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May 11 , 2002
Carleton Rode ratepayers responded promptly,
agreeing on May 1 that £70 be borrowed at five
per cent interest to pay for emigration.
Four days later William Sayer took the coach to Yarmouth
to book passages for John Ringer and family, James Hawse,
James Tite and Edward Hinchley at a cost of £29
plus £8 landing money.
On the 9th they were taken to Norwich, breakfasted at
The Ship Inn, King Street, for 12s 2d and went by steam
packet to Yarmouth where their luggage was removed to
the Miser.
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On May 9, 1832, the 10 emigrants from Carleton
Rode, Norfolk, breakfasted here before going by
packet boat to Yarmouth to board The Miser for
their journey to Quebec.
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At Yarmouth, stores were bought for the
group’s voyage including:
- two cwt bread £2 4s 0d, two cwt flour £2
2s 0d and three sacks 4s 6d;
- potatoes 10s, three stones of sugar £1 1s
0d;
- two cwt beef and bacon £5 4s 0d with salt
1s 6d and a cask 6s 6d;
- cheese 15s 10½d, “salt, mustard, vinegar
and bottle” 2s 8d and “beer for three days,”
9s 2d.
Three beds cost £1 2s 6d, four yards green baize
5s 4d, a cask for water 5s 3d, a keeler (tub) 2s 6d,
soap 3s 9d, a pail 2s 6d, and tinware 19s 10d.- The total expense of the emigration, including an
installment of interest on the loan, was £71
9s 5d.
The parish usually provided any necessary
shoes and clothing. When 52 people emigrated from Winfarthing
in 1836-7, the bill of £479 14s 1¼d included
£17 7s 6d for shoes, £7 7s 9d for clothing,
plus £8 for clothing James Elsey, trousers for
Jerry Elsey 6s, stockings for John Haystead 2s, John
Jessup’s hat 5s, hats and caps for eight families
£4.
In an age when few could read or write, the relatives
and friends they left behind must have wondered how
they fared on the voyage, what challenges their new
life had presented, and even whether or not they had
survived.
Some, like John Ringer and his family who journeyed
from Quebec to Smiths Falls, Ontario, were joining relatives
already established with whom they could stay until
they found work.
Descendants say John worked as a labourer on the new
Rideau Canal, designed to shorten the route from Ottawa
to Kingston, and later he took a farm.
John Dunn, a cooper from Ber-street gates, Norwich,
who with his wife and family sailed on the Spring of
Yarmouth on May 12, 1830, and arrived in Quebec on July
3, was unable to find work despite moving to America.
Thoroughly disillusioned, he returned home on the Brighton
and in November wrote to the press warning others of
the great distress many unemployed emigrants were in,
some being paid mainly in store goods.
He claimed there were thousands wishing to return to
their own country.
In contrast, Brett Athow told of his determination to
succeed. His letter was published in the Norfolk Chronicle,
May 17, 1834. They had left Lynn the previous autumn
to go by ship from Hull, but incurred unexpected living
costs because the vessel, with 54 passengers of whom
24 were children, was not due to sail for 10 days.
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| This advertisement prompted Carleton Rode ratepayers
to finance the emigration to Quebec of John Ringer,
his wife Sarah and their five children, together
with James Hawse, James Tite and Edward Hinchley.
Their passage cost £29 plus an allowance of
£8 on landing. |
Bracing sea air during the seven weeks’
voyage gave the Athows such a healthy appetite that
they ran out of food and found it expensive to buy from
the ship.
On arrival at New York Brett had to pay $7 hospital
money in case they were ill, a dollar being about 4s
4½d. After paying $6 as a month’s rent in
advance, he had just over three shillings, but immediately
found five weeks’ work in an earthenware warehouse
at $6 a week, about £1 6s 3d. Next he worked as
a chandler until March 27, the end of the candle-making
season.
In preference to a weekly wage of six to seven dollars,
he chose piecework at half a dollar for every 100lb
of candles. After three weeks he was making 300lb of
candles a day, “to earn nine dollars a week and
not work more than 11 hours a day”.
On April 1, 1834, he and his family moved to Troy, “a
very pretty place” about 170 miles north of New
York, where living costs were cheaper. He became a painter
and glazier earning six dollars a week, and learned
paper-hanging so that he would have “two decent
trades”, painting in the summer and candle-making
in the winter.
His detailed account of local wages and prices, his
report that the weather was “much finer than England”
and an assurance that there were “no rattlesnakes
or wild animals” was published to encourage others.
But some might have been deterred by his news that he
feared that another Norfolk emigrant, Mr Kirby, who
had not been seen for some months, had died of the cholera
which in the summer had killed more than 800 in a week
in New York.
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