New Brunswick Emigration and Immigration

Online Resources

 * Online Listing of 1500 of the first families to arrive in New Brunswick.
 * Passenger Lists, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Canadian Border Crossing Records
The United States kept records of people crossing the border from Canada to the United States. These records are called border crossing lists, passenger lists, or manifests. There are two kinds of manifests:


 * Manifests of people sailing from Canada to the United States.
 * Manifests of people traveling by train from Canada to the United States.

In 1895, Canadian shipping companies agreed to make manifests of passengers traveling to the United States. The Canadian government allowed U.S. immigration officials to inspect those passengers while they were still in Canada. The U.S. immigration officials also inspected train passengers traveling from Canada to the United States. The U.S. officials worked at Canadian seaports and major cities like Québec and Winnipeg. The manifests from every seaport and emigration station in Canada were sent to St. Albans, Vermont.

The Family History Library has copies of both kinds of manifests. Because the manifests were sent to St. Albans, Vermont, they are called St. Albans District Manifest Records of Aliens Arriving from Foreign Contiguous Territory. Despite the name, the manifests are actually from seaports and railroad stations all over Canada and the northern United States, not just Vermont.

Border Crossing Manifests. Manifests may include each passenger's name, port or station of entry, date of entry, literacy, last residence, previous visits to the United States, and birthplace. The manifests are reproduced in two series:

Manifests of Passengers Arriving in the St. Albans, Vermont, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895–January 1921. (608 rolls; Family History Library films .) Includes records from seaports and railroad stations all over Canada and the northern United States. These manifests provide two types of lists:


 * Traditional passenger lists on U.S. immigration forms.
 * Monthly lists of passengers crossing the border on trains.

These lists are divided by month. In each month, the records are grouped by railroad station. (The stations are listed in alphabetical order.) Under the station, the passengers are grouped by railroad company.

Manifests of Passengers Arriving in the St. Albans, Vermont, District through Canadian Pacific Ports, 1929–1949. (25 rolls; Family History Library films .) Travel to the United States from Canadian Pacific seaports only.

Border Crossing Indexes. In many cases, index cards were the only records kept of the crossings. These cards are indexed in four publications:


 * Soundex Index to Canadian Border Entries through the St. Albans, Vermont, District, 1895–1924. (400 rolls; Family History Library films .)

The Soundex is a surname index based on the way a name sounds rather than how it is spelled. Names like Smith and Smyth are filed together.


 * Soundex Index to Entries into the St. Albans, Vermont, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1924–1952. (98 rolls; Family History Library films .)
 * St. Albans District Manifest Records of Aliens Arriving from Foreign Contiguous Territory: Records of Arrivals through Small Ports in Vermont, 1895–1924. (6 rolls; Family History Library films .) The records are arranged first by port and then alphabetically by surname. Only from Vermont ports of entry: Alburg, Beecher Falls, Canaan, Highgate Springs, Island Pond, Norton, Richford, St. Albans, and Swanton.
 * Detroit District Manifest Records of Aliens Arriving from Foreign Contiguous Territory: Arrivals at Detroit, Michigan, 1906–1954. (117 rolls; Family History Library films .) Only from Michigan ports of entry: Bay City, Detroit, Port Huron, and Sault Ste. Marie.

The major port for the maritime provinces has always been Halifax, Nova Scotia. As with the rest of eastern Canada, New Brunswick has a few scattered ship lists for the period before 1865. The few ship lists from the Acadian period can be found at the Acadian Center, Moncton University. There are a few British ship lists from about 1815 to 1860 on microfilm reels F-1697 and F-1698 at the National Archives of Canada.

The Provincial Archives has recently indexed a series of passenger lists. The sub-series RS23E consists of the passenger lists. These lists are for the following ports and years:


 * St. John—1816, 1833, 1834, 1838
 * St. Andrews—1837, 1838
 * Bathurst—1837

Shipbuilding and Shipowners
Because Great Britain and Ireland were islands, the sea and everything that sailed on it, became matters of record. The British Admiralty, and in civilian guise the Board of Trade, as well as Lloyds insurance brokers, kept detailed records of all British ships and their crews, and British Colonies came under their care. Library and Archives Canada has filmed almost everything relating to ships and shipping in the colonies that became Canada.

In 1878, the year when Canadian ship ownership peaked, 4,467 vessels, totalling 943,583 tons were registered in the Maritime provinces, and many of these were built in the Timber Colony, where shipbuilding was a major industry and being a “shipowner” an “occupation” of the better off members of society.

There are records of both the people who owned the ships and the people who sailed them that can be useful if your research leads into this field.

Shipping Registers
Every ship over 15 tons, owned by any of His/Her Majesty’s subjects, was required to be registered. Until 1874, Saint John was the Port of Registry for ships built along Fundy, including Moncton, Sackville and Dorchester. After Confederation, registration became Ottawa’s responsibility and political gift so just about anywhere that ships were built, a registrar was appointed.

The 18th and early 19th century records are incomplete, but almost everything after 1824 has survived, though the “casually” assembled microfilms at the “Canada Archives” gave Esther Clark Wright some problems. The registers describe the vessel in some detail, some give the date of launching so you can check local newspapers, and every time a share changed ownership, this had to be registered and a new list of owners entered in the Registry Book.

Vessels were owned in 64 shares, the same number for a 100 ton coastal schooner or the 1600 ton Marco Polo, and in theory, there could be could be 64 owners. Ownership patterns varied, in a community where wealth was concentrated in the hands of two or three families, they owned everything. In places where wealth was more widely spread, so was ownership.

For example, in the county town of Dorchester, New Brunswick, many well-to-do lawyers invested in local vessels. Such “shipowners” might hold shares in a dozen vessels, rather like a stock portfolio today, spreading the risk of loss.

These registers of owners can contain a great deal of personal information. A small wooden coastal schooner did not require a great outlay of capital, and a sawmill operator or blacksmith might accept shares in payment for the lumber or hardware they supplied. Usually the Master held a few shares, and in the boom years of the 1860s, even caulkers and other workmen, or merchant’s clerks, are found among the lists of owners. If an owner died, the register will give the date of death, details of probate, names of executors or administrator, and disposition of the shares. The history of a long-lived vessel may be spread through several books.

A Selective Database
You will find a searchable database of Canadian shipping registers on several Internet sites and on a CD-ROM Ships and Seafarers of Atlantic Canada now for sale. The Atlantic Canada Shipping Project was set up in 1976, when computer memory was limited and every byte counted; it indexes each vessel by name, official number, and owner’s name, with some further bits of information.

That means their database does not include a great many ships built in other ports once these became ports of registry. Dorchester, Moncton, Sackville and St. Andrews among others in New Brunswick. The large Vaughan and Moran fleets originated in St. Martins New Brunswick, which never did become a port of registry and Esther Clarke Wright points out that St. Martins ships were registered not only in Saint John and Halifax, but further afield in Irish ports, in Scotland, and Liverpool.

Crew Agreements - A Sample Only
Some data compiled from crew agreements of vessels registered in the ports of Saint John, New Brunswick (and Halifax, Yarmouth and Windsor, Nova Scotia) for the years 1863-1914 is also in this database and CD-ROM. The files contain information on some 20,000 masters and 182,000 seamen, their ports of call and voyages from Atlantic Canada. Just remember, this database is only a sampling of the records that actually exist. The actual records are, for the most part, now at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Other repositories are acknowledged by Eric W. Sager in his Seafaring Labour: The Merchant Marine of Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914 (Montréal, Kingston, London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), a valuable source if you are researching seamen, as is Judith Fingard’s Jack in Port: Sailortowns of Eastern Canada (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1982). Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa has colour microfilms (some 54 reels) of Lloyd’s Captains Registers (MG 40 O 3).

Women’s Lives
For a glimpse of the lives of women connected with ships and shipbuilding, look for Helen Petchy’s little booklet, Signal Sea Changes (1997) which tells of two Dorchester “daughters of the shipyards,” Emma Chapman O’Neal and Sarah Palmer Ryan. Donal M. Baird’s Women at Sea in the Age of Sail (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus, 2001), 226 pages with map and illustrations, among other stories, tells that of Captain Daniel Smith Cochrane, born in St. Martins, New Brunswick, and his wife Annie Meldrum Parker, born in Tynmouth Creek, Saint John, New Brunswick, who accompanied his many voyages on the Prince Lucien of the Moran-Galloway fleet. It is important to note that they were married in Liverpool in 1866, and ended their days in England where they are buried. With seafaring families, this is always a possibility to watch out for.