York, Carleton, and Victoria Counties, New Brunswick, Canada

New Brunswick Counties in 1786

My mother's family came from New Brunswick, Canada. I have run into a bit of confusion about the county names in that province, so I am writing out the evolution of the pertinent counties here, mostly for myself. The issue has come up as I have joined several Facebook genealogy groups (which I will list in the next post, if you are interested) that are set up by county and I wasn't sure which was "our" county. It turns out that all three--York, Carleton, and Victoria--are the right ones. I guess it would have been possible for a family to have lived in the same house (without moving) that was part of each of the three counties at different times!

All of the following information comes from Wikipedia, and the sources are listed at the bottom of this post.

York County was established in 1785. By 1831 "the top half was highly populated, due to the rich soil in the region" so it was split off to form Carleton County. 

Victoria County was established in 1851. Before 1832, it was part of York County; from 1832 to 1850 it was part of Carleton County.

You can see a series of maps from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies showing the changes to all counties in New Brunswick over time: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/New_Brunswick_County_Maps_(National_Institute) The two maps on this post are from that page. 

New Brunswick Counties, 1873 to the present

The communities of York County as of 2011 are Fredericton, New Maryland, Upper Miramichi, McAdam, Nackawic, Stanley, Canterbury, Harvey, Millville, and Meductic. But wait, it gets more complicated. The county is subdivided into 14 parishes: Kingsclear, Douglas, St. Marys, Bright, New Maryland, Manners Sutton, Southampton, Queensbury, Stanley, Prince William, Canterbury, Dumfries, North Lake, and McAdam. Each of these has quite a few "unincorporated areas," which can be found on the Wikipedia page for York County (see below).

The communities of Carleton County as of 2011 are Woodstock, Florenceville-Bristol, Hartland, Centreville, and Bath. There are 11 parishes: Wakefield, Kent, Woodstock, Northampton, Brighton, Wicklow, Richmond, Peel, Wilmot, Aberdeen, and Simonds. Their unincorporated communities are listed on the Wikipedia page for Carleton County (below).

The communities of Victoria County as of 2011 are Grand Falls/Grand Sault, Perth-Andover, Plaster Rock, Drummond, and Aroostook. There are seven parishes: Drummond, Denmark, Gordon, Grand Falls, Perth, Andover, and Lorne. The unincorporated communities are listed on the Wikipedia page for Victoria County (below).

This information is going to be of great help to me as I research the lives of my New Brunswick ancestors, where they were born, and where they moved to. I hope that it may be of use to some other family historian.

Sources

Carleton County, New Brunswick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carleton_County,_New_Brunswick

Victoria County, New Brunswick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_County,_New_Brunswick

York County, New Brunswick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_County,_New_Brunswick

Potato Harvesting in New Brunswick

My mother, Elva Crabtree Harris Rodriguez (1914-1998), was born into a farming family in New Brunswick, Canada. I have an idea that her memories of farm life were not the fondest--she had little use for farm animals or pets, and when I was planning to move to Canada all she could think of was the hard work. And the potatoes!

I came across this old 1955 video* of potato harvesting in the Grand Falls region of Victoria County, New Brunswick. It looks like things hadn't changed so much since the 1930s and 1940s--not so long after my mother would have taken part in the harvests in Beaconsfield, just a 40 minute drive by car today.

Here is a comment on this YouTube video: I remember my grandfather working like this. All the neighbouring families came to help harvest, and then helped the next neighbour, and so on.
Hard work. Bending over all day. I remember very sore backs, and very dry hands.



For contrast, here is a more modern approach to potato harvesting, this time just across the border in Aroostook County, Maine, where the Crabtree family also lived.

*****

* Thanks to Wayne DeLong of the Facebook group, Carleton County Genealogy and Family Trees, for sharing the first video.