The American Revolution was over. Throughout the spring, summer and fall of 1783 a stream of British warships and transports sailed into the broad estuary at the mouth of the Saint John River in His Majesty's Province of Nova Scotia and landed some 10,000 Loyalist refugees on its shores. The newcomers found a superb harbour in an estuary formed by two peninsulas jutting, at right angles to each other, into the Bay of Fundy. Well before the arrival of the Loyalists, British administrators had assumed that the peninsulas which formed Saint John harbour would become significant settlements. Military surveyors had accordingly laid out both as town sites, each consisting of a town plot and a series of squares or commons to serve as public parks. A small settlement called Carleton developed on the western peninsula, but the centre of Loyalist activity was at Parrtown on the eastern side of the harbour. Parrtown, named after Governor Thomas Parr of Nova Scotia, was located on high rocky ground, barren and unbroken except for two coves which provided easy access to the harbour. It was around these coves that the first Loyalist settlements were made, and before too many years had passed, the gradual expansion of population resulted in settlement of the areas between the coves.
While the population of Parrtown may have reached 10,000 or more in the winter of 1783-84, it rapidly declined the following year as most refugees were resettled on the lush interval lands of the interior Saint John River valley. Aside from its harbour and fishing, Parrtown held few attractions for settlement. It was separated from its fertile hinterland by a network of high rocky hills and marshland, and the town itself was located on uneven rocky ledges.
Origins of the City and Incorporation
Who, then, stayed in the town, and why did they stay? About 500 adult men were made freemen of the City of Saint John in 1785. Most of them were Loyalists from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The five largest occupational groups among them were farmers (82), carpenters (74), shoemakers (43), gentlemen and lawyers (43), and merchants (43). They stayed because of the port facilities and the good harbour and because location in a commercial centre would bring a certain degree of influence. Parrtown was not only the entry to a major river valley, it was also the entrance to most of the interior of what was to become New Brunswick. The Saint John River has as its tributaries the Kennebecasis, the Washademoak, the Oromocto, the Nashwaak, the Keswick, the Aroostook and the Tobique rivers, as well as many smaller rivers and the Grand Lake system. It was generally recognized that the community would soon become the commercial centre for this entire region as well as a major port for the British West Indies trade. In addition Saint John became a garrison city, with British regular soldiers stationed there.
In 1784, at the demand of many Loyalist leaders, the province of New Brunswick was separated from Nova Scotia, and Colonel Thomas Carleton was made governor. To overcome the problem of maintaining order in the heavily populated towns at the Saint John River, Governor Carleton united them in 1785, and by securing issuance of a royal charter, created the City and Corporation of Saint John, the first incorporated city in British North America. The new city Common Council was composed of a mayor, six aldermen and six assistant aldermen. The mayor was appointed by the governor-in-council, but the other members of the council were elected annually by the freemen (inhabitants who were citizens and could vote) in each of the city's six wards. To vote or to operate a business or practise a trade or profession in the city, a man had to be a freeman, a status designed to restrict control of the city to its most responsible people. The Common Council was given authority to regulate economic activity within the city. For example, it could set the price of food, control the use of the harbour, and determine who could buy and sell any goods or services. It made laws governing the conduct of all citizens, enforced those laws by whatever means necessary, and sat as a court of common pleas.
The principal role of the city in its early years was to serve the commercial needs of the communities along the Saint John River system. This period, however, was difficult. During the first two decades, the population in the area stagnated or even declined. In the city itself the population was similarly affected because many sought greater security on farms in the interior or gravitated to locations such as Boston or Niagara which seemed to offer greater opportunities. The only significant group of newcomers to arrive in the city during this early period consisted of a number of Scottish merchants, including John Black and Lauchlan Donaldson, who acquired control of the Saint John mast and spar industry which was important to British naval supremacy at this time.
Urban Growth and the Timber Trade
The period of decline ended in 1807 when the British government determined to acquire for itself a secure supply of timber in the face of the Napoleonic threat. Napoleon had tried to defeat Britain by cutting off all timber supplies from the continent of Europe. Timber was to the British navy what petroleum is to a modern air force; without it the navy would be helpless, and Britain would be at the mercy of the French who had by then conquered most of Europe. The British solution to this problem was to impose a high tariff on foreign timber, a tariff so high that merchants and shippers in Saint John and Qu│bec found it profitable to harvest North America timber and ship it to the mother country. The Saint John River system became one of the great timber-producing areas of North America, and the city of Saint John became the centre from which merchants directed the whole operation. As timber was a bulk cargo, an extensive shipbuilding industry developed in the city to provide the hundreds of large carriers needed to transport this heavy commodity across the Atlantic. After the defeat of Napoleon the tariffs remained in place and continued
