The Merritts of New Brunswick

The following from Othniel Merritt of Vancouver to my husband’s grandfather, David R. Merritt on August 28. 1956 and all hand written: Gerry Black

This is a History of that Merritt Branch, descended from Robert Merritt, a Loyalist of Westchester County, New York State, who, early in 1783 went to Nova Scotia to establish for himself and his family a new home, under the British Crown. Like several thousand other Loyalists, he went first to Port Roseway (now Shelborne) in present day Nova Scotia. He filed on two land claims – on the Mainland, the other on McNutt Island out in the Shelborne Harbor.

(ed. note – a more general history of New Brunswick follows)

By June, 1784, after a very discouraging winter of extreme cold, gales and storms, and on discovering during the winter clearing away of forest, that the Shelborne soil was very rough and rocky and ill-fitted for profitable farming, more than 9,000 of the 10,000 then at Shelborne, decided to and did move away. A few went to Halifax. Some 200 went to Digby. The very largest lot of them went to Parr Town (now Saint John City) at the mouth of the St. John River. Of these a 100 or so stayed at Parr Town while the rest went up the river and its branches to settle on lands assigned to them by the British Government, There, out of the solid forests, they began to clear farms (sic) and to build homes for their families.

In 1604 Champlain landed some French settlers at the mouth of the St. John River, and started a settlement there, (sic) That same year he planted another such colony on an island just off the present town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. The following summer saw him back again from France with fresh supplies for these two settlements and more new settlers which he planted in the Annapolis Valley of now Nova Scotia and its environs. Thus began France’s colonization of North America.

Under the French rule all that is now New Brunswick as well as all that is now (sic) Nova Scotia was, by the French Government, made one Province and named Acadia. This name applied to all this territory up to 1713 when, by the Treaty of Utrecht, France ceded (sic) Acadia to Great Britain. Once this territory became a British Province, many of the settlers and their sons from the other older American Provinces began to move over to Acadia to settle there. Even more British settlers came there from the Old Country. Among those were many from Scotland. Soon thereafter the name Acadia was changed to Nova Scotia (New Scotland).

All Acadia (both what is now New Brunswick and what is now Nova Scotia carried this name Nova Scotia up to August 8, 1784, when the British Parliment (sic) separated the Northern half of Nova Scotia from the Southern half. To the Northern half they gave the name New Brunswick. They also gave it a Provincial Parliment (sic) and a Governor of its own with the town of Fredricton as its capitol. This Act of August 8, 1784 left the Southern half a separate Province to be called as before Nova Scotia. At this time, New Brunswick had a British population of about 30,000 of whom 20,000 Loyalists came direct from the States during 1783 and early 1784. Thus New Brunswick was on its own, free from Halifax.

SOURCE- Gerry Black (Maine, USA) EMail address jblack@ainop.com
ITEM: Letter from Othniel Merritt to David R. Merritt in 1958
ADDED BY: David G. Merritt, February 2001

Page numbers in text (?) coincide with a typed copy, scanned, and sent to David G. Merritt, Feb., 2001. Latest source ~ Carol Brown Parker to John Charlton – Jan, 2007. OCR from JPG scanned and edited by John Charlton.