The settlers initially were recruited by the New Brunswick Land Company (NBLC) to take up land in the already established community of Stanley. The Company was organized in 1831 and chartered in 1834, and like similar companies elsewhere in British North America exercised a responsibility, delegated by the colonial administration, to open up and settle large tracts of land at the expense, and for the profit, of their English shareholders. The New Brunswick Company purchased a tract of 589,000 acres in York County, NB north of Fredericton and spent £80,000 preparing two town sites 18 miles apart: Stanley, on the Nashwaak 25 miles north of Fredericton, and Campbellton on the Miramichi (now Bloomfield Ridge). Company agents surveyed the town sites, built mills and houses, and began work on the roads, but less was accomplished than Company literature promised. Of the two, only Stanley achieved modest success as a magnet for settlers. To populate its lands, the New Brunswick Company during the 1830s made four concerted attempts at direct overseas recruitment. The first targeted poor children institutionalized in London, the second farm labourers and tradesmen in the eastern Borders between England and Scotland. The third party was recruited, disastrously, in the Scottish highlands, and the fourth was a second party from the Borders. The first three parties were settled in and around Stanley, with varying degrees of success; the fourth -- the Cornelius party -- escaped the Company's control and founded Harvey, south of Fredericton.

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On arrival in Saint John all but two of the families from the Cornelius continued on to Fredericton "where they received the unfavourable news that a stop had been put to the Company's works" pending the arrival of a new commissioner. There they also learned of complaints of their English friends, and found the economy of the province, reported upon so glowingly the year before, staggering in the wake of an international financial crisis. They therefore appealed to Governor Sir John Harvey, arguing that "they had not left their native country to which they were much attached, through any disaffection but to improve if possible their situation". They petitioned to be allowed to clear a tract of land outside the territory of the Company, “to be sold to them at as reasonable a rate as practicable, to be paid for by instalments within a given period.” The Legislature debated how to respond to their application. Various members of the House pointed to "the most hyperbolical and extravagant inducements" held out to the immigrants in the Company's English pamphlets, and to “its poetical and highly-coloured statements” in the Royal Gazette. In the end the Legislature was swayed by the circumstances of the case. Echoing the favourable reports on the arrival of the D'Arcy the year before, Mr. Clinch, one of the members, observed that it was well-known “that most of the emigrants to this country, and especially the Irish, came here only as a way to the United States; the best of them always went off, and the worst and most useless only remained. But these people were of a different class altogether.” They had been “induced to leave comfortable homes” by extravagant promises that the Company was not in a position to fulfill, and as they had arrived in the wake of a commercial depression in “a year of considerable distress, wages were low, business was greatly stagnated, and a variety of circumstances operated, to prevent these persons from advantageously scattering throughout the Province” looking for work. Moreover, Clinch noted, they had some little capital with them, and were not seeking financial relief, merely the opportunity to buy and pay for lands that they could develop. The Legislature voted the sum of £200 to defray the costs of locating them along a road then constructing between Fredericton and St Andrews, about 25 miles south of the city in what later became the parish of Manners Sutton. It was named the Harvey Settlement, after the Governor. The colonial administration supplied a man to teach them to fell trees, and by paying them to work on the road enabled them to pay for their lots. As this was a special government program, their progress was regularly reported upon.

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Although there is no known passenger list for this voyage it has been possible to reconstruct a list based on land grants in Harvey where most of the emigrants settled, and family histories. The families listed lower on this page were part of the Cornelius party that founded Harvey Settlement, York County, New Brunswick in 1837. The community became known as Harvey Station after the railway came through in 1869,

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Clicking on a family name will link to a post emigration three generation genealogy for each family. More detailed genealogical information is available for most families but is not included here due to privacy concerns for living descendants. Where available information on ancestors in Northumberland and the Borders region of Scotland is included. Some friends and relatives arrived as chain migrants during the next fifteen years. A second group settlers from the western Borders region came to the community from Dumfriesshire in the the western Borders region, influenced by the reports of five Little brothers from that area who camed to Harvey Settlement in 1840. A few additional families, unrelated to these other immigrants, came to the community from various other parts of the United Kingdom in the 1840's and 1850's.

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Excerpted from: B. Elliott 2004-2005. Emigrant Recruitment by the New Brunswick Land Company: The Pioneer Settlers of Stanley and Harvey. Generations: The Journal of the New Brunswick Genealogical Sociey, v. 26, 27.