Canadian Forces Base Gagetown Cemeteries
on the
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick Website

I never tired of hearing the stories Gram told of the people in the pictures in her photo album. Her parents’ looked really old as her father had a long white beard and her mother wore dresses that almost touched the ground.

It was puzzling to me that she had also included pictures of tombstones so I asked her why.

She replied, “A tombstone tells a story also. It gives the date of birth, the date of death, age, spouse and possibly the children who died.” “Tombstones are erected so that anyone who walks through a cemetery will know this person lived and died.”

Today you can walk through the forty-four cemeteries of CFB Gagetown, without leaving home by viewing the 1091 digital photos of tombstones on a searchable database on the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick website at http://archives.gnb.ca.

When doing a search of the databases, there are three options:

1) Search the entire database of 1860 records for family name and given name. 

2) Choose a cemetery and view all records for this cemetery.

3) Choose one of the 298 family names and view all records for this name.

The transcriptions, digitized photos, database and the application were done by a private individual and the work donated to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick.

In 1953 the expropriation of the 1100 square kilometers of land currently occupied by CFB Gagetown forced between 2000 and 3000 people to leave their homes and their deceased loved ones.

The Base Gagetown Community History Association Inc. at http://www.bgcha.ca is a great resource for information regarding the area and the families who lived there.

While you are visiting the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick site at http://archives.gnb.ca, I suggest you take a look at the database of 197 New Brunswick Cemeteries in the counties of Carleton, Queens, Sunbury, and York with 53,362 records that were compiled by several members of the Capital Branch of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society. This is a work in progress and is constantly being added to and hopefully one day, will cover the entire province.

Tombstones provide important genealogical information but locating them is not always easy thus databases on this subject are of great assistance to the family researcher.

Queries

Query 1039
Wilkins: George Freeman Wilkins migrated with his family from Amity, Maine to Canterbury, New Brunswick circa 1850.  Who were his parents?  
-Betty Fredericks, 4 Mt. Pleasant St., (308) No. Billerica, MA, USA, 01862. E-mail to  bbffrrpp@attbi.com.

Query 1040
Hardy - Cole: Searching for Henry Hardy and or his ancestors. Henry was born in New Brunswick - possibly Miramichi - and married Jane Cole, believed to be from Nipisquit. Henry died in 1844 in New Richmond, Quebec.
    -Brenda (Hardy) Hamilton, 3395 Bodard Road, Nelson, BC, Canada, V1L 6T3. E-mail to Brenda_Hamilton@telus.net.

Ruby M. Cusack is a genealogy buff living in Saint John. Send your queries to her at:  rmcusack@nbnet.nb.ca.  Include your name and mailing address for the benefit of the readers of the newspaper who do not have access to E-mail but could have information to share with you. Please put "Yesteryear" followed by the surnames in your query. For more information on submitting queries, visit http://www.rubycusack.com/Query-Instructions.html
 
Ruby contributes a "Family History" column to the Telegraph-Journal on Tuesdays

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