Place:Madawaska (parish), Madawaska (county), New Brunswick, Canada

:the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Madawaska Parish is located in Madawaska County, New Brunswick. The parish is now primarily made up of the city of Edmundston which has a population (according to the 2011 census of Canada) of 16,032. Wikipedia lists no further communities in the parish. However, Place Names of New Brunswick mentions Verret which is located on east side of the St. John River, 4.2 km west-southwest of Edmundston, on the road to Saint Hilaire. Madawaska Parish was established in 1833 and for its first 40 years was part of Carleton and then Victoria County. It included Saint Léonard Parish and Saint Basile Parish until 1850, and Saint François Parish, Saint Jacques Parish, and Saint Hilaire Parish until 1877. (Source:Place Names of New Brunswick) The parishes of Rivière Verte, Sainte Anne and Notre Dame de Lourdes were part of Saint Basile and Saint Léonard parishes and not separated into individual units until the 20th century.

History

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

During the early colonial period, the area was a camping and meeting place of the Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik) Nation during seasonal migrations. From the mid to late eighteenth century, one of the largest Maliseet villages had been established at Madawaska and had become a refuge site for other Wabanaki peoples. The Maliseet village was originally located near the falls at the confluence of the Madawaska and Saint John Rivers. Currently, the City of Edmundston surrounds a federal Indian Reserve (St. Basile 10/Madawaska Maliseet First Nation).

Originally named Petit-Sault (Little Falls) in reference to the waterfalls located where the Madawaska River merges into the Saint John River, the settlement was renamed Edmundston in 1851 after Sir Edmund Walker Head, who was Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick from 1848 to 1854 and Governor-General of Canada (i.e., Lower Canada and Upper Canada) from 1854 to 1861. Originally a small logging settlement, Edmundston's growth is mostly attributed to the city's strategic location.

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".