New Brunswick, forming a New Province

The most surprising fact I learned when I first began to research my Brides province of New Brunswick was that in the year I chose, summer of 1784, there was no New Brunswick. The long, stretched out colony was part of Nova Scotia.

When thousands of Loyalists (people still loyal to King George III) fled the American War of Independence, they were promised land and funds in this colony to the north still owned by Britain. The capital was in Halifax, many miles from mainland Nova Scotia. The Loyalists landed in the village of Parr Town on the Bay of Fundy. A place with a few traders and soldiers, and Fort Howe dominating a limestone hill above, the Loyalists began building shops, townhouses, and coffee houses.

Governor Parr, the governor of Nova Scotia, was considered too incompetent to manage all this new activity. The Loyalists demanded their own capital and their own colony.

Soon Parr Town was renamed Saint John, and the portion of Nova Scotia to the west of the Isthmus of Chignecto was partitioned off and renamed New Brunswick, after one of King George's many titles.


Flag of New Brunswick

The capital would later be moved up-river to a safer place, far from the bay where American raiders could attack, and called Frederick Town, soon shortened to Fredericton.

I incorporated the formation of this new province into my story. My heroine Amelia arrives in Parr Town, to marry a soldier she's never met, shortly before the declaration of New Brunswick.

Canada 1791

Novel blurb:

In 1784, Englishwoman Amelia Latimer sails to the new colony of New Brunswick in faraway Canada. She’s to marry a man chosen by her soldier father. Amelia is repulsed by her betrothed, and refuses to marry him. She is attracted to a handsome Acadian trader, Gilbert, a man beneath her in status. Gilbert must fight the incursion of English Loyalists from the American war to hold onto his land and heritage. Will he and Amelia find peace when events seek to destroy their love and lives.

 

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Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.