Publications
Help Recall
Life Before CFB Gagetown
Although it was a very warm summer's day, Mum insisted,
we wear our Sunday church clothes to Gram's 70th birthday party as there would
be lots of pictures being taken to mark this milestone. It seemed she wanted
us to appear well dressed in the pages of the family album.
During the past four years, many photos from the albums of families who
resided in the communities now occupied by Canadian Forces Base Gagetown
have been collected and placed in publications to help portray and remember
life as it was before the expropriation 50 years ago.
Through the pictures in Places of Our Hearts - Memories of the Base Gagetown
Communities to 1953, published by the Base Gagetown Community History
Association and the Queens County Historical Society & Museum, memories
of places that exist only in the heart have been preserved.
Summer Hill and Dunn's Corner: Gone But Not Forgotten, edited
by Richard Corbett, chronicles the life in these communities. Twenty-three
contributors address the achievements of people nurtured there. It also celebrates
the dedication and sacrifice of the hundreds of families who migrated, mainly,
from Ireland and Scotland, met the wilderness and subdued it, built homes
and established vibrant communities with roads, bridges, churches and schools.
These stories and diaries honour those who persevered and lived quietly until
1952 when everything that had been developed was taken away. There are photos
of the homes on each property as well as treasured family photographs that
are supplemented by family history going back generations.
Richard Corbett and Derald Kirkpatrick authored A Search for the Descendants
of James Corbett and Jane Breakey and the Graham Family. It is in two
parts, one addressing the personal search for the descendants of James Corbett
and Jane Breakey by the author and the other part the search for the descendants
of the main branches of the Graham families who occupied land in Queens and
Sunbury Counties. All the Corbetts from Queens County are shown to be related.
They were linked in Ireland and those links were reinforced in Canada through
the marriage of John Mills Corbett and Jane Corbett. The Graham families were
more difficult to prove inter-relationships but each branch was thoroughly
examined.
Enniskillen - Golden Memories, by Suzanne McCann is a 178-page
history of all the families who had their land expropriated and also of the
families who continued to live in the small community of Enniskillen that
the Government did not buy. Photos have been included of each homestead and
the families who lived in them.
New Jerusalem - We Remember was compiled and edited by Verna
Mott and published by the New Jerusalem Committee of the BGCHA. It consists
of writings of several community members and descendants and contains 115
vintage photos.
In Graeme Somerville's publication, I take my pen in hand, the clock
has been turned back to the 1800s through the letters of the Webb family to
reveal the life and times of a pioneering New Brunswick family. Noah Webb,
the patriach of the family, migrated from Westchester, Cumberland County,
Nova Scotia to New Brunswick in the 1820s. The letters of Noah of New Jerusalem
and of his four children James, Reuben, Isaiah and their sister Mary E. (who
married Andrew Forbes), as well as a dozen other writers run from 1853 to
1893 and cut deep into the temper of the times.
Clones - Days Remembered was published by the Clones Committee.
It is mainly photos of the different families, and information on churches,
schools, farming, lumbering and maps of the area.
Remembering Coote Hill was published by Frank Queen. It is a
brief history of the community along with photos of houses and genealogy
information.
Reflections of Petersville, written by Evelyn Garland with photos
and captions compiled by Linda Adams, is a brief history of the community
along with information on daily life and photos of the people and places of
Petersville. A map has been included marking where different homes were located.
Armstrongs Corner - Memories by the Armstrongs Corner Community
Committee has photos of each house with info on the families as well as some
genealogy and maps showing were houses were located. Articles on community
life were submitted by several residents.
The History of New Jerusalem was compiled by Annie E. Elder in
1953. It is an excellent source of information for those with roots in that
community.
A Time There Was - Petersville and Other Abandoned Settlements in
Queens County, New Brunswick, 1815-1953 by Marion Gilchrist Reicker was
published in 1984 by the Queens County Historical Society. It outlines the
history and folklore of a number of Queens County communities that were once
viable but for one reason or another no longer exist.
Along Hibernia Roads by Carol Lawson and Connie Denby has information
from a diary, photos of homes with info on families including some genealogy
and quite a few pictures.
Wes Hamilton has compiled a 14-page chronology of Hamilton Mountain.
He is willing to share a copy of his research to anyone interested in this
area. Contact him at jetech@sympatico.ca.
He will also be handing out a limited number of printed copies at the Reunion.
The above publications and others will be available for purchasing at the
Reunion on the 50th Anniversary of the Expropriation of the homes in the 20
communities to make way for Base Gagetown. The four day event will be held
at the Queens County Fair Grounds in the Village of Gagetown this weekend.
For more information on ordering, e-mail bgcha@yahoogroups.com or write to
BGCHA, P.O. Box 20086, Saint John, NB, Canada, E2L 5B2.
