A few days ago I posted a question about an immigration diary during the great migration period(I will link it in a comment below) in which Ms Sue and Reed replied with some tips- thank you.
I am starting to write some of the diary and I still have a few questions that I have left unattended to in my word document(questions numbered with a # and bracketed):
(Question #1), I still need to figure out what my character( a 13 or 14 year old girl named Elizabeth Woolland) works as during the time period 1820-1850 in her hometown Liverpool, England before she leaves for her trip to BNA(british north america).The backround is that her mother is sick with tuberculosis and needs alot of food/water and treatment/medicine(doctors and medicine existed right? lol), her older brother is favoured by her parents and hence goes to school, and the father works at a cottage industry and gets laid off due to mechanization.Now, all the family depends on for living is on the girl, my character who works at _____(Question #2: apt job?- does crawling in mines work?) and does not make enough. Then they receive a letter from a relative in Canada telling them about opportunity and success there and the father decides that they should buy ship tickets and immigrate to Canada. SO (question #3 how much did ship tickets cost?) Keep in mind my character(Elizabeth)'s father sold some of her mother's jewelry to get tickets- is that realistic?(was England Liverpool a barter system?)
Then, I move on to the second portion of my diary entries; landing in Canada and how I survive there. The plan is for the mother to die on the ship, the brother to be put in quarantine and die there after being infected when he was actually totally fine, and leaving only the father and the girl Elizabeth. (Question #4: Since the quarantine(stated on my criteria) takes place at Grosse Isle, where-city? is that close to?) When I get off the ship which city would be most realistic to go to? Keep in mind that a family member(the brother) is in quarantine at grosse isle, and eventually dies and I want the father and girl to witness him being thrown into the ocean; so they need to at least hang out for a few days until the brother dies for them to relocate to (the next part of my outline) a part of heavily forested area to start their living from scratch. ALong this, they will first make their way to a city to work free labour to get some seeds to start agriculture(Question #5 what type of work can be done to earn some money or something to purchase seeds with?)( Question #6; should they take a boat somehow into a city or travel by foot(where they buy seeds and any other necessary?)?). Then while they are in the city (question #7: where do they stay for the time being while they try to find a job and work as laborors to get some seeds?), they begged for someone to let them stay at their place- is that realistic? While there, they often stole food from markets to keep the hunger down.And after going through all this, there is only the father and daughter left who develop a stronger more intimate bond together, and this is where my diary will end.
So yeah, I apologize for the abundance of words typed and the questions, but I really couldn't find alot online and the immigrant diary archives that Reed suggested- they were illegible and extrememly long as they were handwritten on rough paper and whole diaries. I read through one entire one(around 35 pages) but none of the scenes were relevant to what I am trying to write and I felt no emotion either. So don't call me lazy, I have been working on this even in my sleep these past two days and this empathy thing just isn't clicking so I would appreciate any help- reading through countlesss wiki articles and my textbook doesnt give enough examples for my diary assignment.
To sum up, my general question is to know how they survive when they reach their destination and what cities/places they must go to first after the grosse isle quarantine.And how they even start up a new life as pioneers, I will do the research, but I really just want to know answers to the questions I asked above in brackets and numbered PLEASE.
How about milkmaid for Elizabeth's job? Young girls often did that kind of work in rural areas. Or maid in the city? She would not be a parlormaid at a young age, but maybe a kitchen maid (scrubbing the pots and pans, the floor, etc If her father works in "cottage industry," he is probably self-employed making whatever he makes (shoes, wagon wheels, whatever). His craft of making whatever by hand is replaced by factory-made goods. And no, barter was not the usual means of exchange. But for people of modest means, the mother has jewelry? Maybe they sold the house? I believe Grosse Isle is a geographic location. Look it up. And, as I said before, if they are on land in BNA, there would be no burial at sea! That only happens aboard the ship. As for interim work, farmhand? Um...in a city any kind of manual labor like loading or unloading freight, shoveling coal... Elizabeth could do domestic work, like tending children or yard chores like tending chickens...laundress... Where do they stay? Assume they have a little cash, the ship fare didn't cost all their money, so give them a cheap rooming house that's not very nice. They often called them "taverns" back then. A place that had rooms to rent as well as a bar and food. Maybe they get work there and a place in the cellar or under the eaves to sleep?
And no, I don't think you are lazy! But do some research on availability of land for farming. Was it "free" as in a grant from the Crown? Where? Remember a subsistence farm might be very few acres.
I found web sites for Grosse Ile, the immigration point, and for settlement in Upper Canada, but for some reason I can't post them. The area around Hamilton, Ontario is a likely destination point for your family. It was English-speaking (Quebec was French-speaking) and was being settled in the 1830s. I also found that land grants were discontinued in 1827 except for military and "loyalists." Look up Grosse Isle, Quebec in your browser and check out Upper Canada settlement sites, 1830s.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Isle,_Quebec
http://www.canada.yodelout.com/kingston-ontario-settlement-and-early-days
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton,_Ontrio