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3. English Settlement from 1774 to Confederation
In August 1755 the Acadian settlers were expelled from the Bay of Fundy by the British. Many came to PEI and the population approached 5,000. The Island was as much a refugee camp as a colony.
In 1758, the British, having taken the fortress of Louisbourg for the second and final time, rounded up French settlers on PEI and deported them. There were only about 300 Acadians remaining, mostly south of Malpeque Bay and also around Rustico and Souris, when the Island was formally awarded to Britain in 1763.
Since the fall of Louisbourg, there has been pressure on the British Crown to award land on the Island to influential petitioners.
In 1764, Samuel Holland arrived to do a survey of PEI. He divided the Island into 67 townships or lots, each of which was supposed to contain 20,000 acres; one small lot, nominally of 6,000 acres; and three town-sites with attached royalties, one in each county.
In 1767, the British Board of Commissioners conducted a lottery in which the townships were awarded to petitioners. Each new proprietor agreed to pay quitrents to the Crown and to settle his lot with 100 Protestant, non-British persons within 10 years.
However, the interest of most proprietors in their holdings was like that of the typical modern stockholder in his shares. Speculation was common. Many of the lots quickly changed hands, conditions of tenure were rarely honoured by the proprietors, rents went unpaid and a land-ownership problem was created that would trouble the Island until after Confederation.
Settlement patterns in the early years of the British regime to some degree repeated those of the French as settlers moved up the Hillsborough River. Settlers were also planted at various locations round the Island coastline, particularly the north shore.
Only a few proprietors tried to settle their lots, but before 1800 some communities grew up along the north shore which were stimulated by proprietary interests. Most notable was the settlement of the Tracadie Bay area in 1770 to 1775 by Captain John MacDonald of Glenalladale. MacDonald, owner of lots 35 and 36, brought over several hundred Scottish Highlanders who established farmsteads around both sites of Tracadie Bay. Contrary to the conditions of proprietorship, these settlers were Roman Catholic.
Also in the early 1770's, lots 18 and 20, on the east shore of Malpeque Bay, were settled by Protestant Scottish Lowlanders. By 1775 there was a population of several hundred in this area.
In 1773, 120 settlers came to the New London area; they were also Protestants - Lowland Scots and English. In the Covehead area, a number of Protestant families settled in 1775 to 1780. French families remained in the Rustico area. The largest single emigrant group, 800 Highland Scots, were brought to the Belfast area by the Earl of Selkirk in 1803.
Ethnic and religious patterns established during these final years of the 18th century have persisted to some degree down to the present.
These groups along the north shore - Protestant Scottish and English predominating, with concentrations of French around Rustico and Roman Catholic Highlanders from Tracadie Bay to St. Peters - gradually brought virtually all the land along the coast under cultivation.
Transportation patterns tended to be east-west in orientation during these early years. People travelled up and down the Hillsborough River and along the north shore. The Island's first ferries operated across the mouths of the north shore bays and estuaries.
The first interior roads connected Charlottetown to Malpeque and St. Peters. Then subsidiary roads were developed to connect the new settlements with these principal roadways. By 1850, the Island's basic road network was complete.
Beginning in the 1830's substantial numbers of Irish Roman Catholics immigrated to the Island from northern Ireland, particularly County Monaghan, bolstering earlier immigration from that country.
In 1769, the Island, which had been administered from Nova Scotia, was granted separate government. Since the Island government was to be financed by quitrents from the proprietors and since they continued to evade their financial responsibilities, land ownership remained a hotly contested issue.
When the first organized British census was taken in 1798, the population of PEI was found to be 4,372. Steady net immigration continued for almost 100 years. In 1891 the population reached 109,000. But from then on, population declined steadily until reaching a low of about 88,000 in the 1930's.
