Parish Boundary Legislation
in Charlotte County, New Brunswick
    This page summarizes what I believe to be all acts of the New Brunswick Assembly relating to parish boundaries within Charlotte County. It is intended to supplement the several websites that describe the evolution of the county's parishes. I have also made comments on several common misconceptions about the history of the parishes.
Table of Statutes
Statute Date
Passed		 Title Remarks
26 Geo. III, c. 1 1786 Mar 15
 (a)		 An Act for the better ascertaining and confirming the Boundaries of the several Counties within this Province, and for subdividing them into Towns or Parishes. Charlotte County confirmed.
Saint Stephen, Saint David, Saint Andrews, Saint Patrick, Saint George, Pennfield, and West Isles created.
43 Geo. III, c. 4 1803 Mar 16 An Act in addition to an Act, intituled, "An Act for the better ascertaining and confirming the Boundaries of the several Counties within this Province, and for subdividing them into Towns and [sic] Parishes." Campobello ("Campo-Bello") created. (Also, boundary of Northumberland County altered.)
53 Geo. III, c. 2 1813 Mar 3 An Act, to enlarge the limits of the Parish of Saint Stephen, in the County of Charlotte. Saint Stephen extended northward.
54 Geo. III, c. 15 1814 Mar 7 An Act to enlarge the limits of the Parishes of Saint Patrick and Saint George, in the County of Charlotte. Saint Patrick and Saint George each extended north to the county line.
56 Geo. III, c. 10 1816 Mar 7 An Act to constitute the Island of Grand Manan and its appurtenances, in the County of Charlotte, into a distinct Town or Parish. Grand Manan created.
4 Geo. IV, c. 11 1823 Mar 27 An Act for erecting a part of the Parish of Saint Stephen and the Country adjacent, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate and distinct Town or Parish. Saint James created.
13 Vict., c. 51 1850 Apr 26 An Act to consolidate all the Laws now in force for the division of the Province into Counties, Towns and Parishes. Parishes confirmed.
Pennfield extended north to the county line.
R.S. 1854, c. 1 1854 May 1 Of the Division of the Province into Counties and Parishes. Parishes reconfirmed.
19 Vict., c. 25 1856 Apr 12
 (b)		 An Act to erect the upper part of the Parish of Saint Patrick, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate Town or Parish. Dumbarton created.
20 Vict., c. 9
  (f)		 1857 Mar 26
 (c)		 An Act to erect the eastern part of the Parish of Pennfield, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate Town or Parish. Lepreau ("LePreau") created from Pennfield. This did not happen in 1859 as has been erroneously reported many times..
32 Vict., c. 51 1869 Apr 21 An Act to erect part of the Parishes of Lepreaux [sic] and Pennfield, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate Town or Parish. Clarendon created.
36 Vict., c. 75 1873 Apr 14 An Act to erect a part of the Parish of Saint Stephen, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate Town or Parish. Dufferin created.
37 Vict., c. 37 1874 Apr 8 An Act to establish a new Parish in the County of Charlotte. Saint Croix created.
C.S. 1877, c. 2 1877 May 1
 (g)		 The Division of the Province into Counties, Towns, and Parishes. Parishes reconfirmed.
44 Vict., c. 31 1881 Mar 25
 (d)		 An Act to alter the Boundary Lines of the Parish of Saint Croix, in the County of Charlotte. Boundaries between Saint Croix and Saint David, Saint Croix and Dumbarton, and Saint Croix and Saint Patrick altered slightly.
59 Vict., c. 8 1896 Mar 20 An Act to Revise and Codify an Act to Provide for the Division of the Province into Counties, Towns and Parishes. Parishes reconfirmed. Saint Croix possibly modified slightly.
7 Eliz. II, c. 56 1958 May 1
 (e)		 An Act to Amend the Territorial Division Act. Boundaries between Saint Croix and Saint Patrick, Saint Andrews and Saint Patrick, and Saint Stephen and Saint James altered slightly. A placename in the Dufferin boundaries was also corrected.
36 Eliz. II, c. 6 1987 May 13
 (e)		 Statute Law Amendment Act 1987 A minor spelling mistake was corrected in the French version of the description of Saint George Parish by Section 110.
I have personally examined each of the above acts. For 1786 to 1823, I used Berton's 1838 volume (26 Geo. III to 6 Wm IV). For all subsequent acts, I used the original annual volumes of acts. I have not yet listed the various post-1854 revised statutes. I have used the modern spellings in the remarks. The dates of passage are taken from the dates printed as such at the beginning of each act.
Footnotes
a. This is the date of Royal Assent, as reported in the Royal Gazette of March 21, 1786.
b. Came into effect September 1.
c. Came into effect September 1.
d. Came into effect July 1.
e. This is the date of Royal Assent, as reported in the act.
f. 2nd Session of the 17th Assembly.
g. Passed April 13, 1876. Came into effect May 1, 1877.		 Abbreviations
c. = Chapter
Geo. = George
Vict. = Victoria
Eliz. = Elizabeth
R. S. = Revised Statutes
C. S. = Consolidated Statutes


Summary by Parish


Comments

    There are a number of commonly misunderstood points about the dates of formation of the parishes of Charlotte County. Most of these seem to have originated with the 1896 version of the Territorial Division Act and with Ganong's monograph of 1901.

1. Pennfield - Northern Extension of 1850

    When the parishes of Pennfield, Saint George, and Saint Patrick were created in 1786 (1) they each extended roughly halfway to the county line. The lands north of these parishes were left unassigned until 1814 when an act (2) was passed to extend Saint Patrick and Saint George north to the county line. According to Ganong, some people assumed that Pennfield extended north as well, even though no such act was passed at the time: (3)

The Act of 1814 extending Saint Patrick and Saint George northward to the county line, did not so extend Pennfield, but such an extension seems to have been assumed, for it appears on all maps even including Wilkinson. I can, however, find no legal justification for it, except that, as its northern boundary in 1786 was the extended northern line of Saint George, the removal of the latter northward may have been thought to carry the northern boundary of Pennfield with it.
    It now turns out that there actually is clear legal justification for extending Pennfield north after 1850. That year, the Assembly passed  An Act to consolidate all the Laws now in force for the division of the Province into Counties, Towns and Parishes.(4) This consolidation gave Pennfield the following new boundaries:
Pennfield, westerly by Saint George and L'Etang River, north and east by the County Line; and south by the Bay of Fundy, including the "Wolves" Islands and all other Islands within two miles of the shore.
These new boundaries were confirmed in 1854 when the Assembly consolidated all of the provincial laws into the Revised Statutes of New Brunswick. The county and parish divisions (5) gave Pennfield the same boundaries as in 1850:
Pennfield - Westerly by Saint George and L'Etang River, north and east by the County line, and south by the Bay of Fundy, including the "Wolves" Islands and all other Islands within two miles of the shore.
Therefore, although the legality of Pennfield's northern extension was questionable from 1814 to 1850, it was definitely valid from 1850 onwards.

1. 26 Geo. III, c. 1, ss. 4-6. Assented to March 15, 1786.
2. 54 Geo. III, c. 15. Passed March 7, 1814.
3. Ganong, p. 434n.
4. 13 Vict., c. 51. Passed April 26, 1850.
5. R. S., 1854, Vol. 1, c. 1. Charlotte Co. parishes were on pages 5-7. The Revised Statutes were passed May 1, 1854.

2. Lepreau - 1857, not 1859

    Although many secondary sources state that Lepreau Parish was created in 1859, it appears to have actually been created in 1857. The act  to create the parish, An Act to erect the eastern part of the Parish of Pennfield, in the County of Charlotte, into a separate Town or Parish, was passed March 26, 1857, to come into effect the next September 1 (still 1857) and it was printed with the acts of 1857 like any other act.(1) I have also checked the statutes  of 1858 (2) and 1859 (3) and found that they do not contain any act relating to Lepreau Parish, nor do they contain any notes saying that the act of 1857 had been suspended or disallowed until 1859. The date of 1859 must be a typo unless something very unusual happened to delay the operation of the act.

    The first source I've found giving 1859 for Lepreau was an act (4) passed in 1896 to reconsolidate the territorial divisions of New Brunswick. It contained marginal notes that gave the date of formation of each county and parish; 1859 was given for Lepreau. This mistake was repeated in the Consolidated Statutes of 1903 and the Revised Statutes of 1952. The Consolidated/Revised Statutes of 1854, 1877, 1927, and 1973 did not give any dates.

    The first non-statutory source I've found giving 1859 for Lepreau is Ganong's 1901 monograph on the boundaries of New Brunswick.(5) He used the act of 1896 as a major source and this is probably where he got the erroneous date. The second source is Fellows' Researching Your Ancestors in New Brunswick, Canada which copied 1859 from Ganong.(6) The third source is the introduction to the Charlotte County Genealogical Guide: 1999 produced by the Provincial Archives. It presumably copied 1859 from Ganong or Fellows. However, Fellows did give 1857 for Lepreau in Community Places Names in New Brunswick, Canada.(7)

1. 20 Vict., c. 9. Printed on pages 15-16 of Acts of the General Assembly of Her Majesty's Province of New Brunswick, Passed in July 1856, and March and July 1857. Fredericton: J. Simpson, Queen's Printer. 1857.
2. New Brunswick. Acts of the General Assembly of Her Majesty's Province of New Brunswick, Passed in March and April 1858. Fredericton: J. Simpson, Queen's Printer. 1858.
3. New Brunswick. Acts of the General Assembly of Her Majesty's Province of New Brunswick, Passed in March and April, 1859. Fredericton: J. Simpson, Queen's Printer. 1859.
4. 59 Vict., c. 8. Passed March 20, 1896.
5. Ganong, p. 435.
6. Fellows, 1979, p. 257.
7. Fellows, 1998, p. 130.

3. Saint Croix - Altered in 1881, not necessarily 1896

    Ganong's 1901 monograph says that Saint Croix Parish was altered in 1896,(1) and several websites have repeated this claim. However, it appears to be slightly in error, because An Act to alter the Boundary Lines of the Parish of Saint Croix, in the County of Charlotte was actually passed in 1881.(2) What happened in 1896, as noted earlier, was that the territorial divisions were reconsolidated into a new act.(3) I have compared the Saint Croix boundaries in the 1896 act with the amended boundaries of the 1881 act and they seem to be very similar; in fact, a large portion of the 1896 boundary description was obviously copied from the 1881 act with insignificant changes to the language. However, due to the complexity of the boundary, I cannot say with certainty that the 1896 boundaries were identical to the 1881 boundaries.

1. Ganong, p. 435.
2. 44 Vict., c. 31. Passed March 25, 1881.
3. 59 Vict., c. 8. Passed March 20, 1896.

4. Digdequash - A Tale of G's and Q's

    The community in Saint Patrick Parish located east of Bocabec is called and spelled Digdeguash. That spelling is used locally and it is sanctioned by the Geographical Names Board of Canada. Furthermore, it has been in common use for far more than a century; indeed, the appropriations acts of the New Brunswick Assembly used that spelling from the 1820s onward, and it was also common in Charlotte County newspapers from an early date.

    In 1896, however, a typo occurred. The same act (59 Vict., c. 8) which gave 1859 rather than 1857 for the date of Lepreau Parish also misspelled Digdeguash as "Digdequash" in the description of Saint Patrick Parish. The offending "q" was then carried forward in every single revision of the Territorial Division Act for the next seventy five years - 1903, 1927, 1952, and 1973. Today, over century later, the "q" is sitting on the Province's website. The Queen's Printer has informed me (October 2000) that they are aware of the problem, but cannot correct the spelling until the Legislature passes an act to do so.


References

    Statutes for 1786 to 1836 were taken from Berton's 1838 edition, listed below. The remaining statutes were examined from the original annual volumes of acts and there is no need to provide a full citation of the volumes in most cases, since the regnal years and chapter numbers are sufficient. However, I have provided full citations for 1857 to 1859 in order to make it perfectly clear which books I examined in order to make my claim that no act relating to Lepreau was passed in 1858 or 1859.
Return to the Counties and Parishes of New Brunswick Site.

This page was prepared by Craig Walsh.
First Posted 16 May 2001.
Last Updated 10 November 2001.