I came across a reference to John Higginbottom yet again on the following listing from PRONI, which may be of interest to others too. It states that John Higginbottom was known to the Earl of Courtown who was one of the biggest landlords in the Gorey area. The Courtown Estate papers reside in the National Library of Ireland.
http://www.dippam.ac.uk/ied/records/22293.pdfSee on list:
(61) J. SPENCER
Wexford Clogher Gory -/-/- [Gorey?]
His brother in Law, John Higginbottom has a family, and lives at Gory, in the County Wexford; is known to the Earl of Courtown
"The McCabe List": Early Irish in the Ottawa Valley
The listing which follows provides the signature or
mark, county, parish, townland of origin, number of
male and female children and names and addresses of
relatives in the homeland for some 700 mostly Irish
families who were in the vicinity of Bytown on 5 February 1829.
The reason the list was compiled is because it
was prompted by a printed questionnaire circulated by a
British parliamentary committee to the Irish who had
emigrated under the Honourable Peter Robinson several
years earlier. Critics in Ireland were charging that
the Robinson experiments amounted to " a system of
transportation and banishment, attended with privations
and misery". The committee asked the emigrants for
their opinion. Among the questions asked were: from
whence did you emigrate, what family had you with you,
and would you recommend a poor family to come out to
Upper Canada if the government advanced the passage
money, 100 acres of land, and provisions for a year,
on condition that the advance be repaid out of the
produce of the farm in annual instalments.
One of the questionnaires found its way to the
Irishmen working on the first sections of the Rideau
Canal near the new village of Bytown. The emigrants
approved the plan suggested in the government
questionnaire, and stated their willingness to
reimburse the government, in instalments, the cost of
sending their near relations out to join them. So the
information on the geographical origins of the signers
already in the colony and on the size of their families
was recorded in response to queries in the
questionnaire.
Conclusively the "McCabe List" is a remarkable
document, revealing much historical information about
the Irish population of this section of the Ottawa
Valley, and casting further light on the men who built
the Rideau Canal. It was found by John McCabe, a N.Ireland
genealogist, whilst researching in the Public Record
Office in England. To the genealogist it is a unique
resource in which many will discover the only reference
to their ancestor's place of origin recorded on this
side of the Atlantic.
