The following are the best web sites and books for finding lists of the parishes and counties of New Brunswick, and related information.

 

Title Author or Source Timeline and Features Comments 1. County Genealogical Guides Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. - Historical. - Dates of formation. The first page of each pdf county guide explains the historical evolution of the parishes in that county. 2. Parish Formations Cleadie B. Barnett's New Brunswick's Past pages. - Historical. - Dates of formation. This gives the evolution of the counties and parishes in a single html document. 3. County Divisions Irene Doyle's personal pages. - Historical. - Dates of formation. - Maps. Similar to Link 2. 4. New Brunswick Parishes Marilyn Strout's Charlotte County GenWeb. - Modern. - GenWeb sites. This lists the modern parishes alphabetically and gives links to their respective county GenWebs. 5.  Canadian Geographical  Names Data Base Natural Resources Canada. - Modern. - Lookup placenames. Type in a New Brunswick placename and the CGNDB will tell you which county it is located in under the "Location" field, but not the parish. 6. Territorial Division Act, 1973+ Statutes of New Brunswick, N. B. Department of Justice. - Modern. - Legal boundaries. This act provides the official boundaries of the modern day counties and parishes. It is the direct descendant of the act of 1786 that established the original parishes. 7. Territorial Division Act, 1786 Statutes of New Brunswick, Local. - Historical. - Legal boundaries. This is the original act that divided the province into parishes and confirmed the counties.

 

1. Ganong, W. F. "A Monograph of the Evolution of the Boundaries of the Province of New Brunswick." Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. Vol. VII (1901) Section II. pp. 139 - 449. This paper deals thoroughly with all aspects of New Brunswick's historical boundaries including the Indian, French, English, and Loyalist eras; and international, interprovincial, and internal boundaries. Section V. C., pp. 413 - 442, lists the historical evolution of the county and parish boundaries, including a good analysis of the reasons for the boundaries and their relation to the topography of the province. Many later lists of parishes are based on this paper. 2. Fellows, Robert F. Researching your Ancestors in New Brunswick, Canada. 1979. Appendix E (pp. 250 - 267), "New Brunswick Counties and Parishes", lists the dates of formation of all counties and parishes. It states that the original counties were formed in 1786, when in fact they were formed in 1785. The book includes a provincial map showing county and parish lines. 3. Wynn, Graeme. "New Brunswick Parishes in the pre-1861 Census Years." Acadiensis. Vol. VI, No. 2 (Spring 1977). pp. 95 - 105. This lists all of the parishes existing at the time of each of the pre-1861 censuses (1824, 1834, 1840, and 1851) with maps. [Thank you to Christopher Greer for provided this reference.] 4. Canada. Gazetteer of Canada: New Brunswick. 3rd Edition. Natural Resources Canada. Ottawa. 1994. (Published for the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (now the Geographical Names Board of Canada) by the Canada Centre for Mapping, Geomatics Canada, Natural Resources Canada.) This is the hardcopy version of the New Brunswick portion of the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base (Link 5 above). It lists all the communities and geographical features of New Brunswick with the county, parish, topographic map reference, latitude, and longitude of each. This is better than the online database which only gives the county, not the parish, of each community. The book includes a provincial map showing county boundaries.