MF – 1866.12.22 Johnville – Woodstock Sentinel #155 F12251
The Woodstock Sentinel, noticing the returns from Johnville, says:
“And here it is but just that we should state that Rev. Mr. Connolly, Parish Priest, has labored hard in that district, and contributed largely to the success and happiness of the people of the settlement. The same result that has followed the career of laborers from St. John in these new settlements has been participated in by many persons from Woodstock and elsewhere, who instead of being “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the [pubic], are making the forest ring with the sounds of their cheery labour, where every tree felled, every fallow burned, every sod turned, is for themselves, and is a tangible addition to their individual wealth, independence and importance.The very satisfactory returns from Johnville, which we published last week, might be repeated twenty-fold, in as many instances, as the history of other settlements in this and the adjacent Counties. True there is a difference in the characteristics, as well as nationalities, of the settlers in the rural districts, but while the Scotch element prevails in some, the Irish in others, English and Blue Nose in others; while in some the settlers were drawn from the laborers as a class, and in others from [artisans] and farmers from less favored districts; yet all are animated by the same spirit, all display the same resolute moral courage in encountering present difficulties, in view of a sure reward; all are working for their own sterling independence, and better than that all are working for posterity; all their united and individual labor goes to enrich and benefit the Province. What has been done in a score of instances where new settlements have been formed may be duplicated a hundred times. “Good as is the land, the inviting to settlement, in the districts already settled it is only a very small part of a continuous tract, following the course of the River St. John, on its eastern side, extending from Canada to the boundary of York. Here are hundreds of thousands of acres of land unsurpassed in native richness, capable of sustaining thousands upon thousands of population. The land, the wood, the lime, the brick clay, and plaster, the water privilege, all and everything the settlers require for their agricultural and manufacturing purposes is here.”