Slowly and painfully at first, then with surprising speed, settlements in the new province began to grow. New Brunswick�s exports of wood across the Atlantic Ocean multiplied in quantity almost twenty times, and a rising tide of British immigration began to swell the colonial population.

Many years passed before the government could afford to build good roads, yet anyone with anything to sell needed to get their goods to markets in Saint John, Miramichi, and the world beyond.

Without roads, settlers needed boats for travel. Naturally they started to build boats of their own, the kind they had used in the United States or in Britain. At the end of ten years, water travel had greatly improved, and shipbuilding was becoming an important trade in New Brunswick. New Brunswick-built ships carried valuable New Brunswick timber to Great Britain, and returned with immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and England.

The New Brunswick government provided every new settler and lumberman with large grants of free land, and as these settlers encroached more and more upon traditional hunting and fishing territories, Maliseet, Mi�kmaq, and Passamaquoddy were forced to settle on reserves. For Wabanuwok, the 1800�s were dark years of devastating famine, disease and despair, as they found themselves excluded from the new form of government.

But Wabanuwok were not the only ones excluded from government. Black Loyalists, some of whom had come to New Brunswick as slaves, others who had arrived as �free� citizens, were denied many benefits made available to other Loyalists. The Royal Charter for the newly formed city of Saint John denied Blacks the right to fish in the local waters, sell any goods or produce within city limits, or to operate a business. It also stated that other than �indentured� servants, no Black person could live within the city limits! There were many individuals in New Brunswick who saw the unfairness of laws like these and worked to have them changed. Two such individuals were Nancy Morton and Thomas Peters.