My Brief American View on Canadian Maritimes History

Having spent the duration of my relatively brief life living in a small town on the border of New Brunswick and Maine, you would think that I would be fairly knowledgable of adjacent Canadian geography. This, however, is not the case. After looking at the names being thrown around like Hantsport, Peel, Brighton, Carleton, and Canterbury, I invested in a Gousha map of New Brunswick that also included everything north of Bangor. This helped quite a bit. I was still rather confused though. There were places that I had a zillion referrences for but no corresponding location on the map. At first I thought that the town just must not exist anymore. Then I found some information proving me completely wrong. The places do exist - but they are parishes not towns or counties. In plotting out what my concept of this web site should be, I thought it important to include a line or two on some basic Canadian Maritimes history.

So - let's begin in 1713. Quebec, New Brunswick & Nova Scotia are all under French control and called "Acadia." In far away Europe the Queen Anne's War was settled between England and France resulting in France reliquished control of Acadia to the English. The English basically evicted the French speaking residents of Acadia. These people fled to French controlled areas, such as the deep South were they became known as Cajuns. The French speakers in the St. John Valley of Aroostook County are also descendents of the evicted Acadians. Quebec stayed a French speaking area and became known as Lower Canada for a time. Speeding ahead for a moment for a quick clarification, Upper Canada is now known as Ontario. Ontario was broken off from Quebec when masses of English speaking Loyalists immigrated into the area.

Upon English control, the whole of the Acadian area became known as Nova Scotia. There was such a demand on the interior area by the incoming flood of Loyalists kicked out of America that the existing government found it neccessary to subdivide Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia today is very nearly an island with much of its development focused on coastal areas. Other settlement at that time was also along the coast so adminstration of government was not formerly a problem. The Loyalists, however, flooded into Fredericton. Fredericton is 60 miles up the St. John River from the Bay of Fundy and the City of St. John making it many sea and land miles from the seat of government at the time, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax is located on the far eastern shore of Nova Scotia. So, in 1784 New Brunswick was split off from Nova Scotia; Fredericton was established as the government seat over eight counties where land grants were being portioned out. Thus began the concerted settlement of far western New Brunswick along the eastern border of Aroostook County, Maine. Many of the settlers were directed to the area around Woodstoock. Woodstock is directly aross the border from Houlton, Maine. Access to and from Aroostook was very easy, particularly considering that records of border crossing were not kept until 1895 even though the border between Maine and New Brunswick was settled in 1842. An obvisously result of the lack of record keeping and easy migration is that many of the families between Houlton and Presque Isle have relatives on the Canadian side that most likely have some Loyalist background. In an 1851 census of Carleton County one-tenth of the population were foreighn born predominately in the British Isles.

The period between the 1790's and 1830's really was not that phenomenal. For the most part families worked their land and built their communities and towns as well as their homes. Between the 1832 and 1863 New Brunswick redividing the administrative districts resulting in a total of 15 counties derived from the original 8. By 1867 there were a total of 10 parishes in the Carleton County area. As you can see, in a 30 year time span New Brunswick went from 8 counties with 5 parishes in Carleton County to 15 counties with 11 parishes in Carleton County. Confusing? Yes. Worse is that many of the records will list things like: born in Wakefield, New Brunswick. Sounds like a town - actually a parish (created 1803) in York County (one of the original 8 created in 1784) until Carleton County was created in 1832. OR: died in Peel, New Brunswick. Peel is a parish created in 1859 from Brighton which was created in 1830 from part of Wakefield parish created in 1803 from part of York County that is now Carleton County. No less do all of the other parishes still exist, but there is also a town named Peel in Carleton County as well as the parish. One of the genealogical guides compared the parishes to the Maine system of dividing the original land base into 6 mile by 6 mile townships. I don't agree with that comparison. Our townships are laid out in a grid fashion with no regard to number of people in them. If anything, I would more compare the parishes to our Legislative districts. The flip side of the confusion is that by creating more counties and more parishes you get a better idea where the folks you are researching actually inhabited once you figure out where you are!!!

The begininning parts of my research concerning the Barkers was centered in Falmouth Parish, Hants County, Nova Scotia when New Brunswick was being subdivided. My research then became centered in Carleton County and I ran into the parish problem again when dealing with Brighton, Wakefield & Peel. Carleton County runs nearly parrallel with the Presque Isle to Houlton area of Aroostook County. North of Carleton County is Victoria County which we seem to have no connection to what so ever. South of Carleton County is Sunbury County where some of Mother's people may of come from. Wedged kind of behind and protruding into Carleton & Sunbury Counties is York County which has turned up a couple times but not too often. The folks in Carleton & Sunbury Counties lived, and continue to live, a life mirrored here in Aroostook County, Maine (although they are better dressed!). The areas both are supported by the farming and logging industries that are plauged with the same spruce bud worm epidemics and potato blights. There is a good map of the counties on the front page of the New Brunswick GenWeb site. And more information on the dates of creations of counties and parishes at Carleton County, New Brunswick Parishes.

Parishes in Carleton County

Aberdeen

Brighton

Kent

Northampton

Peel

Richmond

Simonds

Wakefield

Wicklow

Wilmot

Woodstock

Although not really history, I would like to mention land grants. Land grants were (suprise!) grants of land given to individuals for the possession of a certain lot of Crown (or British government) land. An applicant had to file a petition describing himself, his need, his family and if he had rendered service to the Crown. If you have already read the Barker family page, you may recall that Thomas Barker petitioned for land based on his father Edward's military service. Thomas mentioned in his petition that Edward had never sought a land grant but rather outright purchased his property and that he himself had a large family to support. The Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council approved or denied the petitions. In Thomas' case, it would appear that he denied that request. In Baltus Schryver's case, he approved the petition and granted 200 acres of land. A survey would be done if a petition was aproved prior to ownership being transferred. Property leases were also handled in a similar manner and recorded in the same place. In some records, you will see men being granted several hundred acres over a span of years. I traced one of these and found that the land grants could be turned in and, in a sense, exchanged. The man may not have been farming several hundred acres but a prime 100 acre land grant that he had patiently waited for. In addition, there were grants given to men with no militiary service such as Stephen, Richard & Ziba Barker. To my knowledge, these men did not have any military service. Why would they receive a grant/ The population of Carleton County in 1851 was 11,108. In 1991, it was 26,026. Stephen, Richard & Ziba recieved grants between 1866 & 1878. My suspicion would be that the government had a lot of land in that area and probably advocated land grants to men who would stay on the land and work it as all of those men did.