Vital Statistics for New Brunswick have been kept in
various ways, over various time periods. Although marriage records were
recorded fairly early in the provinces history, most County Registers did
not begin until about 1812. Before that date Church Records were the only
(relatively) consistent records made. Even many of these have not survived.
Also, until the mid 1830's the Church of England was the
only church authorized to perform marriages, as were Justices of the Peace.
This is why many people were married by the Church of England Minister,
even though they belonged to another religion.
Births and deaths were not officially required to be
registered until 1920, although there were some that were. The earliest
records were made on a county basis, and even in a sub-district of a
county, but during later years these records were gathered by the
Provincial Government, and over time have been combined into one
Department. During the past few years many of these early records have been
entered into a database by the Provincial Archives (PANB) and can be found
on their website.
Among the records PANB has come into possession of are a
group called "Late Registrations". These are a set of records compiled by
the government to assist them in identifying persons of a given age -
mainly so they could qualifying for pensions or other benefits. To qualify
for a Late Registration Birth Certificate one had to submit a number of
"proofs" of their idenity. These were usually in the form of christening
records, family Bible recordings, school records, and personal statements
from other family members, neighbours or medical personal, etc. Therefore
these records are more accurately a statement of what the person claimed to
be, rather than a first hand account of what the actual facts were, and we
can find many variations between these records and others we might find.
Government death records are very scarce for the 1800s. We
are most apt to find these in Church burial records, some Probate records,
and on rare occasions from Undertaker's records.
If you have a web site, with any of these types of records,
we ask you to submit the URL, so we can post it here. If you have data you
would like us to mount on our
companion site for you, please contact the Association at
info@bgcha.ca and let us know the
particulars of what you have, in what format, etc. and we will get back to
you as to how we can make use of it.
LINKS WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE
Birth & Marriage
Records - PANB's web site
