Offical launch of the contest was a great success!

View of the group with
 pic of William Davidson in back ground.

The launch of the contest to find the first Scot in New Brunswick was a great success.  We had wonderful coverage from the press (we are looking forward to seeing the story in the papers throughout the week)before, during and after the event.   It was great to have Brad Sturgeon the descendant of William Davidson in attendance at the event and to say a few words. The President of the New Brunswick Scottish-Cultural Association was present and welcomed the group.

Despite the  weather (-21 without the windchill) and the limited parking we had a fantastic turnout. We had people  from Saint John, Miramichi, Perth-Andover and of course the Fredericton area.  We are very thankful to the Provincial Archives for allowing Portal project to use their facilities for the event.  It was great to see people from the provincial Heritage branch in attendance. 

There is a rumour going around that there could very well be two challengers coming forward to attempt to claim the first Scot throne.  The rumour says that there could be at least one in Charlotte county and another from the Saint John area.  How exciting is that!  Now the fun has begun and we wait to receive the family histories from around the province.  

Who Was the first Scot in New Brunswick?

Here at the Portal project we have some very exciting news to share with everyone. This Thursday the project will be hosting a media event to launch our contest "Who is the First Scots in New Brunswick?".  To learn more about the event and the contest you can visit  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/nbscots or on the Association website www.nbscots.com.

Happy New Year

Well it has been some time since our last web portal update.  I am sure many of you might think that the project has died.  That is so far from the truth, in reality we have been so busy working on the project and holding meetings we just haven't had time to provide any updates.  Well we are in a new year and as result we are going to be getting back to providing regular updates.  To help accomplish our improved commutations plan we are going to start sending out a newsletter to our supporters and followers.  The link be shared here in this space and we will be emailing you directly.

We have plenty to share but instead of overwhelming everyone with the news all at once we will be sharing it over the next week.  But to start off with I want to let everyone know we have completed the mining of the data from the 1851 census and we have moved on to the 1861 census. We originally said that we would have this information up and on display in the portal by the spring of 2013.  However due to holidays and dirty data that upload will only happen in the fall.

We are preparing now for the next stage of the project and that is to gather family histories, that will include pictures,stories about people from around New Brunswick.   We will be making a big announcement in the coming days that will we hope will help in obtaining those stories.   So stay tuned to this spot for more information when it arrives.  

Scottish Web Portal Mid-Summer Update

It has been quiet a while since we provided the members of the New Brunswick Scottish-Cultural Association and our project supporters with an update.  As you know the project has been going since February.  As a committee we have been meeting on monthly bases. However that scheduled has changed with the summer months upon us.   With this update we have some good news and some bad news.  

What I am going to do is start with the bad news and end with the good news. This way this up date will end in a positive note.

The bad news is that we are away behind in our fundraising for our goal of $20,000.00 in seed money and as a result the project is at risk and is officially behind in schedule.  We needed this seed money to get this project going and to proceed with applying for provincial and federal funding.  In June we issued our third email appeal and raised only $25.00 this is compared to the other two appeals where we raised over $1000.00 on each.  To date our total money raised is just shy of $11.000.00.  So as you can see we are still along way off from reaching our goal of $20,000.00.  The summer is never a good time to do fundraising due to the summer vacations.  However we expected to have our seed money in place by May and federal and provincial funding in place no later than the August.  Neither has happened.  So work on the project has been scaled back until such time we do raise the much needed money.   We can’t thank the people who have made a donation to towards the project.  We want you to know without your help we would not have been able to accomplish what we have to date.  For those of you who have not made a donation we wanted to let you know that we are not looking for huge amounts of money.  People can donate an amount as small as $5.00, it all adds up.   To make a donation we have set up a special location on the NBSCA website that help you to make a donation as easy as possible.

The good news our volunteers have started working on the 1851/1861 census and the information is starting to come in.  We are very happy to say counties of Kent, Queens, Gloucester and York are just about completed and the data is in the process of being validated.    We are also happy to report that we have received permission from Lucille Campy to use information from her book titled With Axe and Bible in our narrative of the Scots who came to New Brunswick.  This will save us a lot of money and time when it comes to that story.   We have also completed the budget for all three phases of the project and we will be posting that budget on the Portal section of the New Brunswick Scottish-Cultural Association site.

We also co-sponsored our first public talk on July 5^th in conjunction with the New Brunswick Provincial Archives.   Dr. Elizabeth Ritchie from the University of the Highland and Island, Scotland spoke about her research on Scottish Woman immigrates to Canada.  We had over 50 people in attendance and from all indication the talk was found to be very interesting and enjoyed by all.   

In closing for this up date I would like to introduce you to our official logo for the project. I would also like to appeal to all those people who have not contributed to the project to please do so.  This project is all about telling the story about the Scots who came to the province and help shape New Brunswick to the province it is today. Please visit the portal section on the NBSCA site for more information.  Until the next time have a great summer and play safe.

April 2012 Web Portal Update

Great Coverage from Brunswick News

Since our last up date back back on March 28^th we have been very busy getting the word out to the people of New Brunswick about Web Portal project.   We have been lucky that most of the newspapers around the province have been more than happy to write a story about the project.  The only paper that has not replied to us is the St Croix Courier.  This is very sad because of the high number of people who are of Scottish descent live in that area.  Hopefully we will find another way to get the word out in the area.

Volunteer Need
The Web Portal Advisory Committee is currently looking for a volunteer to sit on the advisory committee to help with communications. The type of communications this person would be involved in would be the writing of press releases, contacting and working with provincial, Federal and in some case British media. Updating the portal section of our website,Facebook and twitter.  There is also a need to work with local not-for-profit organizations with similar interests as this project.  As the head of communications you would also be looking after our email communications to our stake holders. If you are interested and would like more information please email the NB Scottish Web Portal committee.

Research

Beginning this month (April) we should have a better understanding when we will be calling our volunteers to help with research.  As a committee we want to make sure we are ready for the volunteers and we have everything in place and we are sure where we want to start.

We Are Still In Need of Your Finical Help

Donations continue to be received and we are very happy with the response and the amounts people are donating.  It shows that there are people who understand appreciate the importance of this project. We are still along way away from our target and if you are interested in supporting this project please visit our donation section of NB Web Portal Page.

Do you have a family history you want to share?

Once again, if you have any questions or suggestions for the committee please do not hesitate to contact us.  If you have a story that you feel should be included in this project or a family history that needs to be include please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Phase One of the NB Scottish web Protal Started

Stories like Capt. John Hamilton will be highlighted

The NB Scottish Web Portal Advisory Committee has held two meetings with our third coming up on April 21^st.  We are on schedule with the project and have officially started phase one with the hiring of Melynda Jarratt and her business Maven New Media .  We have also started mapping the layout of the actual portal.   In April will we will begin the hard cord research that is going to be needed to bring the information and data to the portal.   We will be looking at the 1851 census and family histories and individual biographies.

It was the Scots who literally opened up New Brunswick

The committee is also looking at holding workshops around the province to provide training for those people who will be helping with the search.  This training will make sure that everyone recording the data is recording the information in a constant way and to establish some rules for everyone to follow to make sure we have a regular flow of material.

I would encourage everyone to review phase one to find what this phase will include and if you know of anyone that might have information that should be included on this phase please contact us.   

I would also like to encourage you to review the map that we have created listing Scottish settlements through out New Brunswick.  We might have missed a few and we want to make sure we don’t miss a settlement.  

We will be telling the story of people like Lauchlan Donaldson

Last but not least we are always asking for financial help to see this project through to its end.  If you make a monetary contribution to the project you can do so by visiting our donation section  

The advisory committee came together for its second meeting.  The focus on Saturday was donations and grants.  As you know the project needs to collect $20,000.00 in seed money privately ( members and the general public) by March 31, 2012.   To date, we are happy to report as result our supporters we have raised almost $8000.00.  In just the last week alone we have received over $500.00 in donations. We would like to thank everyone for their kind contributions.  We also would like you to know there is no such thing as as to small of  a donation. 

 We have along way to go to meet our target by the end of this month.   To make a donation visit our donation section.

We have also started to tap into the media for help, in Friday's Daily Gleaner we had a story about the project. We also had an interview on CBC Radio and Television early Friday morning.  It is our hope that we can get the information into other newspapers around the province.

Back Row left: James Thompson-Caledonian of Restigouche , Barry MacKenzie-NBSCA,
Maxine Campell- Fredericton Society of Saint Andrew
 Allen Doiron- Provincial Archives, Melynda Jarratt-Project Manager,
 Front Row: Juliette Babineau Moore-Secretary
Dan Taylor- Chairman, Bill Donald-Miramichi Highland Society
Missing: Laurie Hossack- Saint Andrew's Society of Saint John and Chris Robbins-NBSCA

Included in today's update is this picture of the Advisory Committee.  As you will see the committee  consist of representatives from different areas of the province. We are continuing to search for a person from the Perth-Andover area.  To date we have not been successful in finding anyone from that area.  If you know anyone from that area that would be able to attend our meetings please let us know.

The Web Portal section of the NBSCA website has been up dated with a map of the different Scottish communities around New Brunswick.  These communities are the areas we will be focusing on for the Web Portal project.    We have also added the outline for the project in this same area.

If you are interested in helping out either financially or as a volunteer please contact the project directly. You will find our contact information on this blog.  We would also like to hear from you if you have a story of a family that should be included in this project.