr had inadvertently made a choice that was comparable to acquiring land at Passchendaele in July of 1914. In the years that followed, the Coopers’ properties became a focal point in a conflict between Indians and settlers that came to be known as the Indian Wars of the Northwest. Because the Coopers were interested in sawmilling as well as farming, they had chosen lands on the far edge of a zone suitable for agricultural settlement, lands that included rough forested hill country along Yager Creek as well as open prairie. As native peoples fled settler violence, the Yager Creek region above Coopers’ farms served as an important area of refuge for them, and the Coopers’ mills were obvious targets for raids to acquire food and supplies. In 1855, John Cooper and a hired hand were attacked by a party of Indians who ambushed them in the farmlands adjacent to the mill. The two were lucky, as the hired man suffered only arrow holes in his clothes and John a wound in his hand. The Indians were less fortunate, as a party of settlers tracked some of them down at the head of Yager Creek, killing five and recovering bags of flour taken from the mill.83 Although John, by his own account, “never carried, or used, a weapon against” the Indians, he came, reluctantly, to embrace some of the actions settlers took against the aboriginal peoples of the region.84 His brother-in-law, Leonard Beckwith, was a leader in locally organized campaigns against the Indians, and George Cooper appears to have participated in these as well.85

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A letter from 1863 captures the character of the times: writing to her father who had moved from his Hydesville farm to the coast, a young woman reported that her husband and many of the young men of the community were “out hunting Indians.”86 As tensions increased in the early 1860s, the Coopers often left their house near the mills unoccupied, staying at the farmhouse they had built on the prairie above Yager Creek, roughly three-quarters of a mile from the mill premises. While living there provided them and their families with greater security, it made the mills even more of a target for Indians seeking food or bent on revenge. When the mills were in operation, employees took arms with them when they worked in the woods. In July 1861, while George and a hired man were running the sawmill, a party of perhaps twenty or thirty Indians armed with guns attacked the premises. George was killed in the first volley. The hired man and George’s wife, Eleanor, who was in the nearby house, managed to escape, despite attracting more gunfire. Eleanor was able to scoop up their young son on her way out the door and thereby save George Jr (apparently originally named Abraham Lincoln Cooper by his father). An adopted Indian child was less fortunate and was killed in flight. Although the newspaper account suggested this child was a boy, the victim was likely Topsey, a four-year old Indian girl the couple had adopted.87 These traumatic events had economic consequences as they transformed the Cooper brothers’ flourishing operations into an unsustainable liability. In the context of what would become the increasingly bloody American Civil War, which had begun in April 1861, John’s appeal for military assistance to protect his mills was useless. With two families to sustain, mills he could no longer work, and more than $12,000 of debt, much of it incurred to establish their milling operations, John found it necessary to sell what assets he could and to abandon the farm and mills. In the spring of 1862, he and Lucy, along with three of the Coopers’ employees and George’s widow and son, moved to a mining district in eastern Oregon. It would be another three and a half years before they thought it safe to return. By this time a steam sawmill and gristmill had been erected in nearby Rohnerville, and Coopers’ water-powered mills were no longer economically viable. John Cooper and those who remained with him were wrong in thinking that their farms were now secure.

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Four years later in 1869, Indians killed John’s brother-in-law, Albert DeLasaux, while he was ploughing land on the mill farm.88 Had William Cooper’s thoughts of moving to California been predicated on joining his sons, the death of George in 1861 and the family’s flight from Eel River closed that possibility. Cooper would, in the end, stay on Prince Edward Island.89 He published the sad news of George’s death in Island papers. No doubt he hoped that others would write to John, Rowena, and Caroline, as he thought it would provide them with “some consolation” to “know that there are others here besides their father who sympathize with them in their loss.”90 Cooper had described himself as a political refugee seeking land under American jurisdiction when he arrived in California in 1850, but his assessment of the relative virtues of British rule as opposed to the political possibilities elsewhere appears to have shifted over time. The visit of the Prince of Wales to Prince Edward Island in 1860 occasioned an assembly debate the following year over the lavish reception that Conservatives held for the prince. Cooper’s speech reveals his thinking at that time. At issue was the cost of the reception but also whether Islanders actually enjoyed the privileges promised by the British Constitution or, as Edward Whelan put it, whether they were “little better … than the veriest serfs under the greatest despot that ever existed.” On this occasion Cooper supported the Conservatives who had staged the celebration. What was at issue was not the prince and his status, but, as Cooper phrased it, “the exemplary conduct of his mother, Queen Victoria. No page of the future history of British Sovereigns would be fairer than hers.” The celebrations, Cooper maintained, “proved to the Republicans of America, and to the despots of Europe, our satisfaction with British institutions.” His position was shaped by recent events: “In America we read of the dissatisfaction under a system of Government which was held up to the world as the most liberal, and which seemed to be breaking up like unpopular forms of Government in Europe.”91 By the early 1860s, Cooper, like the radical William Lyon Mackenzie in Upper Canada, seems to have become less impressed with Americanstyle republicanism and more committed to British traditions of governance, although he was not anti-American.92 His thinking was likely shaped in part by his intimate knowledge of the recent history

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of California as well as by the events that were about to plunge the United States into civil war. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Cooper paid attention to proposals for a new political union in British North America. In September 1864, in a major step toward a possible union of British North American colonies, delegates from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island assembled in Charlottetown to consider the possibility of a Maritime union, and delegates from the Canadas attended to urge a broader union. The Charlottetown Conference was followed by a conference in Quebec City later that fall. News of the discussions filled Island papers, and by late fall Islanders knew the details of resolutions passed at Quebec City concerning the formation of a confederation of British North American colonies. They also knew that some Island delegates to the Quebec Conference had tried to get a commitment that the new polity would provide a £200,000 loan to the Island that might be used to buy out the Island’s landlords. Island delegates had sought as well to ensure that the Island would have adequate representation in the new polity’s elected lower house by proposing an alteration to the principle of representation by population. They failed in both attempts. Discussion of the Confederation proposals in the aftermath of the Quebec conference revealed major divisions within Conservative as well as Liberal ranks. Colonel Gray supported Confederation, but Edward Palmer opposed it. George Coles opposed Confederation, but Edward Whelan supported it. Joseph Pope’s sons, William Henry and James Colledge, both of whom were prominent Conservatives, split on the issue.93 On the eve of consideration of the Quebec Resolutions in the House of Assembly, William Cooper published a letter articulating his position on Confederation. On the issue of excessive taxation, which some saw as a risk in Confederation, Cooper argued that the Island’s own government posed a greater threat than the proposed federal arrangement. He noted that the Island’s assembly had expanded from eighteen members to thirty in the years he had been in the colony; surely this was evidence of the Island government’s propensity for wasting taxpayers’ money. The proposed “framework of the constitution for the government of the United Provinces” had, he thought, been “drawn up with circumspection, to allow equal

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rights to all parties.” He was dismayed that the Island’s delegates to the Quebec Conference had marred the proceedings by “demanding a special grant of £200,000” and by “demanding an extra representative to the Federal Legislature.” He thought this had “an ugly look” and compared unfavourably with the work of the “statesmen” who had guided the proceedings of the Quebec Conference.94 Cooper based his support of Confederation primarily on what the new polity offered for resolution of the land question. Imperial refusal to treat the Land Commission Report as anything other than that of a fact-finding mission had been followed by refusal to countenance the £100,000 loan guarantee the commissioners had recommended. In 1864 the Island’s Conservative government passed legislation that enacted parts of the commissioners’ recommendations, but the legislation only pertained to the lands of proprietors who consented to be bound by it. Known as the 15 Years Purchase Bill, the legislation forgave tenant arrears prior to 1858, with some exceptions, and offered tenants the opportunity to purchase their farms by paying the equivalent of fifteen years’ worth of rents, plus all outstanding arrears since 1858. Few tenants found these terms attractive, and few took advantage of them to acquire their farms. The 15 Years Purchase Act, however, was a major benefit to the consenting landlords. Indeed, some Islanders dubbed it the “Proprietors’ Bill,” and others “Sulivan’s Bill,” as the landlord Laurence Sulivan was thought to have played a central role in drafting it. The legislation eliminated the Crown’s fishery reserves on the lands of proprietors who brought themselves within the act, thus removing a potentially disastrous restriction on their titles. The legislation also removed the consenting proprietors’ liability for outstanding quit rents.95 With the passage of time, it became increasingly clear that the 1860 Land Commission would fulfill no one’s hopes. The leading proprietors, who had been the force behind the Land Commission in the first place, had obtained some things of value. But even from a landlord perspective, the results fell well short of the imperial intervention some had sought in order to ensure that proprietors received good value for their estates. The disappointment of tenants was much greater. Not only had the commission failed to end the leasehold system on the Island but its judgments on outstanding issues such as quit rents, fishery reserves, and escheat, as incorporated in

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the Proprietors’ Bill, undermined their ability to restructure the landlord/tenant relationship. In Cooper’s view, Confederation offered a constitutional solution to the long impasse. Over the years he had come to believe that the central problem lay with the imperial government’s denial to Islanders of the rights they accorded British subjects in other colonies. Imperial refusal to allow Prince Edward Islanders a forum in which they might test the validity of proprietors’ titles was, Cooper thought, a fundamental impediment to achieving sweeping land reform. The terms of Confederation would, he believed, eliminate imperial oversight of Island legislation. In his public letter advocating Confederation, he noted that the new British North American parliament would have the power to “make laws for the peace, welfare and good government of the Federated Provinces” and that this explicitly included passing laws “rendering uniform all or any of the laws relative to property and civil rights in Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island, and rendering uniform the procedure of all or any of the Courts of these Provinces.” This, Cooper believed, would at last give Islanders an opportunity to bring an end to the “unconstitutional indulgence of Colonial Ministers, who have refused to allow the law to be put in operation for revesting forfeited lands in the Crown.” If tenants wanted to be “placed on a footing with the settlers in other Provinces,” Cooper advised, “their safest course is to support the Union of this Island with the other Provinces.” The weakness in this approach, as he acknowledged, was that federal statutes creating uniform laws would, under the terms of the Quebec Resolutions, have to be “sanctioned by the Legislature” of Prince Edward Island. Cooper well knew that over the years Island legislators, many of whom were landlords or land agents, had had a major hand in defeating attempts to redress tenant grievances. Thus Cooper thought it best that Prince Edward Island first agree to New Brunswick’s offer of union with it and then, subsequently, join Confederation.96 In the wake of the failure of the Conservative land question initiatives, many Island tenants had turned again to direct action. The stirrings of tenant league or “union” formation began early in 1864; by May there was sufficient support to hold an Island-wide meeting of

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delegates in Charlottetown. As well as petitioning against the injustices of the 15 Years Purchase Act, the delegates, like their counterparts earlier in the century, sought to organize direct action to force an end to landlordism. In time, they would learn that yet again the imperial and Island governments were willing, if necessary, to use military force to uphold landlords’ property claims.97 As tenants organized to resist landlords’ demands, the Island politicians debated Confederation. The majority, for a variety of reasons, opposed incorporation into a larger polity when the Quebec Resolutions were debated in the legislature. As a result the resolutions were decisively defeated, and the legislature instead adopted an address asking the imperial government to withhold royal assent from any act that might include Prince Edward Island in the proposals of the Quebec Conference.98 In late 1865, Cooper offered his views on yet another of the political initiatives being considered in British North America and on the Island: annexation to the United States. Cooper chose to address pro-annexation arguments that had been published in Ross’s Weekly, a paper that supported tenant direct action. At issue was whether annexation would provide a solution to the land question. Cooper pointed out that annexation would require a treaty signed by the British. Before imperial authorities would consider allowing Prince Edward Island to become part of the United States, they would have to be persuaded that the change would not cause injury to Britain, its other colonies, and British citizens with property within the colonies. Because of Prince Edward Island’s strategic position in regard to the Atlantic fisheries and the defence of British North America, it was, Cooper argued, absurd to think that the British would consider allowing the Island to proceed alone. Given the “relationship of the Colonies to each other,” annexation would only be an option if the residents of British North America as a whole wished it. An annexation, Cooper argued, would not provide a solution to the land question. He was familiar with the struggle against landlordism in the Hudson Valley and might have noted the difficulties experienced by tenants and their advocates there in trying to effect land reform, but he made a different argument. According to Cooper, the problem with advocating annexation as a strategy for achieving land reform was that annexation could only occur by treaty between the

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American and British governments, and British officials might well “stipulate in the treaty that the grants shall remain undisturbed.”99 Cooper did not oppose annexation to the United States. Indeed, by December 1865, when he was responding to Ross’s Weekly, he believed that the changing context in which Prince Edward Island and the other British North American colonies found themselves required major political shifts that might ultimately result in a single country in North America north of the Mexican border. By this point the Union army had triumphed and the United States had abolished slavery. In Cooper’s opinion, Britain’s shift toward free trade, which had been increasingly apparent since Britain repealed protectionist corn laws during the potato famines of the late 1840s, and its support for a federal union in British North America, signalled its reduced interest in bearing the cost of defending British North America from the United States. He might have noted too Britain’s costly military campaign to suppress a revolt against East India Company rule in South Asia and the new profile it had assumed in ruling India in the wake of that conflict. Britain’s interests had shifted elsewhere. Although the American press had initially responded favourably to the possibility of a confederation of the colonies of British North America, the tone south of the border had changed, Cooper noted, when “our would-be-aristocracy to feed their own vanity, and pay an unwelcome compliment to the British Government – proposed to unite the Provinces under a viceroy and House of Lords, to be appointed by British Ministers.” Cooper worried that American political leaders might “easily find a pretext for war, and obtain the Provinces as a conquered country to pay the cost of the war,” if political developments in British North America were perceived as anti-republican.100 He also took note of the Reciprocity Treaty, which had facilitated trade between the United States and British North America after it came into effect in 1854, but was due to expire in 1865. Cooper believed the treaty had been more advantageous to the United States than to Prince Edward Island or the other colonies. The United States “had free navigation of our waters for trade, which privilege they refused to us. This made their ships more valuable, and drew away our young men to build their ships.” The American fishery, which was supported by bounty, had grown under the treaty, he argued, and this had allowed the American fishing industry to

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draw “away more of our youth to fish for them.”101 As things stood, Prince Edward Island’s economic circumstances were not good and they were, Cooper thought, about to get worse. In Cooper’s opinion, Islanders would have to explore new political arrangements in order to effectively respond to these continental, and global, changes. “When such matters are taken in consideration, the Colonists will see that they are governed by circumstances, and pressed by necessity, to perform a duty even against their inclination, namely to promote the Federation of the Provinces with the view of annexation to the United States.” If there was a “peaceful annexation on equitable terms, all parties would be gainers, but more especially the Provinces, the inhabitants of which would gain the good-will of American citizens, without losing the good-will of their friends at home. Our ships would acquire a greater value; our fishermen would share in any bounty allowed for fishing; we would have free trade for our produce, and free navigation of American waters, without losing our trade with Great Britain; and we would save the cost of fortifying and arming for defence of our border.”102 Cooper did not live to see the first of these fundamental changes. He died, aged eighty-one, at Sailor’s Hope on 10 June 1867, two and a half months after Queen Victoria signed the legislation that would come to be known as the British North America Act, and three weeks before Confederation would be proclaimed in the new Dominion of Canada.103 Despite pressure from the imperial government to sign on, Prince Edward Island would remain outside of the new polity for another six years.

9

Reflections The Examiner’s obituary of William Cooper described him as “a man of great natural powers.” It noted that he was a “fair debater” and “a vigorous writer” who had been “closely identified with the history of the Colony” for “about thirty years.” It was wrong on the latter point: Cooper had been closely identified with Island history for half a century. The obituary also noted that he had been “deeply censured” for “the alleged extravagance of his views on the Escheat question,” but that “the majority of his fellow Colonists” had “long admired” him “for the boldness with which he urged those views.” According to the Examiner, “all parties and classes gave him credit for sincerity.” 1 The epitaph on Cooper’s tombstone, which likely reflected the thinking of Benjamin Davies, who was one of Cooper’s executors and an ally in the struggle for land reform, described him as “an eminent patriot who faithfully advocated the interest of the people through the press and in Parliament for upwards of thirty years … with credit to himself and the colony”2 (see illustration 9.1). These assessments certainly capture crucial aspects of William Cooper’s character and life. In the years after he settled on Prince Edward Island, he assumed the role of the people’s tribune, and he persisted in it until his death. The Examiner’s choice of words in describing his performance in articulating popular demands for land reform in the house and in the press reveals significant reservations: Cooper’s skills as a debater were “fair,” and his efforts to advance land reform in the press notable not for their quality but for their

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Illustration 9.1 William Cooper’s gravestone, Bay Fortune. Photograph by author, June 2007.

vigour. Cooper himself would not likely have disputed either of those restrained tributes. He was well aware that he lacked the education and skills necessary to be a great parliamentary speaker and debater. On issues that mattered, he prepared written speeches and read them. He was likely aware as well that he was not a polished writer. He was, however, as the Examiner acknowledged, prolific, producing letters and petitions by the score in order to keep the land reform issue before the public and as a tactic to press politicians on the Island and elsewhere to act.

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Given Cooper’s social and educational background, what is remarkable is not that he struggled with the tasks that he set for himself but that he was able to effectively assume roles that required skills in parliamentary debate – indeed, those necessary to serve as speaker of a colonial parliament – the ability to personally present policy demands to senior figures in the imperial government, and the ability to draft persuasive public letters and petitions. He did not have the benefit of formal schooling, an apprenticeship in a trade that would have enhanced these abilities, or the luxury of having parents to provide a living for him while he obtained an education. The skills that he brought to bear on public life in Prince Edward Island were those that he had begun to acquire as a young agricultural labourer and then enhanced across two decades of work in the British merchant marine, starting as a cabin boy and working his way up to the captaincy of relatively small vessels plying the trade routes between Britain, Iberia, and North America. Cooper shared much by way of background with the Upper Canadian reform leader William Lyon Mackenzie. Both were born near Dundee in the last decades of the eighteenth century, and both were left fatherless at an early age. Mackenzie, unlike Cooper, acquired a formal education in Dundee during his youth and had the advantage of modest economic resources. As a young man, Mackenzie was able to obtain apprenticeships, find work with a local newspaper, and become a member of a Dundee scientific society.3 Another contemporary reformer, Louis-Joseph Papineau, leader of the Patriote struggle in Lower Canada in the 1830s, was born into a professional family and attended colleges in Montreal and Quebec. Later he trained as a lawyer. 4 Robert Baldwin, an Upper Canadian Reform leader, and Joseph Howe too benefited from educational opportunities and privileged childhoods.5 Compared with other reform leaders in British North America, Cooper’s social background was humble and his educational preparation for leadership limited. His son, John Woodcock Cooper, described him as “a man of strong will.”6 This, along with the “natural powers” that the Examiner noted, help to explain how Cooper managed to go from rural poverty in Scotland, and the lowest of entry-level employment in the merchant marine, to a position of political importance in Prince Edward Island. Having set his sights on acquiring an

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education, and later on acquiring the skills necessary for political life, he persisted in learning what he needed to know. Once he decided that the Island’s land system was unjust and required correction, he was relentless in his pursuit of justice. Even when he was a lonely voice in the assembly, or, indeed, outside of it altogether, Island politicians could never afford to ignore him. To say that he was “deeply censured” by many of them because of his positions on land reform is to understate the attacks Cooper endured across his political career. Lieutenant-governors derided him as a “notorious escheator,” “an illiterate,” and a man “possessed of much low cunning.”7 Political opponents on the Island characterized him as a “superannuated office hunter,” a man only interested in his own financial gain, a “visionary” who was deluding the public by suggesting the impossible was possible, a “monomaniac,” and a “wicked, cruel man,” whose name “stunk in the nostrils of the tenantry” as he had “caused the ruin of many a family” who had foolishly followed his leadership in grasping for a future that would never be.8 The written record left by island administrators and many of its leading politicians and newspaper editors is littered with the “censure” the Examiner notes. Much of it is tinged with a class sneer. In assuming the role of a leading colonial politician, Cooper was, many seemed to think, reaching above his station. Allegations that he was insincere in his campaigns and only looking for a way to feather his own nest, however, lost credibility with the passage of time.9 In the last years of his life, the content of the criticisms increasingly focused on his continuing advocacy of escheat as a tactic for effecting land reform and the logical and factual shortcomings of some of his claims. By 1867, however, the Examiner felt free to assert that “all parties and classes” credited Cooper with “sincerity” in his unceasing advocacy of land reform.10 Yet asserting that Cooper faithfully and sincerely advocated “the interest of the people through the press and in Parliament” is not the same as saying that he did so wisely and effectively. Thus the question remains whether the challenge of charting a way forward for the Island’s tenantry and other elements of the rural population was too great for Cooper, the self-educated mariner turned farmer, miller, shipbuilder, and politician. Certainly this is not a question that can be answered by reference to the judgments of his political enemies. Although the political

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correspondence and newspapers of the Island overwhelmingly provide a negative portrait of Cooper across much of his career, the Examiner tellingly noted in its obituary that “the majority” of Islanders “long admired” Cooper “for the boldness with which he urged” his views on land reform and escheat. His following in the 1830s was such that, despite innumerable obstacles, he and his followers were able to build a popular movement that dominated the countryside and, ultimately, controlled the majority of seats in the house of assembly. The organizational skills and creativity that informed the construction of the escheat movement of the 1830s were impressive. By the mid-1830s, Cooper and his allies had built a movement that connected tenant activists in local communities across the Island, guided by a central management committee capable of formulating collective policy on matters such as which candidates should have support for public office and how to respond to landlord demands for rents. While grounded in Prince Edward Island history and traditions, the movement Cooper helped to forge had much in common with contemporary struggles for economic and social justice elsewhere in the Atlantic world. Judging from the content of his speeches and letters, he, like many of his allies in the struggle for land reform, saw themselves as participants in broader progressive trends. He may not have been a polished parliamentary speaker, a gifted writer, or a brilliant logician, but he had the personal and leadership skills necessary to command the respect of local rural leaders, to coordinate the efforts of disparate communities on the Island, and to link local demands and grievances with broader issues and trends. The consequences of the mass movement that Cooper helped to build in the 1830s proved long lasting. Although he and his allies lost their majority in the assembly in 1842, Island politicians who did not share his views continued to worry for another twenty years that Cooper might again lead a sweeping challenge to the status quo. Even as his political opponents – be they among the emergent Liberals or the Conservatives – censured him and sought to isolate him, they could not escape the demands for land reform that he had helped to encourage, articulate, and perpetuate. In the 1830s he had insisted that landlord/tenant relations on the Island, and the injustice that followed from them, were a public question, not a private one,

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and that they required a political solution. Lieutenant-governors, imperial officials, and most of Cooper’s Island opponents ultimately came to agree with him on this position. So too did Canadian Supreme Court Justice William Buell Richards when, in 1877, he ruled against the last proprietorial attempt to impede a politically imposed end to the Island’s proprietorial system. The land question was, Richards asserted, “a matter affecting the public interests” and affecting “the peace as well as the prosperity of the province.”11 The rhetoric that Cooper used so effectively to place land reform at the centre of Island politics in the 1830s proved persistent and, ultimately, hegemonic as well. In his first major speech in the assembly, he contrasted the property rights and fundamental virtue of tenants with those of landlords. On one hand there were the people who “have wasted their youth in clearing land for others,” who “have planted their labour where the forest grew … have made a garden in the wilderness, and built a cabin where the bear has had his den.” And on the other, there were the proprietors who wished to monopolize Island lands so that they might “have a claim on the labour of their fellow subjects,” and who blocked tenants’ ability to inform imperial authorities of the real situation on the Island, so that proprietors might keep rural residents “in bondage.”12 Cooper’s articulation of a labour theory of value to justify tenants’ property claims and his presentation of the Island land question as a story of honest rural productivity versus landlord parasitism and duplicity proved enduring. Within five years of Cooper’s speech, even Lieutenant-Governor FitzRoy was asserting that it was “the labour alone of the settler” that “renders wilderness land of any value.”13 The claim became an undisputed truth in the discussion of the Island’s land question, as did the trope of the evil landlord and victimized tenant. Making the case for tenant interests before the 1875 Land Commission that helped end landlordism on the Island, Benjamin Davies’s son, Louis Henry Davies – who became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada – described how the landlord “allows arrears to accumulate,” waiting “year by year” as the tenant family “expending their labour on the farm” makes “the farm worth the arrears, and then he comes down” to “pounce upon it” and seize the value of their accumulated labour.14 There was more than a little of Cooper’s voice in Louis Davies’s speech, as well as that of his own father.

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Mid-nineteenth-century opponents of Cooper and his leadership, and critics since, have argued that he led the Island’s tenantry into a tactical dead end: Cooper failed to realize that to demand the escheat of proprietorial holdings, and to pin tenants’ hopes of land reform on an escheat strategy, was to advocate an impossibility. Wise leaders, so this argument goes, focused on the need to achieve responsible government as a preliminary step for gaining land reform. Once the Island population, through its elected representatives, achieved control over colonial governance, Islanders would be in a position to end landlordism. Wise leadership did not advocate the blunt instrument of escheat action but sought to achieve similar ends by imposing new taxes on landlords’ holdings and by introducing legislation that would induce landlords to voluntarily sell their holdings to an Island government that would be able to make these purchases. Such was George Coles’s position before and after responsible government.15 Following the election of 1859, the Conservatives too introduced land reform policies that were purportedly wiser and better than escheat. There are many problems with this critique of Cooper’s leadership. One is that the critics who suggested that responsible government would give Islanders the power to effect land reform were, quite simply, wrong. The new powers accorded to Island politicians after the introduction of responsible government did not change the imperial government’s ability to withhold assent from Island legislation, nor did the advent of responsible government cause imperial authorities to stop blocking land reform initiatives. The claim that moderate legislative alternatives offered a better way forward than escheat is not convincing either. Not only was it difficult to get imperial sanction for moderate land reform legislation but the initiatives that were accepted by the Colonial Office did not produce the dramatic results anticipated. True, the Worrell estate and much of the Selkirk estate had been transferred to the government by September 1860, but by the mid-1860s landlordism was still alive and well on the Island.16 A quarter of a century would pass between the introduction of responsible government and a final resolution of the land question in 1875. When the end came, it was not by gradualist tactics but by legislation that compelled Island landlords to sell their estates to the government, at a price set by a tripartite

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commission. The legislation that ended landlordism instructed those who had to determine the rate of landlord compensation to consider the terms of the original grants in deciding the value of proprietorial holdings. Although the scale of compensation provided to landlords under the legislation of 1875 was much greater than Cooper would have wished, the mechanisms for final resolution of the land question had much in common with what he had proposed in the 1830s.17 The claim that the demand for an escheat was necessarily a tactical dead end and that Cooper was a poor leader for advocating it is not persuasive either. In the late 1830s, for example, the Durham Report’s analysis of the land tenure problems on Prince Edward Island, and appropriate policy initiatives, left open the option of escheat.18 More importantly, Cooper’s thinking needs to be appropriately contextualized. British authorities had the power to act to enforce the provisions of the original grants or to resist doing so. Whether there would be escheats was a political decision. Cooper thought it was possible to bring sufficient popular pressure to bear on imperial authorities to force them to act. He hoped to induce them either to initiate escheat action or to use the threat of escheats or the threat of enforcement of the Crown’s rights over fishery reserves to force a comprehensive land settlement. The enormous energy that Island landlords devoted to resisting escheat and to ensuring that imperial authorities blocked Cooper’s initiatives does not suggest that proprietors thought escheats, or enforcement of other provisions of the original grants, to be an impossibility. Effective proprietorial resistance, however, required the construction of the appearance of impossibility. Thus, landlords and their influential Island allies struggled, with considerable success, to create the illusion of an immutable policy. But it took great effort. In an historical context where Catholics were acquiring voting power against the wishes of powerful forces, where Parliament was being reformed against the wishes of powerful forces, and where slaves were being freed against the wishes of powerful forces, the condemnation of Cooper’s leadership because in urging tenants to demand escheat proceedings on Prince Edward Island, he urged the impossible, is not persuasive. To note the flaws and limitations of many of the critiques of Cooper’s land reform leadership is not to claim that he effectively met all the challenges he set for himself, or that he met the needs

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and expectations of his followers. His speeches, letters, and petitions commonly contained leaps of logic and misinterpretations of historical events. His writings were often a jumble that combined persuasive claims and insights and effective use of evidence with claims that were overstated or incorrect, and could be shown to be so. As a result, well-educated people who wished to dismiss his arguments found it easy to do so. The errors in his writing and thinking certainly were a liability. Island land reform advocates would have been better served had he been as effective a communicator with elite audiences as he appears to have been with popular ones. Certainly too, Cooper’s effectiveness as a land reform leader was limited by his pursuit of other goals. There was a tension between his yearning to get ahead materially and socially and his concern with social justice. While he was willing to provide leadership for the land reform struggle, there was a limit to the sacrifices he would make for the cause. Having acquired modest property after years of exertion, he did his best to avoid risking it, and indeed continued to enhance his wealth across the years he engaged in the struggle for land reform, as he anticipated the needs of his family. During the 1840s, the challenge of providing for his wife and their six sons and three daughters, and ensuring that his children had a better start in life than he had, increasingly absorbed his attention. While Cooper dealt with the practical, day-to-day issues of helping his children learn to manage the family’s mills, farms, and households, he also grappled with fundamental questions concerning the appropriate ways to accumulate property and to earn an honest livelihood. The rapidly changing world of the mid-nineteenth century posed challenges as he sought to provide guidance and leadership for his family. Many of the assumptions that had informed his youth no longer seemed to hold. His discussions with his two oldest sons in the 1840s reveal generational tensions in their different responses to moral and material questions concerning the appropriate way of “making property.”19 John and William Jr rejected their father’s attempts to help them become established as farmers when they came of age; they did not leap at the opportunity of learning a trade either. They appear instead to have been attracted to more speculative ventures, to the possibility of accumulating wealth by faster, seemingly easier means than their father advocated. No doubt

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they both knew other young men who were making their way in the world without engaging in as much hard labour and persistent effort as their father thought necessary. Entrepreneurs willing to take their chances in shipbuilding, sealing, or the timber trades might easily make more in a few years than an Island farmer would in a lifetime of patient toil. They might lose as much too. Cooper’s decisions to engage in shipbuilding with his oldest sons and, ultimately, to join in their plans for emigration were grounded in part in the possibilities provided by the living bequest of his wife’s aunt, Sarah Walker, to the family. As well, though, his decisions were a response to the new opportunities of the times, opportunities that his sons, like many others, found enormously alluring. Why stay on Prince Edward Island with its bitter winters and unattractive land tenure system when there were warmer, better lands available for the taking elsewhere? Why accumulate capital one penny at a time, when one might do it by the pound with borrowed money? The Coopers’ trials as shipbuilders and timber merchants in the late 1840s appear not to have diminished John and William Jr’s willingness to engage in speculations and incur debts in order to get ahead. They explored the possibility of continuing to build ships for the British market on credit without their father’s assistance, and upon arrival in California John and his brothers incurred large debts to set up a commercial farm and develop a substantial milling operation. The shipbuilding years reinforced Cooper’s discomfort with the world of merchant credit and speculation. The family emigration plan, which finally came to fruition at the end of the 1840s, appears to have represented a way forward on which both generations could agree. In essence, the plan entailed shifting the existing Cooper enterprises, which focused on farming and running the mills, from Prince Edward Island to a more favourable setting. Cooper’s 1845 letter to his oldest sons, laying out the possibilities before them, is a reminder of the geographical scope of the opportunities available at mid-century. His sons might, he noted, settle in South America, western North America, Australia, Tasmania, or New Zealand.20 The possibilities for building a new life now stretched far beyond what he might have imagined for himself as a boy growing up in rural poverty outside Dundee. The Atlantic world that had become familiar space for him as a young man, and to which he introduced his sons, had been

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superceded. By the late 1830s, he and his children were imagining the possibilities available to them within a global frame of reference.21 The plan that took the Coopers around Cape Horn and on to San Francisco was one for applying the family’s skills and energies to the agricultural opportunities of a new frontier. It was a plan that seemed consistent with Cooper’s beliefs concerning the appropriate way of making a living. What the family encountered in San Francisco, however, was not. San Francisco epitomized much of what Cooper objected to in the new order taking shape in nineteenthcentury North America and elsewhere: speculation, waste, a focus on making money as quickly as possible, violence, and a lack of attention to community or to the future. Observers commonly saw San Francisco as an extreme version of the emergent character of the new country that had just acquired it. There probably were aspects of San Francisco that reminded Cooper of East London’s cosmopolitan bustle and the rawer aspects of life in the dockside communities. But he had left that behind, for the most part, when he married and began to raise a family. What he encountered in San Francisco was not what he sought for his family. It was, however, in many ways the face of the future. The world Cooper came to inhabit was one of rapid change. We do not know whether he made his way back to Prince Edward Island in part by steamship or by railroad, but both had recently become features of the transportation landscape. When he and Sarah were married in Shoreditch, the space in front of St Leonard’s church was busy with the coming and going of horse-drawn stagecoaches. When he and William Jr left London for the last time, the two were checking train schedules linking London with Liverpool and Newcastle. At least twice during the Coopers’ shipbuilding years, the family’s boats were rescued by the timely intervention of steam vessels that hauled them into port when they were unable to proceed safely on their own. Across the years of Cooper’s life, a revolution in metallurgy, industrial techniques, and energy use was increasingly transforming how humans moved across the face of the earth. Despite the shifts toward the use of fossil fuel for motive power, the Coopers still lived in the world of wind, water, and muscle power.22 It was wind that took Cooper back and forth across the Atlantic innumerable times, and wind that took the family from Prince Edward

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Island to the tip of South America and back north again. It was water that powered the mills that Cooper would have seen in his youth in Scotland and in East London, and it was water power that sawed the wood and milled the grain at the family’s mills in Grand River and then again at Yager Creek (although the coming of steam power to Humboldt County proved the fatal blow to the Coopers’ water mills there). As for the trees that were felled, the stumps pulled, the fields ploughed, the potatoes, wheat, and oats planted, the hay and grain cut, and the seaweed fetched from the shore for fertilizer, it was entirely the work of human and animal muscle power, just as it had been in the Scotland of Cooper’s youth. The dramatic transformation of the Island’s environment during the nineteenth century, like that of many other neo-European frontier zones, was for the most part grounded in the extensive application of the rural practices of Europe rather than in the use of new technologies.23 The years of Cooper’s life saw other fundamental changes in Prince Edward Island beyond the extraordinary environmental ones. The social ideas informing the Island’s development underwent a dramatic shift as well. When Cooper first arrived in the colony, the vast majority of its lands were part of large estates owned by landlords, and the belief that proprietors had a constructive and necessary role to play in the colony was alive and well. By the 1860s that idea was dead. Even Conservative politicians accepted the 1860 Land Commission’s judgment that the original proprietorial plan had been “ill-advised.” What had increasingly come to be at issue in the political debate was not the need to eliminate large-scale landlordism but how to go about doing so. This reorientation had profound consequences not just for the distribution of land but for the nature of the society that would emerge in Prince Edward Island. William Cooper did not live to see the final steps of the struggle to dismantle the structures of 1767 and to realize a new order. When comprehensive change in land tenure came to the Island, however, it did so not just as part of the history of his years in the colony. The change owed more than a little to the choices Cooper had made about how to live his life, and to the significant contributions he had made in imagining an alternative future and in providing leadership in the struggle to obtain it.

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Notes

Abbreviations used in notes

BA BEA BL BLM CHS CSA CSL DCA DLHC GL GROS HCHS HCL HCRO HSUL HL LAC LC NA NAS NLS NMM NRAS

Bancroft Library Bermuda Archives British Library Bureau of Land Management (California State Office) California Historical Society California State Archives California State Library Dundee City Archives Dundee Local History Centre Guildhall Library General Register Office for Scotland Humboldt County Historical Society Humboldt County Library Humboldt County Recorder’s Office Humboldt State University Library Huntington Library Library and Archives of Canada Library of Congress National Archives (Kew) National Archives of Scotland National Library of Scotland National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) National Register of Archives for Scotland

256



NSARM NSCLRC PANB PANL PARO PEI , JHA PEI , JLC PEI , PR PPEC PWDRO RL RSAL SFHC SLSL uda WCRO

not es to pages 3– 6

Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management Nova Scotia Crown Lands Record Centre Public Archives of New Brunswick Public Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Record Office Prince Edward Island, Journal of the House of Assembly Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Council Prince Edward Island, Parliamentary Reporter Private Papers of Edward Cooper Plymouth and West Devon Record Office Robertson Library Royal Society Archives and Library (London) San Francisco History Center Southwark Local Studies Library University of Dundee Archives (Dundee) Warwick County Record Office

chapter one “Glams” is a phonetic spelling of “Glamis.” See PPEC , “The Family Bible of William Cooper,” transcript. 2 Porter, London: A Social History, 157–93; Cornewall-Jones, The British Merchant Service, 89. 3 Bumsted, Land, Settlement, and Politics, 148. 4 PARO , Acc. 2324, Holland to Hillsborough, 4 Oct. 1765. 5 Yenne, The Missions of California; Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America, 246–65. 6 Devine, Clearance and Improvement: Land, 42–53. 7 Devine, The Transformation of Rural Scotland, 41. 8 Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 320, 327, 344. 9 Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 7; Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 287–94. 10 Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 435. 11 Devine, The Transformation of Rural Scotland, 61. 12 Heron, Scotland Described, 204–5; Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 248. 1

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13 Heron, Scotland Described, 205. 14 Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 120; Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 410. 15 Strachan, “Parish of Strathmartin,” 636–7; Roger, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 3–4, 22–3. The papers of the Earl of Strathmore highlight the extent of these investments while also noting the employment of many workers named Cooper, or Cowper, (uda , NRAS , 885, Bowes-Lyon Family, Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne Papers, 96–7, 148). 16 Roger, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 3. 17 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 126–56; Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 392–4. 18 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 400. 19 Warden, The Linen Trade, 570–2. 20 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 392. 21 Ibid., 394. 22 Ibid.,” 395. 23 Elliot, Lochee As It Was and As It Is, 13–26. 24 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 392–3, 399–402; Elliot, Lochee As It Was and As It Is, 13–17. 25 Alexander Elliot, Lochee As It Was and As It Is, 21; Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 403. 26 Strachan, “Parish of Strathmartin,” 670. 27 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 399. 28 PPEC , John Woodcock Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 29 Valuation Roll of the County of Forfar, 45–8, 51. The estate name was changed to Duncan of Camperdown in 1798 in honour of Admiral Adam Duncan’s great naval victory of 1797. See Millar, Roll of Eminent Burgesses of Dundee, 237–41; Warden, The Linen Trade, 572. 30 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 31 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 410. 32 DCA , uncatalogued Farrar Deposit, Cash Book, 1820–32; GD /L / ld/4/1, Accounts, 1835–52. 33 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 395–6. 34 Strachan, “Parish of Strathmartin,” 670.

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35 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 409–10; Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment, 22–3. 36 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 37 Ibid. 38 This was the basic fare even of the inadequate schools of Liff and Bervie. See Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 410. 39 Headrick, General Views of the Agriculture of the County of Angus, 193, 262; Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 398; Strachan, “Parish of Strathmartin,” 638. 40 Heron, Scotland Described, 206; Scott, “Parish of Auchterhouse,” 49. 41 Dundee Repository of Political and Miscellaneous Information, vol. 1 (1793), 67–70; Benjamin Franklin, Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin; Friends of Liberty (Dundee), At a General Meeting of the Friends of Liberty. 42 Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 19; Heron, Scotland Described, 206. 43 [Nail], A Description of the County of Angus, 21. 44 Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 26; Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 401. 45 Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 26–9. 46 The Dundee Register of Merchants and Trades, 3; Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 60. 47 Small, A Statistical Account of the Parish and Town of Dundee, 54. 48 [Forbes], The Boy of Dundee. 49 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 50 Earle, Sailors, 22. 51 Ibid., 24–5. 52 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 20. 53 Earle, Sailors, 25. 54 Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 40, 65, 71. 55 Earle, Sailors, 43–5. 56 PPEC , John Woodcock Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 57 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 20, 27. 58 Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 45–6, 62. 59 Hay, Landsman Hay, 11–12, 16–17.

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60 Mangin, Some Account of the Writer’s Situation as Chaplain in the British Navy, 25–6. 61 Ibid., 19. 62 Wilson, Remarks on Board His Majesty’s Ship Unité, 257. 63 Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 110–11. 64 Ibid., 151. 65 DCA , CE 70/1/8, Collector to Board and Others, 1794–1800. 66 Fayle, “The Employment of British Shipping,” 74. 67 Constable, “United Parishes of Liff and Bervie,” 401; Watson, Dundee: A Short History, 84–5. 68 Fayle, “The Employment of British Shipping,” 79, 82–3. 69 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 185–7. 70 Flannery, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, 152–3; Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 90–1, 101–2; Robinson, Jack Nastyface, 66–9. 71 Lloyd, The British Seaman, 158; Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 105. 72 Adkin, The Trafalgar Companion, 172–3. 73 Earle, Sailors, 193; Lloyd, The British Seaman, 132, 199. 74 Adkin, The Trafalgar Companion, 172. 75 Wilson, Remarks on Board His Majesty’s Ship Unité, 246. 76 Flannery, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, 152–3; Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 194–5, 251; Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 91, 105. 77 J.H. McDonald, “Some Historical Facts about Eureka and Humboldt County,” The Maple Leaf (Oakland, California), April 1936. 78 Mackenzie, The Trafalgar Roll; “Trafalgar Ancestors,” http://www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/aboutapps/trafalgarancestors/. 79 Pemberton, The Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice, 96. 80 Flannery, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, 185–7. 81 Ibid., 177–8. See too Robinson, Jack Nastyface, 66. 82 Adkin, The Trafalgar Companion, 174. 83 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 273.

chapter two 1 2 3

Lubbock, “Seaman,” 106; Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 273; Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 116. Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 118–19; Earle, Sailors, 29; Fayle, “Shipowning and Marine Insurance,” 30. Earle, Sailors, 43.

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not es to pages 23–5

As A.G.E. Jones notes, useful as Lloyd’s List and the Lloyd’s Registers are, neither is internally consistent and complete (The Greenland and Davis Strait Trade, 151–2). 5 The Thames, which sailed between London and Halifax, for instance, was captained by George Cooper; the Highlander, which sailed between British ports and the Gulf of St Lawrence, was captained by John Cooper; the Adonis, which also sailed on routes connecting British ports to the Gulf of St Lawrence, was captained by a J. Cooper as well; the Captain Cooper of the East Indiaman Lord Castlereagh was named Edward. There are significant limitations to the usefulness of most sources concerning the movements of vessels and captains in the early nineteenth century. Some of these limitations, though, can be overcome by combining a variety of sources on a single spreadsheet. The analysis in this chapter draws from Lloyd’s List, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping and Lloyd’s Register of the Society of Merchants, Shipowners and Underwriters, the Thames records of the Receiver of Sixpences (NA , ADM 68), customs records, and newspaper accounts of the arrival and departure of vessels. 6 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” J.H. McDonald made a more sweeping claim in the 1930s when he wrote that Captain Cooper “became a sea captain and sailed the seven seas.” His version of Cooper’s career has subsequently emerged in scholarly accounts of Cooper’s life. The phrasing has a romantic ring to it, but the geographic reality of Cooper’s travels as a captain is likely much narrower. See J.H. McDonald, “Some Historical Facts about Eureka and Humboldt County,” The Maple Leaf (Oakland, California), April 1936. 7 Lloyd’s List, 1 Jan., 11 Oct., and 13 Dec. 1808; 23 Sept. 1809; 7 April and 24 Sept. 1810. 8 PARO , RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811, 12 Oct. 1811. 9 Lloyd’s List, 14 May 1811; NA , ADM 68/211, Records of Royal Greenwich Hospital, and the Chatham Chest, Names of Ships and Amounts Paid for Sixpences, 15 May 1812. 10 Lloyd’s List, 5 July 1811. 11 Ibid., 8 Nov. 1811. 12 PARO , RG 9 Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 12 Oct. 1811.

not es to pages 25– 9

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

261

Stewart, An Account of Prince Edward Island, 9. Clark, Three Centuries and the Island, 237n2. Stewart, An Account of Prince Edward Island, 4–23, 122. Ibid., 47–8. For an excellent overview of the history of the white pine on Prince Edward Island, see Sobey, “The Fall – and Rise? – of White Pine.” Ibid., 36–42. PARO , 0,539 (sheet 2), Map of Lot 28. PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811. PARO, RG 9, vol. 8, Shipping Inwards, 1802–1809; vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811. LAC , DesBarres Papers, MG 23/F 1–5/14/2781–4, Isabella DesBarres to William Dolben, 21 March 1809. NMM, HNL /59/120–1, Henley Papers, voyage accounts; PARO, RG 9, vol. 8, Shipping Inwards, 1802–1809; vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811. Island Gazette, 7 June 1821. The 152-ton Albion brought thirty-nine passengers direct from Dundee in June 1809 and took twenty-two passengers, perhaps from among those who took passage to Prince Edward Island, on to Quebec. See PARO, RG 9, vol. 8, Shipping Inwards, 1802–1809; vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811; Campey, A Very Fine Class of Immigrants, 58. Captain Marryat, Frank Mildmay, 161–6; Shamrock (New York), 10 August 1811. See too O’Grady, Exiles and Islanders, 100–4. Marshall, Royal Naval Biography, 18–20; Perkins, “George Canning, Great Britain and the United States” 1–22. Lloyd’s List, 10 March and 8 May 1812. Bumsted, Land, Settlement, and Politics, 14; Acts of the Privy Council of England, in Colonial Series, vol. 5, A.D. 1766–1783, edited through the direction of the Lord President of the Council by James Munro (London 1912), 63. McGilvary, Guardian of the East India Company, 195, 242; Marshall, “Sulivan, Laurence.” Bumsted, Land, Settlement, and Politics, 62–4. Holman, “John Cambridge,” 107–10. PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 7, Shipping Inwards, 1790–1802.

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not es to pages 31–8

33 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811 to 1817. 34 NA , Chancery Records, C 112/5/1–3. 35 Lloyd’s List, 19 Jan. 1813, shows the James and Ann under the command of Captain Purvis arriving in Dublin from Cadiz. 36 Earle, Sailors, 19; Inwood, A History of London, 317–19; White, London in the Nineteenth Century, 182. 37 Coloquhoun, A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames, 26. 38 Ibid., xxxi. 39 Ibid., xxxi, 68–70, 75–6. 40 Ibid., 58–76. 41 Greeves, London Docks, 1800–1980. 42 Fayle, “Shipowning and Marine Insurance,” 30. 43 Inwood, A History of London, 354; Flower and Jones, Lloyd’s of London. By the early 1800s, Lloyd’s was surveying roughly ten thousand vessels per year (Martin, The History of Lloyd’s, 337). 44 Earle, Sailors, 29. 45 GL , London Map by C. and J. Greenwood, 1824–6; Morris, Mile End Old Town. 46 Avery, Bishopsgate Schools, 11. 47 William Cooper’s wife’s sister, who was born the same year Sarah and William were married, was enumerated in the 1851 census of England. It listed place of birth as Bishopsgate, in the civil parish of Stratford Le Bow (NA , H 0 107, 1555, 126, 6, 1851 England Census). 48 Hughson, Walks through London, 271. 49 Besant, Shoreditch and the East End, 9. 50 Belamy, Ramblin’ Jack, 126. 51 GL , London Map by C. and J. Greenwood, 1824–6. 52 Hughson, Walks through London, 273. 53 Hughson, London, 112–13. 54 Lloyd’s Register, Underwriters Supplement, 1809; Jones, The Greenland and Davis Strait Trade, 69, 71–3, 86, 88, 92, 94, 97, 103. 55 Jackson, The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby vol. 1, 3. 56 Jackson, The British Whaling Trade, 78; Lloyd’s List, 30 July 1809; 17 Aug. 1810; 16, Aug. 1811; 28 Aug. 1812; 31 Aug. 1813; 2 Sept. 1814; 29 Aug. 1815; 3 Sept. 1816; 26 Aug. 1817.

not es to pages 38–40

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57 Lloyd’s List, 21 March, 29 July 1809; 6 Nov. 1810; 8 Jan., 19 July, 12 Nov. 1811; 21 Feb., 24 July 1812; 3 Aug., 7 Sept., 23 Nov. 1813; 29 March, 18 Nov. 1814; 31 March, 18 July, 17 Nov. 1815; 5 Jan., 23 July, 15 Nov. 1816; 21 Feb. 1817; NA, ADM 68/211, 1811 and 1812. 58 Lloyd’s List, 10 Sept. 1809; 28 March 1810, 25 June 1811; 28 Dec. 1813; 13 May 1814; 2 May 1815; 10 Sept., 22 Nov. 1816; 6 May 1817; 23 May 1817; NA, ADM 68/211, 1810 and 1811. 59 An Account of Ships Employed in the Service of the Hon. United East India Company, 201–4, 255, 270–1; Sutton, Lords of the East, 61; Earle, Sailors, 5–6, 22. 60 NA, ADM 68/211, 14 Feb. 1818; Lloyd’s List, 17 June, 2 Sept., 28 Oct., 25 Nov. 1814; 6 Jan. 1815; 8 Oct. 1816; 30 Sept., 16 Dec. 1817; 14 July, 15 Sept., 13 Oct. 1818. 61 NA, ADM 68/211, 3 Jan. 1816. 62 Lloyd’s List, 7 Aug. 1812; 30 July, 6 Sept. 1814; 12 Nov. 1816; 11 Feb., 15 April, 27 May, 14 Nov. 1817; 13 Jan., 27 Jan., 27 March, 19 June, 11 Sept., 9 Oct. 1818. 63 Lloyd’s Register, Underwriters Supplement, 1809. 64 Earle, Sailors, 43. 65 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 166. 66 Dana, Two Years before the Mast, 148–9. 67 Earle, Sailors, 41–2. 68 Garstin, Samuel Kelly, 168. 69 Earle, Sailors, 47. 70 The Prince Edward Island customs records mistakenly list him as Captain Lands rather than Sands (PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 30 Nov. 1815). 71 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 30 Nov. 1815; Johnstone’s London Commercial Guide and Street Directory, 1817. 72 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 30 Nov. 1815. 73 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817. 74 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 30 Nov. 1815. 75 PPEC , John W. Cooper to William Cooper, 21 Dec. 1848. 76 NAS , 1841 Scotland Census, Orphir Parish.

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77 GL , Ms. 7498/29, Parish Register of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, marriages, March 1816 – Sept. 1817. 78 Reaney, A Dictionary of English Surnames, 148. 79 Sarah’s aunt listed herself as Middlesex-born on census returns (NA , HO 107/713/2/6, Census, 1841, Middlesex). 80 SFHC , N. Gray & Co. Funeral Record, 1850 to 1862, 18 Nov. 1850. 81 PARO , Cemetery Transcript, PEI Genealogical Society, Annandale United Baptist Cemetery, Lot 56–3, transcribed 1987. 82 Gash, Aristocracy and People: Britain, 76. 83 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 693. 84 Ibid., 664; London Chronicle, 15/16 Feb. 1817. 85 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 700. 86 Earle, Sailors, 49–51. 87 PARO, RG 9, vol. 2, Shipping Register, 95. 88 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 16 June 1817. 89 Pedley, The History of Newfoundland, 274, 281–2. 90 Ibid., 269. 91 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811–1817, 13 Aug. 1817. 92 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 45, Shipping Outwards, 18 Dec. 1817; Lloyd’s List, 20 Jan. 1818. 93 PPEC , “The Family Bible of William Cooper,” transcript. 94 Prince Edward Island Gazette, 5 June 1818. 95 Ibid., 6 July 1818. 96 Ibid., 24 Oct. 1818. 97 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 46, Shipping Outwards, 1815, 1818–1819, 2 Nov. 1818. 98 It is possible that Sarah and young John Woodcock Cooper came to the Island in June 1818, but it seems more likely that their move was synchronized with William Cooper’s resignation from the captaincy of the Britannia and John’s reaching the advanced age of almost twelve months.

chapter three 1

George Seymour, a fellow Londoner, remarked on the wonderful climate he found when he toured the Island in late summer and early

not es to pages 44–50

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22

265

fall two decades later, and described it as among the finest in the world (WCRO, CR 114A /1380, Journal of a Tour). According to Andrew Hill Clark, the 1827 population of Charlottetown itself was 1,649 (Three Centuries and the Island, 70). Johnstone, A Series of Letters, 118. MacGregor, Historical and Descriptive Sketches, 6. Johnstone, A Series of Letters, 123. Ibid., 105. Ibid., 117. PANL, MG 988, Rev. C.A. Binns, Journal of a Voyage from Liverpool to PEI , August to November 1817, 76. PARO , No. 0, 249, A , A Plan of Prince Edward Island, 1820. MacDonald, et al., Those Were the Days; PARO , Chancery Court, Series 2, Case Papers, sub-series 1: 1793–1923, box 3, William Cooper v. David Morrow. NSCLRC , 8/259, Gov. Campbell to George Viscount Townshend, 9 Aug. 1769; Powell, “Townshend, George, First Marquess Townshend.” “Census by the Sieur de la Roque,” in Report Concerning Canadian Archives for the Year 1905, vol. 2. 126–8. United Kingdom, Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, vol. 5, 76–7. Lockerby, “The Deportation of Island Acadians,” 45–94; Harvey, The French Regime, 200. United Kingdom, Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, vol. 5, 77. PARO , No. 0, 524, B , Plan of Lot 56, 1811, by Robert Fox; No. 4, 152, F , Plan of Lot 56, 1864, by J.C. Underhay. PARO , Acc. 4524, J. Henri Blanchard papers. PARO , Acc. 2702, Smith, Alley Collection, vol. 24, Fanning to Marquis Townshend, 2 March 1804. PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.” Cooper acknowledges that by “patient hopeful labour” his father turned the property into “a very fine farm.” The soils of Sailor’s Hope were of the Charlottetown Series. See Whiteside, Soil Survey of Prince Edward Island. Prince Edward Island Gazette, 8 Dec. 1819. PANL, MG 988. Rev. C.A. Binns, Journal of a Voyage from Liverpool to PEI , August to November 1817, 79–86.

266

not es to pages 50 –2

23 Ibid., 85–6. 24 Prince Edward Island Gazette, 5 Nov. 1818; 20 Jan. 1819; PARO , RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, 1820, J Peters v. C & E Seon; BEA , Acc. 453, Slave Registers, 1821–1834, 105, 162; Acc. 713, Probate Records, Book of Wills, vol. 14, 172, Will of Engelsbe Seon of Hamilton; vol. 15, 21, Will of Thomas Seon, Esquire. 25 PANL, MG 988. Rev. C.A. Binns, Journal of a Voyage from Liverpool to PEI , August to November 1817, 77–8. 26 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 2, 1787–1825; Nicholson, Early Prince Edward Island Probate Records, 36. 27 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 2, 1787–1825, 10 May 1808. 28 These passage time estimates, which seem long, were determined by matching Prince Edward Island customs records of a vessel’s departure with its arrival time in St John’s, as recorded in the Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser. For vessels for which there are records in 1810 and 1811, passage times ranged from nine to thirty-seven days (PARO , RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–1811; vol. 44, Shipping Outwards, 1811 to 1817). 29 The Nova Scotia Royal Gazette reported on 6 Nov. 1811 that the Happy Return had arrived from Prince Edward Island in ten days. This was likely a good but not unusual passage time. 30 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 2, 1787–1825. 31 MacGregor, Historical and Descriptive Sketches, 68. 32 Ibid., 70, 74. 33 White, Lord Selkirk’s Diary, 3, 15. 34 PARO , Acc. 4082, Peter Magowan to John Stewart, 15 April 1807; Acc. 2849, Palmer family fonds, 98/10–11, Palmer to Johnson, 5 March 1807. 35 MacGregor, Historical and Descriptive Sketches, 78–9. See too Miller, “Aboriginal Micmac Population.” 36 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 2, 1787–1825, 63, 97, 102; RG 9, vol. 44, Collector of Customs, Shipping Outwards, from 1811 to 1817. 37 PARO, RG 16, Land Registry Records, Power of Attorney to Manage Real Estate, 7 Sept. 1811, lib. 21, folio 25–6.

not es to pages 52–5

267

38 Walter Johnstone noted that front lands were “nearly all occupied” by 1820 (A Series of Letters, 113). 39 PARO, RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, Abell v. R. Swallow, 1815; E. Abell v. MacKie, 1816; Richard Yates v. E. Abell; Abell v. Decoster, 1818; Abell v. J. Dingwall, 1818; Abell v. W. Dingwall, 1818; Abell v. G. McKie, 1818; Abell v. J. McKie; Abell v. J. Roberts, 1818; Abell v. A MacDonald; King v. E. Abell, 1817; King v. E. Abell, 1818. 40 Underhay, “Bay Fortune,” 391–2a; O’Grady, Exiles and Islanders, 104–6. 41 The reward for Pearce’s capture described him as five feet, six inches (Prince Edward Island Gazette, 3 Sept. and 23 Sept. 1819). 42 PARO, RG 6.1, series 14, file 36, Inquest into the death of Edward James Abell. 43 William Cooper Junior was born at Sailor’s Hope on 6 Nov. 1819 and baptized at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Charlottetown the following March (PARO , Records of St Paul’s Anglican Church, Baptisms, 1777–1939, 186). 44 NA, CO 226/56/185–6, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 45 See chapter 2. 46 NA, CO 226/56/185, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 47 PARO, RG 16, lib. 27, folio 78–82, Land Conveyance, series, 1769– 1872, Lord James Townshend to William Cooper, power of attorney, registered 25 May 1820; No. 0, 524, B , Plan of Lot 56, 1811, by Robert Fox. Charles Stewart’s annual fee for managing Lot 19 for the Melville and Westmorland families was £100. In the years of the timber boom roughly a decade before Cooper became Townshend’s agent, Ambrose and James Gosling paid Joseph Browne £500 per year to manage their PEI estate. This was, however, a full-time job, and Browne’s duties included managing not just the land they owned but all their business interests in the region. In the 1860s, G.W. DeBlois received £200 per annum plus expenses for managing the Sulivan estate (Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords, 36, 145; NA, C , Chancery Papers, 112/5/2/111, Goslings to Till, 3 June 1808). 48 NA, CO 226/56/185–6, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.”

268

not es to pages 55– 60

49 Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island, 41–2. 50 PARO, RG 16, lib. 27, folio 78–82, Land Conveyance series, 1769– 1872, Lord James Townshend to William Cooper, power of attorney, registered 25 May 1820. 51 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John MacGregor, 12 Nov. 1847; Bumsted, “John MacGregor,” 547. 52 MacGregor, Historical and Descriptive Sketches, 57–8; Bumsted, The Collected Writings of Lord Selkirk, 1799–1809, vol. I , 182–4; Whiteside, Soil Survey of Prince Edward Island, 31. 53 PPEC , “The Family Bible of William Cooper,” transcript. Yet another infant, who did not survive, appears to have been born in 1821. 54 PARO, RG 6.6, Chancery Court, Series 2, Case Papers, sub-series 1: 1793–1923, box 3, William Cooper vs. David Morrow. 55 Cooper’s attention to rotations and improved agriculture was not the norm among working farmers in the region, despite elite attempts to make it so. See Samson, The Spirit of Industry and Improvement, chap. 2; Wynn, “Exciting a Spirit of Emulation among the ‘Plodholes.’” 56 NLS , Acc. 6981, Thomas Wilson to brother, 9 July 1818. 57 PARO , Acc. 4379, James MacDonald (Lot 34) family fonds, 1818– 1863, Mrs James MacDonald to aunt and uncle, 9 Dec. 1818. 58 A True Guide to Prince Edward Island, 19. 59 Hogan, “‘White Gold and Train Oil,’” 19–22; Sobey, “An Analysis,” 389. 60 Hornby, “Bear Facts” part 1 and 2; Sobey, “An Analysis,” 387. 61 Bittermann, Rural Protest, chap. 1. 62 Prince Edward Island Gazette, 8 Aug. 1818. 63 PARO , No. 0, 249, A , A Plan of Prince Edward Island, 1820. 64 NSCLRC , 8/259, Gov. Campbell to George Viscount Townshend, 9 Aug. 1769. 65 NA, CO 226/41/64–5, Requisition to Sheriff; Bumsted, “John MacGregor,” 547–8. 66 NA, CO 226/56/186–7, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 67 PEI , JHA , 1825, 1st session, 3–4. 68 PEI , JHA , 1863, Appendix A , Appendix to Report of Commissioners … Rent Roll of Township No. 56, in King’s County.

not es to pages 60 –3

269

69 Gordon and Laird, reporters, Abstract of the Proceedings before the Land Commissioners’ Court, 7. 70 NA, CO 226/56/179, “Report of a Select Committee of the Inhabitants of Township Number Fifty Six.” 71 PARO , No. 0, 249, A , A Plan of Prince Edward Island 1820; NA, CO 226/56/178–9, “Report of a Select Committee of the Inhabitants of Lot or Township Number Fifty Six.” 72 NA, CO 226/56/186, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 73 Prince Edward Island Register, 6 March 1824. 74 NA, CO 226/56/186, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 75 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 43, Shipping Outwards, 1802–11. 76 De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island. 77 Ibid., 294. 78 PARO , Acc. 4225, MacDonald family [Georgetown] fonds; NA, C , Chancery Papers, 112/5/2/92–5, Goslings to Charles Stewart, 27 April 1808; A Late Resident of That Colony, Some Account of the Island of Prince Edward, 20–1. 79 Bradley, Shipshape Cambridge Fashion; de Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, 282–4, 318; Holman, “John Cambridge.” 80 De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, 312. 81 Holman, “John Cambridge”; Taylor, “Charles Worrell.” 82 Holman, “John Cambridge,” 109. 83 Taylor, “Charles Worrell,” 953; [Shilestone], “The Worrell Family in Barbados.” 84 NA, CO 226/56/186, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” 85 De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, 45n27; Holman, “John Cambridge,” 109. 86 PARO , RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, 1826, A & H MacDonald v. W Cooper. 87 PARO , British Board of Trade, Ships’ Registry Papers, 1826, Charlottetown, P.E.I.; RG 9, vol. 48, Shipping Outwards, 1825–1827. 88 PWDRO , Plymouth, UK , 2602/2–6, Copy of Original Shipping Registers.

270

not es to pages 63– 9

89 90 91 92

De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, 346. Holman, “Joseph Pope.” PWDRO , 2602/1, Index to the Plymouth Shipping Registers. Plymouth Herald and Devonshire Freeholder, 12 Aug. and 26 Aug. 1826. 93 De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, chap. 2. 94 Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, vol. 1, chap. 4. 95 Greenhill and Giffard track the growth of the Prince Edward Island timber and shipbuilding connection with the Bristol Channel region in Westcountrymen in Prince Edward’s Isle. 96 Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords, 36–42. 97 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 47. 98 Ibid., 35. 99 PARO , Acc. 2849, Palmer family fonds, 98/19–23, Palmer to Johnson, 30 Aug. 1807. 100 NA, CO 226/56/179, “Petition of the Inhabitants of Township Number Fifty Six.” 101 Prince Edward Island Register, 29 May 1827; CO 226/56/179, “Report of a Select Committee of the Inhabitants of Township Number Fifty Six.” 102 Pollard, Historical Sketch of the Eastern Regions of New France, 197. 103 PARO, RG 16, Land Conveyance, Series 1769–1872, lib. 65, folio 631–3. 104 Prince Edward Island Register, 21 July 1829.

chapter four 1 2 3

Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords, 12. The 1832 census recorded a population of just over 32,000 (PEI , JHA , 1834, Appendix [C ]). Timber and shipbuilding returns for 1824 are in NA, CO 231/7, Prince Edward Island, Exports. The total for the two together in 1824 was £44,863. Timber returns for 1830 are in CO 231/13, Prince Edward Island, Exports, and amount to £6,001. In 1830 2,758 tons of shipping were built on the Island (de Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward, 36, 39). Calculated at £7/ton, it was worth £19,306. Even if all the shipping built in 1830 was sold, which is

not es to pages 69 – 79

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

271

unlikely, the total of shipping and timber exports in 1830 would have been £25,307, or 56 per cent of the 1824 returns. Likely they were significantly less than this. Bittermann, Rural Protest, 35–46. London Chronicle, 23/24 Jan., 6/7 Feb., 11/12 Feb., 25/26 Feb., 13/14 March, 1/2 April 1817. MacNutt, New Brunswick, 170. Royal Gazette, 15 March 1831. Ibid. Royal Gazette, 15 Feb. 1831. Ibid. Prince Edward Island Register, 29 Sept. 1829; Royal Gazette, 7, 21 Sept. 1830. Royal Gazette, 15 Feb. 1831. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1830. Ibid., 15 Feb. 1831. Ibid., 15 March 1831. PARO, RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, 1830, Sheaffey v. Cooper and Howlett. See too NA, CO 226/56/185–6, [William Cooper] “To the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters.” Royal Gazette, 15 March 1831. Ibid., 15 Feb. 1831. Ibid., 15 March 1831. Ibid., 10 Jan. 1832. Bittermann, Rural Protest, 61–4; Bumsted, “Parliamentary Privilege, Part Two,” 15–17. Royal Gazette, 24 Jan. 1832. Ibid., 7 Feb. 1832. Haszard’s Gazette, 3 Feb. 1852, emphasis in the original. Bittermann, Rural Protest, 69–70. Royal Gazette, 3 April 1832. Ibid. British American, 13 April 1833. PPEC , Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.” Royal Gazette, 15 Feb. 1831; Bittermann, Rural Protest, 76–9, 253. The regional patterns of trade, investment, and capital formation can be traced in the richly detailed customs house and vessel registry

272

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45

46

47 48

not es to pages 80 – 6

papers (PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers). Royal Gazette, 3 April 1832. Ibid., 24 April 1832. Ibid., 1 and 29 May, 5 June, 6 July, 21 Aug., 4 Sept. 1832. Ibid., 24 April 1832. Bittermann, Rural Protest, 79. Royal Gazette, 11 Sept. 1832. Ibid., 9 April 1833. Bittermann, Rural Protest, chap. 5. Royal Gazette, 8 Feb. 1842, “An Elector of King’s County” to “The Electors of Prince Edward Island,” summarizes the building accusations concerning Cooper’s “selfish schemes,” accusations that would persist for the remainder of his life. To varying degrees, these critical assessments re-emerge in contemporary scholarship concerning Cooper and the escheat movement. See Baglole, “William Cooper,” “William Cooper of Sailor’s Hope,” and “The Legacy of William Cooper”; Robertson, The Prince Edward Island Land Commission, xv–xvi. Hochschild, Bury the Chains, 343–4; Brock, The Great Reform Act. Armstrong and Stagg, “William Lyon Mackenzie.” For the serial meetings of 1832, see Royal Gazette, 24 April, 1, 15, and 29 May, 5 June, 7, 21 Aug., and 4 Sept. 1832. Bittermann, Rural Protest, 138–41; Benjamin Davies to the editor, Daily Examiner, 6 Nov. 1895; NA, CO 226/64/31, “Construction of the House of Assembly of Prince Edward Island,” 13 Aug. 1842; de Jong, “John MacKintosh.” PARO , Acc. 2316, Stewart Family fonds, Stewart Letterbooks, 1/421–3, Robert Stewart to Waller, 20 Aug. 1834, Robert Stewart to Rennie, 21 Aug. 1834; 2/10–12, Resolutions of Prince Edward Island Association; Royal Gazette 18 Nov. 1834. NSARM, MG 2, George R. Young papers, box 724, folder 1, Young to Stephen, 11 Dec. 1837; George R. Young, A Statement of the “Escheat Question.” Royal Gazette, 12, 26 April 1836; Prince Edward Island Times, 16 April, 10, 31 May 1836. Royal Gazette, 26 April, 28 June, 5 July 1836; Prince Edward Island Times, 31 May, 28 June, 12, 19, 26 July 1836.

not es to pages 86 – 90

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49 Royal Gazette, 2 Feb. 1836; Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, 27–8; Miller, Thomas Campbell. 50 Prince Edward Island Times, 31 May, 12 July 1836. 51 PANB, RG 1, Harvey letterbooks, RS 344/B/1/88–9, Harvey to Campbell. 52 [William Cooper], Legislative and Other Proceedings on the Expediency of Appointing a Court of Escheats. 53 Royal Gazette, 18, 25 Oct. 1836. 54 Ibid., 18 Oct. 1836. 55 Ibid., 10 Jan. 1837. 56 NA, CO 226/54/15–19, Harvey to Glenelg, 24 Jan. 1837. 57 PEI , JHA , 1837, 24. 58 NA, CO 226/54/17, Harvey to Glenelg, 24 Jan. 1837; Buckner, “Sir John Harvey,” 375; PANB, RG 1, Harvey letterbooks, RS 344/ B /1/59–62, Harvey to Taylor, 7 Jan. 1837. 59 NA, CO 226/54/15–9, 25–6, Harvey to Glenelg, 24, 26 January 1837. 60 NA, CO 226/54/26, Harvey to Glenelg, 26 Jan. 1837. 61 PEI , JHA , 1837, 34–5; Prince Edward Island, Journals of the House of Assembly, 1838, 6–7. 62 PARO, RG 1, Lieutenant-Governor Commission Book, 1769–1835, 176–7. 63 Dickson, “The Tolpuddle Martyrs,” 178–87. 64 PEI , JHA , 1837, 25. 65 Royal Gazette, 29 May 1832. 66 PEI , JHA , 1837, 24. 67 There were at least five community-level meetings that provided continuing support for the Hay River initiative in late February and March, and a larger, district-level meeting in Charlottetown in midApril (Royal Gazette, 7, 14, 21, 28 March, 11, 18, 25 April 1837). 68 NA, CO 226/54/259, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 3 Oct 1837. 69 NA , CO 226/54/257–63, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 3 Oct. 1837; CO 226/54/263–4, Copy of an Address … , 8 Sept. 1837. 70 NA, CO 226/54/257–62, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 3 Oct. 1837. 71 NA, CO 226/54/259, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 3 Oct. 1837. 72 PARO , Acc. 2524/20, Correspondence Concerning Cooper/FitzRoy Dispute, William Cooper to John Le Lacheur, 14 Sept 1837. 73 Royal Gazette, 6 Feb. 1838. 74 PARO , Acc. 2524/20, Correspondence Concerning Cooper/FitzRoy Dispute, William Cooper to John Le Lacheur, 14 Sept. 1837.

not es to pages 91– 6

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75 Bittermann, Rural Protest, 204–5, 210–13. 76 NA, CO 226/55/76–81, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 30 Jan. 1838. 77 Greer, The Patriots and the People; Read and Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada. 78 NA, CO 226/56/193, Memorial to Glenelg, 24 March 1838. 79 NA, CO 226/55/318–21, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 6 May 1838. 80 PPEC , Joseph Howe to William Cooper, 3 and 7 July 1838. 81 Beck, Joseph Howe, vol. I , 184–5. Howe’s diary indicates that Howe arrived in London in late May, and it includes a Mile End address for Cooper other than that of Sarah Walker (LAC , Joseph Howe fonds, MG 24-B -29, vol. 45, Diary, 1838, 1841–42, 2, 7). 82 NA, CO 226/56/147, Cooper to Glenelg, 30 June 1838. 83 Bittermann, Rural Protest, 222–4. 84 LAC , Joseph Howe fonds, MG 24-B -29, vol. 45, Diary, 1838, 1841– 42, 25; Examiner, 21 May 1855. 85 PEI , JHA , 1839, Appendix (A ), 21–2, Grey to Cooper, 25 Aug. 1838. 86 PARO, RG 7, G & D , vol. 11, 409–10, Glenelg to FitzRoy, 2 Aug. 1838; Bittermann, “Mi’kmaq Land Claims.” 87 Huch and Ziegler, Joseph Hume. Hume’s personal papers were destroyed by fire; thus, the main documentation concerning his dealings with Cooper is to be found in papers in the possession of the Cooper family and in the Hume correspondence published in Island newspapers and the legislative journals. 88 See chapter 5. 89 NA, HO 107/1555/126/6 GSU roll 174787, 1851 England Census. 90 PPEC , Sarah Walker to William Cooper, 1 Sept. 1838. 91 PPEC , “Whilst Happy in My Native Land, I Boast My Country’s Charter”: song, written out by hand, sent in one of Sarah Walker’s letters.

chapter five 1

NA, CO 226/56/187, Cooper to the Committee Appointed to Report upon Mr. Waller’s Letters, 16 Dec. 1837; CO 226/54/25–6, Harvey to

2

PPEC , crew list of the Packet; Edward Cooper, “Cooper Family

3

PPEC , copy, William and Sarah Cooper to Sarah Walker, 30 Nov.

Glenelg, 26 Jan. 1837. Notes,” 27 Nov. 2000; Irvine, History of Humboldt County, 1201. 1838.

not es to pages 97–103

4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

275

PPEC , 7 Oct. 1841, William Cooper to Sister, notes apple trees that were bearing in 1841 that his sister-in-law had watched be sown by seed the autumn she was on the Island. PARO , Acc. 2702/900, Smith, Alley Collection, unidentified diary; RL , Prince Edward Island Collection, David Ross Diary, 3. PPEC , copy, William and Sarah Cooper to Sarah Walker, 30 Nov. 1838. Buckner, The Transition to Responsible Government, chap. 7. PEI , JLC , 1839, 2nd Session, [3], 10. PEI , JHA , 1839, 1st Session, 6–7. PEI , JHA , 1839, 2nd Session, 26. Colonial Herald, supplement, 23 Feb. 1839. NA, CO 226/148–66; Bittermann and McCallum, “The One That Got Away.” PEI , JLC , 1839, 2nd Session, 46–52, 54, 57, 61; PEI , JHA , 1839, 2nd Session, 59, 63–9, 72, 76. Royal Gazette, 7 May 1839; PEI , JHA , 1839, 2nd Session, 50–1, 76–80. NA, CO 226/58/106–22, FitzRoy to Normanby, 7 May 1839. Cooper appears to have taken lodging at 16 Cleveland Street, Mile End (PPEC , Cooper to Walker, 9 Sept. 1839; Cooper to Walker, 2 Oct. 1839). NAC, CO 226/59/72–210, Cooper to Normanby, 15 July 1839, and documents. Colonial Herald, 15 Feb. 1840. NA, CO 226/59/215–9, Cooper to Russell, 9 Sept. 1839; PEI , JHA , 1840, Appendix (A ), Cooper to Arbuckle et al., 20 Sept. 1839. Royal Gazette, 26 Nov. 1839; Prince Edward Island, PEI , JHA , 1840, Appendix (A ), Cooper to Russell, 23 Sept. 1839. Royal Gazette, 3 March 1840. PEI , JHA , 1840, Appendix [C ]. Royal Gazette, 25 Feb. 1840. PPEC , copy, Cooper to Hume, 5 Oct. 1839; copy, [Cooper] to [Hume], 16 April 1842; drafts, [Cooper] to [Hume], 16 April 1842. PEI , JHA , 1840, Appendix (B ), 9–12, Cooper to Russell, 9 Sept. 1839. Bittermann and McCallum, “The One That Got Away.” PARO , Acc. 2524/20, Correspondence Concerning Cooper/FitzRoy Dispute, William Cooper to John Le Lacheur, 14 Sept. 1837. PPEC , draft copy, Cooper to Hume, 16 April 1842.

276

not es to pages 103–11

29 PPEC , Cooper to sister [in-law], 7 Oct. 1841; PEI , JHA , 1870, appendix (X ); PEI , JHA , 1872, Appendix (C ); Bittermann and McCallum, “Upholding the Land Legislation of a ‘Communistic and Socialist Assembly.’” 30 PPEC , copy, Cooper to Hume, 5 Oct. 1839. 31 Royal Gazette, 3, 10 March 1840; PEI , JHA , 1840, 20, 37–9. 32 PPEC , undated draft of Cooper correspondence to Hume. 33 PEI , JHA , 1842, 130–5. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 135. 36 Ibid., 151, 37 PPEC , copy, Cooper to Hume, 16 April 1842. 38 PEI , JHA , 1843, [5]-6. 39 Colonial Herald, 23 July 1842. 40 Huch and Ziegler, Joseph Hume, 121–8. 41 PPEC , copy, Cooper to Sarah Walker, 30 Nov. 1838. 42 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 14 Feb. 1840. 43 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 19 Feb. 1847. 44 PPEC , William Cooper to sons, 2 Jan. 1845. 45 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper, 19 Feb. 1847. 46 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 14 Feb. 1840. 47 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 28 Feb. 1840. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 PPEC , William Cooper to John Cooper, 22 March 1840. 51 Royal Gazette, 19 April 1836. 52 See chapter 6. 53 Norman McLeod to “my dear friend,” 1 June and 22 Aug. 1848, 27 June 1849 in Harvey, Bulletin of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 21–7. 54 McPherson, Watchman against the World; Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart; McKenzie, The Gael Fares Forth. 55 W.C. Wentworth in Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of New South Wales (1819) seems to have provided a foundation for subsequent comparative assessments of potential destinations for emigrants. See Late Resident of That Colony, Some Account of the Island of Prince Edward: With Some Practical Advice to Those Intending to Emigrate, and Some Observations on the Cape of Good Hope, New South Wales, Canada, and the Red River … (1826).

not es to pages 111–16

277

56 Harper, “British Migration and the Peopling of the Empire,” 77, my emphasis. 57 Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia, 223. 58 PPEC , copy, William Cooper Senior to Sarah Walker, 14 Sept. 1843. It is not clear what became of Cooper’s plan to bring a vessel to Britain in the fall of 1843, as the registry of Island-built vessels does not report the launch of a vessel owned by Cooper, and the record of ships clearing customs on the Island does not record the departure of a vessel owned or captained by Cooper. 59 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 152, 1833–1845, 40. The Flora Beaton was initially built for Donald Beaton as a 169-ton boat and was launched in Souris in 1842. Cooper had it rebuilt as a larger vessel. 60 Colonial Herald, 29 Aug. 1840. 61 PPEC , William Cooper to John Cooper, 22 March 1840. 62 Lieutenant-Governor Huntley began hearing rumours that Cooper was planning to leave the colony in the winter of 1842–43 (NA, CO 226/63/54–7, Huntley to Stanley, 16 Feb. 1842). 63 PPEC , Sarah Walker to William Cooper, 1 Sept. 1838. 64 PPEC , William Cooper to John Cooper, 12 Oct. 1840. 65 PARO , RG 16, Land Registry Papers, lib. 65, folios 68–70 and 160–1. 66 PPEC , 1 Feb. 1848, codicil of William Cooper’s will. 67 PPEC , undated draft of letter, William Senior to William Junior. 68 Ibid. 69 PPEC , 1 Feb. 1848, codicil of William Cooper’s will. 70 The contract for the Plenty, which was signed on 27 January 1846, required that it be launched by 1 June 1847. In the event it was launched five weeks later. See PPEC , John Cooper and William Cooper Junior contract with John Morrow, 27 January 1846; PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 154, 1845–1853, 8 July 1847, no. 19. 71 De Jong and Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island, 43–4, 96–7. 72 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 50, Shipping Outwards, 1841–1847, 24 Aug. 1844. 73 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, 1833–1845, vol. 152, no. 40. 74 PARO , Acc. 2881/698, Peake, Brecken fonds, William Cooper Sr to Peake, 2 Aug. 1844.

278

not es to pages 116 –24

75 PARO , Acc. 2881/699, Peake, Brecken fonds, John Cooper to Peake, 13 Nov. 1844. 76 PPEC , 1 Feb. 1848, codicil of William Cooper’s will. The registry papers for the Flora Beaton record a request for transfer from Stockton, UK , dated 6 Feb. 1845 (PARO , Acc. C -3176, Shipping Registers, 1833–1845, vol. 152, no. 40). 77 PPEC , William Cooper to sons, 2 Jan. 1845. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 PPEC , 1 Feb. 1848, codicil of William Cooper’s will. 82 PPEC , William Cooper to sons, 2 Nov. 1845. 83 PPEC , 1 Feb. 1848, codicil of William Cooper’s will; PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, 1845–1853, vol. 154, 1846, no. 18, 1847, no. 19; PARO , Acc. 2881/712, Peake, Brecken fonds, John Cooper to Peake, 3 Feb. 1846. 84 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 18 Sept. 1844. 85 PPEC , John Pitcairn to John Cooper, 28 Sept. 1846. 86 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper and William Jr, 2 Nov. 1845. 87 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper and William Jr, 2 Nov. 1845. 88 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 14 Sept. 1846. 89 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 18 Sept. 1846. 90 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 26 Dec. 1846. 91 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to William Cooper Sr, 30 Jan. 1847. 92 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to William Cooper Sr, 1 March 1847. 93 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to William Cooper Sr, 19 April 1847. 94 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, 1845–1853, vol. 154, 1846, no. 18. 95 Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 215, 281, 292, 297–9. 96 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 19 Feb. 1847. 97 PPEC , William Cooper, “Inquiry into the Cause of the Motions of the Bodies of the Solar System.” 98 Ibid. 99 Islander, 2 Jan. 1852. 100 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1848, 1849; Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal Society of London, from 1843 to 1850 Inclusive, vol. 5, 1843 to 1850. There

not es to pages 125– 7

279

is no indication in the society’s records that it communicated with Cooper concerning the paper (RSAL , indexes). 101 C. Ian Jackson, ed., The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger, vol. 1, xxvii; Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 10–15, 96–8, 108–9. Janet Browne notes the role many naval captains played in contributing to scientific knowledge in this period and the fame that could follow from their endeavours (Charles Darwin, 209). 102 PPEC , William Cooper to sons, 2 Feb. 1846; [William Cooper Jr], notes, 11 Dec. 1848. 103 BL , Additional MS . 48.340 “Applications for Readers’ Tickets, 1824– 1870.” This listing of applications may not be complete, as Karl Marx does not appear among the applicants, yet he used the library. Given the requirements for admission, Cooper might have gained a reader’s ticket on the basis of a letter of support from Joseph Hume, or John MacGregor, or perhaps other acquaintances (Berlin, Karl Marx, 17). Although Marx did not move permanently to London until 1849, he spent time there earlier in the 1840s (Padover, Karl Marx, 113–14, 126–8, 150). 104 Hewitt, “The Mechanics’ Institute Movement in the Maritimes, 1831– 1889,” 81; Hewitt, “The Mechanics’ Institutes of P.E.I.” 105 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 19 Feb. 1847. 106 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 8 Feb. 1847. 107 References to the Cooper family’s female servants are included in PARO , RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, 1830, Sheaffey v. Cooper and Howlett, and PPEC , Journal of William Cooper Jr, Dec. 1848 to March 1849. Bittermann, “Women and the Escheat Movement,” charts some of the differences in women’s work experiences in rural settings in this period. 108 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 8 Feb. 1847. 109 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 18 Oct. 1847. 110 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 3 Nov. 1847. 111 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to John Cooper, 23 Nov. 1847. 112 Ibid. 113 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 2 March 1848. 114 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 2 March 1848; undated draft of letter from William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr.

280

not es to pages 127–36

115 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 2 March 1848. 116 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 1 March 1848. 117 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 2 March 1848. 118 Ibid. 119 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 1 March 1848; John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 26 Jan. 1848. 120 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 23 Nov. 1847; William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 7 April 1848; Mr Ford’s account, 31 May 1848. 121 Thompson, The Chartists, 311–12. 122 Goodway, London Chartism, 1838–1848, 68. 123 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 7 April 1848. 124 Ibid.; Bittermann, Rural Protest, chap. 6. 125 NA, HO 107, 1851 Census, 176, 31; PPEC , copy, William Cooper Jr to [John Pitcairn Jr], 16 April 1848. 126 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 7 April 1848; copy, William Cooper Jr to [John Pitcairn Jr], 16 April 1848; New York Customs House receipt for Plenty, 29 May 1848. 127 PPEC , John Pitcairn Sr to William Cooper Sr, 11 Oct. 1848. 128 PPEC , copy, William Cooper Sr to Mssrs Pryor and Jones, October 1848. 129 PPEC , John Pitcairn Sr to William Cooper Sr, 11 Oct. 1848. 130 Ownership of the Plenty was transferred in Shields on 26 Oct. 1848 (PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 154, 1845–1853, 8 July 1847, no. 19). 131 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 7 Nov. 1848; William Cooper Jr to William Cooper Sr, 9 Nov. 1848. 132 PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, [8 (?) Nov. 1848].

chapter six 1

2 3 4 5

On decisions concerning domestic matters, such as who her sister Margaret should marry, her input appears to have been much more significant (PPEC , William Cooper to Sister, 7 Oct. 1841). PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 26 Dec. 1846. PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 14 Dec. 1848. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 14 Sept. 1847. PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 23 Nov. 1847.

not es to pages 136 –43

6

PPEC , William Cooper Jr to [Lawson Spenceley & Co.], draft, 29

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

PPEC , William Cooper Jr to [John MacGregor]. PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 15 Dec. 1848.

281

Nov. 1848.

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid.

PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 14 Sept. 1846. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, 289–90. Kinealy, The Great Calamity, 32. Donnelly Jr, The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, 76. See chapter 5. Kinealy, The Great Calamity, 168. Devine, The Great Highland Famine, 35. Bittermann, “The Hierarchy of the Soil”; Morgan, “’Poverty, Wretchedness, and Misery.” PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 20 Dec. 1848. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 5 Sept. 1848. Ibid. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 14 Nov. 1848. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 24 Jan. 1849. Ibid. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 1 Nov. 1848. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 14 Nov. 1848. Holliday, Rush for Riches, 45–79. Examiner, 16 Oct. 1848. Royal Gazette, 16 Dec. 1848. Examiner, 1 Jan. 1849. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 10 Jan. 1849. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 24 Jan. 1849. PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 15 Dec. 1848. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 24 Jan. 1849. PPEC , Journal of William Cooper Jr, Dec. 1848 to March 1849. Ibid. Ibid.; PPEC , William Cooper Jr to John Cooper, 24 Feb. 1849. PPEC , Journal of William Cooper Jr, Dec. 1848 to March 1849. PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 3 Jan. 1849. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 6 Feb. 1849. Ibid.

282

not es to pages 143–8

41 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 7 April 1849; John Hall to William Cooper Sr, 12 April 1849. 42 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 20 Feb. 1849. 43 PPEC , Captain Cooper to H.G. Ward, Secretary of the Admiralty, undated draft. 44 Williams, “Crew Size in Trans-Atlantic Trades.” 45 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 7 April 1849. 46 Examiner, 29 Jan. 1849; Royal Gazette, 20 March 1849. 47 Royal Gazette, 20 Feb. 1849; Examiner, 29 Jan., 12 Feb. 1849. 48 Royal Gazette, 17 April 1849. 49 Weaver, The Great Land Rush, 174. 50 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 7 April 1849. For an insightful, multi-generational analysis of out-migration from Prince Edward Island to New Zealand a generation later, and some of the objectives that informed it, see Hatvany, “Environmental Failure.” 51 Cape Breton Spectator, 12 May 1848; Spirit of the Times, Feb. 1848. 52 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 7 April 1849. 53 Rohrbough, Days of Gold, 40; Sherwood, California and the Way to Get There, 38–40. 54 Rohrbough, Days of Gold, 58–60. Even in late 1853, after the isthmus route had been improved, a New Brunswick man advising his sister and niece on how to come west counselled against using the isthmus route. If they came on their own, he advised them to come round the Horn on a clipper ship from New York (HCHS , Vada Bissell Collection, box 2, 1990.83.14L , Brown to niece, 9 Oct. 1853). 55 Levy, They Saw the Elephant, chap. 2. 56 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 7 April 1849. 57 PPEC , William Cooper Jr to William Cooper Sr, 16 May 1849. 58 PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 6 Feb. 1849. 59 PARO, RG 19, Marriage Register Books, 1844–1852, 500. 60 Royal Gazette, 16 June 1849. 61 Ibid., 24 July 1849. 62 Islander, 20 July 1849. 63 Royal Gazette, 21 Aug. 1849. 64 Ibid. 65 Royal Gazette, 2 Oct. 1849.

not es to pages 148–55

283

66 Islander, 4 Jan. 1850. The Islander lists four as travelling in steerage, but one of these, William Briggs (or Biggs), was on the crew list as ship’s cook (PPEC , crew list of Packet). 67 PARO , Acc. C -3176, British Board of Trade Ships’ Registry Papers, vol. 155, 1845–1853, 14 Nov. 1849, no. 86. 68 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 44, 9 Jan. 1815, 3 Jan. 1817. 72 PARO, RG 9, Collector of Customs, vol. 43, 17 Feb. 1802. 73 Islander, 4 Jan. 1850. 74 PPEC , crew list of Packet. 75 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 76 CHS, MS 958, William M. Hatch Diary. 77 Islander, 16 Nov. 1849. 78 Islander, 26 April 1850. 79 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 80 Royal Gazette, 2 April 1850. 81 Islander, 25 Oct. 1850. 82 Rogers, “The Voyage of the Fanny.” 83 Dewar, “Letter from the Gold Rush.” 84 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 85 LC, MMC 2994, Papers of John J. Craven, John Craven to wife, 13 April 1849. 86 CHS, VAULT, MS 37/1, James P. Keeler, “Journal of a Voyage from New Haven to San Francisco in the Bark Anna Reynolds … 1849.” 87 Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 153. 88 Browne, Charles Darwin, 250. 89 SFHC , Small Manuscript Collection, George B. Elkins papers (1850), Captain S.C. Clay to Elkins, 5 Jan. 1850. 90 SFHC, SF MSS 7/6, A.W. Gemming to J. Woodward, 20 Sept. 1849. 91 HL, HM 60467, Franklin Augustus Buck Papers, Buck to Bradley, 31 May 1849. 92 Islander, 25 Oct. 1850.

284

not es to pages 156 – 63

93 Another vessel “spoke” to the Packet on 24 March at lat. 55 46, south, long. 78 west. 94 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 95 Royal Gazette, 20 Aug. 1850. 96 Daily Alta California, 24 July 1850; Islander, 20 Sept. 1850. 97 San Francisco Herald, 1 Aug. 1850. The Herald’s report has the Packet arriving on 23 July and the Sea Witch on 24 July. 98 California Courier, 31 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1850. 99 White and Gillaspie, By Sea to California, 1849–50, 55. 100 Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco, 277. 101 Richards, California Gold Rush Merchant, 24. 102 Cumming, The Gold Rush, 31. 103 LC, MMC 3570, Barnett Allen Howard Papers, box 2, folder 4; HL , fac. 4, Silas Newcomb, Journal. 104 Alonzo Delano’s California Correspondence, 103. 105 Johnson, California and Oregon, 103; Gaar and Miller, San Francisco. 106 BA, MSS 2006/127, David L. Gardner letters, Gardner to mother, 1 May 1849. 107 Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco, 300–1. 108 Ibid., 300. 109 Given the constant movement of people, the estimates of San Francisco’s population in the summer of 1850 can only be approximations. The figure of 30,000 to 40,000 seems a reasonable estimate. See Hittell, A History of the City of San Francisco, 156; Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco, 301; LC , MMC 3570, Barnett Allen Howard Papers, box 2, folder 4. Malcom J. Rohrbough, however, suggests a much lower figure of 20,000 (Days of Gold, 156). Certainly, the population varied over the course of 1850; the differing figures may in part reflect estimates of the population at different times in 1850. 110 Taylor, Eldorado, 301. 111 Shaw, Ramblings in California, 32. 112 Borthwick, 3 Years in California, 45. 113 SFHC, MSS 11/3, Samuel L. Preble 1850 Correspondence, Samuel Preble to wife, 16 Aug. 1850. 114 Schaeffer, Sketches of Travels in South America, 27, 58. 115 William Kelly, Excursion to California, vol. 2, 245–6.

not es to pages 163– 7

285

116 BA, MSS C-B 547, pt. 1, box 1, item 40, California Gold Rush letters, Dustin to brother, 14 Aug. 1850. 117 Frank Marryat, Mountains and Molehills, 40–2. 118 Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco, 300. 119 Daily Alta California, 29 Aug. 1850. 120 Soulé, Gihon, and Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco, 300. 121 Frank Marryat, Mountains and Molehills, 40–1. 122 Ibid., 36. 123 Schaeffer, Sketches of Travels in South America, 51. 124 HL, FAC 1454, James Pryce Letters, Pryce to wife, 15 Aug. 1850. 125 BA, MSS C-B 547, Pt. 1, box 1, item 21, California Gold Rush letters, Pearl to sister, 8 July 1850. 126 Levy, They Saw the Elephant, xvii. 127 BA, MSS 2006/127, David L. Gardner letters, Gardner to brother, 13 Sept. 1849, emphasis in original. 128 Borthwick, Three Years in California, 40. Borthwick also extolled the advancement of San Francisco that was occurring simultaneously. 129 Tyson, Diary of a Physician in California, 59. 130 Johnson, California and Oregon, 214–15. 131 BA, MSS 2006/127, David L. Gardner letters, Gardner to mother, 1 May 1849; MSS 73/163 C , De Witt Family Papers, ca. 1848–1867, box 3/2, Alfred De Witt to father, 24 Sept. 1848. 132 Kelly, Excursion to California, 243. 133 White and Gillaspie, By Sea to California, 55. 134 Holiday, Rush for Riches, 132–6. 135 Delgado, To California by Sea, 110. 136 Wilbur, “A Frenchman in the Gold Rush” (Journal of Ernest de Massey), 22. 137 Naval instructions to the man serving as customs collector in San Francisco in the fall of 1847 included a list of seventeen standard rules, with ten of these struck out as being inappropriate for San Francisco. See BA, MSS C-A 169, pt. 3, box 1, United States Custom House (San Francisco, Calif.), Records, 1847–1912, Shubrick to Richardson, 15 Sept. 1847. 138 Foreman, The Adventures of James Collier, 36–7. 139 San Francisco Herald, 1 Aug. 1850. 140 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50”; Foreman, The Adventures of James Collier, 39.

286

not es to pages 168– 75

141 PPEC , William Cooper to Colonel Collier, July 1850. 142 Delgado, To California by Sea, 112. 143 Foreman, The Adventures of James Collier, 37–8. 144 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 145 PPEC , “This Agreement Made This Third Day of August”: family agreement concerning the sale of the Packet and some of its cargo, and distribution and use of the proceeds. 146 PARO, RG 6.2 Series 1, Probate Court Register of Wills: 1807–1920, Register of Wills, lib. 7, Will of William Cooper, 14 Aug. 1860, 340–1. 147 Daily Alta California, 25 Aug. 1850. 148 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 149 BA, MSS C-B 547, pt 1, box 4, item 188, California Gold Rush letters, Crowell to friend, 13 Aug. 1850. 150 PARO, RG 6.2 Series 1, Probate Court Register of Wills: 1807–1920, Register of Wills, lib. 7, Will of William Cooper, 14 Aug. 1860, 340–1. 151 In a letter to William Jr written in early 1848, Cooper noted that his planning for the family was shaped by his recognition that “your Mother was delicate.” Family letters gesture toward this as well (PPEC , William Cooper Sr to William Cooper Jr, 2 March 1848). 152 SFHC , Deed Books, vol. 9A , 1851, lib. 4, folio 422–3.

chapter seven 1 2

3

4 5

BA, MSS C-B 547, pt. 1, box 4, item 164, California Gold Rush letters, Chamberlain to father, 23 Jan. 1850. HL, FAC 1454b, Pryce to wife, 14 Aug. 1850; BA , MSS C-B 547, pt. 1, box 2, item 73, California Gold Rush letters, Ham to Charlie, 22 Jan. 1853. E.G. Fitzhamon, “The Streets of San Francisco,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10 and 11 Oct. 1928; Woodbridge, San Francisco in Maps and Views, 46. BA, MSS C-B 547, pt. 1, box 1, item 6, California Gold Rush letters, Osgood to Strang, 23 Aug. 1849. BA, MSS C-B 547, pt. 1, box 1, item 21, California Gold Rush letters, Pearl to sister, 8 July 1850.

not es to pages 175– 7

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26

287

BA, MSS C-R 114, Guy E. Jones Papers, 1850–1923, transcript of a Dr T.M. Logan letter, 29 Oct. 1850. Harris, California’s Medical Story, 79. BA, MSS C-R 114, Guy E. Jones Papers, 1850–1923, transcript of a Dr T.M. Logan letter, 29 Oct. 1850. California Courier, 5 Oct. 1850. CSL, SMCII, box 12, folder 8, W. Darrah to Susan, 11 Nov. 1850. BA, MSS 73/163c, De Witt Family Papers, ca. 1848–1867, box 3/3 Henry De Witt Letters, Henry to mother, 15 Dec. 1850; box 3/7, Theodore De Witt Letters, Theodore to mother, 29 Oct. 1850. PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” HL, FAC 1454b, Pryce to wife, 15 Aug. 1850; BA, MSS C-R 114, Guy E. Jones Papers, 1850–1923, transcript of a Dr T.M. Logan letter, 29 Oct. 1850. SFHC, N . Gray & Co. Funeral Records, 1850 to 1862, 18 Nov. 1850; Daily Alta California, 19 Nov. 1850. SFHC , N. Gray & Co. Funeral Records, 1850 to 1862, 27 Nov. 1850; Daily Alta California, 28 Nov. 1850. San Francisco Cemetery Records, 1848–1863 (1938), 78. PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50”; Islander, 17 Jan. 1851; Arcata Union, 18 April 1906. SFHC , N. Gray & Co. Funeral Records, 1850 to 1862, 14 and 21 March 1851. BA, MSS C-R 114, Guy E. Jones Papers, 1850–1923, unidentified newspaper report, 10 Nov. 1850. Examiner, 26 May 1851. Islander, 17 Jan. 1851. Royal Gazette, 28 Jan. 1851; Islander, 16 Nov. 1849. HL, HM 50451, Fancher Stimson, “Overland Trip to California by Platte River and South Pass in 1850” (with description of return voyage via Panama written in 1900). HL, HM 2194, Solomon A. Gorgas to Mary Francis Gorgas, his wife, 27 Jan. 1851; California Courier, 31 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1850. Delgado, To California by Sea, 65. BA, MSS 73/163c, De Witt Family Papers, ca. 1848–1867, box 3/3, Henry De Witt Letters, Henry to mother, 24 April 1849; SFHC , Small

288

27 28 29 30

31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

not es to pages 177–83

Mss, Mark A, Evans Papers, Evans to brother, 8 Aug. 1850; Daily Alta California, 24 Aug. 1850, 30 Aug. 1850; Evening Picayune, 22 Aug. 1850; Delgado, To California by Sea, 54. SFHC , Small Mss, Mark A, Evans Papers, Evans to brother, 8 Aug. 1850. Holliday, Rush for Riches, 98–101. BA, MSS C-F 84, The Overland Diary of Robert Beck. HL, HM 651, Solomon A. Gorgas Diary, 160–2; HM 54795, Starkweather Family Papers, Starkweather to sisters and friends, 22 April 1849; HM 19408, Israel S.P. Lord Journal, March 1851. This estimate is grounded in the New York to San Francisco throughfares reported in Delgado, To California by Sea, 51. HL, HM 651, Solomon A. Gorgas Diary, 163–4. These fares declined significantly over time. By 1852 return fares between San Francisco and New York were as low as $120 (Rohrbough, Days of Gold, 208). J.H. McDonald, “Some Historical Facts about Eureka and Humboldt County,” The Maple Leaf, vol. 30 (April 1936), 52. Merrill J. Mattes notes that although probably 95 per cent of those using the overland trail were between sixteen and fifty years of age, there were some who made the trip who were more than seventy (The Great Platte River Road, 65). HL, HM 26348, Journal of Madison Berryman Moorman, 125. HL, HM 651, Solomon A. Gorgas Diary, 84. HL, HM 50452, Diary of the Overland Trail and Letters of Captain David DeWolf, 30 Sept. 1849. HL, HM 50514, George Lawson to [John Lawson], 26 Sept. 1850. Meldahl, Hard Road West. HL, HM 26348, Journal of Madison Berryman Moorman, 26; HM 50452, Diary of the Overland Trail and Letters of Captain David DeWolf, 7 June 1849; Meldahl, Hard Road West, 73, 103; Unruh Jr, The Plains Across, 122–31. Unruh Jr, The Plains Across, 128, 130. PEI, PR , 1857, 70. PPEC , John Cooper to William Morrow, 16 Dec. 1851. PPEC , [William Cooper Jr] to C. Clay, 10 Jan. 1852, draft letter. SFHC , San Francisco Deed Books, vol. 9, 90, Adolphus and William Cooper to Michael Carty. Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 96.

not es to pages 184– 91

289

47 PPEC , [William Cooper Jr] to C. Clay, 10 Jan. 1852, draft letter. 48 Seth Kinman’s manuscripts, typed copy by Marshall Anspach from George Richmond’s copy in possession of Betty Genzoli, April 2002, “Life and Adventures of the Renowned Hunter and Trapper, Guide and Explorer Seth Kinman,” 30–1. See too HSUL , Humboldt County Collection; History – Settlement Period, 1850–1875, Albert S. Brill to Dear Brother in Christ, 29 May 1853. 49 Heizer, George Gibb’s Journal of Redick McKee’s Expedition, 126–7. 50 Illustrated California News, 15 Nov. 1850. 51 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 96. 52 Ibid., 96–7. 53 Examiner, 21 May 1855; PEI, JHA , 1850, 1st session, [5]; Bittermann, Rural Protest, 231, 267–8. 54 NA, CO 227/10/39–46. 55 An Act to Commute the Crown Revenues of Prince Edward Island …, Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1851 (XIV Vic.) c. III . 56 NA, CO 227/10/59–62, Grey to Bannerman, 20 Aug. 1851; PEI, JHA , 1852, 6–7, 15–16. 57 PEI , JHA , 1843, 5. 58 PEI , JHA , 1847, 5. 59 PEI , JHA , 1851, 8. 60 The History of Delaware County, Iowa, 630. 61 Bittermann, Rural Protest, 162–3, 247–8. 62 Robertson, “George Coles.” 63 Royal Gazette, 13 May 1851. 64 NA, CO 227, 10/39–46, Grey to Bannerman, 31 Jan. 1851. 65 The 2 Sept. 1851 Haszard’s Gazette, for instance, maintained that escheat had “been set at rest forever: Responsible Government having been, as it now appears, granted on that condition.” The issue persisted for years, with Coles denying that “he had accepted office on those conditions” (pei , pr , 1859, 74). 66 Royal Gazette, 1 Sept. 1851. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.”

290

not es to pages 192– 6

71 Bittermann, “The Hierarchy of the Soil”; Morgan, “’Poverty, Wretchedness, and Misery’”; Kinealy, The Great Calamity; Devine, The Great Highland Famine; Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, chap. 16; PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 24 Aug. 1846; John Cooper to William Cooper Sr, 5 Sept., 20 Dec 1848; Royal Gazette, 25 Aug. 1846; Islander, 7, 14 April, 23 June, 22 Sept., 3 Nov. 1848; 4 Oct. 1850. 72 Examiner, 11 Dec. 1850. 73 Nation, 22 Feb. 1851; Examiner, 12 May 1851. 74 Haszard’s Gazette, 29 July 1851. 75 NA, CO 226/79/212–14, 14 Aug. 1851, Bannerman to Grey. 76 Sleigh, Pine Forests and Hacmatack Clearings, 170. 77 NA, CO 226/79/153–4, Stewart to Grey, 3 June 1851. 78 Islander, 5 Sept. 1851. 79 Haszard’s Gazette, 20 Jan. 1852. 80 Ibid., 6 Jan. 1852. 81 Islander, 2 Jan. 1852. 82 PARO , Cemetery Transcript, PEI Genealogical Society, Annandale United Baptist Cemetery, Lot 56–3, transcribed 1987. 83 Islander, 18 Feb. 1853. 84 PPEC , John Cooper to William Morrow, 16 Dec. 1851. 85 The Coopers had to pay $30 to ship a horse north from San Francisco when they first moved to the Eel River (PPEC , [William Cooper] to Clay, 10 Jan. 1852, draft letter). 86 Ibid. 87 Huntley, California, vol. 1, 44. 88 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 98; PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 89 Ibid. 90 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 96; Bittermann, “Mi’kmaq Land Claims.” 91 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.”; Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 99. 92 Seth Kinman’s manuscripts, typed copy by Marshall Anspach from George Richmond’s copy in possession of Betty Genzoli, April 2002, “Life and Adventures of the Renowned Hunter and Trapper, Guide and Explorer Seth Kinman,” 43.

not es to pages 197–204

291

93 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50”; Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 100. 94 PPEC , Olsen (?) to John Cooper, 1 July 1853. 95 An Act for the Encouragement of Education, and to Raise Funds for That Purpose, by Imposing an Additional Assessment on Land. Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1852 [15 Vic.], c. XIII . 96 An Act to Extend the Elective Franchise Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1853 [16 Vic.], c. IX ; Royal Gazette, 4 July 1853. 97 Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1853 [16 Vic.], c. XVIII . 98 Royal Gazette, 4 July 1853. 99 PEI , JHA , 1854, 5. 100 Moulton and Robertson, “Sir Alexander Bannerman.” 101 PEI , JHA , 1855, 5. 102 Examiner, 21 April 1851. 103 Haszard’s Gazette, 23 Dec. 1851, Cooper to Bannerman. 104 Royal Gazette, 19 Sept. 1853. 105 Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815–1870, 664–5. 106 Cooper, The Land Question Considered, 5–8. 107 Ibid., 12–14. 108 PEI , JHA , 1877, Appendix (F ). 109 Taylor, “Charles Worrell.” 110 pei , pr , 1857, 111; Robertson, “William Henry Pope.” 111 Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords, 146–7. 112 Haszard’s Gazette, 21 Feb. 1855; PEI , JHA , 1877, Appendix (F ); Examiner, 5 March 1855. 113 Cooper, The Land Question Considered, 3, 41. 114 Haszard’s Gazette, 24 Feb. 1855; Examiner, 26 Feb. 1855. 115 PEI , JHA , 1855, 43, 68–9. 77; Examiner, 2, 9, 16, 23 April, 7 May 1855. 116 Examiner, 2 April 1855. 117 Examiner, 9 April 1855; Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law; Richardson, Henry Thoreau, 81–2, 106–9. 118 Cooper, The Land Question Considered, 14. 119 Examiner, 9 April 1855. 120 Examiner, 9 and 16 April 1855. 121 Examiner, 16, 23 April, 7 May 1855; Henley and Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns, vol. 1, 281.

292

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122 Examiner, 16 April 1855. 123 Ibid., 7 May 1855. 124 Ibid., 23 April 1855. 125 Ibid.; Robertson, “Edward Whelan.” 126 Cooper, The Land Question Considered, 14–15, 20. 127 NA, CO 226/82/86–91, Daly to Russell, 24 April 1855. 128 Weekly Advertiser, 27 Sept. 1855; Examiner, 17, 31 Dec. 1855, 23 June 1856. 129 Weekly Advertiser, 27 Sept. 1855. 130 Examiner, 24 Sept. 1855. 131 PEI , PR , 1856, 90; ibid., 1857, 106–11. For examples of the Examiner’s sustained attempts to discredit Cooper, see Examiner, 18 June, 27, 30 Aug. 3, 21 Sept., 15 Oct., 17 Dec. 1855. 132 PEI , JHA , 1875, Appendix [E ], [6]. 133 Cooper, The Land Question Considered, 14. 134 PEI , PR , 1859, 12. 135 PEI , PR , 1859, 13. 136 PEI , PR , 1860, 11. 137 PEI , PR , 1860, 15. 138 PEI , JHA , 1875, Appendix [E ], [6]. 139 Gordon and Laird, reporters, Abstract of the Proceedings before the Land Commissioners’ Court, 25–6. 140 PEI , PR , 1859, 42, 56. 141 NA, CO 226/90/206–8, Daly to Bulwer Lytton, 13 May 1859. 142 Bittermann and McCallum, Lady Landlords, 96. 143 PEI , PR , 1862, 39.

chapter eight 1 2 3 4 5 6

Clark, Three Centuries and the Island, 121, 134, 152, 87; Rider, Charlottetown, 27. Gordon and Laird, reporters, Abstract of the Proceedings before the Land Commissioners’ Court, 5–8. Ibid., 149–52; Holman, “William Townshend.” NA, CO 880/2/5, Prince Edward Island, Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Queen to Inquire into the Differences … 59, 60. Examiner, 9 Sept. 1861; PEI , PR , 1862, 74. PEI , PR , 1862, 22.

not es to pages 213–22

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

293

NA, CO 880/2/5, Prince Edward Island, Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Queen to Inquire into the Differences. Ibid. PEI , PR , 1861, 20. Ibid. Monitor, 19 Feb. 1862. The History of Delaware County, Iowa, 630; Monitor, 19 Feb. 1862, emphasis in the original. PPEC , 11 April 1848, copy, Cooper to Howe. PEI , PR , 1861, 32. Ibid. Examiner, 26 Aug. and 9 Sept. 1861. Examiner, 9 Sept. 1861. PEI , PR , 1862, 77, 102. Ibid.; Examiner, 13 Oct. 1862. PEI , PR , 1862. 19. Ibid., 19–22. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 76, 84. PEI , JHA , 1862, 110–11. PEI , JHA , 1863, Appendix (C ), Newcastle to Dundas, 9 Aug. 1862. Examiner, 13 Oct. 1862; Examiner, 30 March 1863. Robertson, “The Bible Question in Prince Edward Island”; Fessenden, “The Nineteenth-Century Bible Wars”; Trigger, “Irish Politics on Parade”; See, Riots in New Brunswick. PEI , PR , 1857, 27, 58. PEI , PR , 1858, 73. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 1858, 39. Examiner, 30 March and 20 April 1863. Ibid. Examiner, 20 April 1863. Examiner, 26 March 1855. Noel, Temperance Crusades before Confederation. Fay, The Opium War. Haszard’s Gazette, 7 April 1855; Examiner, 21 May 1855. PEI , PR , 1857, 37, 113; ibid., 1858, 50. PEI , PR , 1860, 28–9.

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41 White, “Speed the Plow”; Wynn, “Exciting a Spirit of Emulation among the ‘Plodholes.’” 42 PEI , PR , 1857, 69–70, 72. 43 PEI , PR , 1858, 89. 44 PEI , PR , 1861, 109. 45 Islander, 8 Aug. 1856. 46 PEI , PR , 1861, 107. 47 HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 52, 231; Irvine, History of Humboldt County, 594; U.S. Census, 1860, Humboldt County, California, Eel River Township, reel no. M 653–59, 28; HCL , A Guideline to Humboldt County Births before 1900, vol. 1, 42–3. 48 HCRO , Deed Books, book B , 317–8; PARO, RG 6.2, series 1, Probate Court, Will of William Cooper, 14 August 1860, lib. 7, folio 340–1. 49 Humboldt Times, 23 Sept. 1854. 50 BA, MSS C-D 167, “Statement of Recollections on Matters Connected with the Early years of Cal. & Oregon, 1849–63, by Judge Walter Van Dyke … 1878.” 51 Eminent Editors and Authors of California, ed., Sketches of Leading Men of San Francisco, 715–20; Shuck, History of the Bar and Bench of California, 495–9. 52 U.S. Census, 1860, Humboldt County, California, Eureka Township, reel no. M653–59, 52; HCL , A Guideline to Humboldt County Births before 1900, vol. 2, 820. 53 Eminent Editors and Authors of California, ed., Sketches of Leading Men of San Francisco, 715–20; Shuck, History of the Bar and Bench of California, 495–9. 54 Shuck, History of the Bar and Bench of California, 499. 55 PPEC , John Cooper to William Morrow, 16 Dec. 1851, notes Little William’s presence in San Francisco at this time. 56 PARO, RG 6.6, Chancery Court, Series 2, Case Papers, sub-series 1: 1793–1923, box 3, William Cooper vs. David Morrow. 57 Ibid. 58 PARO, RG 6.2, Series 1, Probate Court, Will of William Cooper, 14 August 1860, lib. 7, folio 340–1. 59 PEI , PR , 1860, 12. 60 PARO, RG 6, Supreme Court Case Papers, 1860, W Cooper v. G (George) Coles.

not es to pages 228–31

295

61 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 98; John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50.” 62 CSA , 8th District Court Files, Humboldt County, D02400, Case 43, John W. Cooper v. J.B. Truesdell & Henry F. Janes; Humboldt Times, notice of sheriff’s sale, 16 Sept. 1864; HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 31, 172. 63 PPEC , [William Cooper] to C. Clay, 10 Jan. 1852, draft letter; Humboldt Times, 18 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1854. 64 PPEC , John Woodcock Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50”; HSU , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 2, 348. 65 The brothers’ holdings varied over time. When the local merchant, timber baron, and fellow Maritimer William Carson, took legal proceedings against them in 1862, he attached 720 acres of Cooper land in the Yager Creek region (CSA , 8th District Court Files, Humboldt County, D 02400, Case 309, William Carson v. John W. Cooper). The Register of Homesteads for Humboldt County records the tracts of land John and George acquired in the Yager Creek region under the California Homestead Act (HCR, Register of Homesteads, Humboldt County, vol. 1, 205–6). Walter Van Dyke’s sale of 240 acres of Yager Creek land to John and George in 1861 probably concerned the transfer of the portion of William Jr’s real property that William Sr gave to Rowena as a marriage present (HCR , Deed Books, book D , 165–6). John Cooper’s ownership and sale of town lots in Eureka is recorded in HCR , Deed Books, book C , 99–100, 149–50. John’s sale of Cooper brothers’ land on the south bank of the Van Duzen several miles above Yager Creek is recorded in HCR , Deed Books, book D, 355, as is George’s purchase of 160 acres south of that tract (book D, 218). 66 PPEC , Memorandum of agreement between Cooper and Brothers and Jones and Griffiths, 10 Dec. 1852; Agreement between Cooper and Brothers and Harris, 19 Jan. 1853. 67 Rob Roberts transcription of “Richard Johnston Story,” 59 (original in BA ). 68 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 98; Irvine, History of Humboldt County, 1201. 69 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 101.

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70 BLM , Plat Map, Township No. 2 North, Range No. 1 East, Humboldt Meridian, 1 Nov. 1855; Plat Map, Township No. 2 North, Range No. 1 East, Humboldt Meridian, 9 Jan. 1885. 71 Humboldt Times, 9 Sept. 1854. 72 Humboldt Times, 9 Sept., 21 Oct. 1854. 73 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 101. 74 CSA , 8th District Court Files, Humboldt County, D 02400, Case 194, Robert A. Haw v. John W. Cooper; HCRO , Mechanics’ Liens, book A , 49; HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 2, 358. 75 HCR , Miscellany A , 75–6. 76 HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 117, 136. 77 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 102. 78 Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, 102, 113. 79 HCL , Some Very Early Marriages, 1854–1904, Humboldt County, California, compiled by Marilyn Keach Milota (Eureka, 2006), 3; U.S. Census, 1860, Humboldt County, California, Eel River Township, reel no. M 653–59, 30; Irvine, History of Humboldt County, 1202. 80 HCL , Some Very Early Marriages, 1854–1904, Humboldt County, California, compiled by Marilyn Keach Milota (Eureka, 2006), 3. 81 HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 117, 240. 82 Raphael and House, Humboldt History, vol. 1, 162. 83 HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 38, 195–6, vol. 39, 25–6. 84 CSA , Indian War Papers, F 3753, 474, John W. Cooper affidavit, 9 March 1860. 85 Ibid.; BA, MSS 99/138C , Diary of John T. Best, 1860–61, Journal of a March from Camp Flemming to Fort Baker [1863]; Irvine, History of Humboldt County, 594. 86 HCHS , Vada Bissell Collection, box 2, Anna to father, 2 April 1863. 87 Humboldt Times, 27 July 1861; PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50”; Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 102; U.S. Census, 1860, Humboldt County, California, Eel River Township, reel no. M 653–59, 30; HSUL , Susie Baker Fountain Papers, vol. 2, 346; Humboldt Times, 9 March 1861. 88 Bledsoe, Indian Wars of the Northwest, 103–5. Some of John Cooper’s debt problems can be tracked in HCRO , Mortgage Book A , 197–9; Lis Pendens, Humboldt County, book A , 34, 51–3; CSA , 8th District

not es to pages 235–45

297

Court Files, Humboldt County, D 02400, Case 309, William Carson v. John W. Cooper. 89 PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward Island to California in 1849 & 50”; Arcata Union, 18 April 1906. 90 Protestant, and Evangelical Witness, 21 Sept. 1861; Examiner, 16 Sept. 1861. 91 PEI , PR , 1861, 71. 92 Gates, After the Rebellion. 93 Bolger, “Nation Building at Charlottetown, 1864,” and “Prince Edward Island Rejects Confederation.” 94 Examiner, 6 March 1865. 95 An Act for Settling Differences between Landlord and Tenant, and to Enable Tenants on Certain Townships to Purchase the Fee Simple of Their Farms Statutes of Prince Edward Island, 1863 [27 Vic.], c. 2; Bittermann and McCallum, “The One That Got Away.” 96 Examiner, 6 March 1865; Islander, 22 Dec. 1865. 97 Robertson, The Tenant League. 98 Bolger, “Prince Edward Island Rejects Confederation.” 99 Islander, 22 Dec. 1865. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid.; Masters, The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. 102 Islander, 22 Dec. 1865. 103 Examiner, 17 June 1867.

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Examiner, 17 June 1867. PARO, RG 6.2, series 1, Probate Court Will, lib. 7, folio 340-1, will of William Cooper, 14 Aug. 1860. Armstrong and Stagg, “William Lyon Mackenzie.” Ouellete, “Louis-Joseph Papineau.” Cross and Fraser, “Robert Baldwin”; Beck, “Joseph Howe.” PPEC , John Cooper, “A Pioneer Family from Prince Edward’s Island to California in 1849 & 50.” NA, CO 226//55/318-21, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 6 May 1838; CO 226/90/206-8, Daly to Bulwer Lytton, 13 May 1859.

298

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18 19 20 21

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Islander, 5 Sept. 1851; Haszard’s Gazette, 20 Jan. 1852; Royal Gazette, 7 Feb., 1832; Examiner, 24 Sept. 1855; Prince Edward Island, Parliamentary Debates, 1859, 71. See, for instance, John Longsworth’s comments in the assembly 20 Feb. 1860 and Col. Gray’s of 28 Feb. 1861 (Prince Edward Island, Parliamentary Debates, 1860, 12; ibid., 1861, 32). Examiner, 17 June 1867. Kelly v. Sulivan (1877), Canada, Registrar of the Supreme Court, Supreme Court Reports, I: 34-5. Royal Gazette, 3 April 1832. NA, CO 226/54/257-63, FitzRoy to Glenelg, 3 Oct. 1837. MacGowan, Report of the Proceedings before the Commissioners, 152. Cooper, The Land Question Considered. PEI , JHA , 1875, Appendix [C ]; Robertson, The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island, 10-11. Bittermann and McCallum, “Upholding the Land Legislation of a ‘Communistic and Socialist Assembly’”; Bittermann, Rural Protest, 275-6. Appendix (B ) to Report on the Affairs of British North America: from the Earl of Durham (n.p.: n.p, [1839?]), 19, 21. PPEC , John Cooper to William Cooper Jr, 19 Feb. 1847. PPEC , William Cooper Sr to sons, 2 Jan. 1845. Nicolas Canny provides persuasive analysis of the links between Atlantic and Global history and the timing of transition. (“Atlantic History and Global History”). Insightful histories of energy regimes include Crosby, Children of the Sun, and Burke, “The Big Story.” Crosby, Ecological Imperialism.

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Index Abel, Edward, 52–5 Abel, Sussana, 53 Acadians, 48, 51, 212–13 Acapulco, 166 Adelaide, 110 agriculture: California: 5, 183–5, 194–5, 228–9, 231; Ireland, 136–7; Oregon, 118; Scotland, 5–7, 27, 56, 136–7; PEI , 25, 27, 42, 48, 50–1, 56, 97, 113. 136–8, 145 agricultural mechanization: California and McCormick reaper: 232; PEI and threshing machines, 123 agricultural societies (Prince Edward Island), 180, 222–3 American Revolution, 58 American River, 138 Angus (Forfarshire), 5–7, 10, 12, 19 annexation: British North America to the United States, 239–41; PEI to New Brunswick, 238; PEI to Nova Scotia, 101

Arcata, 225 Auchterhouse, 11 Audubon, John W., 162 Australia, 111, 116–18, 142, 251 Baldwin, Robert, 244 Baltic Sea, 16–7, 23 Baltimore, 123, 139, 165 Bank of England, 35, 41 Banks, Sir Joseph, 125 Bannerman, Alexander, 188–93, 197, 199, 216 Barbados, 62–3 Barraclough, Thomas, 48 Bay of Chaleur, 42 Bay Fortune, 44–5, 47–8, 50–4, 61–2, 74, 78–80, 84, 87, 95, 116, 212 Beagle, 153 bears: in California: 184; in PEI , 57 Beatson, John, 31 Beck, Robert, 177 Beckwith, Leonard Crocker, 224, 233

324

i n de x

Bedeque, 79 Belfast (PEI ), 110 Belisarius, 28, 47 Benton, Senator Thomas Hart, 146 Bermuda, 50 Bervie, 8 Bethnal Green, 36 Bilbao, 15 Binns, C.A., 45, 50 Birnie, Alexander, 31, 35 Bishopsgate, 36 Blackett, John, 67 Blackett’s Creek, 61 Black Sea, 23 Blackstone, William, 202 Bloody Dispatch, 188–9, 193, 200, 203, 216 Bloomsbury, 31 Borthwick, J.D., 164 Boston, 16, 129, 139, 142–3, 147, 178 Brazil, 117, 152 Brenan, Daniel, 75 Bristol, 39, 62 Britannia, 41–4 British Museum and Library, 125 British Queen, 38 Brothers, 24 Burke, William, 63–4 Burns, Robert, 204 Cadiz, 24 California: cost of travel from, 177–8; cost of travel to, 146; early colonial, 5, 39; early legislation, 166; statehood, 166 California Association, 148, 152–3 Californian, 138

California Star, 138 California Trail, 179 Cambridge, John, 28, 62–3, 79 Campbell, Donald, 188 Campbell, Thomas, 86 Canada, 121, 222, 238 Canada horse, 180 Canary Islands, 38 Canterbury, 232 Cape Breton, 110–11 Cape Horn, 152–6, 170, 178, 251 Caribbean, 140 Cartwright, Major John, 69 Centre Prairie, 229 Chagres River, 177 Charles, 24 Charles X, 83 Charlottetown, 25, 43–5, 48, 59, 79, 86, 107, 109, 148 Charlottetown Conference, 236 Charlottetown Mechanics’ Institute, 125 Chartism, 94, 130 Chatham, 24 Chepstow, 24 Chesapeake, 28 Cheticamp, 48 China, 38, 222 Chitty, Joseph, 204 cholera: in California, 175; in New Orleans, 139; in Panama, 195; in San Francisco, 175–6 Civil War: American, 225, 234, 236; English, 11 Clearances, 87 Clementina Street, 170–1 climate: comparative, PEI /British Isles, 56–7; Oregon Territory,

i n de x

117; PEI , 28, 96–7, 107, 111, 149–50 clipper ships, 156 coal trade: Nova Scotia, 129; to California, 145 Cobbett, William, 41, 69 Coles, George, 187–91, 197–208, 217, 223–4, 228 Collier, James, 166–8 community-level politics (PEI ), 79–80, 84, 87 Connell, James, 177 Conroy, Nicholas, 214 Cooper, Adolphus: birth, 56; death, 194; managing family resources in San Francisco, 169; navigational training in London, 125; second mate, 151; voyage to Britain, 118; work habits, 126, 129 Cooper, Caroline: birth, 96; children, 224; marriage, 224 Cooper, David: birth, 96; death, 194 Cooper, Edward, xii Cooper, George Dalrymple: birth, 96; death, 234–5; tending kiln in family mill, 126; with armed posses, 196, 233 Cooper, James (Captain Cooper’s father): 3, 7–10 Cooper, James (Captain Cooper’s son): birth, 56; death, 67 Cooper, John: account of family history, 9, 18, 23; birth, 43; birth of first child, 170; disagreements with father, 125–7, 142, 147; early plans with William Cooper

325

Jr, 107–10, 113–14; emigration to PEI , 43; farming in PEI , 113; marriage plans, 110, 147; marriage in California, 232–3; miller, 136; name, 40; on settler/aboriginal relations in Humboldt, 195–6; plans with William Cooper Jr, late 1840s, 134–6, 139, 142 Cooper, Malvina: birth, 56; childbirth, 156, 170; death, 176; marriage, 126–7 Cooper, Mary, 3–4, 7–10 Cooper, Oscar: birth, 96; death, 176; work habits, 129 Cooper, Rowena: birth, 96; marriage, 224–5; places of residence, 129 Cooper, Sarah Glover (William Cooper’s wife): death of tenth child, 113; emigration to PEI , 43; marriage, 36, 40–1; parents, 40; places of residence, 129; pregnancies, 54, 56; work, 126 Cooper, William: as cabin boy, 11–12, 14–16; as captain, 15, 19, 21–8, 31, 35, 37–41, 43, 112, 116, 118–19, 121–2, 126– 7, 131–2; as farmer, 55–6, 197; as farm worker, 10–11; as land agent, 54–5, 59, 62, 65–8, 70; as a mechanic, 123; as miller, 60–1, 66–7; as pamphleteer, 86–7, 201–2; as seaman, 15, 17–19; as shipbuilder, 61–6; attacks on integrity and character, 83, 95, 193–4, 206, 245; birth, 3–4, 8; and British Museum and

326

i n de x

Library, 125; brother and sister, 9–10; challenges as political leader, 82–3; character, xi, 191; comparison with other reform leaders, 244; critiques of his leadership, 248–50; death of tenth child, 113; death, 241; decision not to run for house of assembly in 1863, 220–1; delegate to Britain, 85–7, 92–4, 96, 98–104, 107, 112, 190; disagreements with John and William Jr, 125–9, 133; dispute with Bannerman, 189–91; education, 10–11, 16, 73–4, 95, 125, 244; elected speaker of house of assembly, 98; electoral campaign 1830, 70–4; emigration to PEI , 43; first escheat speech, 76–8, 79–80; found in contempt, 88–9; ideas on aboriginal rights, 196; ideas on agitation, 89; ideas on agricultural practices, 226–7; ideas on agricultural societies, 222–3; ideas on annexation to New Brunswick, 238; ideas on annexation to the United States, 239–41; ideas on British constitution, 235–6; ideas on Coles’s land reform policies, 197–202; ideas on Confederation, 236–8; ideas on Crimean War, 221; ideas on debt, 120–1, 128–9; ideas on emigration, 141–2; ideas on family, 110; ideas on family’s emigration, 125; ideas on

“improvement,” 86–7; ideas on justice, 77, 89; ideas on land, 70, 77, 86–7, 89, 202–3; ideas on landlord/tenant relations, 66, 86–7; ideas on laws, 70; ideas on morality, 72–3; ideas on oldest sons’ abilities, 113–14; ideas on political change, 83–4; ideas on popular lore and science, 223–4; ideas on prohibition, 221–2; ideas on public works, 222; ideas on reform, 72; ideas on religion, 72; ideas on revolutions of 1848, 130; ideas on rights of labour, 77; ideas on role of fathers, 128; ideas on shipbuilding, 119, 121; ideas on slavery, 72; ideas on the state, 70, 77; ideas on statefunded education, 197, 218–20; ideas on United States, 235–6; illness, 123; marriage, 36, 40–1; obituary, 242–3; parents, 3–4; possibility of returning to California, 228, 235; resident of London, 31, 35–6; relations with FitzRoy, 90, 92–3; return from California, 172–3, 176–80; ship designs, 143–4; testimony at Land Commission, 210–12; theory of the solar system, 123– 4, 130, 194; will, 129, 227–8; wintering in London, 127 Cooper, William Jr: birth, 54; on California goals, 180; on cholera deaths, 180; disagreements with father, 125–9, 133, 135, 139, 147; early plans with

i n de x

John Cooper, 107–10, 113–14; farming in PEI , 113; first mate, 150; managing family resources in San Francisco, 169; in New Orleans: 140–1; plans with John Cooper Jr, late 1840s, 134–6, 139, 142; sailor, 122–3, 136, 139–40; on slavery, 140; wintering in London, 127 Cooper, William (Malvina’s son): early years in San Francisco, 183; inheritance, 227–8; on Packet, 151; orphaned, 176; return to PEI , 226 Cooper family (in PEI ): ages and roles, 108, 134; emigration plans, 107–14, 116–18, 131, 133–6, 138–9, 141–7; emigrant trade, 131–2; farming, 126; mills, 108–9, 126, 129, 136, 197; on board Packet, 151; plans for California, 149, 167–8; plans for return to PEI, 170, 172; roles, 170; servants: 72–3, 141; shipbuilding, 108–9, 111–12, 114–16, 119–21, 123, 126–30, 132–5, 142–4, 148; timber trade, 114–16, 118, 120–1, 123, 126–30, 132–5 Cooper family (in San Francisco): construction of buildings in San Francisco, 170–2; customs regulations, 165–8; disease and death, 175–6; going to the mines, 180–2; parting ways, 169–70, 172; portraits, 181; purchase of land in San Francisco: 170–2; residence: 173–4

327

Cooper family (in northern California): abundance of region, 184–5; congregating, 185; deaths of David and Adolphus, 195–6; death of William Jr, 196–7; farming, 183– 5, 194–5, 228–9, 231; financial losses, 196; finding land, 183–4; mills, 231–3; relations with aboriginal peoples, 185, 195–6, 233–5; residence, 182–3; road construction, 194–5, 231; selling San Francisco property, 183; supplies from San Francisco, 194 Coopers Creek, 232 Cork, 24, 122, 137 Corn Exchange (London), 31, 35 Cowes, 122 Cravin, John, 153 Cremer, Jack, 14–16, 21 Crimean War, 221 Crowell, Benjamin, 169–70 Cumbrian, 38 Cunard, Samuel, 227 Cunard estate, 227 currency (PEI ), 53, 60–1, 67 Daily Alta California, 163, 175 Dalkeith, 17, 19 Dalrymple, George, 74–5, 96 Daly, Sir Dominick, 205–6, 209 Damariscove, 151 Dana, Richard Henry, 39 Darrah, William, 175 Darwin, Charles, 153 Davidson, Erasmus, 50–1 Davidson, Margaret, 147, 151, 170, 176, 232

328

i n de x

Davidson, Mary, 151, 183 Davies, Benjamin, 247 Davies, Louis Henry, 247 DeLasaux, Albert, 235 DeLasaux, Eleanor, 233–4 DeLasaux, Lucy, 232–3 Denmark, 26 Desbrisay family, 201 DeWitt, Alfred, 165, 176 DeWolf, David, 179 Dingwell, Alexander, 78 Dingwell, James, 78 Dingwell, John, 78, 144 Dingwell, Joseph, 78, 135 Dorset, 88 Douse, William, 208 Dublin, 28 Duke of Newcastle, 200 Duncan of Lundie, 9 Dundee, 3–4, 8, 11–13, 16, 19, 27, 83, 244, 251 Dundee, 37 Durham, Lord, 92, 97–8, 203; and Durham Report, 249 Earle, Peter, 39 East India Company, 14, 23, 29, 38, 240 economic depression, 64–5, 69, 115, 127 Eel River, 183–5, 194–7, 224, 228 elections: Britain, 1841, 107; PEI , 1831, 74; PEI , 1834, 84–5; PEI , 1838, 97, 107; PEI , 1842, 106– 7, 187; PEI , 1853, 197–8; PEI , 1854, 199 PEI , 1863, 220 Elmes, Mary Ann Eason, 40

emancipation: Catholic, 69–71, 218; slave, 70–1, 83, 86 emigration: to distant locales from PEI , 110, 145; to distant locales from Cape Breton, 110–11, 145; to PEI from Britain, 56–7; to PEI from Cape Breton, 60; to PEI from Ireland, 27–8; to PEI from Newfoundland, 60; to PEI from Perthshire, 27 escheat: demands in early 1830s, 79–81; issue in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 48, 58; bill, 98–9; legislative debate of 1855, 202–5; Land Commission, 212–13; Liberals endorse, 207–8; partial, 75–7; party, 101, 187 estate improvement: Lot 56, 55; PEI , 66, 105; in Scotland, 6–7, 66 Eureka, 228–9 Examiner, 139, 206–7, 219, 242–3, 245–6 exports: from Cooper’s PEI farms, 109–10, 137–8; from Bay Fortune, 79; from PEI : 50–1, 61. 68–9, 137–8 Falmouth, 24 Fanning, Edmund, 48 Fanny, 152–6, 177 Fife, 56 15 Years Purchase Bill, 237, 239 fishery (PEI ), 25, 29, 99 fishery reserves, 98–9, 102, 199– 200, 214, 217, 237

i n de x

FitzRoy, Charles, 89–90, 93, 98, 100, 102106, Flora, 38 Flora Beaton, 111, 114, 116, 119, 121, 126 Flynn, Daniel, 135 Forbes, J., 14 forests: California, 230; PEI , 25–6, 45, 210 Franklin, Benjamin, 12 Fraser, Allan, 185, 188 Frémont, Jessie, 146 Frémont, John C., 146 French Revolution, 4, 11 Gale and Company, 37 Gardner, David, 164–5 Geming, A.W., 154 George IV , 70 George’s Bank, 28 Georgetown, 74, 79 Gibb, George, 184 Glamis, 3, Glamis Castle, 6, 66 Glenelg, Lord, 93, 196, 216 Glory, 39–40 Glover, Christiana (mother of Sarah Glover Cooper), 40, 96, 108, 112, 129, 150, 180 Glover, Christiana (sister of Sarah Glover Cooper), 97 Glover, John (father of Sarah Glover Cooper), 40, 96, 108, 112, 150, 180, 194 Glover, Margaret, 96, 129, 150, 180, 197 Glover, Sarah. See Cooper, Sarah Glover

329

Glover, Sarah (daughter of Margaret Glover), 129, 151, 183 gold: Australia, 111; California discovery, 138–9; newspaper reports in PEI , 138–9, 144, 147–8 Goose Lake Prairie, 229 Gorgas, Soloman, 179 Gosling, James and Ambrose, 31, 35 Government House, PEI , 186 Grampians, 6 Grand Banks, 121–2 Grand River, 61, 109, 113–14, 119, 126, 136, 138 Gray, John Hamilton (New Brunswick politician), 209 Gray, Colonel John Hamilton (Island politician), 210, 215, 236 Great Salt Lake, 179 Grey, Lord George, 188, 191, 200, 216 Guadeloupe, 140 Guildhall (London), 35 Hackmatack, 63–6, 69, 115 Halifax, 28 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 28, 51, 85, 150, 209, Happy Valley, 174 Harper, Marjory, 111 Harvey, John, 87–8, 95 Haszard’s Gazette, 194 Hatch, William, 151 Haviland, T.H., 67, 98, 103, 199, 205, 227 Haw, Robert, 232 Hay, Robert, 15

330

i n de x

Hay Fork, 195–6 Hay River Meeting, 87–9, Henderson, Captain, 41 Hero, 38 Heron, Robert, 11 Hill, John, 29, 31 Hillsborough River, 44–5 Hindu law, 203 Holland, Samuel, 29, 47–8 Hollett, William, 31 Howe, Joseph, 92–4, 209, 215, 217, 244 Howe Bay, 45, 47–9, 52, 63, 67 Howlett, Mr, 144 Howlett, William, 145 Hudson Valley, 239 Humboldt Bay, 229 Humboldt River, 179 Humboldt Times, 225, 229 Hume, Joseph, 94, 101, 103–7, 112, 125 Hunt, Henry “Orator,” 41, 69 Huntley, Henry Vere, 106–7, 195 Hutchinson, Julius, 54–5, 60, 65–6 Hydesville, 230, 232 Iberia, 24, 31 impressment, 17–19, 27–8 India, 38 Indian Creek, 232 Industry, 25 insects (PEI ), 57 Iowa, 187, 214 Ireland, 38, 136–7, 192 Islander, 177, 193–4, 223 Isle of Dogs, 34 Isle of Wight, 122

Jackson, Andrew, 83 Jacobite risings, 11 James and Ann, 23, 25, 27–8, 31, 37, 39 Jarvis, Edward, 82 John, Theodore, 165 Johnstone, Walter, 44–5 John Taylor’s Point, 143 Jones, William, 203 July Revolution (France), 83 Keeler, James, 153 Kelly, Samuel, 14–15, 19, 39 Kelly, William, 163, 165 Kinman, Seth, 184, 196 Labrador, 24 Laird, Alexander, 204 land agents (PEI ), 54–5, 65–6, 97–8, land clearing (PEI ), 55–6 Land Commission (PEI ), 1860, 208–20, 237; 1875, 247 Land Commission of 1860, Report, 210, 214–6, 218, 237, 253 land policy (PEI ), 57–9 land reform and responsible government, 185–91 land reform demands, Island-wide organization, 85–6, 89, 92 Lang, 96 Lasuén, Father Fermin, 5 law and tenants, 82 Laws of Menu, 203 Lawson, George, 179 Leghorn, 21 Le Lacheur, John, 85–7, 89, 91–2, 187, 214

i n de x

Lennox Island, 213 Levy, JoAnn, 164 Liff, 3, 8–10, Lincoln, Abraham, 234 Lincoln’s Inn, 54 linen trade (Scotland), 8, 12, 16–17 Lisbon, 25, 28, 31 Little Pond, 141 Little River, 129 Liverpool, 39, 43 Lochee, 3, 8–12 Locke, John, 202 Lloyds: insurance, 22, 35; List, 22, 23, 24, 37; Register, 37; survey, 119 London: as Cooper residence, 4; Bloomsbury, 93; City of, 31, 36, 39; Captain Cooper’s visits, 65; docks, 34–5; East London, 35–6, 92, 100; merchants, 31, 35, 39; Picadilly, 92; Roman, 35–6; shipping, 4, 17, 19, 21, 24, 28–9; Thames: 4; West End, 92 London Bridge, 31, 36 London “needle women,” 126 Lord Castlereagh, 38 Los Angeles, 224 Lot 43, Kings County, 78 Lot 52, Kings County, 27 Lot 55, Kings County, 113–14 Lot 56, Kings County, 28, 47–8, 52–5, 59–60, 63, 67–8, 103, Louis-Phillippe, King, 130 MacDonald, Andrew, 62–3, 79 MacDonald, Angus, 62–3, 79 MacDonald, Donald, 193 MacDonald, Hugh, 62–3, 79

331

MacDonald, John, 74 MacDonald, Captain John, 62 MacDonald, Joseph, 141 MacGregor, John, 55, 59, 124, 130, 136 Macintosh, John, 85, 87–9, 91, 147, 187, 189–90, 193, 198, 204 MacKay, Duncan and Donald, 41–2 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 83, 91, 94, 235, 244 Maine, 151 Malay Peninsula, 38 Malpeque Bay, 213 Malvina, 120–3, 126–8, 133–7, 143, 150 Mangin, Edward, 16 Maple Leaf, 178 Margaree, 48 Market Street, 170–1 Mark Lane, 31 Marryat, Captain, 28 Marryat, Frank, 163 marshes (PEI ), 47, 49, 55–6, 68, Martha, 23, 154 Marx, Karl, 125 Mayflower, 39 McDonald, J.H., 178, 180 McInnis, 190 McKie, Alexander, 151 McLeod, Donald, 110–11 McLeod, Murdoch, 119–20 McLeod, Reverend Norman, 110–11 McNab’s Island, 150 Mediterranean, 16, 23, 38 Melbourne government, 100 Melville, Viscount (family of), 66

332

i n de x

Mexico, 138 Mi’kmaq, 50–2, 196, 213 Mile End Old Town, 36, 100 Mile End Road, 39, 92 Milfordhaven, 25 mills: in California, 231–4; in PEI , 60–1, 66–7, 108–9, 126, 129, 136, 197 Mississippi River, 140–1, 162 Missouri River, 179 Mitchel, John, 151 Monitor, 214 Monk, General, 11 Montgomery, Donald, 209 Moorman, Madison, 179 Morrison, Dr James, 156–8, 165 Morrow, David, 226–7 Morrow, James, 126, 143, 151, 176 Morrow, John, 107, 109, 114, 116, 118–21, 126–7 Morrow, William, 183 Morrow, William Cooper. See Cooper, William (Malvina’s son) Murray Harbour, 60, 62, 79, 214 Nancy, 50 Napoleon, 26 Nelson, Admiral, 18 New Brunswick, 121, 209, 222, 236, 238 Newcastle, 132–3, 135 Newell, E.L., 232 New England, 143 Newfoundland, 29, 42, 52, 61, 79, 238 New Holland (Western Australia), 117 New London, 29, 217

New Orleans, 110, 136, 139–41, 143, 146, 152, 162 New Perth, 27 New South Wales, 107, 111, 114, 136, 142 Newton, Sir Isaac, 124, 194 New York, 28, 131–2, 139, 156, 178 New Zealand, 110–11, 117, 164, 169, 251 Nicol, John, 17, 19 Normanby, Lord, 100 Northern Lights, 124 North Sea, 4 Nova Scotia, 52, 61, 79, 86, 100, 105, 121, 129, 186–7, 222, 236, 238 O’Connell, Daniel, 72 Oldfield, Thomas, 31 Oregon, 117–18, 145, 150 Orkneys, 40 Osgood, J., 174 Packet: crew, 150–1; departure, 150–1; design, 148; loading, 149; passengers, 148–9; sale, 168–70; voyage, 152–6 Paganinni, Nicolo, 206 Paine, Thomas, 12 Palmer, Edward, 118, 204–5, 236 Panama, 142, 146, 177–8 Papineau, Louis-Joseph, 244 Paris, 162 Patagonia, 153 Peake, James, 63, 115–16, 118 Pearce, Patrick, 534 Pearl, Frank, 174–5

i n de x

Peel, Robert, 107 Pentland Firth, 40, 116 Peru, 224 Peters, James, 227 Petersburg, 19 Pictou, 129 Pitcairn family, 130–1 Pitcairn, John Jr, 130–1 Pitcairn, John Sr, 123, 126, 130–2 Place, Francis, 125 Platt River, 179 “Pleasures of Hope,” 86 Plenty, 121, 123, 125–36, 138, 143 Plymouth, 24, 63–4, 115, 118 Pope, James Colledge, 236 Pope, Joseph, 63–4, 79, 106, 112 Pope, William Henry, 236 Pope family, 201 population growth: Bay Fortune, 48; California, 5; London, 4–5; PEI , 5, 25, 68–9, 210; San Francisco, 159 Portsmouth, 24 potato crop failure: Gulf of St Lawrence region, 137; Ireland, 136–7; PEI , 136–8; Scotland, 136–7 Preble, Samuel, 162 Prince Edward Island Association, 85, 93–4, 98, 130 Prince of Wales, 235 Prussia, 26 Pryce, James, 164 Purvis, Captain, 31 Quakers, 29 Quebec, 24–5 Quebec Conference, 236–7, 239

333

Quebec Resolutions, 236, 238–9 Queen Victoria, 235, 241 Radford, Jenkin, 28 Rae, Alexander, 106, 187–8, 192 railroads, 126, 252 Ratcliff, 36 rebellions in the Canadas, 91–2, 94–8, Reciprocity Treaty, 240–1 Red House Farm, 54–5, 68, Reform Bill, 83 reform movement: Atlantic World, 69, 83; Britain, 69–71, 83; British North America, 86, 94 Regent’s Canal, 92 religion and politics (PEI ), 207–8, 218–21 rental terms (PEI ), 53 rent resistance (PEI ), 53–4, 80, 82, 87, 89 rents and leases (PEI ), 102–3 revolution, France, 1848, 130 Richards, William Buell, 247 Riga, 19 Riggs, William, 151 Rincon Hill, 174 Rincon Point, 156, 171–2 Rio de Janiero, 152 Ritchie, J.W., 209 Robertson, David, 31 Robert the Bruce, 11 Robbins, 145 Rocky Mountains, 179 Roger, Reverend, 7 Rohnerville, 234 Rollo Bay, 48, 76 Ross’s Weekly, 239–40

334

i n de x

Rotherwithe, 29, 31, 34 Royal Exchange (London), 21–2, 35–6, 126 Royal Gazette, 79, 84, 87, 100, 144, 177, 190, 199 Royal Society (London), 124–5, 130 Russell, Lord John, 100, 112, 216 Russia, 26, 221 Sacramento, 175, 179, 195, 197 Sacramento River, 138, Sacramento Valley, 185, 194, 196 Sailor’s Hope, 45–9, 56–7, 96–7, 109, 114, 126, 180, 197, 199, 215, 226–7, 241 Salem, 139 Salt Lake City, 224 San Diego, 5 Sands, Captain Thomas, 39–40 San Francisco: drunkenness, 162–3; ethnic diversity, 161–2; fires, 157; founding of mission, 5; gambling, 162–4; living conditions, 174–5; music, 163; nature of society, 163–5; news of gold discovery, 138; paintings, 163; population, 159; shipping, 158, 165, 168; urban development, 158–61; wages, 168–9; women, 163–4 San Francisco Herald, 167 San Jose, 175 Santa Barbara, 5 Saville Row, 36 Scoresby, William, 124–5 Scott, Reverend, 11 Seadly Hills, 11

Sea of Monterey, 142 Sea Walker, 119–21, 126, 128, 135, 151 Sea Witch, 156 Selkirk estate, 208, 210 Sentiner’s mass rally, 90–1 Seon, Cornelius and Englesbe, 50 settlement patterns: Lot 56, 59–60; PEI , 51–2 Shadwell, 34, 36 Shaeffer, L.M., 162, 164 Shamrock, 28 Sheaffey, Elizabeth, 72–3 Sheaffey, Francis, 72–3 Sheaffey, Mary, 72–3 Shepherdess, 24 Shields, 131–3 Shoreditch, 36 shipbuilding (PEI ), 29, 41, 61–4 Sicily, 38 Sierra Nevada Mountains, 139, 179 smallpox in PEI , 138 Smith, Charles Douglass, 58, 69 social unrest: in Britain, 40–1; in PEI , 58–9 Souris, 62 South America, 251, 253 Southern Ocean, 154 Spa Fields, 41 Spanish cattle, 195 Spanish grants, 169 Spitalfields, 36, 40–1 St John, New Brunswick, 156 St John’s, Newfoundland, 27, 41–2, 51, 137–8, 150 St Leonard’s Church, 36–7, 40–1 St Peters, 45, 48, 60, 62, 74, 79, 201

i n de x

St Peters Road, 45 Stanton, Captain, 122–3, 137 steam vessels, 116, 122, 141, 252 Stepney, 31 Stewart, John, 25–6, 59–60 Stewart, Robert Bruce, 193 Stiebels and Company, 131–3 Strathmore and Kinghorne, Earls of, 6, 66 Stringman, the, 145 Success. See Packet sugar trade, 17, 23, 63–4 Sulivan, Lawrence, 29 Surrey Canal, 122 Sutter’s Mill, 138 Sutton Pool, 63 Tam o’Shanter, 204 Tasmania, 251 Tay, 4, 6, 12 Taylor, Walter, 197 tenant leagues: Ireland, 192–3; PEI , 192–3, 201 Texas, 110, 144, 162 Thain, 156 Thames, 24, 34–6 Thistlewood, Arthur, 41 Thoreau, Henry, 203 Thornton, Edward, 214 Three Brothers, 24 Three Rivers, PEI , 48, 50, 62–3 Tierra de Fuego, 153 timber trade: Baltic, 26, 29, 61, 63; British North America, 21, 23, 26, 61, 63; PEI , 25–7, 29, 31, 39–42, 61 tithes (Ireland), 88 Tolpuddle Martyrs, 88

335

Tower of London, 31, 35, 41 Tower Stairs, 165 Townshend, Captain James, 28, 47, 52–6, 58, 60, 65–6, 68, 70, 95, 98, 103 Townshend, George, 47–8, 57 Townshend, William, 212 Trafalgar, 18–19 Treaty of Amiens, 17–18 Treaty of Quebec, 212 Trinity Mines, 194–5, 224, 228, Trinity River, 185, 194–5, 231 troops (PEI ), 91, 205–6, Tyson, James, 165 Union Republican Party, 225 United States Navy, 166 University of Edinburgh, 125 Uxine, 136, 140 Valparaiso, 152, 155–6 Van Duzen, 183–4, Van Dyke, Walter, 224–5 Virginia, 28 Volusia, 38 Waipu, New Zealand, 111 Wales, 23, 25 Walker, Sarah, 36, 40, 92, 94, 96–7, 100, 107, 111–13, 251 Wallace, William, 11 Waller, William, 65–6 walruses (PEI ), 57 Wapping, 34, 36, 136, 165 wars: 1812, 27–8, 69; American Revolutionary, 4; French Revolutionary, 17, 19–21; Indian Wars of the Northwest,

336

i n de x

233; Mexican-American, 138; Napoleonic, xi, 17, 19–21, 26–7, 42, 63, 69; Seven Years, 5, 29, 47, 57, 212 Washington, DC , 138, 166 Waterford, 28 Waters, Edmund, 31, 35 Watson, James, 41 weaving (Scotland), 3, 8–9, 12, 14, 16–17 Welsford family, 31 West Indies, 17, 29, 38, 42 West Indies Dock, 33–5, 126–7 Westmorland, Earl (family of), 66 whaling, 37–8 Whelan, Edward, 206–8, 217, 235–6 Whitechapel, 36 Wightman, 132–3

Wightman, George, 212 Williams, W.H., 78 Wilson, Robert, 16 Wilson, Thomas, 56 Wise, George, 227 Woodcock, John, 39 Worrell, Charles, 62–3, 74, 79 Worrell, Edward, 62, 79 Worrell, Jonathan, 62–3 Worrell estate, 74, 201, 203, 207 Wrights Mills, 45 Yager Creek, 183, 196, 229, 231–4, 253 Yerba Buena. See San Francisco Yerba Buena Cemetery, 176 Yorkshire, 45 Young, George, 85