Place:Hartland, Carleton, New Brunswick, Canada

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hartland (2011 population: 947) is a town in Wakefield parish of Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada. Hartland is situated on the Saint John River in the central-western portion of the province in the agricultural heartland of Carleton County.

The first settler in the area was William Orser (b.1762) and his son William Jr. William traveled there from New York with his wife and six children. His wife died of an illness and he remarried to a widow, Mary Blake, who also had six children. The pair later conceived an additional six children. The land was settled in 1797, and granted in 1809.

The town was named Hartland in 1874, to honour James R. Hartley, a surveyor and MLA (member of the legislative assembly or provincial government).

The town is best known for being the site of the Hartland Bridge, the longest covered bridge in the world. Originally opened on July 4, 1901, the 1,282 foot (390.75 m) bridge is a national historic site. The bridge was covered as part of major repairs in 1921, and the pedestrian walkway added in 1945.

Prior to the building of the Mactaquac Dam, Hartland was also famous for its salmon pools, located slightly upstream of the Hartland Bridge.

Being built close to the Saint John River, the town is usually affected by the annual spring freshet. Ice jams threaten the Hartland Bridge, it being a choke point for loose ice.

Research Tips

• New Brunswick Provincial Archives. This is the introductory page. The tabs will lead you to more precise material.
• The FamilySearch wiki. This lists the availability of vital statistics indexes for New Brunswick.
• New Brunswick GenWeb. A round-up of a lot of genealogical information at the province, county and parish level. Lists of cemeteries and monumental inscriptions can be found here.
• The Provincial Archives website titled The Placenames of New Brunswick has maps of all of its parishes and descriptions of some communities within them. This site contains "cadastral" maps for each parish illustrating the grantee’s name for land granted by the province. These maps are cumulative, showing all grants regardless of date.
• Microfilm images of all Canadian censuses 1851-1911 are online at Library and Archives Canada, as well as at FamilySearch and Ancestry. The 1921 census appears to be available only at Ancestry.
• The CanGenealogy page for New Brunswick. An overview of available online sources with links written by Dave Obee.
• More possibilities can be found by googling "New Brunswick province family history" and investigating the results.
• The word "rencensement", found in Sources, is French for "census".