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the British Government,
in grants of land to Scotch soldiers.
Valuable seigniories are conceded to their officers; thus, Major Nairn, of
the Royal Emigrants, received a patent for the Fief of
Murray Bay, on the Lower St. Lawrence, while his companion-at-arms,
Lieutenant Malcolm Fraser, had, on 27th April, 1762, obtained the
adjoining seigniory, Mount Murray, bounded to the west by the river Murray
or Mal Baie, to the east by the Rivière Noire—running three leagues into
the interior.
Their followers and
retainers crowded around them; soon a whole Scotch colony flourished round
the bay or on the highlands of this http://www.electricscotland.com/history/canada/picturesque spot, which in many
particulars reminds one of the glens and gorges of Scotland: to this day
many hamlets resound with the names of McLean, McNichol, Blackburn,
Warren, Harvey, McNiell, old 78th men, albeit the name only now survives.
Alliances with the French Canadian peasantry, have obliterated all trace
of a Celtic nationality, though the descendants of the famous Lairds of
1762, Major Nairn and Lieut. Fraser still hold their own in their snug and
solid old Manors. Fraser’s Highlanders settled all over Lower Canada;
their descendants now number (it is said) more than 3,000. Scarcely a
parish in the Lower St. Lawrence without some offishoot from the parent
tree: at Levis, Beaumont, St. Michel, St. Vallier, St. François, St.
Thomas, St. Andre, Rivière-du-Loup, Restigouche, Matapedia, &c.
There are, however, populous
settlements of Scotch— such as that of Metis—which do not hail from the
Fraser Highlanders. This colony was formed in 1823, by the late J. McNider
of Quebec. There are wealthy Scots
in
the Baie des Chaleurs, who do not trace either to Fraser’s Highlanders or
to the U. E. Loyalists of 1783—such as the Laird of Cluny Cottage, Wm.
McPherson, Esq., for thirty- |
